#remember that they only achieved equal pay in 2021

[quinnfebrey]

can we fast forward 4 years to see how ireland performs in the next ww cup 😪

[trbcard4001]

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[thetinyraccoon]

well, it would appear that Margaret Atwood has outed herself as a transphobe.

Earlier today, she shared on twitter a column from the Toronto Star called “Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?”. The article is however behind a paywall, and since I refuse to pay for that shit, I found it on the Wayback Machine. 

Here’s the link, and under the cut will be the article copy-pasted in case the link doesnt work. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20211019131846/https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/10/15/why-cant-we-say-woman-anymore.html

I have to say, I am both disappointed and confused, especially considering how adamant Atwood has been about respecting trans and nb people’s identities in the past.

“You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Person with a Vagina.”

“Man! I Feel Like a Person who Menstruates”

“Oh, Pretty Person with a Cervix”

Apologies to Aretha Franklin, Shania Twain and Roy Orbison, but this appears to be where we’re heading if language radicals get their way.

And they’re getting it, tying everybody up in linguistic knots so as not to offend or get clobbered by the social media mob.

The inclusive objective is worthy.

The erasure of women is not.

“Woman” is in danger of becoming a dirty word … struck from the lexicon of officialdom, eradicated from medical vocabulary and expunged from conversation.

Which is a bitchy thing to do to half the world’s population.

It shouldn’t leave well-meaning people tongue-tied, lest they be attacked as transphobic or otherwise insensitive to the increasingly complex constructs of gender.

“The Lancet,” the prestigious and highly influential British medical journal, put “Bodies with Vaginas” on the cover of its latest issue, referring to an article inside, entitled “Periods on Display,” a review of an exhibit about the history of menstruation at the Vagina Museum in London.

Maybe the editors, who tweeted the piece, were just looking for clickbait, with a pullquote on the cover teasing that “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of such bodies have been neglected” — this although the author had used the phrase “bodies with vaginas,” only once and “women” four times.

A hell-storm broke out, quite rightly, with readers indignant over the wording. As one, an author of books on childbirth and women’s bodies, wrote: “You’re telling us that you’ve noticed that, for hundreds of years, you’ve neglected and overlooked women, and, then, in the same breath, you are unable to name those people you’ve been ignoring.”

The magazine’s editor-in-chief apologized hastily.

This isn’t an argument against gender self-identification. Surely we’re well past that. It’s more about an infelicitous evolution of language, which is fundamentally about communicating clearly. Even if making the argument ends up aligning uncomfortably with reactionaries and regressives with whom I have no truck.

In one fell swoop, “The Lancet” — remember, this is a medical publication! — reduced womanhood, biological or metaphysical, to purely anatomical parts, a gross reversal of the century-long campaign to, not only achieve equal rights, but for women to be seen as more than their biological and rampantly objectified, sexualized packaging. This is fundamental to feminism and humanism. Further, we are seeing, in, for example, legislation passed or coming down the pike in U.S. to severely restrict abortions, basically undoing Roe vs. Wade, how fragile these gains can be.

“That Lancet” episode was not an over-woke outlier.

The American Civil Liberties Union took detestable liberties by deliberately mauling the words of beloved and brilliant Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in marking the one-year anniversary of her death. Reaching back to comments Ginsburg made during her confirmation hearings in 1980, wherein she spoke about the right of women to obtain an abortion, the ACLU unilaterally removed “woman,” replacing it with “person.”

It came out thusly: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a (person’s) life, to (their) wellbeing and dignity …. When the government controls that decision for (people), (they are) being treated as less than a fully adult human and responsible for (their) own choices.”

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, also subsequently issued a grovelling mea culpa, promising he’d never again drastically alter quotes in the future.

But is that really a lesson that needed to be pounded into his head?

And still Romero tried to justify his interference by claiming that Ginsburg would have supported more inclusive language.

Maybe so. I would really like to know what she might have thought. But we don’t and can’t and it’s outrageous for anyone to mishmash the justice’s voice.

Women have abortions. Or, I suppose, in the tiniest of numbers, people born with female genitals who identify as male or fluid can terminate a pregnancy.

Women have babies. Or, in the tiniest of numbers, people born with female genitals who identify as male or fluid, can get pregnant.

Yet in 2016, the British Medical Association recommended staff use “pregnant people,” instead of pregnant women. A British hospital now instructs staff on its maternity ward to use “birthing people,” instead of pregnant women. The Biden administration’s proposed 2022 budget substituted “birth people” for mothers. Rep. Cori Bush has used that term, while her Congressional Squad teammate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has talked of “menstruating people.”

These are women I admire but they’ve jumped the shark.

All of this recalls the point bestselling author J.K. Rowling was trying to make, wryly, in a tweet that got her bludgeoned by the mob: “People who menstruate. I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling was branded a TERF — activists do like their neologisms — meaning trans exclusionary radical feminist. As if she was hostile to the trans movement, which she assuredly is not. Some bookstores removed her work from their shelves. Were she not a gazillion-selling author, Rowling could have lost her publisher.

In Britain, where roughly 680,000 people do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, according to government figures, midwives at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals were told to start using terms such as “chest milk,” instead of breast milk. This, apparently, because some transgender men who give birth and nurse their babies were distressed at being reminded of what they were doing with those lactating female appendages. Although surely “breast” is a gender-neutral term, as both sexes have them and both can develop breast cancer.

This is all directly a phenomenon resulting from trans activism run amok.

I get the passion for recasting language, to improve gender and LGBT equity, to minimize the “cognitive mental salience” of males.

