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freifraufischer · 3 years ago

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What happens when passive aggressiveness becomes the safe choice? Tom Forrester

This past Olympics if you were watching NBC you might have wondered if anyone replaced Marta Karolyi as the head of the United States Women’s Gymnastics program. After all in pervious cycles the famously controlling ‘evil genius’ of American gymnastics was a constant fixture in the narrative of US WAG (women’s artistic gymnastics). The person holding her former position, now named the High Performance Coordinator, is a long time coach named Tom Forrester. And he did everything he could to avoid the public eye. You might think that’s a good thing given the organizations past ... but let me tell you about Forrester’s tenure in the job.

Forrester was named after Valeri Liukin (father of Nastia and a former Soviet gold medalist himself) who briefly held the position stepped down after interviews with former gymnasts raised issues about emotional abuse and weight shaming. Forrester was a ‘safe’ pick as he was an elite coach but hadn’t been involved deeply in the national program for years. HIs last high level gymnast was in the 1990s and he seemed free of baggage. And like fashion trends that should never come back that 1990s drama turned out to haunt the program.

But at first Forrester was well liked enough. He gave some interviews and answered questions on social media, though that stopped soon enough after people criticized that he didn’t seem to understand the Olympic Qualification path for individuals (the path that Jade Carey would take that would lead to her Olympic Gold on Floor but not as part of the US team). But mostly he was celebrated largely for simply being inoffensive--because being inoffensive wasn’t an easy quality to find among potential candidates for this job.

But troubling signs started to show up: American women were receiving deductions (or not receiving credit) internationally that they weren’t receiving at home. That is partly on US domestic judging but it’s part of the job of the HPD to help athletes and their coaches tailor their compositions to the international judges. His hands off approach meant no one had guidance. After 2019 Junior Worlds he said, “We definitely learned that dance elements are being weighed heavier than tumbling elements.” Except... that’s not something he should be learning at championships. This is like a soccer coach who is unfamiliar with the off side rules and who thinks that his players and their personal trainers should figure it out for themselves.

Spoiler, he didn’t learn on the dance elements thing because that was one of the things the American women were hammered on in Tokyo.

But for someone holding a job in an organization hammered with an ongoing abuse scandal I think there is a worse manifestation of his refusal to make decisions. Maggie Haney, former coach of of 2016 Olympian Laurie Hernandez was under investigation for horrific verbal abuse and being sued by one of her former athletes a top US Tokyo hopeful Riley McCusker who was stricken with Rhabdo. Rhabdo is the kind of injury in gymnastics that you immediately blame on the coach because it is their job to manage their athletes training. While Haney was under investigation/being sued for her treatment of Hernandez and McCusker both athletes were going to US National Team camps under Forrester. And so was Haney.

Though his wife on facebook (because why take accountability by speaking to the press normally) it was said that Forrester had stepped in between Haney and McCusker in the past but his hands were tied because Haney’s current athlete had a right to have the coach of her choice at the camp. Except... that’s not true. Hernandez and McCusker both had a right, codified in US Safe Sport rules, not to have her there. So it’s either he doesn’t know the rules for coaches under investigation anymore than he understands the code or he does and doesn’t want to be involved in a confrontation. Haney has since been given the longest suspension ever handed down in US Gymnastics that was not a permanent ban.

As an aside, talking through his wife on Facebook has resulted in some truly unprofessional comments from her which no one has the authority to hold him accountable for because she’s not officially involved in the team. Neat trick that.

The most high profile part of his job though is guiding and selecting the Olympic Team and as the build up for trials started there were signs that that 1990s drama was going to come back to haunt the American women. See it’s very common in gymnastics for top gymnasts to petition to trials or onto teams because you want to give those athletes time to recover from injuries and send the strongest teams. This can be very controversial as those gymnasts who are by any measure not as strong compared to a healthy petitioner feel aggrieved about being passed over.

In 1996 the petitioners were Shannon Miller and Dominique Moceanu, Miller was already a multiple Olympic and world championship medalist and would be the only member of the Magnificent Seven to win an individual gold medal in Atlanta. Moceanu was the current national champion. They were always going to make the team as the two best gymnasts in the country. In a history of controversies involving petitions this was the least controversial case ever. Unfortunately for the future... the gymnasts past over were coached by Tom Forrester and he has been holding onto that bitterness at the “unfairness” ever since.

This year there was only one petition accepted to trials, and it was a gymnast that wasn’t very likely to make the team given her injury status. Two former world champions (though one is ... slightly less straight forward story) were denied. Forrester told an NBC film crew after trials that one of those gymnasts had to place a certain way on two events at nationals to have her petition accepted. She posted on twitter ‘news to me’. Because she had never been told.

At trials the US Olympic team was named in rank order from the all around even though the highest team score would have meant selecting a team based on who was strongest on which events. When asked about this he said “it’s not going to come down to a few tenths”. Because of course his strategy was “we have Simone Biles so we will win.”

And that’s totally not something that might contribute to the incredible stress placed on Biles that might have consequences in Tokyo... nahhh... that will be fine. But perhaps the most insidious part of his behavior was answering criticism of his decisions (if you can say following a spread sheet is a decision) is that he has used the language and words of Nassar survivors to justify himself. You want athlete centered, this is it, your welcome. I thought we didn’t care about medals anymore? Well... the organization shouldn’t. But it’s specifically your job to care about medals a little bit. And it’s not like this behavior has been super great for the athletes.

But for me the most damning thing he has done was that after Simone Biles had to withdraw from the team final in Tokyo. After the remaining members had to perform on events they weren’t expecting to do and managed to pull out a silver medal as three people competing with teams of four... he wasn’t at the press conference. He left those young women to face the world media alone.

Because who needs leadership?

#gymnastics #usa gymnastics #tom forrester #olympics #team usa

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saucylittlesmile · 4 years ago

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Anonymous said:

Do you read FSU? There’s an interesting discussion on Tessa’s SM there and would like your thoughts. (This is NOT a bashing question genuinely want to know what you think)

(Sorry, I glanced at the FSU discussion a couple of days ago when this ask came in, but couldn’t answer until now, and then my computer ate my first reply, so now you’ll get a little less thought*, LOL.)

So from my (brief and now old) look at the discussion, it seemed to fall under the usual category of: is Tessa’s social media too commercialized?

My response hasn’t changed much over the years, but I’ll summarize it here. As someone who lived through the years in which VM’s social media was Scott’s Facebook fiasco and otherwise non-existent, I was just initially very happy when they each (but let’s face it, mostly Tessa) got social media. To me, the social media was just another way to have a peek into what they wanted to share about their lives or careers, and I had very few expectations beyond that. (Wishes are a different thing, LOL.)

I do understand that Tessa’s social media presence has changed over the years. (What hasn’t changed, is that people were and still are so eager to complain about it, if not directly to her then in other places, and it doesn’t really seem to matter what she posts.) Even as she began, there was an... understanding that she was a public figure. She made distinct choices in her first posts (both Twitter and Instagram), and was always a mix of skating, other business, and personal - but never exceptionally personal. She has never been one to let everything in her real life be exposed - hints, not a full show - and has, like most people, curated what she showed to reflect a ‘best’ version of herself, and occasional glimpses into the less perfect.

Of course, as Tessa’s sponsorships/partnerships grew and changed, so did her social media. She has plenty of obligations, and obviously, part of that is for her to promote those products (or services, or professional relationships). As the number of her partners grew, the percentage of times she’s promoting grew too. And while most non-celebrity people are posting selfies, she posts photoshoots (and that doesn’t seem abnormal compared to other celebrities - even other skaters - to me).

These things make sense to me, given the trajectory of her off-ice (current) career, but although she was honing the aesthetic of her social media as they made their comeback, I still can’t discount the affect of PyeongChang. I mean, obviously, their gold medal wins and going viral, made her a much more marketable athlete and opened doors for her on that side; but it also caused (another) massive influx of new fans to start following her, and quite frankly, fans crossed the line any number of times into her (their) personal lives, and I think that it made... well, not a difference, as I again don’t think she ever over-shared on her personal life, but re-affirmed to her that she needed to be cautious in what she chose to share. And since fans tend to complain no matter what she posts (or, conversely, gush no matter what she posts), then she could spend her whole time on social media struggling to make the people already inclined to be disagreeable happy, or she can recognize that there will always be people unhappy with her social media, and she might as well posts what she wants or what she is comfortable posting or what she has to post.

(We also can’t discount the past year’s unique footprint, in which the pandemic has seriously lessened the number of social gatherings, and/or seriously curtailed the urge to post about them, as they inevitably cause controversy about distancing, masks, etc. 2020/2021 is also the first time in which she has not been skating at all as an ice dancer, and so anything she posts about skating has been a flashback, and it’s just no longer a part of her current, consistent life.)

I don’t write all this to say that I am always thrilled with her social media, or that you ought to be - there are any number of times I wish for something different. But as always, I do say that we, as consumers, have the choice to follow or reblog, or to not.

*Less thought, though apparently not less words. Oops.

TLDR: if (the generic) you don’t like Tessa’s social media, don’t follow. ;)

Meanwhile, as a retrospect, here are Tessa’s first ever 12 instagram posts (that are currently online, and of course in reverse order). I will give you this, none of them were partnered posts; but then again, this was starting in August 2014, which was post-Sochi but also before her Hillberg and Berk partnership being promoted, and long before her Adidas partnership; basically, this Tessa was unsponsored. There is - a social cause [the video], a Skate Canada/Scott/skating post, three/four Tessa-only photos [the forklift one was, IIRC, one in which at the time we knew Scott was actually involved], four ‘pretty’ pictures, one quote, and one ‘random’ photo of Tessa with a workout group.

And here is her most recent 12 Instagram posts. We’ve got: 5 sponsored/partnered posts/videos [which could also be seen a 3 Tessa-only picture posts], 2 ‘pretty’ pictures, 1 quote post, 2 skating/Scott/fan edit retrospectives, 1 vintage personal reflection post, and 1 Zoe post (which could also be seen as a personal life post, given the content).

Sometimes, there are more random photo shoots (no partnership, and so they are just ‘Tessa only’ photos, and especially when she has just participated in one), sometimes there are more sponsored posts, but overall, she will usually go back to a mix, as we can see here.

#ask #social media

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therealmnemo · 4 years ago

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WV governor just signed an anti-trans sports bill here in the state.

This is the rant I just posted to Facebook and I’m fucking livid right now.

*gets on soapbox*

About 2% of teens are trans... In total. So, accounting for that making up those that are trans boys and trans girls and nb, that would mean just under 1% of the teen population are trans girls.

Now, of that 1%, what percentage are even participating in sports? All of these states, including this one, can't even point to an example of a trans teen competing in sports. Mostly because of how they're treated in general by the population and probably the sports crowds to boot.

1% of cis women are over 6 ft tall... and you know that if a girl is that tall they're being pushed into modelling or basketball... or any other sport. Your lil girl is more likely to compete with a 6ft cis girl before competing against a trans girl. And you know what, if she's training as much as your daughter is, statistically she's gonna thump your daughter's ass in basketball, track, swimming, etc because of her size and limb length. Hell, when I did play basketball in grade school there were a few girls in the league already 6 ft or damn near close and I did get knocked down. I was approaching 5'4 by then and solid, I knocked some people down too. Don't even get me started with the beefy girls that I played softball with. They'd be *pissed* if you insinuated that a boy could beat them (and trans girls are *not* boys)

Are you going to tell the tall cis girls they can't compete because of their advantage? That the 6 ft, 160 lb guarding the net might knock over your 5'5" 110 lb racing down the court? Because that happens now. Are you going to tell the undersized cis boys that it's best they don't play sports because they'll get roughed up by the big boys? Hell no. And they're most likely not going to because the meatheads are probably already teasing the hell out of them for not performing masculinity.

I'm absolutely offended, and I'm sure cis teen girls are too, by how they insist that 'you must be *weak* enough to compete with the girls.' I saw Heaven Fitch *win* a *boy's* wrestling state tournament. Why? Because wrestling is done by weight and size. And if boys and girls weren't socially raised to be so prudish about themselves they wouldn't be 'embarrassed' to wrestle each other. When you go to a state tournament... how many kids are there? How many 1-3 places in how many events? Really small percentage huh. Look at how many kids play sports to just *play sports* Sport is about teamwork, about cheering on your teammates. One trans girl competing and taking 2nd place isn't going to make your child that got 12th suddenly medal.

Our state yoinked the genital inspections, but they're on track in Florida. If you have a daughter that seems to be just a little too tall and solid and masc looking? They can be accused of being trans and then a doctor gets to get all up in their business to prove who they are. (As if genitals were enough. Check out the TED talk of the XY woman with a complete vagina and breasts whose ovaries just happened to be undescended testes. She's a woman, and a genital inspection would not have told you of her XY.. then you would see the XY and yell BOY even though she doesn't produce testosterone at all. BECAUSE BIOLOGY IS COMPLICATED.) But this will make sure that a lot of lawsuits happen and the NCAA will most likely punish the state's programs. It's a clear violation of Title IX. Have fun defending that.

Anywho. Transphobes are probably beside themselves that they didn't go for sports before bathrooms. All these people are absolutely feral over a problem that doesn't exist and their ignorance is showing.

*gets off soapbox and kicks it*

And god, this was pointed at cis parents.. but I’m going to add here just how fucking exhausting it is for trans athletes that do compete that have to constantly talk about how much they *don’t* win and have to tear themselves down to ‘prove’ they don’t have an advantage.

#mnemospeaks #transphobia #this was triggered by a dad in the local new comments complaining about a 6ft trans girl being a danger to his daughter #you asshole #she's probably already competing against cis girls like that #calm the fuck down

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violetsystems · 5 years ago

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#personal

When people wonder how long I’ve spent being ignored down here like everybody else it’s nothing compared to how long I’ve held the same job. Truly one of the things I’ve been most successful with in proving consistency has been my work ethic. It helps that it returns financial compensation and benefits not that any of that impresses anyone these days. I say that work is work a lot and leave it at that. It is important to note I work in an extremely liberal environment. I don’t mind being inclusive in fact I think it’s more rewarding in the long run. You expect that respecting people’s right to be will create an atmosphere that encourages you to do the same. This is the Utopian vision of liberal America that always has it’s heart in the right place but fumbles upon execution. Mainly because accepting people in America seems to be largely an egocentric experience. We the people. Wait who are we all again really? It’s true I don’t really feel much in line with extreme politics on either side these days. I spent years soul searching after making dance music on how to do something more important. I volunteered for a Korean American Festival for three years back in 2011 through 2013. That imploded in such a Tarantino-esque way like everything else in my life. People come together and power struggles emerge out of the vacuum. Around 2013 I worked with a collective of mostly women from my school in a project called Collective Cleaners. It was a project about cleaning and the value of human labor. I learned how to weave rags from old bedsheets. We did a year long show at Jane Addams Hull House at UIC. I could go on and on right. But it seems like I’m telling a joke about my life with no actual punchline. Like I’m mockumentary in the flesh. Here I am still out here ambiguous proving myself to some phantom army. And here I am still not good enough for America staring it in the face. After all this my life is still a fucking joke to people in the worst and most hurtful way. It becomes exhausting to remind people you have acted on solutions to these modern problems. Nobody cares about me and what I do about it year after year. Trust me I get that part by now. That’s what it seemed like for awhile. And then I had the painful realization that the work never stops. And it seems like I’m all alone doing all the work. To be truthful a lot of the work and expectations follow me around after I leave my day job. On my lunch break I had to break up a fight between a white christian woman and a fake monk on Michigan before it happened. The woman came running down the street making a sign of the cross with her fingers. I stepped in front of her and calmly asked her what the fuck she was doing. She ran away in opposite direction. Where’s my comic book Marvel?

For all the things I’ve done I’m still just as mistrusted and questionable in the eyes of the social elite. I’m never quite good enough. Never quite valid enough to prove I’m just as just viable as a closet misogynist with a six figure salary. I’ve been questionable for years only to realize that nobody has any answers for me on how to be otherwise without being me. Other than me. And so in the end only I really know how successful this has all been. And only I know when it’s appropriate to stay the course or give up entirely. I haven’t given up. That’s self confidence talking. And sometimes you have to lead yourself forward towards some sort of progress through the hazy chaos. I spent an entire year answering political calls and surveys out of guilt. Mostly due to what I would hear from my peers about the intrinsic value of being politically aware and woke in the arts. When it comes to American politics I do participate at bare minimum in voting. One robocall asked my political leanings. I said left. “So I’ll mark you down as progressive.” I didn’t know how I felt about it at the time. Progressive in Illinois is a strange beast. We elected a billionaire for Governor and a lawyer for Mayor. At surface level that sounds horrible and I guess the more you dig into Chicago and Illinois politics you’d find the same shit. You need money in America to have a say in politics regardless of how many free speech arguments you win on the Internet. You can of course vote and it would be remiss to say I haven’t seen progress in that. As of January we have recreational Marijuana and abortion legal across the state. I have seen the drug war up close and personal. It sounds like I’m a vice news reporter. I’ve probably nudged up against them too in the field but they pretend I don’t exist. Maybe that’s a parable of the drug war and the media industrial complex. Maybe shit was lame. All I know is through a series of miracles in the democratic process smoking weed in Chicago isn’t as dangerous to your personal freedom as it used to be. Making friends in public still is. Welcome to snitchville. Whereas New York is up close but never personal Chicago is your best friend and your arch enemy at the same time. Progressive politics signifies that things move on, evolve and change. I’ve read enough news feeds to understand the Governor made whatever possible by crossing the aisles. Which can be read as compromise. That’s government. I’m a private citizen in America. Or so one would think. There’s endless commentary about how people like me don’t do enough. Americans love to talk all day about privacy and talk can be cheap. Facing the realities of a growing surveillance state that likes to masquerade as the land of the free is troubling. So can facing the reality your favorite punk rock festival is using public space for profit in under served neighborhoods. I’m more concerned about white dad rock masquerading as punk. But insecure men would rather lash out at the me too movement than rock the boat. You pick your battles right? Generally when I’ve been the one to stand up to things it’s been about not moving backwards in terms of progressive beliefs. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I got targeted on the street all summer because of it by Christians who thought it was ok to bring it to my face. I didn’t get a medal and I sure as fuck didn’t really get a pat on the back. I still have my secret support systems but I don’t have the luxury any more of hiding from who I am and what I believe. I often stand by myself and what I believe and suffer for it. Or worse it gets hijacked, misunderstood, and misrepresented by someone’s interpretation of what I’m trying to say. And I sit here every Saturday morning wondering if I’ve made any progress in being happy at all.

After failing so much in everything you get a little tired of falling for the same old tricks. The personal is the most political you can be and I have years of resistance to draw from. Nobody ever wants me to be me even after all the passionate posts on the internet about what I believe. It goes nowhere. There are people who do understand and people I trust. But the reality in America is that is few and far between in public space. The propaganda that we’re all free is largely based on some huge stipulations. Money is one of them. I work for a non profit. You can do the math. It feels like everything that the Left wanted me to be based on critique is largely ignored unless I have my wallet out. And even then I’ve been happier being less liberal with my money in places where it isn’t respected. I guess I could run away to Hong Kong and start over. The irony of that is pretty funny right now. I haven’t talked to that side of the family in a while since I’ve been off Facebook. I haven’t left the country since I came back from China, Korea and Japan by myself since the first summit between Moon Jae-in and the other guy. I don’t know that I feel very safe leaving the country. I don’t feel very safe leaving my house these days. So do I shrivel up and waste away hoping somebody will save me. What have I done to deserve all this I’m not sure. I’ve spent over three years clocking in hundreds of miles running around desolate and abandoned areas of Chicago. What am I really afraid of at this point? Dying alone and forgotten? I feel dead inside already every day. I have no hope any of this will change no matter how much we sit and argue about it. Nobody does anything. Nobody is out there with me other than the people close to my heart. Nobody invites me to a special club other than me at my kitchen table on a Saturday morning. For all the good I’ve done I’m still the first person to scapegoat as ‘problematic’ after all these years. And I can’t even profit off it on the internet? That’s a joke. If listening to all these criticisms and taking them to heart got me where I am why do we still pay so much attention to Dave Chapelle’s career and for profit opinion? I’m invisible. Just like all the victims out there who are invalidated when somebody says they’re over reacting to sexual abuse and harassment. I think America has enough problems that nobody wants to confront without us having an opinion about any other country’s sovereign dirty laundry. And this is where I think we can all learn a little something about progress. I got to where I am by believing in myself and resisting people’s judgements of who I am. I got there by challenging my own perspective and growing into my own by putting my ideas into practice. It hasn’t been easy. It has been largely thankless and a complete mind fuck. But I haven’t been alone as much as it seems. People use so many words and get nowhere. And then people learn how to communicate without ever opening their mouth. People can say they love you all day long. I’m always going to be out here showing you just how much it means to me regardless of who sees it and how they feel about it. In that I err on the side of consistency. If that makes me a loser I’m happy with the results. <3 Tim

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chelsanitys · 8 years ago

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anon post

for all 3 of my fans

i live for ur wit and sass

thx n same

Dont fuck with the best! Kate works hard to get the craziest anons to post in her yard, and I've got nothing but respect. There's no fan in the fandom as genuine and earnest as she is. Wishing her and her cats a long and healthy life!

lmao yall need to quit

you've probably answered this already but what do you think will give vm the best shot at the OG?

a good short dance + a good free dance + gui missing the catch-foot on his twizzle again

Are you taking the bar exam this summer?

no i just finished my first yr

I will cry if T&S end up together, They would be a horrible match. Surely I'm not the only one who sees this??

i am ashamed that this is the level of trollin i get. step up ur game!!