The movement has been spectacularly successful in the progressive West, although English isn’t as heavily gendered as, say, Italian or French. Truly, props for an undertaking that has given voice and power to a demographic historically oppressed, horribly shaped and disproportionately subjected to violence!

Merriam-Webster was the first dictionary to add gender-neutral pronouns “they” and “themself” to refer to a person whose “gender identity is non-binary.”

But these examples go far beyond insistence on neutral pronouns, into an outer orbit of linguistics where both women, as a gender, and “woman” as a noun are being blotted out.

There’s more than a whiff of misogyny to it. Why “woman” the no-speak word and not “man?” Why not “persons who urinate standing up” or “people who eject semen?”

Certainly there are words — they are slurs mostly — that are no longer acceptable. “Woman” shouldn’t be one of them.

The battleground of language has turned into a baffleground of agendas.

I am woman and I am roaring.

[my18thcenturysource]

On International Women's Day we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and economic achievement of women, but I would not call it a happy or quite celebratory holiday. Today we also highlight the current work towards equality, and raise awareness against bias, and this years' theme is #ChooseToChallenge (because a challenged world is a world in alert, so challenge and call out gender bias and discrimination when you see it.)

Today's post (hey! I'm back!) is a little timeline for International Women's Day, for all of us to take a look at what we have achieved, and what the road ahead looks like. So, here we go:

1909 - the Socialist Party of America created the "National Women's Day" held in February 28th in New York City. This was a the original idea of activist Theresa Malkiel.

1910 - The International Socialist Women's Conference takes place in Cophenhagen, Denmark. 100 women from 17 countries agree on an annual Women's Day to promote equal rights (including the vote), but no date was specified.

1911 - International Women's Day was honoured for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19th. On March 25th the fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City took the lives of 146 working women, most of them immigrants, this drew attention to working conditions and it became a main focus on the next International Women's Day events. James Oppenheim published a poem in The American Magazine, quoting "bread and roses" from a 1910 speech by Helen Todd calling not only for basic rights and equality, but also for beauty and dignity, creating the "Bread and Roses" slogan that became representative of the women's fight, but also key for the 1912 Lawrence mills strike.

1914 - International Women's Day was held on March 8th for the first time. In London was held a march from Bow to Trafalgar Square in support of women's suffrage, and Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested.

1917 - On the last Sunday of February (March 8th on the Gregorian calendar) women in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) began a strike for "bread and piece" for the end of WWI, this demonstration eventually covered the whole city, and days later forcing the Czar to abdicate and women were granted the right to vote by the provisional Government. This marked the start of the Russian Revolution.

1927 - There's a march in Guagzhou, China, of 25,000 women and male supporters. Even though the Women's Day was commemorated in China since 1922, it was until 1949 that it was declared an official holiday and women would be given half a day off.

1936 - Dolores Ibáuri led a women's march in Madrid on the eve of the Spanish Civil War.

1967 - Women's Day is taken up by second-wave feminist, and it stops being perceived as a "communist holiday". It is now a day of activism and its sometimes refered in Europe as "Women's International Day of Struggle".

1975 - International Women's Day is celebrated by the United Nations. During the 70s and 80s, women's groups were joined by leftists and labor organizations in calling for equal pay, economic opportunity, legal rights, reproductive rights, child care, and prevention of violence against women.

1996 - The UN announced the first annual theme: "Celebrating the past, Planning for the Future", each year there's a new them and 2021's is "Choose to Challenge".

2007 - Violence sparked in Tehran on March 4th, when police beat hundreds of men and women who were planning a rally, arrested dozens of women and some were released after several days of solitary confinement and interrogation.

There is of course so much more to say about this day, but this post is getting LONG, and of course I added at the bottom links for further learning.

Finally, this is a day to take action. And the marches are not the only option, you can:

Support female-centric charities.

Raise awareness of women's struggles.

Pressure your local government to achieve gender parity.

Share and celebrate women's achievements.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Learn more:

International Women's Day

Remembering Theresa Serber Malkiel, the forgotten woman behind International Women’s Day, Adrija Roychowdhury, The Indian Express, 8th March 2019.

International Socialist Conferences of Women Workers, Alexandra Kollontai, International Socialist Conferences of Women Workers, 1918.

The roots of International Women’s Day are more radical than you think, Erin Blakemore, National Geographic, 2020.

Death in the Afternoon Podcast, ep 11: The Least Worst Death, 2019. MAJOR CONTENT WARNING this episode talks about the tragedies of 9/11 and the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, and it might be VERY disturbing for some. Please take care while listening if you choose to.

Uncovering the History of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, David von Drehle, The Smithsonian Magazine, 2006. - Again, CONTENT WARNING for fire, mass death, suicide,

Bread and Roses: the origins of a Mount Holyoke tradition, Rachel Nix, 2019.

Bread and Roses poem, by James Oppenheim, 1911.

From the archive, 11 June 1914: Arrest of Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, The Guardian

The Strike that Shook America, Christopher Klein, History.com, 2012.

Russia’s February Revolution Was Led by Women on the March, Carolyn Harris, The Smithsonian Magazine, 2017.

In China, Women’s Day Marches On Despite Decline, Chen Yan, Sixth Tone, 2018.

Memories of Resistance: Women Activists from the Spanish Civil War, Shirley Mangini, Signs (vol. 17, no. 1), 1991.

Iranian Police Clash With Women's Day Protesters, 2007.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Images from top:

Poster for Women's Day, March 8, 1914, demanding voting rights for women, Karl Maria Stadler.