"i hope tessa marries semple so i can see all the shippers cry tbh" Poor Alex! Marrying him would probably restore his self confidence and prompt a return to the cfl! Still holding out hope!

honestly alex was the hottest of all her bfs. fedor is balding, has a dad bod n is wearing khakis on the beach now. and semple was always fug. also rl talk i didnt know canada had its own football league until this guy came around. thats so cute for canada

"i hope tessa marries semple so i can see all the shippers cry tbh" I want her with the Bitove guy. His family looks like the type that will post tons about them on sm afterward.

lmao yall know his grandfather started the toronto raptors?? i knew this brodie’s last name sounded familiar. also apparenty he and his fam golf at trump’s resort @ mar-a-lago VOM. tessa is 500% going to end up with a smarmy, filthy rich trust fund kid like him like its not even a question

Hey now. I want shippers to get overthemselves, too, but Tessa marrying Semple, god no. Basically, Tessa, open your eyes and save yourself.

lol i actually wish she was still dating him so all this mindless speculation rn would stop

Bitter and hateful is what I come here for. Anons should just fuck off and go to the Disney website if that's what they want.

vm fans are so damn soft n sensitive about everything lol, i rly wish some of yall would stop taking everything i say so seriously

Please come back, without your snark the fandom is controlled by the most delusional shippers.

i’ll post more when there r actually things 2 talk about. being around here when nothing is happening and ur all screaming into a vacuum about the same things over and over is like being institutionalized in a loony bin

why are you always up so late?

nhf for this east coast bias, it is a perfectly reasonable time in california

Which of the current/rising juniors do you see making tbe most impact next quad?

carreira/ponomarenko are going to win a olympic medal in 2022. even if the shibs, h/d and bock don’t retire, i see them easily rising through the pack - they just have the Look and aren’t without talent. i’m iffy on the rest - mcnamara/carpenter are too creepy and weird, parsons have no height difference and are siblings, both are coached by an unproven staff, everyone else are varying levels of mediocre. hawayek/baker will go to worlds 2018 if they’re lucky and prob never again if no one else retires.

i wouldn't take h/d's music choices as an indicator of what vm will have. they are the c team and vm are the a team in that camp. look at last season... h/d got stuck with marie-france's lame ass idea of the evolution of music and vm got prince.

true..... altho i think personal taste is important too. tessa would die b4 she ever approved an ‘evolution of dance’ sd

I want Tessa to steal Fedor back from Meryl. All that drama would be hilarious. Fedor lost his looks and is butt ugly now so he is exactly Tessa's type, even more so than in 2009.

i nvr thought he was that cute but he literally looks like he goes door to door selling pool cleaner now

I noticed that when Tessa shakes hands or kisses someone on the cheek (like during medal ceremony or interviews) Scott often puts a hand on her lower back even though there had not been any physical contact between the two of them before said handshake or kiss. It just always surprises me and I'm not sure I understand why he'd do this. What's your take on it ?

lmao ik u want me 2 say its bc his subconscious is screaming out in jealousy and he wants to covertly claim her and show the world she still belongs to him but i rly think they r just touchy ppl who like to touch. or hes makin sure she doesnt lose balance and fall off the podium as she’s leanin over

moulin rouge would've been a much cooler choice in 11/12 for their musical fd instead of funny face, but i don't see them doing it for their olympic fd. it's a bit tacky and overdone. i figure they'd want to do something that's a little bit more special and unique then that.

ia it wouldnt have been a bad filler fd for an off year. i just dont see it doing it for their Last Ever and for the olympics. its such a warhorse - what could they possibly say with it thats original? and its such a character piece - they r such overly emo, earnest ppl, i dont think they’d want to do something that different from themselves for their Last Ever.

huh what, vm don't stand a chance against moonlight sonata?? Pls... that would be a flop, such an overused piece of music everywhere, it's like Für Elise - hearing the first notes of it makes me vomit in my mouth a little

ya bc no one’s ever won a gold medal skating to a warhorse before

it sounds more believable to me than vm and moulin rouge tho

What interpretation? PC will just float around. They can do that in any key and judges will eat it up.

true, gui gui is a demon

No way. The judges will think they're watching Gordeeva/Grinkov again and just hand the gold to them immediately.

remember when pc said they didnt even know who torvill and dean and g/g were lmao

If scott doesn't cut his disgusting gutter frat boy hair I'm renouncing my Canadian citizenship and moving 2 Peru

was legit lookin @ pics from autumn classic n skate canada and i cant believe how short his hair was then, i can not believe i was complainin so much. i am honestly such a whiny bitch lmao this is my punishment

i have mixed feelings because Prince is the best short dance of VM's career so far but then Latch was one of the worst lol. It dragged in a lot of areas, especially the middle, and it never felt complete. I don't hate it by any means but considering we only had 2 free dances left and that was one of them... :| so I'm torn between trusting MF, and then thinking she's one misguided song choice away from ruining VM's swan song.

the thought of mf picking out the music for vm’s last ever fd makes me kind of sad. like yall have no ideas? at all?? ur relying on instagram suggestions and mf’s adult lite fm spotify playlists for inspiration? im surprised n disappointed tbh, like they arent kids anymore, i thought they would take more ownership of their careers.

but idk we’ll see. whenever i complain a lot, i usually like their material later lol

why do i feel like vm are gonna come out in their sd with despacito... the justin bieber version...

ok who is this person who keeps sending me despacito questions?? you sound like you want it to happen more than anyone else and are trying to will it into existence

It's funny because Tessa is SO cautious about everything she/they say, that she comes off/is rehearsed--I don't understand why she cares so much. They are not politicians or even super famous. Plus most people who watch (excluding Tumblr fans bc they're all extra) watch during high times like Worlds and Olympics. Most people don't watch interviews and press conferences. If they do watch one, it's usually only the fun "game" interviews or the mainstream ones like etalk which they are not tons of

idk what this is in reference to but ok lol. it prob matters to her bc its her life and she cares bc its happening to her? just spitballin here

Oh no what has Max Trankov said I'm scared to know now. If he's a Trump fan I might have to #nopeout lol he’s russian and a male chauvinist pig. he once said he wouldnt do a quad with tati until she had a baby for him...”and then maybe we try”

still gonna stan his trash ass to the end of time tho

Speaking of bad music cuts I could not stand the way HD's music was cut this year. Like I like all the songs they used individually but it just felt so weirdly put together like the songs didn't flow well into the next. The only part I liked was the last part with earned it.

really? i thought earned it was the part that seemed completely out of step with the first 2 pieces of music. the transition was way off and the tempo was so much faster than the other 2

The Facebook q&a is the first time I felt vm are actually compatible enough to be a couple.

should’ve published this steaming hot take when u sent it a month ago bc i have no idea what this is in reference to now

what do you look like?

tired mostly

haha funny how we went from vm are in a relationship to they hate each other.

dont ‘we’ me bitch i have nothing to do with this fandom’s daily emotional yo-yo-ing

Can you explain the Tessa/Kaitlyn Weaver friendship? Are they really friends? Kaitlyn seems like the kind of girl Tessa would make fun of behind her back.

more like kaitlyn weaver is tracy flick and is trying to bring down everyone in her path tbh

I get a bit of a superiority, cold vibe with Tessa, don't you?

no but i dont have self esteem issues

I think people who find Tessa cold and snobby do not get her at all. Yes, she is far from perfect and her feminism is all (...) but to call her cold and unfeeling means you haven't been paying attention at all. Like get off her dick and/or stop following her career.

i dont think shes cold either. standoffish maybe, but i dont feel like thats from superiority or aloofness. some ppl just want to mind their own business and chill?? not everyone’s a chatty cathy like scott

Music stresses me out. The only thing I've gathered from all of the various discussions is they should be exciting but not too exciting because it's an Olympic season. But they shouldn't also be too safe. Like I know you have mentioned various choices that would be good but what would be in your mind the ideal program, both SD and FD. It's their third Olympics, so how do they build on the past while still being fresh but also them. Or do they just not and give the audience what they want?

something original thats not a warhorse but is also audience friendly and is instantly musically palatable to a lot of ppl

so basically mahler

Which songs from moulin rouge should they use?

if they were doing mr (which i doubt), the orchestral score is 500x better than the cheesy ass nonsense from the soundtrack. like come what may with nicole kidman’s tremulous bird vocals and ewan mcgregor literally straining not to pop a vein would almost be too dramatic and Too Much. i think that kind of thing only works for a v specific kitschy, performative kind of team (a la russians) and wouldnt vibe with vm’s super earnest approach at all. but the orchestral score is genuinely moving and effective in a less garish way

but i dont think they’re doing moulin rouge lol

"the movies honestly made it hard 4 me to interpret hermione’s undying loyalty and devotion to harry as anything other than latent sexual attraction tbh lmao" Hahaha, pretty much. Plus, the whole Harry and Ginny thing, even more so in the movies, seemed to come out of nowhere and was cliche as fuck.

is bonnie wright still acting? i’ve seen dead fish more alive than her on screen

LMAO someone posted a clip from VM's show when they were having dinner with WP and they were talking about how WP live together and they ask VM how they deal with one another and LOL I stg I started loling cause their reactions were #priceless. S literally just had a WTF look on his face while he said something hella awkward & T looked like she wanted to slap him. Her follow up that she doesn't think they could ever spend all their time together just cements why they'll never date for me.

lmao that whole scene is so stupid. kaitlyn n andrew r such good friends i swear

Thanks for setting that anon straight. Set some boundaries so that they don't egg on shippers?? WTF. They're fine with doing what they're doing, and if they're dating others, those others are obviously fine with it too. Besides, it's not like they're filming porn or something. If you can't handle it, stop watching them.

idek what these r in reference to anymore but it sounds dumb as hell lmao

Wow I cannot believe that people actually think VM owe fans any explanation for their relationship/partnership. Like we don't know them, we're never going to know them or be friends with them? Why the fuck do they owe fans a detailed explanation of their personal business? I stg these shippers have lost their damn minds. As long as VM continue to put out good programs and do well I couldn't care less what they're doing off ice. Whatever it is it's clearly working for them. You do you VM.

the entitlement of some fans is insane. its STILL happening now with tessa’s ig now too. why dont yall just let her live n let her white-girl post to her hearts content. she is literally doing nothing differently to what every other skater does, idg this absurd criticism

Fr tho both of them have such nice teeth and I've never seen pics of them with braces, like how??!?!

tessa’s r so nice i cant believe she’s never had braces. and they r such a natural white? like u can tell w most skaters that they get it professionally whitened but hers dont have that artificial look at all

Are you in college? Your bio says 23 but it said that last year too.

i actually turned 24 a while ago im just 2 lazy to change it. im in law school currently

I just read an ancient interview with vm where they said Mahler was about getting married or something... WHAT

ya i cant remember if it was them that said or marina that said it tho. i remember a story about a guy who wrote them saying he and his gf were watching mahler at the olympics and once it was over, he was so moved he got down on one knee and proposed to her and marina was like ‘thats what that program is meant to do’ lol

Do you think Zach is a good skater and partner? I keep changing my mind on him.....

he is such a bland, wet noodle - no taste, no flavor, just empty white carbs. its up to madi to add any spark to the team bc she’s the real star, he just stands there and is tall and can lift her