Female tailors on strike, New York City, February, 1910.

The Bread and Roses strike, 1912.

Women's demonstration for bread and peace – March 8, 1917, Petrograd, Russia

Alexandra Kollontai with Clara Zetkin at International Women's Conference, 1921.

A Tehran University female student protesting against the government of Iran, December 9, 2007, Tehran University in Tehran.

[lozislaw]

HELLOOOOO, I LOVE YOUR ART 💗💗💗💗 but I want to know if you have some tips for anatomy??? CUZ I WANNA LEARN TOO, or do you know some artists that may have some tips for anatomy? 🥺especially HANDS cuz omg they’re a total pain 😩😩

I love you btw 🖤

Oh god oh jeez. I have no idea what advice I could possibly give that wouldn't sound like a goose trying to learn English with a parrot translator. But goddammit I'm gonna try my way.

This is embarrassing because I'm literally in art school and I'm lacking fundamental advice for anatomy like those incredibly clever art-tips you see online. But I've picked things up along the way I swear. Maybe not exactly what you're asking for (probably definitely not - so I apologise in advance), but I think they're good to know anyway. Bear with me as I vomit them out.

Firstly, I'm gonna play a broken record to you on repeat here, which is the most important thing when it comes to improvement. You guessed it: PRACTISE (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

I know - Trust me I know it sounds tiring, and the idea is much easier than actually picking up your tool and doing it. But there's no way around it. Not even the most talented and incredible artists in the world become that way at the moment of birth; they're spending their lives practising and learning new things. Whether professionally or not, you don't become amazing overnight. It takes effort; and whether you want to treat that effort as work, or fun, is completely up to you. Being one or the other doesn't change your skill - it only changes the way you view your practise. Personally; I view my practise as fun, because it feels like more of an achievement when I make something I'm proud of. It's a win-win. Also because fanart is extremely fun always XD

If you keep practising - even if you hate your work at first and want it burned, I fucking promise you it'll pay off, even if it takes years. The best part about it is looking back on your progress and thinking: wow, I'm so proud of myself. For example here is my own evolution, one from August 2020 - to September 2021

(I was brand new to digital art with a purely traditional background, so I was extremely naive about the whole concept. Looking at multitudes of fanart is my only education XD)

This is the evolution of practice and studying the shit out of other peoples art; experimenting like crazy and teaching yourself from the basics to the advanced. Spend one week practising curls and nothing else. Spend another learning how to render skin. And another doing nothing but hands and fingers and wrists galore. Draw a hand using a photo, even trace over it. Learn your shapes first and then you can advance to the next step. Dip your toes in and you won't get overwhelmed <3

I know this isn't exactly nitty-gritty anatomy tips, but at the end of the day any advice is just more education; it helps all around. I'm gonna give you something else - a much more specific tip; an exercise. It's fun I promise, because there's no such thing as a bad result, they're all equally bad XD Shit - I can hear my teacher scowling, I meant good.

You can do this digitally if you prefer, but I like using simple pencil and paper, it feels more fluid. There are two ways to practise accessing the right-side of your brain (the creative side). Or in a less pretentious way to say: how to stop giving a fuck about being perfect.

The first way is called blind continuous line-drawing. It’s pretty self-explanatory: you either use a reference in front of you or just on memory, and draw it without ever lifting your pencil up. But you don’t look at your paper at all, you’re letting your hand and your memory guide you. The more you practise this, the more you stop worrying about making it neat and perfect, you can fucking let loose. Make music that sounds like cats shoved into a washing machine. This exercise will follow you on your other art pursuits, even if you don’t realise it. Remember, practise baby~

Next exercise, and my personal favourite is loose line sketches. They’re similar to continuous line in the way that you’re encouraged to let your inhibitions go and make a mess. You can lift your pencil, and you can look at your paper, and essentially it’s like sketching... if your sketching was like an ice-addict having a seizure. Which is beautiful! And unique, and dammit you don’t need to feel embarrassed, but none of these are meant to be perfect.

See the heavy loose lines that I use sparingly in the sources of light, and condensed in the spaces of darkness. I put away that little devil telling me to be perfect and concise, and just have fun and go bonkers. It teaches you about form and light without spending 5 hours trying to make it photorealistic. These all took less than 5 minutes, that’s how little I gave a fuck about making them perfect. And goddamn it helps. Give them a try, spend no more than five minutes on them, and see how you go <3 It works digitally too!

Okay this answer is so long and I’m so sorry, I don’t even know if I’ve answered your question at this point, I’ve gone off the rails. Hands... okay hands. Hands are the most difficult thing for me to draw, which is just cruel irony because they’re also my favourite aside from faces. The most I can offer at this point is that practise will save your life. Observe other artists and how they draw, take the time to notice things about their art that you wouldn't at first glance. The highlights and source of light? The length of their fingers? Are they thick or delicate? Are they anime hands and fucking massive? Is that body slender or thicc? Where are they putting the curves, fat and muscle on their person (or furson, furries are welcome here ❤). Decide through this observation and your own practise what kind of style you aspire to have out of your art. Do what makes you proudest, what you find the most enjoyable, and as I've said, stop giving a fuck about anyone, including yourself. You have your own unique take on reality and it's beautiful <3 You can draw blob hands and it's okay, because they're your blob hands :3

And anon? I love you too ;3;

[jade-it-queen]

Jade. The fate of female character in Mortal Kombat

It’s been a while since I posted anything on my blog cause I’ve been busy with my life and rapid changes in it. During this time, I’ve watched the new 2021 Mortal Kombat movie as well as the new animation Battle of the realms and also rewatched the Story Mode of MK11 a few times. As you probably can tell, I have a lot to say.

JADE. MILEENA. KITANA. SONYA.

Skip this if you don’t want to read my very important (and long as sh*t) rant about female characters in MK.

DISCLAIMER. This thing is going to sound extremely feminist and women-supremacist or whatever. By saying things that I’m going to say, I by no means think that male characters should be weak or lacking. If anything, it would be nice to have some godforsaken EQUALITY. I’ll explain further later.

Part One: Mortal Kombat (2021)

There’s no Jade in this movie. 

The end. That should be the sole reason I dislike it.

However, it might be better this way since the Nitara and Mileena portrayals in this movie are... questionable to say the least. Okay, y’all been robbed. If MY JADE would be brought into this movie to BE THERE for like 4 minutes of screen time only to get absolutely brutal FATALITY I. would. be. pissed.

More than I already am and that means something.

Sure, there’s a possibility that she’s going to be present in some of the upcoming movies because this one is definitely not the only one they’re going to make. But do I want that? Yes. And no.

Mortal Kombat movies (and Mortal Kombat in general) have a problem with women portrayal in general. The target audience for them are MEN, potentially heterosexual men, who want nothing more than bloody gorey fighting scenes with occasional sex scene here and there. To achieve that, they need a female lead, an attractive, kinda kick-assish but not too much, to not overshadow the absolutely badass men characters. Girls tend to be “independent” (because God forbid they’d want to express interest in the male leads before the time is right), sarcastic, laid back and sometimes even bitchy. Because, you see, they are fighters. And they are Sonya Blade. They need NO MAN. They just need plot armor, bigger than America itself. And if they’re not Sonya Blade, they are... non existent. They are there, but they are never really there. Here, let me walk on screen for a couple seconds. Let me sit beside Very Important Male Character (aka Shang Tsung) for a couple of seconds, looking absolutely gorgeous. Let me have a fight scene in which I make choices so f*cking stupid there’s no potential explanation to it. I exist in this movie to make people that love me (this character) to come into theatres in hopes to see some good action and interesting plot.

Now, I wasn’t born yesterday, I know how the world works. It’S bEeN LiKe ThAt FoReVeR, gEt OvEr here iT. Yeah, it’s been like that forever and the result is a mediocre movie that pleases neither the casual viewer, nor the actual Mortal Kombat fan. I don’t know, there might be guys who just saw Kung Lao’s fatality on Nitara, thought to themselves “Neat” and went on with their lives. But I exited the cinema with a sour taste in my mouth, feeling like I’ve watched one of the “fighting genre” films based on video games that had nothing worth remembering. Well, besides Kano. He was my favourite part of this movie and I  normally can’t stand the guy :’D

Would it really help if they changed the way the women were portrayed? I mean - is that the ACTUAL problem of the movie? No, women being the eye candy and barely something else (if they’re not Sonya Blade) are not the only problem it suffers from. It’s that MK has been going the same route, retelling the same goddamn story for the millionth time. It’s always THE SAME. The only thing changing is who’s gonna get brutally killed. But - of course - out of the “disposable” character pool. It’s never Sonya (because you need our female lead or else there would be no female characters in the story), who ya know could be killed by Mileena but magically WASN’T. Because Mileena FOR SOME REASON was like: Ya know what? Naaah. Even though Sonya’s from Earthrealm and is actively trying to stop you. If anything, kill her because she annoys you. BUT NAH. It’s never Liu Kang because he’s the Chosen One. But killing Kung Lao is fine, he can die so Liu can awaken or smth. It’s not the main character because how else can you portray THE MAGIC OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP? Ya, that’s what I thought, don’t even think about it.

You have an amazing universe, filled to the brim with SO. MUCH. POTENTIAL. Let go of the same boring plot line and show us Kombat from another perspective. Change something. F*ck, go all feminist route and make a story center around Mileena dominating the world. Try with different versions of the same story, making it center around different character each time. 

SURE, YOU’LL PROBABLY LOSE SOME VIEWERS BUT TIMES ARE CHANGING, AND MOST OF US ARE TIRED TO PAY FOR THE SAME STORY OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Part Two: Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms

Jesus f*cking Christ.

To say this film was rushed is an understatement. While I was watching it, I was like: TF? Everything happens all at once, we have Kuai Liang-Scorpion story line, we have Outworld’s attack, the tournament, not to mention the final fight that should be whole another movie. I felt like no story line was properly laid out, some of the characters died before I got to even know them and the battles were... disappointing. I believe they needed to push this movie out so they squished in everything they had and just went with it. 

But, again, this movie just repeats the same things as its live action version. Let me lay it down for you:

Kung Lao dies (because yes)

Sonya Blade lives (because yes)

Jade is just there (more of it later)

disposable characters are disposed of

Liu Kang is badass and always wins

You watch it and feel like you’ve already seen it before. Sure, gore is fine, human Raiden is precious and need to be protected at all costs and adrenaline is pumping (I guess).

BUT NOW.

You know what’s coming.

JADE.

JADE.

My f*cking piece of sunshine, the gorgeous goddess of beauty and kombat, the woman who owns my heart.

She’s there for like not even a minute.

Words can’t describe how f*cking PISSED I am by this portrayal. These motherfrickers put her in EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE SNIPPET OF THIS MOVIE. HER BATTLE WAS IN THE TRAILER, ONE OF THE SNEAK PEEKS WAS A SCENE OF HER AND KITANA.