Why the fuck are so many people freaking out because Tessa did not attend a wedding with Scott. 1. They are not dating so there are no reason for Scott to bring her. 2. She has people visiting 3. I bet they don't even hang out off ice 4. I think Scott has a secret girl in Ilderton. 5. TS not dating. I wish people would claim down.

this is so far back in my inbox i have no idea whats happening

I love it that whenever Tessa posts an IG story the fandom goes crazy analyzing and speculating about Scott what there even when he is clearly not Then there there are talks about TS wedding. WTF Soon it will be TS having babies. I am wondering if maybe the fandom (new fans) are mixing reality with those fanfics.

honestly no clue

I know this has been discussed before but I don't get how Scott and Jess even communicated. Jess could barely seem to understand English back then and Scott couldn't speak French. I wonder if them not being able to speak to each other is part of why they lasted so long actually

lol bryce davison actually learned french so he could communicate w/ her. not scott tho lol

I don't think T cares too much about fs friendships the way other skaters do. Of course she's friendly with a lot of them but she's not really close with anyone except her partner, which doesn't really count lol. She has her own friend group outside of skating and that's what she seems to stick to. It's funny you mention Meryl, Brooke, Tanith, and Lauren because they're all still really good friends.

honestly i think skating stressed (stresses?) her out so much back then that she really hated being in that world for too long. i dont blame her for wanting to disconnect and not having to hang out with skaters who just talk about other skaters and skating 24/7

I don't mean this in a mean way. Watching Avatar. If you paint Meryl's face blue she could be in the movie

it kills me when ppl say she looks like a disney princess? ya the ant queen from a bugs life maybe

I think Tessa sometimes forget that Scott is a huge part of why they are successful and she wouldn't have all of these deals w amazing brands if they weren't so strong+didn't win everything. it's easy to put her on the pedestal bc she's gorg and can dance, but he should get/deserves just as much credit-- i mean he is the one lifting her and she could not do any of this by herself. sometimes i get the vibe that she thinks she's too good for him. maybe he's not as fancy, but he has a heart of gold

i’ve literally never gotten that she thinks she’s too good for him...? they go out of their way to pay each other compliments all the time and dont even jokingly diss on each other. its actually kind of weird that after knowing each other so long their relationship isnt just one long roast section where they talk shit about each other bc thats what my relationship w/ all my lifelong friends r like....but then again im a flinty bitch and they’re super earnest and emo like all the time. like i bet they both cry during sex

i find it kinda gross, disturbing and a bit pathetic that so many people feel the need to write erotic fan fiction about Tessa and Scott--like they are real people not characters, and it's kinda creepy that people spend so much time writing and reading them. Also, i would pay a million dollars to have someone show TS what people write about them--they would literally die and so would i--some fans are kinda extreme crazy

u know how on graham norton when he’s always showing celebs really erotic fanfic and fanart of themselves and they’re just dying of embarrassment?? i would literally pay everything in my bank account (so like....twenty dollars) for someone to do that to vm

omg it's gonna be so awk when tessa and scott have to see klawes...poor klawes, she just could not hold a candle to tessa. still don't know why klawes still follows tessa's insta--like i would unfollow and would not wanna see some of the pics t posts of TS giving each other lovey looks/touchy regardless of whether ts are together or not. also, it's never like t and klawes would actually be friends bc they're polar opposites

v disappointed that the olympic summit did not deliver on this #drama

tessa and kl were real friends tho, i think its sweet. and its nice they still keep in touch even tho scott is a dog

Are you a fan of tessa's style? She wears so much expensive yet ugly shit in my opinion.

lmao no. i think some of her casual wear is cute, but she wears some of the most hideous high fashion shit ever when she’s going out. like that blue carpet jumpsuit? yall know wht im talking about. those hideous trousers??? also she wears an unbelievable amount of boring black dresses

also gf needs to do smth with her hair. tired of her high bun and slick pony. she looks way cuter w/ her hair down imo

Do you think Tessa pays for all the Adidas stuff she wears?

no she def gets it for free. i was a walk-on my freshman yr of college for half a second and even i got a bunch of free shit from nike

How do u as an ed sheeran unstanner feel about ts doing these songs their obviously using him for the sd next season and i wouldnt be suprised if they use him for the fd as well

reading this made my cholesterol go up

really hope they're exhausting all the ed sheeran options now so they won't actually use it for comps lol

ngl i do kind of dig that embarrassing white boy rapping galway girl song but that cld prob just be my girl saorise ronan hypnotizing me like she always does

Minus the horrific man bun, do you think Scott's hot? Also, do you think Tessa finds him attractive?

no and probably yes now that hes so fug

Do you think Scott's attractive?? Also, do you think Tessa being told she's beautiful constantly on sm has made her get a big head--she often comes across as a bit cold and stuck up prancing around in her $1000 + outfits? Love her and she's gorgeous but...

some of yall need to stop projecting your shit onto tessa for real

Power plays of the figure skating journalists. Inside Skating does a very literal interview and article with P/C which blows up and then they go to Jackie Wong so he can basically write up a damage control press release. Kind of fascinating to see both journalists doing their thing with the same content. Hard to believe Inside Skating didn't think their article would create a storm. Interesting.

speaking of jackie, skaters r really going to him for their exclusives now huh? dying that ashley gave him her big la la land fluff piece instead of tsl. pays 2 be nice and kiss ass

Doesn't look like KH/JLB will have much of a chance to advance cuzis so crowded with the current seniors not retiring and juniors moving up. KH/JLB needs to work on their twizzles, thier lines, skating skills, chemistry looks promising. Some of those junior and senior teams should consider representingif they want a chance at aCanada doesn't have any promising teams once VM-WP retire. I feel like CB, SS, HD ain't retiring till they win Wch or OG which may never with PC around.

hawayek/baker could prob skate for gb because jean-luc has citizenship and carreira/ponomarenko could prob skate for canada bc she’s from montreal but i doubt the us fed is letting either of them go. they’ve invested way too much at this point. i don’t think c/p need to move tho, i think they’re talented to rise organically through the ranks. i think they’re more likely to be us #1 instead of not tbh

I don't understand the whole David and Tessa affair; like some people say it happened after he was separated and others talk like it was a full blown affair. The only thing I do know is that her being called a "homewrecker" or anything else of that nature makes me want to punch something because it's disgusting, and it's society go-to response. Be cruel to the woman and basically give the man a free pass. But maybe he received shit, too? I just never heard about it.

i think he was basically separated but not divorced when it happened

Do you think if TS and Cappelini and Lanotte switched partners they would be a good team?

lol no. anna’s not a great skater and luca looks like he’s shorter than tessa

Wait is that Tessa's ex Semple in that photo you posted of her pre and post nose job? Cause if so damn does she lowball herself. Like she could have such better looking guys I do not understand. Girl is very pretty she needs someone to help her pick better guys.

~we accept the love we think we deserve~~

I think T is cringeworthy as a speaker bc she's sooo gd rehearsed. Not a things she says comes across like she didn't practice it in the bathroom mirror 75 times that morning. She would be pretty good if she could lose even half the pretension in her delivery and tossed out the eye rolly words she keeps littering the sentences with like privilege and journey.

they honestly both suck. she’s worse than he is, but they’re both super stiff. and they always do this forced banter bit at the start which just seems so awkward lol

That one anon pointing that some have denied the nose surgery - this is exactly what annoys me about those shipper blogs, not that they are shippers (you can want them two to be together- that by itself doesn't bother me), but their ways and how they always have to insist on vm's perfect image - they all get so upset and aggressive when you point some issue out, like why would you deny Tessa has done a nose job... so out of touch! vm are interesting exactly cause they're real people with flaws

i can not believe ppl r denying her nose job. like yo its right there. it does lend credence to my theory that all shipprs r just hallucinating n seeing things that arent there tho

If Tessa and Scott did hook up while officially with SOs I have a feeling they wouldn't consider it cheating.

ok lmao??? im sure something extremely profound i said provoked this

how rich do u think scott and tessa are???

prob millionaires by the time 2018 comes around if they get their sponsorships

i might do part 2 later if i can be bothered... but nothing really makes sense out of context lol, its like watching charlie kaufman do slam poetry

#Anonymous #vm #fs

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reasonandempathy · 8 years ago

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My Politics and History

Since I get called “conservative”, “centrist”, or “radical leftist” on multiple occasions, I figured I’d actually make a post about this and stick it up on my header. This is just a rundown of who I am, my political history, my activist background, and whatnot.

Who am I?

A mid-20′s straight white male from New York City. I went to a well-respected conservative catholic grammar schools (k-8) where, and I quote, “[X] thinks light-years ahead of his class.” Went on to attend Xavier High School, an all-boy school with a strong JROTC background, where I was part of the JROTC bfor 3 years, helping my school earn the Gold Star of Excellence (I forgot the exact name, it’s been several years) for regiments with a score of 97%+ on the inspection. I legitimately cannot think of one identity that isn’t in my immediate or extended family, other than Native Americans. Indonesian Muslim cousins, check. Urban black family, check (I was actually in their house when a cop showed up to raid the place; was a “fun” experience). Mormons from Utah? Check. And they hit me in the face with a snowmobile. I blocked that shit with a high block and walked away fine. Gay genderqueer/nonconforming white girl from the Southwest? Yep. Black/Latina “adopted” daughter who I’m helping tutor through high school? Got it. Crazy religious family that goes to see the Virgin Mother Most Blessed Mary appear in Colorado and pray for her intercession to push off Armageddon? They’re fun to argue with.

Also, I got my black belt at 16.

Went to Hofstra University in 2008 where I attended the Obama/McCain debate, had a blast, partied like a star when Obama won, before transferring out. The school was nice but too expensive, and after about a year off I transferred to CUNY Hunter College, and eventually got involved in the New York Public Interest Research Group, originally founded by Ralph Nader and a liberal lobbying group.

What political things have I done?

Through NYPIRG I directly lobbied for a variety of liberal issues, including the passing of the New York State DREAM Act. Major works and achievements was the re-reinstatement of the Peter Vallone Scholarship in NYC (called the AAA Scholarship), Getting the New York State Fracking Ban through, operating and expanding a state-wide legal helpline/network to provide free aid to people for the Small Claims Court, ran and lead workshops on voter rights, what your credit is and how it works, discriminatory hiring practices and the unfounded impact of credit reports on hiring and handling employees, numerous homelessness outreach events, Midnight Run coordination, and, frankly, a lot more. Eventually I was voted onto their Board of Directors.

Outside of that, though, I’ve also been an active campaigner and activist for Wolf-PAC, worked for and ran a campaign to have the first female Indian-American elected to City Council, I’ve marched with Black Lives Matter in protest of Eric Garner’s death, and (frankly) a lot more, including campaigning for Bernie Sanders and being “that guy” in the family that people just enjoy picking political fights with. To quote an uncle, “you’re the only person I know who cites their facebook status.”

Ultimately graduated with a degree in Psychology and I’m looking into getting a Master’s in Political Psychology at George Washington University.

And my political beliefs?

I took that compass map, and I’m solidly left and libertarian, but hardly to the extreme of either.

Apparently I know a healthy amount about Feminists and Feminism throughout history.

Apparently I’m not too privileged (Okay, this one is mostly a joke, considering the source is buzzfeed)

Also, Teddy Roosevelt is the Best. Period. President. Period. Ever. Period. Who else wins a Nobel Peace Prize and a Medal of Honor and punches Death in the dick?

So you know what my beliefs are and my history. I’ve been “in the game” for about 8 years since at the time of this post going up. You know I’m anti-authoritarian and left-leaning, a “classical liberal” as people like to say, and I’ve got an unapologetic raging boner for history, both Chinese and U.S.

So here’s the thing: If I’m disagreeing with you, you should ask which of those things I’m pushing against.

#personal #political ideology #libertarianism #socialism #teddy roosevelt #theodore roosevelt

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consulting-celiac-in-the-tardis · 5 years ago

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11+ Kids and Teens with Celiac Disease Already Doing Seriously Amazing Things

New blog post! If you read this blog regularly, you know that I love applying a positive perspective to life with celiac disease. At times, though, having a chronic illness or needing to follow a gluten free can feel pretty dang hard.

That’s why today’s post is highlighting 11+ kids and teens who are totally kicking booty at life, even with celiac disease! Whether you have a child with celiac you want to feel less alone or just want to read about some amazing members of the younger generations, keep scrolling to discover some pretty inspiring girls and guys.

1. A (Literal) Master Chef

If you’re a fan of the cooking show, Master Chef Junior, you probably already know all about Che Spiotta. Spoiler alert: he’s the winner of the latest season of Master Chef Junior.

According to this interview, the now-thirteen-year-old has still not mastered the art of baking gluten free bread, but he certainly doesn’t let his diet get in the way of enjoying himself in the kitchen. As Che puts it: “I probably started on the stove when I was 3 or 4. I think that’s because I’m gluten free, and at first I didn’t know what I had; there were just lots of foods I couldn’t eat...When I realized I was gluten free, I just kept on cooking. I realized how much fun it is. I love the creativity about it. “

2. 10 and 11-Year-Old Authors

The most impressive part of these stories isn’t that Lillian Bordoni and Kristen Adam respectively published books about celiac disease at ten and eleven years old. What really gets me are motivations behind these girls’ separate projects. Kristen, author of Dear Celiac (available on Amazon), wanted to keep kids with celiac disease from feeling lonely when they were first diagnosed, like Kristen felt. Meanwhile, Lillian reportedly had one of the most extreme forms of celiac disease seen by Children’s Hospital Colorado. So she wrote and illustrated Cecilia the Celiac Superhero (available on Story Jumper) to tell show readers that anyone can thrive with celiac disease as long as “they just all put their family together and try super duper hard.”

3. Hockey Superstar

If you’re a big fan of hockey, you probably already know about Kaapo Kakko, a Finnish hockey player who was the second draft pick for the 2019 NHL. But besides being an amazing hockey player who won three gold medals in the Finnish hockey world, Kakko also has diabetes and celiac disease. And Kakko won’t let either of those conditions get in the way of him dominating the ice.

In fact, when asked about his health struggles, the eighteen-year-old replied, “It’s nothing for me. I got (diagnosed) five years ago. It’s a normal thing for me.”

4. Members of the Celiac Youth Leadership Council in Seattle

Seattle Children's Hospital is doing more than just diagnosing kids with celiac disease; it's also empowering celiac kids and teens to take part in a mostly kid-run outreach and mentor program for people with celiac disease. Besides raising celiac awareness in their community, celiac teens like Elle Penarczyk are running a gluten free food drive for a local food bank and "testing gluten-free products sold in regular bakeries and pizzerias to see if they’re affected by flour in the air." Talk about a hospital - and a group of young celiacs - who are seriously going above and beyond.

5. Twin Authors Heading to College

As the self-named Casey the College Celiac, I obviously love hearing about the new generations of celiacs heading off to college. In particular, I love hearing about new advocates educating others along the way...and Rayna and Hallie Katzman definitely fit both bills.

Via the twins' Facebook page

Before they went off to college, the girls worked with their mother to write and publish a book based on their celiac diagnosis at age 13 called Everybody’s Got Something: My First Year with Celiac Disease (also available on Amazon). According to this interview, the girls wanted to create a book that filled the gap between books about celiac disease for younger kids and for adults, and gave them the information they wish they had at 13.

6. Miss Pinal County

Josephine Taylor didn't let celiac disease or Hashimoto's keep her from winning Miss Pinal County - and she's using her platform to raise some major celiac awareness. In particular, she's been working on making sure that all Arizona high schools have a safe, cross-contamination-free microwave that students with dietary restrictions can use. That way, students with celiac disease or food allergies can still eat in the cafeteria along with everyone else. At least as of this report, Taylor's efforts have paid off in one school district. But I'm sure Taylor's mission is far from over.

7. Taylor Miller from Hale Life

I've been fortunate enough to meet this teen in real life (at the first Gluten Free Teen Summit), and Taylor Miller is as kind in person as he is online. Taylor is the guy behind the super popular gluten free website, Hale Life (formally Gluten Away). Besides being a huge celiac and chronic illness advocate that speaks at tons of different events around America, Taylor also works with gluten free brands on social media marketing, owns a gluten free bakery in Tampa, Florida with his mom, and has started taking college classes. Suffice to say, he's a pretty cool guy!

8. Miss Nebraska Hopeful

Lianna Prill started competing in pageants as a junior in high school and qualified to compete for the spot of Miss Nebraska in 2014. It wasn't until Prill's dad was diagnosed with celiac disease that Prill eventually realized her constant migraines and flu-like symptoms could be symptoms of the same disease. Since going gluten and dairy free, Prill says, “Now I’m a new woman. All that stuff with being sick that I just wanted to forget about was actually part of a plan. I can’t wait to share that story and hopefully save some lives.”

At least as of this Facebook post in 2017, it seems like Prill is still fighting for her crown - but she did come in third place!

9. Celiac Strong Camp Founder

I've loved seeing that, nowadays, there are several celiac camps that occur all over the country. One of these camps, though, actually started out as Sabrina DeVos's Girl Scout project when she was just 16 years old. Nowadays, Sabrina is 21, but her Celiac Strong Camp is still (pun intended) going strong. Her main goal? In Sabrina's words: "I want other kids to experience the joy of having a few of worry free days and create a place where they can just be kids."

10. A Creative Cooking Champion

If you need some inspiration for getting creative in the kitchen, here's another inspirational teen for you to check out! Her name is Maizy Boosin and she beat three other young chefs to become a Chopped Junior Champion. Besides raising celiac awareness in the actual episode by talking about her condition, Boosin also shared plans to donate some of her $10,000 winnings to celiac disease research and education.

11. All of the gluten free and celiac kids you know in your own life!

Of course, we can't forget to celebrate every kid, preteen and teenager who's navigating the usual hurdles of life along with eating gluten free and thriving with a chronic illness. And if you or the inspirational little celiac in your life needs even more young role models to look up to, you can check out Gluten Free Living's list of epic gluten free ambassadors, who range from a young cookbook author donating all her proceeds to celiac research to kids just spreading celiac awareness in their own community.

What I Hope Everyone Knows about Living with Celiac Disease as a Teen

Honestly, this post really hits home for me because I was diagnosed with celiac disease at age 16. In fact, I was diagnosed only a few weeks before my senior year...and less than a month before I was asked out on my first date. So before I even really knew how to take care of and feed myself safely with celiac disease, I already had to navigate the awkward reality of living with celiac disease at an age where 99% of social events revolve around food. And I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. It. Was. (And still is, in grad school). Hard. It was hard to not know what to order while visiting an ice cream shop on my first date, or to constantly turn down food at pizza parties, graduation events, freshman orientation and all throughout college. But I did it. Heck, even though I was hospitalized for celiac complications as a freshman in college, I can still say that I created some amazing (gluten free) memories during those four years.

At the end of the day, I think these kids are sending the same message I try to always convey: that celiac disease can be tricky at any age but that you can still kick butt through it. And you might even change the world along the way! No questions - just tell me your thoughts! <3 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2MptcRC

#Blogger #college #celiac #gluten free #coeliac #celiacs #paleo #primal #foodporn #foodart

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sandinz · 6 years ago

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Our summer kiwi visitors we’ve blogged about so far had booked their passage with us well in advance. Actually at least a year before their arrival. The next one wasn’t quite so planned. It also encompassed a great deal of places and people – leading to a number of blog posts to do the momentous occasion justice.

In March (I think!) this year, I spotted a Facebook post of Barry’s elder brother Ray, who lives in Barry’s hometown Gisborne in New Zealand. It announced his success in being pulled out of a draw for a place in ‘The Brompton World Championship‘. In all honesty I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about! As one does nowadays to acquire information, I Googled it. I discovered it was a race for owners of Brompton fold-up bikes, in London, in July.

Okay, that meant he was coming to London right? I thought I’d better check with him …

Yep.

Actually, his plan was to come to do the race, then spend around three weeks or so with us. He’d just not quite got around to letting us know (here’s where the lol comes in!).

Awesome. Ray had never before given us any inkling of wanting to come to England, quite the opposite. He’d been rather concerned about the vagaries of the British weather. Rightly so usually I hear you say. As you and I now know, he chose a spectacular summer to make his virgin voyage to the Land of Hope and Glory!

We soon found out a lot more about Brompton bikes and the race in question. Ray already had an ‘old’ Brompton. For the race though, his intention was to buy a new one once he arrived in London.

“The Brompton World Championship is our flagship Brompton only racing event. With qualifying heats held in 15 countries and a final in the UK. The event has been running for 10 years and is held in cities around the world. Riders must follow the strict dress code which reflects the heritage of the event.” https://www.brompton.com/events/Brompton-World-Championship

Ray hadn’t had to qualify in a heat anywhere. There are apparently number of tickets worldwide available in a random draw – you have to apply and supply such things as details of age, nationality, and predicted speed. It was his first application, so he was understandably ecstatic to be chosen. Ray’s number and predicted placing was 580, which meant they reckoned he’d finish 580th!

More about the race later …

After much communication and sharing of spreadsheets (loosely it turned out!) of Ray’s itinerary, we both travelled to Heathrow on Wednesday 25th July to meet him off his flight from Hong Kong where he’d spent a few days. We’d contacted some friends in Boreham Wood in advance, as we thought it would be great to tie in a visit to them too. Barry and many of his group of friends from Gisborne had stayed in the area in the 1970s, Barry in 1976 on his inaugural UK trip where he first spotted canals.

We stayed with Jane and Mick on the Wednesday and Thursday night, enjoying much camaraderie and laughter.