TURNS OUT EVERYTHING I SAW BEFORE THE MOVIE WAS RELEASED... WAS EVERYTHING I WAS ABOUT TO SEE OF HER!!!!

THEY MADE ME HYPED UP FOR NOTHING!!!!!!

I know I’m not the only one riding this trolley. Li Mei was there just to be killed. Kung Lao had a f*cking single dialogue line and then BAM, fatality, buh-bye. But I was watching everything of this movie, being so enormously happy that I will finally see Jade in the movies, FINALLY! Only for her to be present in a single scene, get her ass kicked by Liu Kang (what’s new) and then she’s never seen again, even when the whole f*cking world is breaking apart.

Again. She’s just there. Ladies and gentlemen, one of the best Shao Kahn’s assassins, gets her ass kicked in fourty seconds. They NEVER let her speak ffs. She just spews some general villanous sh*t and proceeds to step on Johnny. Then, she just goes Observer mode as Kitana “betrays” Shao Kahn, gets tied to the column and then the world is ending. 

WHERE THE F*CK IS SHE?!

If you hype me up for her every chance you get, at least GIVE ME what you’re advertising. This is a scam. This is criminal offense. And homophobic. She is more than a revealing outfit and Liu Kang’s punching bag. I’m SO. F*CKING. TIRED. OF THIS. SH*T.

Kitana. The rebellious princess of Outworld... turned damsel in distress in this movie. Her role is so effing bad it hurts me to my core. You see her as a general being so badass and independent... oh right, we need Liu Kang to save her because he needs to maintain his hero look. And we need two kissing scenes. How do we get there? Oh, right, let him save her, because you know - that’s what makes wahmen kiss you. 

ARE YOU NUTS?!

The movie started just fine, with Kitana being in charge with her right hand, Jade. Then, obviously, they water her down and soon she is a princess in a tower (in this case, princess on a column) that needs her buffy sexy man to save her. Oh, and she can’t resist him - you know, every normal girl’s reaction to getting untied is to kiss a guy you’ve known for like a few hours but seen before and you’ve talked like three dialogue lines in total. Sure.

Kitana just gets the unfortunate role of a female main character. She’s Liu’s love interest and that makes her take the role of a strong (but surface level, only) woman who still needs her hero to free her. Classic damsel in distress story, with Kitana being the princess, Liu being the Prince charming and Shao Kahn as the dragon (lul). Of course, they try to cover this up by making Kitana a general, letting her win a few fights but it won’t matter in the end. Some say that women want to believe in fairy tales but the more I see fighting games’ lore, the more I say it’s the men who want to believe them. 

Is it necessarily bad? No. But it’s boring as fuk.

I would like to ask the directors to stop being so afraid of upsetting the target audience. Target audience can change and sometimes it comes out better than originally planned. My Little Pony was designed as a child’s cartoon but it was the creepy men who made it reach the top. Morally? Questionable at best. But business is booming, right? And that’s what they care for, right?

All I’m trying to say is these days women and gays are the future.

Thank you for today, more to come. I’m going to rant about the Story Mode.

[heyitsyn]

Oh God

TimeTraveler!Son x Haikyuu!! Part 2

a/n: hehe i wouldnt put ‘x haikyuu’ if manager y/n ends up with that certain character. youll just have to,,,, wait for the end 😏

he didnt want to lie but he had to so he could survive

hinata offered his hand to help him up and natsu winced at the scratches and the slight headache as he stood on his two feet

‘you okay?’

hinata asked and natsu nodded

‘yea, just a headache’

natsu tried to play it off as cooly as he could bc this must’ve been from the car hit before and he couldnt just say he got ran over by a damn car

‘where do you live? i can go and treat your wounds there’

natsu was about to respond but he remembers hes not in tokyo anymore and he cant just spout out his address

so he did the thing his mom told him to do whenever it was necessary

he lied

‘i-um,,,’

he fumbled for an excuse but he sighed to maintain the act

‘i got kicked out’

he mumbled and hinata had to make him repeat it twice because he said it so quietly

the tangerine boy gasped and held his arms

‘what?! why?!’

natsu sniffled

‘my dad,,,, he just,,, doesnt want me’

well, that was actually true

so a true statement could equal that lie, right?

thankfully, hinata bought it and he grabbed his arm to walk forward while his other was pushing his bike

‘i hit you with my bike so the least i could do is take you to my house and treat you!’

and that was what they did

natsu’s phone was dead even though he was sure he charged it from denki’s powerbank during practice but it remained its black screen no matter how many times he hit the power button

his surroundings was also something unfamiliar

his mother only kept him in tokyo and never took him to go visit her family because she was kicked out and had to go live with her auntie when she found out about him and his father refused to help her

‘so, sendai, huh?’

he mumbled and hinata looked at him confused

‘sounds like youre not from around here. where you from?’

‘t-tokyo’

he replied and saw hinata’s eyes brighten

‘oh?! you look like youre my age so you must have been in a high school in tokyo, right? what school?’

‘yuuei’

‘hah?! yuuei?! what is that?!’

natsu rolled his eyes and shrugged

‘a school’

hinata persisted though

‘do you know other schools?! any other school friends?! like nekoma?! or fukurodani?!’

natsu shook his head and he was supposed to be happy that he got to meet, even talk, to his idol yet his younger self was much more hyper than his mellowed out behavior on tv

‘i stick to my friends from yuuei’

‘but what are you doing all the way here?’

natsu’s throat dried up and he watched his feet kick the pebbles to distract him of his urge to just whine and throw a tantrum with the confusion from this mess

‘i dont know’

he choked out and he was so tired and confused and all he wants to do is cry in his mother’s arms like he used to but she doesnt even know he exists

hinata sensed the tension and sadness from the boy beside him and tried his best to stay quiet until they get home

to say his mom was angry was an understatement

‘SHOYO, DONT YOU KNOW TO WATCH WHERE YOURE GOING?!’