The two Teutenberg’s together

An most pleasant balmy evening out with Mick and Jane

Barry and Ray travelled back into London on the Thursday to pick up the Brompton (while I stayed at the house to do Ad-Extra online work – I so love the flexibility of a location independent job), but hit a slight snag and surprisingly Ray ended up the potential owner of not one but two Bromptons! Most confusing. There was a problem re-claiming the VAT on his initial online purchase, so he had to find a way to cancel that and buy another one! It all came out in the wash after some discombobulation and delay – finally successfully taking ownership of the shiny new wheels on Friday afternoon. The race was the following day.

In the meantime, we left Jane and Mick’s and headed to our accommodation for the next three nights in Paddington – unsurprisingly not far from a canal.

We’d previously moored at Paddington Basin in September 2010, for about a week. Barry’s son Tom was with us for a three-week visit, and we had one extremely special night on board when all four of our children were together. For one night only. This is yet to be repeated … Barry’s daughter Jamie was in London at the time on her two-year ‘Overseas Experience’ (OE as kiwis call it), and Lisa and Kim travelled down and up the country respectively to be with us all.

Skip forward eight years and oh my goodness, how the area has changed! We were amazed at how the city here has embraced the canal. A buzzing, thriving, colourful place – especially in the warm sunshine with deckchairs scattered around and a splash area for the children. There were even powered boats for hire (Go Boats) to cruise coolly around whilst nibbling a picnic and sipping Prosecco. And an air of luxury with al fresco dining on a floating pontoon.

Incredibly we arrived at an opportune moment to see the ‘Finger Bridge’ raised. We had no idea what it was, until it lowered, then read that this occurs only at certain times … Brilliant!

The new finger bridge over the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union. Five separate sections that lower and become one. Opened at 12:00pm on certain days, so very lucky to catch it!

The canal in places was covered in a carpet of green weed, possibly from the hot weather. The inventive local coots were making the most of the weed and the detritus they found to build a nest.

We even visited the floating café at Little Venice, that was there in 2010, and had a coffee – returning for a spot of lunch on the Sunday. It’s good to support floating businesses!

The Waterside Cafe in Little Venice still going strong!

Then it was a short long walk (sorry Ray!) to the Brompton store to collect the new wheels – not the blue wheels featured below!

A flash car near Hyde Park – with a parking ticket attached

Buckingham Palace no less

Covent Garden and the voice of an angel

Having a walk around London on Friday, en route to the Brompton store, visiting the Queen’s pad

Hurrah! Possession of Brompton successful

Sheltering from the first rain in weeks

Trying out the Brompton

Ray was over the moon. So much so that he decided to rise early on Saturday, the day of the race, and do a few circuits of St James’s Park where the event was held that evening. Needless to say, Barry and I chose to remain in bed as long as possible in the hotel in Paddington while he whisked himself away!

As stated above, there’s a strict dress code. Lycra is banned. City Slickers is the order of the day. Ray had brought his outfit from New Zealand and fitted in with his companions well.

With almost 600 riders in the final, the cyclists were tasked to race around eight circuits of St James’ Park, zooming past the Queen’s pad each lap.

Arriving at the start of the hospitality to make the most of the much-anticipated day, we partook of what was on offer …

One such joy was standing on the winner’s podium – well you never know!

Another was a rather lovely experience with ‘Thomas Dakin Gin‘. Now we’d never heard of this brand, and still have yet to see it anywhere. But apparently it was first distilled in 1761, not far from where the Bridgewater Canal was built spookily in the same year!

Barry and I and four others heard the story, watched the gregarious chap describe the process, and had a taste of the product with a blend of lemon and honey I seem to recall. Very delicious thank you!

On the Dakin stall they encouraged passers-by to ‘Spin the Wheel’ – I was lucky enough to have a go and win a rather splendid Dakin umbrella! Handy too as it was much-needed the following day …

Supporting the kiwi contingent

Brothers in arms

After many hours of walking around, chatting, drinking and eating, and watching other cycling events, the race finally began.

One of the highlights of this spectacle is the competitors must place their FOLDED Brompton on the opposite side of the track and wait for the whistle. It’s performed in stages so the riders don’t all end up in a tangled mess – though one or two did manage that during the race unfortunately but unsurprisingly …

Once the whistle for your particular group is blown, you all run across and assemble your bicycle before pedalling like crazy round and round and round …

The speed some of the cyclists were going at, and the closeness of the bikes was frightening! Have a look at the video (click here) and be amazed at the craziness of the challenges – you’ll see my back on the gin tasting wagon at 24 seconds in, and Ray and his bike at 28 seconds and one minute 52 seconds.

His finishing place on the day was a highly honourable and deserving 289th. Which is 291 ahead of his predicted 580. Pretty darn amazing I’d say for an almost 64 year-old kiwi! He definitely deserves a medal.

Cambden Town and more sight-seeing

Following the excitement of Saturday, Sunday was our last full day in the capital. Despite us all feeling rather knackered after a long day and much walking and frivolity, we made the most of the time left. Sadly the summer weather turned a little awry, as you’ll see from the grey skies.

We’d planned to meet our fabulous friend Sandra from ‘The Doggie Boat‘ in Camden, as she’s been in and around London this year and we’ve missed each other. More of the green weed proliferated around Camden Lock – crazy stuff.

Snatching a catch up lunch with Sandra

You may have spotted that a few of the images in this post aren’t that great – it’ll be because they’re taken by me, with my iPhone 5, rather than by Barry who’s a far better photographer! The Sandras selfie is quite obviously one of those …

Heading across London again we crossed the River Thames for a tour of The Tate Modern. This incredible space in central London is (mostly) free. We wandered around for a couple of captivating hours, and happily discovered a viewing floor on the top floor of the Blavatnik Building, giving a 360degree view of the city and beyond. It did as well for us as the London Eye would’ve – but for no cost. Marvellous.

Some spectacular views of the London skyline from the viewing level. Most impressive!

Following all that culture, we ventured back out into the elements and continued along the Thames walkway to Tower Bridge. Barry captured many a fine shot along the way, there’s so much to see …

I’m sneaking in a picture of the brothers, despite it being poor quality (mine of course!), because it has both the brothers in …

My new Thomas Dakin umbrella came in tremendously handy!

Goodness, so much seen and done in just four days. And so much was yet to be seen and done …

Meanwhile, we returned to Areandare moored at Penkridge on Monday 30th July, the day before Ray’s birthday, to make some narrowboating memories.

More on Ray’s trip soon.

Where are we in ‘real’ time?

We’ve a few posts to write to catch up, intending to do so in the next week or so. In the meantime, we’re very close to our first floating festival of 2018. The Black Country Boating Festival (BCBF), to be held at Bumble Hole Nature Reserve (I adore that place-name!) this weekend. We’ll be trading beside our dear friends Helen and Andy from Wild Side, again for the first time this year and are very much looking forward to spending time with them. And of course everyone at the event, and the brilliant entertainment on offer.

If you’re anywhere nearby, do come and see us there!

A Succession of Summer Visitors Part 4a – London bound Our summer kiwi visitors we've blogged about so far had booked their passage with us well in advance.

#Blavatnik Building #Boreham Wood #Brompton Bike Challenge #Brompton World Championship #Cambden Lock #Cambden Town #Covent Garden #Go Boats #Little Venice #London #Paddington Basin #Paddington Basin Finger Bridge #River Thames #St James&039; Park #The Tate #The Tate Modern #Tower Bridge #Tower of London

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blockheadbrands · 7 years ago

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The Olympic Green Medal

Sam Roos of High Times Reports:

When Chloe Kim blasted off the halfpipe for the second 1080 of her Olympic gold medal run, she was momentarily the highest person at Phoenix Snow Park. But I’m pretty sure the marijuana-infused chocolate bar I’d eaten on the train ride to Pyeongchang made me the second highest.

I was in South Korea for the winter Olympics mostly because opportunity knocked. A close friend of mine was working on the games and offered me the extra bed in his hotel room. My friend had only two requests: a couple of fancy bricks of cheese (his cheese-addicted boss felt the Korean cheese selection sub-par), and any amount of weed I could get my hands on.

My friend was a seasoned international pot smoker, but South Korea was the first place he’d been sent where he could simply not find a joint to save his life. The Koreans are test-your-hair-follicle levels of serious about not toking up. The only person who’d offered to sell him some hyptochronalite had quoted him $200— a gram. So when I showed up at my friend’s hotel a week after the opening ceremonies, I had about five hundred dollars worth of edibles and vaporizers with me.

For obvious reasons, I can’t go into details about how I arranged this; I don’t need Jeff Sessions or the South Korean police knocking on my door. Suffice to say, we technically risked deportation at best, jail time at worst. Which sounds scary. But I spent much of my twenties theoretically risking similar punishments in states like Indiana, Arizona, and Iowa. In fact, if you want to get technical about it, every time we light up in the united states, we hypothetically risk up to a year of federal incarceration. Anyway, that’s how I convinced myself. But, for the record, such behavior is discouraged by both High Times and my mother.

Call me bold, stupid, or lucky; I did not get deported or spend time in a Korean jail. I did throw out three perfectly good gummy bears when I was convinced I was being followed by secret police on a solo trip to Seoul (for a legendary noodle bar in a bus station that serves the best soup I’ve ever had,) but that’s par for the course with me and edibles. I had no trouble with the law or anyone else. On the contrary: I ended up being the most popular guy at the Olympics.

It started on a bus ride from the high-speed train station to the PeyongChang Mountain Cluster to watch my first ever live Olympic event. I piled into a shuttle, good and toasty from a vape hit, and sat alongside a pack of drunken Canadians. I sat there stonily as I listened to these four guys dressed in maple-leaf emblazoned red and white suits discuss in broad terms the things they liked about South Korea (Korean BBQ, Soju, noodle soups,) and the things they disliked about the Olympic experience (shuttle busses, long lines, the cost of beer). It was the end of their trip, and they agreed that what they would most look forward to back home was packing a fat bowl and watching the curling finals on TV.

They became my first trading partners.

I approached them on the trudge up a large hill towards the Alpensia Cross Country Skiing Center (fun fact: cross-country skiing is the cheapest ticket at the Olympics). I offered them all a hit off my pen— in the cold air, our vape breath looked like any other steam exhalation. I eschewed any payment but they insisted upon buying me two beers and the most expensive hot dog ever served. I sat and drank with them as we watched my first ever Olympic event: the skiathlon, a ninety-minute event during which you see about twelve minutes of actual cross-country skiing. As the numbing cold thinned the crowd, I roared alongside the Canadians as we rooted home a trio of red-and-white jumpsuited athletes.

It turned out that they were Norwegian, not Canadian, but what do you expect from a bunch of stoned, frozen, first-time cross-country watchers? We parted ways after another toke— they seemed high enough to skip the plane ride and simply float across the Pacific.

This opened the floodgates for me. I started looking out for potential marijuana refugees wherever I could. I traded vape hits for beer and food almost every day. I traded a handful of gummy bears for a ride in some German guy’s car after I missed the last shuttle bus leaving the Olympic Sliding Center.

At the Gangneung Coastal Cluster, four girls from New Jersey made one of their boyfriends trade me his ticket to Speed Skating in exchange for a chocolate bar. I gave him a gummy bear to improve his waiting experience and then sat next to his girlfriend— we cheered for all the falls for about three hours and are now Facebook friends. About the only people I failed to trade with were Kim Jong Un’s sister and the North Korean cheerleaders.

The coup de grace came the day when I saw Chloe Kim win her gold medal. For the relatively hefty price of two full chocolate bars and everything left in one of the vapes, I was given the loan of a media lanyard for a day. I got into four Olympic events, ate lunch at the commissary of a major television network, used their (heated!) portable restroom, and convinced a few especially drunk old British men that I was the play-by-play announcer for the luge enjoying a day off. I got to see Chloe and Sean White post the highest halfpipe scores of their respective genders, which was as patriotic as I’ve felt since the elections in 2012 while being as stoned in public as I’ve felt since the Lollapalooza of 2012.

Being the Johnny Appleweed of the Korean peninsula was an incredible way to experience the beauty of South Korea, the culture of Seoul, and the spectacle of global competition. But my favorite part of the experience was tapping into the international pot community that lurked in the shadows; knowing winks and whispered trades are disappearing in the states. As pot culture becomes more mainstream, we’ve lost that feeling of collaborative chicanery, of honor amongst thieves.

I would never suggest things were better when pot was more illegal— no fun cultural element is worth the cost of all the people wrongly jailed under absurd anti-pot laws— but my time in South Korea made me realize this part of pot subculture is basically extinct in our country. I found it again for a moment in South Korea, amongst the ice dancers and the skeleton riders, and it reminded me both how far we’ve come, how far there still is to go, and what an odd experience it is to be caught between the past and the future.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/entertainment/olympic-green-medal/

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sublimedeal · 8 years ago

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Bushra Azhar – Sold Out Launch

EVEN if you have taken a zillion other courses (but never finished any) EVEN if you think you have seen & done it all ( with no results) EVEN if you have 2 hours a day to work on your launch (& no budget to hire a coach,mentor, designer, *insert other useless must-have* ) EVEN if you think the internet is a dirty messy place that only favors the BIG GUNS (& you are decidedly NOT a big gun or ANY gun)

Here’s how… Consumer Psychology Knowing exactly what makes people buy and not tip-toe around your buyers for months building an email list, giving value & not making money. The idea is to ditch the advice of creating a list of subscribers and instead create a list of buyers from the get-go. More than 20% of my own email list are buyers and this is exactly what I preach in SOL..because guess what? We want people to see you as a book shopped not a library where they can get free information and never open their wallet EVER.

The 80:20 Launch Rule Using the shortest most effective path to launching so that you don’t spend hours (weeks, months…even years) planning, wondering & losing your mind. Instead you can just use this plug and play system with the tech, graphics, email, social media posts, sales page templates heck even your ads..and just transplant it in your launch. No thinking, wondering, second-guessing yourself, no needing to invest 10 grand for a coach, custom website or mastermind. Just trusting the system, taking actions that GET results and making lots of money…all in one full swoop

Functional Behavioral Leverage My unique and kinda lunatic Systematic Stalking Initiative coupled with SOL Hall of Fame tactic that allowed 92% of students to finish the course and 41% of them to launch in less than 4 months. I don’t know of any online program (heck even COACHING program) that promises such results. As one SOLer described it “It was like you were running after me urging me to get to the finish line, sometimes lovingly, sometimes fiercely..but always there” THAT is behavioral leverage and THAT is what gets people to launch and sell out in 35 days.

PLAY THE VIDEO TO FIND OUT THE BRAIN GLITCH THAT’S KEEPING YOU FROM LAUNCHING & SELLING OUT YOUR ONLINE PROGRAM (AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT) 5 SANITY-SUCKING NIGHTMARE THOUGHTS PEOPLE HAVE WHEN IT COMES TO LAUNCHING Sanity-Sucking Nightmare Thought One: “Where do I start?” “What do I do about the tech? The design? The social media?” Sanity-Sucking Nightmare Thought Two: “I need to buy this program and that system”. “I need to hire a coach and a VA and an OBM and oh ohhhhhhh…” Sanity-Sucking Nightmare Thought Three: “How do I get people to know about me?” “How do I compel them to buy?” “How do I put all the pieces together?” Sanity-Sucking Nightmare Thought Four: “I don’t want people to make fun of me” I can’t be seen failing YET AGAIN” Sanity-Sucking Nightmare Thought Five: “I am hopeless, I will never be able to do this!” “Those who do it are smarter/richer/different” Let me tell you a secret. It is not your fault! Internet experts have made launching needlessly complicated… to make matters worse people have attached a certain romanticism with the word hustle like it’s some medal to be worn by the “launchers” as the other non-hustling losers stare forlornly on. But why would they do that? If they told you that creating and launching a profitable online course can be easy, fun & effortless, who would they sell their 10,000 dollar coaching packages to? (buy now or the price goes up you sour non-hustling loser) They want you to fail….so you can keep buying.

5 TYPES OF COCKAMAMIE EXPERTS YOU SHOULD NOT BE TAKING LAUNCH ADVICE FROM The Launchy Launcher: If your only product is a product about launching, where did you learn to launch that launch program? If you have never launched a non-launch program, how come you are an expert on launching a launch? I need coffee! The Chief Expert of The Planet Internet: The one who is an expert on the internet but has zero credentials, zero expertise, zero credibility and zero relevance OUTSIDE the internet. But hey, the website is flashy and the sales page shows a picture of them with their new Merc so gotta be legit right? The Grandmaster Digital Sensei: Are you a thorough expert in everything you teach? If yes how? And can I steal your genes to clone and create other super-humans with immeasurable skills like yours? Because seriously NO human can have ALL skills needed to create, launch & sell out quality information products. The Number Flaunter: If the sole premise of your sales argument is that you made a million dollars in 10 days, that tells me nothing about what value you provide. It also tells me nothing about how you get those results (there are a lot of ways to make and some of these do make you want to throw up in your coffee) The Walking Timebomb: This is the grand poobah of the online hustle. The one who tells you that you should be working non-stop… Facebook, livestream, tweet, instagram and snapchat the hell out of your business. Sleep? Who needs sleep! That’s where I come in… The antithesis of all things internet, the slayer of BS, the basher of poopy people and the giver of zero f*ucks.

5 COMPELLING REASONS TO TRUST ME WHEN I TELL YOU ABOUT LAUNCHES (THE NOT-SO-MODEST EDITION) I am Bushra and I am not a hot shot (but I play that on the internet) I have worked on 25+ online launches and about a dozen offline launches of big name brands and after the first dozen, I developed a loose system of LAUNCHING that matches the launch with the psychology of the buyer. It has served me and my clients REALLY well. I have made one million dollars in about 2.5 years working mostly part time and no, I have not made this money doing launches telling people how to do launches. Here are some other results: 1. Worked with 5,000+ people 2. Sold 7,000+ courses 3. Built an email list of 32,000+ and an FB community of 14,000+ 4. Launched my first course and sold 320 packages in 2 weeks 5. Launched my membership site and sold 400 memberships in 28 days 6. Have the distinct pleasure of selling out my courses in a couple days after launch…I don’t even know why I set a cart-close day…it’s defunct! 7. Helped my client J sell out her program in THREE days and make $22,765 on her very first launch and with an email list of 1,200 people. 8. Helped my client L sell $750K worth of programs in a month 9. Have an online course with a completion rate of 92% (vs industry average of 15%) and a success rate of 41% (vs undisclosed but probably minuscule numbers)

I have no time: I am a mom of 2, wife of one and I live an expat life. Which means no support system and limited opportunities to keep the kids busy. I also cook every day. Till about 2 months ago I was balancing my online work with my offline consulting gig…so literally NO TIME DUDE! The techniques I teach are all about using the 80:20 rule…things don’t get any easier than the way I teach. I have no energy: I am incredibly lazy and prone to random Netflix binges so I am the perfect person to teach other lazyasses looking for an uncomplicated process to create, launch and SELL OUT! I have no team: It is possible to do this all on your own..I am a testament to that. I am a one person army and over the last 2.5 years, I have maybe outsourced 5% of my work. I have developed systems, formulas and checklists to allow me to work fast and work smart. You get access to all these when you invest in Sold Out Launch. (I now have a great team member but she came onboard after 2+ years of flying solo) I have no contacts: When I started I didn’t know a single soul on the internet…I started like everyone with no list (my first subscriber was “foxy5ways”…does that give you an idea of where I was) and slowly built my way to where I am…no contacts, no networking…just plain old hard work. So if you think only people with contacts or access to private networking events or “inner circle” access can make it, think again! 5 LIFE-ALTERING WAYS YOUR BUSINESS AND LIFE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE (FOR THE BETTER) THIS IS YOU: Thousands of email subscribers, hundreds of eager buyers & a life that’s so full of joy it annoys the shit out of your neighbors THIS IS YOU: Your launch strategy, launch planning, copy, tech, graphics all DONE! THIS IS YOU: Your Facebook ads pumping new targeted traffic into your launch funnel effortlessly and gracefully….like a ballerina on rollerskates THIS IS YOU: Taking a day or a week (or a MONTH) off just because you feel like it because you have a system in place that does not require you to keep trading dollars for hours. THIS IS YOU: No more hoping, praying, dying… always winning. Every Time! How will you get there? I have a system that will get you there. It’s systematic, it’s scientific, and endlessly creative. It drags peoples’ eyeballs away from the cat videos on Facebook to YOUR ad. It gets people excited, animated positively exhilarated about your “thing” It makes the process of creating, launching and selling out your online product a BREEZE!

WATCH THE VIDEO TO FIND OUT THE 5X5 METHOD FOR CREATING, LAUNCHING AND SELLING OUT YOUR INFORMATION PRODUCT IN 5 WEEKS (THIS IS THE EXACT FRAMEWORK THAT HAS ALLOWED ME TO MAKE $1M IN 2 YEARS WITHOUT A TEAM, MENTOR OR MASTERMIND) YOU ARE 5 WEEKS AWAY FROM CREATING, LAUNCHING AND SELLING OUT YOUR FIRST (OR 10TH) ONLINE PROGRAM WITH MORE PROFIT, MORE FREEDOM AND FAR MORE EASE

WEEK ONE: SOLD OUT OFFER & PLAN The 4 step 45 minute idea validation and niche tightening method: This will save you months of posting survey questions and hoping people will just tell you what they want (Hint: surveys don’t work because people don’t know what they want, period.) The USP Generator: A simple tool to reverse engineer your irresistible market positioning based on the core psychological triggers of your ideal buyer. This approach positions you as a subject matter expert who can tap into the her subconscious and make her say, “I WANT YOU NOW”! The E-Learning Infrastructure: 4 Information selling models that get maximum returns and a simple test to identify which one of these models works best for your niche. The Cash Spotter Technique: How to identify the “fastest cash areas” so you’ll know exactly what to do first to get huge gains for your clients, exactly what to sell, exactly what to charge, exactly who to target, and exactly which model to use in your launch. Sold Out Launch in a Weekend: How to craft your offer, choose a model, map out your launch strategy, craft timelines and allocate resources in a weekend.