‘kaa-san i was so angry and bakageyama was yelling at me and hit me and-’

‘THAT DOESNT GIVE YOU AN EXCUSE TO RUN SOMEONE OVER!’

natsu sat there on their couch awkwardly watching the black-haired woman yell at the human tangerine

he coughed in impulse and she turned away from her son and went to sit next to the h/c boy

‘dear, im so sorry for my son and his terrible biking. i didnt catch your name when you entered, what is it?’

even hinata forgot to ask his name but thats such a hinata thing to do though

natsu froze

if he was to say his mother’s last name, it would raise suspicion that he might know her in this time period and izuku has shown him enough doctor who to show him what happens when he messes up in time

again, he lied

‘kiri,,,shima,,, natsu. kirishima natsu’

he inwardly apologized to eijirou for using his last name

mrs. hinata raised a hand to her mouth with a surprised gasp

‘oh! my daughter’s name is also natsu! natsu, dear! can you come here for a second?’

natsu heard soft sounds from the stairs and she shyly walked down 

‘come say hi’

she softly urged her daughter to come closer and the little girl ran to hide behind her older brother who gently smiled and held her hand

‘well, thats her. she just turned 10 a few days ago. look dear, kirishima-kun has the same name as you!’

she waved slightly and natsu felt his heart swell at the sight of the adorable little girl

his mother never really had time for relationships so he was an only child and never got to experience a sibling, only hearing the experience of having siblings from his friend, shouto

mrs. hinata placed a gentle hand on his arm to revert his attention back to her

‘shoyo told me what happened and im sorry that this is all happening to you’

he felt guilty at the sight of her sad eyes because this was all a lie but he knew if he told them the real reason, they wouldnt believe him

so he had to continue with the lie

‘everything was falling apart and i wanted to leave everything behind. so i just took the shinkansen to nowhere and ended up here’

mrs. hinata felt her heart tug because he was just a little boy and he was too young to experience this so she offered him something he shouldnt have agreed to but again, survival

‘you can stay with us in the mean time. our guest room has been collecting dust so you can live here’

‘what? no! i can’t!’

natsu instinctually turned it down because he hated people giving him charity

but the woman squeezed his arm to give him a smile

‘i will not allow a child to live in the streets because of something he couldnt help’

‘arent you worried youre inviting a total stranger in your home?’

but she gave him a knowing smile

‘im a mother. i can trust you, boy’

in exchange for board and food, he promised to get a part time job so he could pay her back and get out of their house as quickly as he could

shoyo led him to the bathroom upstairs so he could treat the wounds from the ground

natsu sat on the closed toilet seat while his literal idol was putting cream on his boo-boos

he still cant wrap his head with everything

maybe it was because he was so busy trying to come up with lies that he wasnt able to fully sit down and think about the fact that he just TRAVELED BACK IN TIME and could accidentally change it

‘shoyo, what year is it?’

he mumbled

‘2012′

he answered and natsu sighed but his head perked up

oh god

2012

thats a year away from 2013

the year he was born

that meant shoyo’s team manager was going to give birth to him next year

‘why? did you hit your head so far that you forgot?’

hinata joked but he paled when natsu didnt laugh

‘OH GOD DID YOU?!’

‘NO! AND STOP YELLING!’

natsu shouted, equally surprised

‘whew, thank god. again, im so sorry i hit you’

‘shoyo, dont worry about it, okay? im fine, i swear’

during dinner, mrs. hinata told him about his school situation

‘you can go to karasuno with shoyo. what year were you in?’

‘first’

‘perfect! shoyo is too so he could easily help you around the school!’

natsu nodded quietly, still out of it and his brain finally starting to accept this impossible reality

‘but i dont think i could help you with the entrance exams. im not the most-um-smartest, per se’

shoyo apologized but natsu already knew that

he was no extreme fanatic but he knew quite a lot about hinata shoyo, the player he watched during the 2021 olympics and the reason he started playing volleyball

natsu dreamed to join the msby jackals just like his idol did and eventually reach the national team like hinata did

it was during the olympics of 2021, he knew he wanted to be like him

this boy who sat next to him was the reason he came to love volleyball along with his other idol, oikawa tooru, from the argentina volleyball team after seeing that legendary match 

when oikawa hit that service ace, natsu wanted to be able to receive that

he was merely 8 and his neighbor, midoriya inko, was babysitting him and she placed him and her son who was his friend, izuku, in front of the tv where they watched the olympics match

‘someday, ill be someone great. ill be great like him’

he promised and from then on, he worked to achieve that goal 

‘natsu? hello?’

he was shaken from his thoughts as shoyo nudged him back to reality

mrs. hinata laughed

‘maybe you should head to bed early, dear. you must be tired after having a hard journey’

he nodded and was about to go and wash his dishes when she stopped him

‘no. go and sleep, ill take care of this’

‘i have to do my part in here, hinata-san. please, let me do this’

she finally agreed and he was scrubbing the plates when his mind wandered over to possible solutions on how he could go back

there was an episode that he watched with izuku that the character had to do something to go back

and he had a feeling that he would have to do the same thing

but what would that something be?

there had to be a reason he was thrown all the way in this time and it couldnt just be a coincidence that supposedly, this would be around the same time his mother would get pregnant

but who would it be?

he finished putting the plates on the drying rack and he felt really thirsty suddenly

opening the fridge, he found no water bottles and natsu had a very sensitive stomach so he couldnt drink tap water

his next favorite beverage was there and he pulled a glass from the cabinet

‘hinata-san, is it okay if i can have some milk?’

he called out and she shouted that it was okay

natsu poured the drink on his glass and started drinking it when hinata entered the kitchen and snickered at him

‘yknow, you remind me of my idiot teammate. none of my other friends drink straight milk except for him’

natsu placed the glass down and wiped his lips

‘chocolate milk make me sick and i hate the taste of flavoring in milk. but i just hate flavoring in general. except for gari gari popsicles, those are good’

natsu reasoned, watching hinata move across the room to get an apple

‘still ew. but come on! lets go to bed so i can show you around school early before practice tomorrow!’

natsu noticed his excitement by the way he bounced in place and he chuckled

it reminded him of his friends mina and denki

hinata led them both to his room so he could check his wounds again just to make sure

then something caught his eye

‘kirishima-kun you like volleyball?!’

that threw him off

partly because he wasnt used to being called by his friend’s last name

but also because of the question

‘huh? how do you know that?’

natsu asked, almost defensively

hinata shrugged

‘i saw your volleyball shoes in your bag’

hinata reasoned and excitedly pointed at them

‘you should play for us! im part of the team too! oh oh! what position do you play?!’

‘l-libero’

natsu stuttered out, slightly overwhelmed by hinata’s energy

hinata started circling him, inspecting his height and looking at him up and down

‘yanno, kirishima-kun, youre really tall. like much taller than the rest of my club. maybe not saltyshima but really!! youre so tall!!’

hinata whined in envy and natsu laughed

‘blame it on the paternal side of the family. my ma isnt really tall’

he laughs but then memories of his mother resurfaced and he suddenly felt gloomy, guilty, even, bc he doesnt know if time stopped there or it kept going and if so, shes probably worried sick

and he knew she was always one who blamed herself

hinata noticed his downcast expression and thought he probably remembers his dad and got sad since he got kicked out

so our baby sunshine freaked out and he frantically waved his hands around

‘oh no! gomen kiri-kun! gomen! i really didnt mean to make you think about him! gomen!!!’

he even bowed which surprised the h/c boy and made him stand back up

‘o-oi shoyo! dont! you didnt because i wasnt thinking about him!’

he fussed and patted hinata’s hair

‘i dont care about him. to be honest, there isnt much to think about’

he didnt think about what he said until he heard himself

natsu’s eyes widened, fearful of how hinata could take it but he flinched when the orange-haired boy’s eyes were filled with his own tears

‘OH NO!! KIRI-KUN!!!’

then launched another series of apologies and natsu had to calm him down

oh dear

it was early in the morning like 5 when hinata bursted into natsu’s room

the loud shout of shoyo made his eyes blink open and he groaned before turning to the side

‘come on, kiri-kun! we need to go to take your exam!’

‘nooooooooo’

‘yeeessssssss’

it was quite a battle for hinata to even just get natsu out of bed but he managed to bribe the latter with some milk bread from the bakery down the street

‘2′

natsu showed his two fingers and hinata sighed before nodding

‘yes. now go hurry so we can leave!’

dressed in his grey sweatpants and a yuuei sweatshirt, natsu cursed as he only has clothes good for 2 days and he didnt want to bother the hinatas so he was at a loss

mrs hinata bid the two boys good bye and natsu was yawning and dragging his body to walk while hinata was skipping over to his bike

then he finally realized the problem

he nervously looked at natsu and the taller boy didnt understand why he was looking at him that way

‘what?’

shoyo pointed at the bike and awkwardly smiled

‘uh,,, you see,,, i dont think youd,,, fit,,, at the back seat’

natsu shrugged

‘then ill bike. ive done it before’

he sauntered over to the bike and swiftly lifted his leg before testing out the brake handles

‘its good and better than mine back home’

‘a-are you-’

‘sit down, sho’

hinata gripped on to the back of natsu’s sweatshirt as he told him the directions to how to get to the school

natsu remembered watching an interview of hinata talking about his high-school life and he remembered the star player talking about his dedication to go to karasuno everyday for volleyball

and the boy couldn’t believe hes doing that right now, with his idol literally behind him, and driving to the legendary karasuno high school

from the jackals to the adlers and even some other teams like the frogs, natsu cheered for them

there was a memory of his mother sitting with him on their couch during one of her rare day offs as they rewatched the recorded copy of the olympics

it has become natsu’s favorite thing to watch

‘with great talent comes great hardships. people don’t become good overnight and i watched those people suffer through it all but look where they are now’

‘KIRISHIMA, WATCH OUT! COWS CROSSING!’

natsu was snapped out of his thoughts at hinata’s shout

then it morphed into pure and utter confusion

‘cows?’

shoyo laughed

‘since youre from the city, this must be a weird sight for you, huh? well, in the countryside, this happens a lot!’

but natsu didnt mind

in fact, he loved cows

he loved any farm animal in general

maybe it was his upbringing in the hustle and bustle of the city that he grew to love the countryside

shoto took him with his family to a trip to the country once and he remembered loving the smell of grass

they were able to do an activity in a farm where they worked in a rice farm and the peace and serenity was something he will always remember

his mother was lucky she grew up in a place like this

‘kiri-kun, ive been wanting to ask, how is your volleyball team in the city? are you a powerhouse?’

natsu felt pride bubble up in his chest

‘of course! we got second place in nationals!’

he boasted and blurted out before he could stop himself

then he felt fear

he shouldnt have said that because for all he knows, yuuei probably doesn’t exist at this time period

hinata had a different reaction and his eyes shone

‘WHAT?! WOAH! SO COOL! I HAVE TO TELL OUR CAPTAIN THAT WE’RE GETTING A POWERHOUSE STUDENT!’