WEEK TWO: SOLD OUT LAUNCH ASSETS Fantastic Five Launch Pages: The 5 Pages you need (yes there are only 5) to create your own Sold Out Launch. Your Opt In Page: A simple (proven) formula to create an optin page that converts 80% of the cold traffic into subscribers (and loyal fans) Your Sales Page: Follow the Mass Persuasion Method to craft a sales page just like this one and to make an offer they just can not refuse. The exact structure, hooks and urgency points that make a killer sales page Your Content Delivery Page: How to create a simple page that showcases your material in the best possible way Your Thank You Page: That builds Know Like Trust and primes them for what’s next. This is a crucial page that almost everyone gets wrong Your Online Program Members Page: The best way to set up the members area after people buy from you I am not just showing you how to create these …I’m also just flat out giving you the templates for each one! Fantastic Five Launch Emails: The 5 types of emails (yep 5 only) that you need to send so that you can convert people from subscribers to buyers Seduce Email: How to create an instant connection with your readers and build Know Like Trust that not only create an instant bond with the reader but also establish you as THE subject matter expert using powerful storytelling techniques and polarizing seduction method so you attract raving fans and dispel lukewarm ones. Tease Email: How to create a frenzy of excitement & hysteria around your launch. Email formula that creates an urgent, insistent need to sign up for your launch trigger so that you can lovingly guide them through your sales funnel. Prime Email: How to prime people to buy from you. I will share a formula that serves two core purposes; priming people for the sale AND delivering massive value while creating a frenzy of excitement so that people BEG you to sell to them. Pitch Email: How to write pitch emails that look like content but have a super persuasive pitch weaved into them using the principles of Believability & Desirability Nudge Email: This email moves people from “I’ll buy when I have time” to “I Want this NOW!” People need more than one “nudge” to buy from you. I will show you a formula to write nudge emails that is tested to boost sales by as much as 70%. Persuasive Blogging Workshop: How to research, outline and create your viral-worthy blog post & launch content in under 45 minutes You’ll get examples, swipes files, worksheets, training videos, and more… so you’re able to hit the ground running without staring at a “blank screen” wondering how to start.

WEEK THREE: SOLD OUT TRAFFIC PLAN Sold Out Launch Traffic (The Strategy): This is where we start feeding your “launch machine” with perfect targeted traffic by putting your message in front of targeted audience primed to buy from you. Here’s what you get: How to create an instant frenzy of likes, comments and shares for anything you share online by tapping on to their deepest darkest desires. Everything from Facebook ads to social media posts to punchy one-liners that pull people in. A step by step training on how to find and target the RIGHT audience for your Facebook ads 10 Psychological hooks that you can use to write the copy for your Facebook ads (one of these got me a 9% click through rate) 10 Psychological hooks that you can use to write the copy for your Facebook ads (one of these got me a 9% click through rate) A step by step, goof-proof training on using Power Editor to create your high performing Facebook ads. We will talk pixels, custom audiences and all that tech gibberish that scares you so much and I will actually make it fun. Fantastic Five Launch Ads: The 5 ads you need for a Sold Out Launch. I will show you how to put together these 5 types of ads for maximum ROI on your ad spend: Seduction and brand recognition Ads: So that you become a familiar face in their newsfeed and when they do actually see you offering something, they don’t feel violated Authority building Article Ads: So that you can use the power of Facebook to establish yourself as a subject matter expert. There is a simple trick to master this that literally takes less than 30 minutes. Optin Ads: To encourage people to sign up to your email list so that you can put them in your launch funnel (AKA sell to them) Video Ads: These are under 2 minute videos that are meant to seed the idea of your product in the minds of your potential buyers. I will show you how to create these and what scripts to use. Retargeted Ads: so that people who leave your site without opting in or buying can be brought back. This is how Amazon follows you around Facebook after you look at something but leave without buying. Fantastic Five Social Media Posts: You only need 5 types of social media posts to get noticed in crowded places like Facebook groups and getting people to hunt you down and get on your list. This module will show you how to: Craft your Sold Out Launch social media plan in under 60 minutes for maximum impact, engagement & conversions Master social media etiquette and how to tailor your posts to fit the different platforms (FB groups, FB pages, live stream, twitter etc.) Find the best places to get social media inspiration and curate content that establishes you as a subject matter expert

WEEK FOUR: SOLD OUT PRODUCT CREATION Sold Out Product Creation (Strategy) You’re going to learn step-by-step how to create your own product in under 48 hours (so the actual nitty gritty product creation process), and finally how to record the sessions. This is product creation on steroids and the exact process I use to create so much quality content in so little time. Best Part? No past experience required! Sold Out Product Creation (The how-to) The three different types of info products and why you need to choose one before moving forward with course content creation The different learning styles and how to create course content that addresses all styles for an optimal learning experience Online course best practices to inspire you How to set learning objectives and map out your course content in 45 minutes How to use strategic thinking to create learning materials that support an optimal learning experience How to map out the required learning materials for your program in 45 minutes 5 best free tools for creating beautiful worksheets, guides and printables for your course How to whip up beautiful worksheets, guides and printables for your program in 2 hours

WEEK FIVE: SOLD OUT LAUNCH EXECUTION Build a Sold Out Launch: How to put all the pieces together and finally press START on that launch. This is where the rubber meets the road and this is where we get to WIN! The Ultimate Launch Checklist and Turbo Execution Guide, Plan and Calendar Template A walk-through of my process on how to launch working 4 hours a day even during launch days Sold Out Smart Phone Video Production: How to prep for your launch video shoot and a sure-fire way to always look perfectly put together in your launch videos (lighting, makeup, dress, background etc.) How to use your smartphone to make professional looking launch videos My favorite video editing softwares and how to use them for a professional looking launch vide

Bushra Azhar – Sold Out Launch published first on http://ift.tt/2qxBbOD

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endorsereviews · 8 years ago

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Bushra Azhar – Sold Out Launch

Bushra Azhar – Sold Out Launch posted first on premiumwarezstore.blogspot.com

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nickreposted · 8 years ago

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nicreations shared this story . Tom Hanks is, arguably, the biggest movie star in the world. His films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars and won him two Oscars and four Golden Globes. He also recently nabbed a Presidential Medal Of Freedom from President Obama just for being a stand-up guy. Why, then, would Tom Hanks take precious time out of his rich-guy Hollywood schedule to host a public radio show? Probably because that show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! isn’t just a public radio show—it’s the public radio show. Now in its 20th season, Wait Wait is NPR’s flagship product, drawing almost four million listeners weekly when it’s broadcast on more than 700 member stations. (The podcast version is also downloaded more than 700,000 times a week.)A wry, slightly self-satisfied game show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me is normally hosted by Peter Sagal. Each week, Sagal and announcer-scorekeeper Bill Kurtis are joined by a panel of Wait Wait-caliber wits—mostly authors, podcasters, and mild comedians—for a quiz inspired by local news. With Sagal out on vacation for last week’s Wait Wait, the show reached out to Hanks. Hanks said yes, and the result was an episode that taped this past Thursday in Chicago and was attended by this reporter.Wait Wait’s Executive Producer Mike Danforth said the Hanks’ offer came because he knew Hanks was a fan. “He’s been on the show in the past,” said Danforth, noting that “one of [the show’s] old producers has a sort of relationship with him or a member of his family.” Danforth said getting Hanks was surprisingly simple: “I texted a friend and said, ‘Hey, do you think Tom Hanks would ever host a show?’ and it was maybe two hours later when I got an email from him.” Hanks hosting wasn’t just a half-assed “show up two hours before the show” effort, either. He spent about three days in Wait Wait’s Chicago office—which Hanks described on stage Thursday as “not as glam as one would have thought,” what with its “sad folding table” and scant office supplies—to whip up jokes about why Republicans are supposedly more attractive than Democrats and a Jimmy John’s in Florida that got in hot water when two of its employees used bread dough as a jump rope before baking and serving it to customers. According to Danforth, the move to bring Hanks fully into the fold was made because Wait Wait “has a routine, and for better or worse, it works.”That’s not to say the show didn’t try to incorporate Hanks’ particular set of skills. In a new game the show called “The Role Of A Lifetime,” Hanks channeled his Oscar-winning acting chops to play “a failing pile of garbage,” prompting the panelists to ask questions to try and figure out what he was. The results fell a little flat, though it was interesting to see how quickly Hanks could think on his feet.If nothing else, that was the takeaway from Thursday’s taping, which clocked in at about three hours long and was subsequently edited down into the one-hour show Wait Wait listeners heard over the weekend. Hanks, who at one point called himself “a middle-aged charm monster,” is sharp, smart, and surprisingly dirty. (When asked early on how often he gets to perform live, Hanks responded, “Quite frankly, about twice a week at home.”) He spent a good portion of both the actual show and the in-between segments making fun of himself and the Wait Wait gang, even calling the audience “the happiest crowd of ugly Democrats I’ve ever seen.” He had an especially good rapport with panelist Paula Poundstone, who spent most of the episode either marveling that “Woody from Toy Story” was standing 5 feet from her or trying to get Hanks to be her plus-one for her upcoming 40th high school reunion.Hanks, it turns out, isn’t just a showman when the camera (or the microphone) is on. Between takes, he’d sing songs about the show’s technical manager, Lorna White, and fought a lengthy period of giggles when he found out he accidentally said “fartaceuticals” instead of “pharmaceuticals” during the show’s lightning-fast quiz round. When asked to test his mic, he quickly and clearly did enunciation drills to the phrase “Peter Sagal is a sucker,” and tried in vain, both on air and off, to get anything fun out of call-in guest Simone Biles, who didn’t seem to get any of the panel’s jokes.That charming conviviality even extended into the post-show Q&A, something that was surprisingly helped by the 450-person audience’s mostly cogent and interesting questions. What really stuck, though, was Hanks’ response to the final question of the night, asked by a middle-aged man sitting smack in the middle of the room: “What do you see the next four years looking like?” The audience sat in pin-drop silence as Hanks, who played up his reassuring role as America’s dad on Saturday Night Live last fall, called on both his life and role as a lay-historian to once again reassure the very clearly Drumpf-uneasy audience. “We’re going to be all right,” Hanks said, “but we’re not going to be all right overnight.” He emphasized the importance of holding our politicians accountable and contributing day by day to the “multitude of drops” needed to make up a powerful, all-consuming ocean of good deeds and good people, an idea he said he took away from the Cloud Atlas script. Hanks also harkened back to what he remembers from the Vietnam War era, which he said “was the shittiest time imaginable.” Citing the era’s racial strife, lying politicians, and family dinners that could turn into fistfights on a nightly basis, Hanks said we should reference those years to demonstrate that just because something is terrible doesn’t mean we can’t get through it. It was warmly reassuring and sweetly smart, and—paired with his hard-working, freely given Wait Wait performance—confirmed that Tom Hanks is exactly the guy we all want him to be.Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! live with Tom Hanks (Photo: Andrew Gill for NPR)

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