‘uh-i-uh-’

natsu didnt know what to say because he had a feeling he definitely just did an oopsie

so he switched topics really quick to divert the attention away from his past

‘o-oi sho, once youre done being a pro volleyball player and stuff, we should have our own rice farm’

of course it was such a random idea but it distracted the orange boy

hinata shrugged

‘i mean,,, i have to be a pro first but i guess we can!’

‘hmm,,,, i dont think you have to worry about that’

.................................................

taglist:

@hartbeat-art​ @yakus-yakult​ @nerdyphantomlady​ @jollycowboysaladhero​ @cynicallychaotic​ 

a/n: oh god this sat in my drafts for so long and i really dont know what im doing like i kinda have a rough outline of what im doing but im just going with the flow but i dont think the flow is quite flowy 

[moldy-mold]

Hello! It’s already May... Life updates - a roller coaster of emotions

A tempestuous, tearful April... Aghh the struggle has not eased up a bit. Living is just too expensive to be shouldered by part-time wages, meager freelance, and fickle confidence. My parents are disappointed - I’ve always tried to dodge the questions about my uncertain future. After all, I don’t have any answers.

What nearly broke my spirit was the humiliating scolding I received on my birthday. “You’re almost 30. Stop playing around at the cafe, don’t you know your bank account is nearly empty? How will you pay for this? If you can’t afford car insurance then just bike to work!” I didn’t even have time to think about how inconsiderate that was. In a daze, I hung up and went to my second part-time job that day.

Well, Dad, those are the questions I asked myself every single day. All I can do is keep trying even if you don’t believe in me. Because, despite everything, I still believe in myself.

Nothing good will come out of asking these punishing questions. I don’t know if things will get better or worse. Just gotta do what I can to get by as a small creature existing in this universe.

I learned to stop blaming myself for not being successful. Given the circumstances, I think the odds are stacked pretty high against most of us right now.

“Banish the nonsense. Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.” - Annihilation

--

I’ve begun my investment journey! After studying how it all works I have come to understand the value of investing. It was one of my resolutions for this year and I’m glad I’ve achieved it.

My brother, a crypto enthusiast, knows my monetary plight and has been helping me out in the weirdest ways.

6 am text: “Hey Sis, you got $1000? Put it into Dogecoin... like NOW.”

I don’t like doing these kinds of high-risk-high-reward investments but what the heck, I was desperate. I applied for an account that can trade crypto.

In the end my account got rejected (there was no explanation) and I gave up. Because of course that would happen lol.

--

“Hey, do you have time to talk about the future?” “UM... are we breaking up???” “LOL don’t say it like that!”

My roommate / best friend decided she wanted to move to her own place and find her own way in life. Of course, my fragile heart, still tender from the previous month’s beating, took it very personally. I was reassured it wasn’t my fault - there are plenty of other valid reasons why.

We’ve been sharing an apartment for 6 years now, and although I knew it would happen someday, it was quite shocking to hear it being said to me in reality. At first, I laughed it off because I’ve been dreaming about moving out of the country anyway and it all works out. I’m an introverted, neat-freak, homebody! It’s perfect! But after a very pensive shower, I realized that I’m actually terrified to be without any companionship. Either way, I have to put my feelings aside because I don’t wanna hold her back from her dreams. I may have trouble accepting it now but hopefully I can genuinely be happy for her in time.

--

The Plant Life Please welcome Rokurou, the newest addition to my jungle.

It’s been a few weeks and he totally ate bugs already lol. Nice! I was thinking the smaller traps wouldn’t catch anything, but it turns out they’ve been doing the most work. The larger traps can’t catch ants or tiny gnats. They just crawl out after the trap snaps shut.

This venus fly trap is rather picky about what water he gets so I’ve been out there collecting rainwater in buckets JUST for him! Kind of a pain, but I will do whatever it takes to keep him alive.

It was a very tiny dream of mine to collect and care for carnivorous plants. If the shop had more varieties, I would probably buy them all.

--

I thought I was gonna die... Hostess for a day. One day while working at the cafe, this old Chinese man came in asking how much I made here. Then he told me if I work as a hostess/front desk person at his restaurant (which was next to the cafe, by the way), he will pay me more than the cafe. He slipped me $5 to go see him after my shift at 9pm. It was soooooo sketch. But I went anyway to at least hear him out after telling my roommate and my parents where I was going. You know... in case I die.

Luckily I didn’t die. It was a normal Chinese restaurant. I met the staff and they were all super cool and the mysterious old man goes by Mr. Lin.

Mr. Lin was very chill about it. He said I can have a trial run after my bakery shift on Saturday. If I don’t like it, I can just tell him no and he will pay me for my time.

I knew it was a bad idea to take another shift after a long shift at the cafe but I did it anyway. It was BUSY. Too busy for anyone to teach me how to be a hostess so I literally just had to guess what I’m supposed to be doing. It was kinda obvious though, showing people to their tables. I picked them at random bc I didn’t know if there was a method to seating people or not.

There are three different menus: Chinese, Korean and English and they’re ALL different. Depending on the nationality of who walks in, I have to decide for myself which menu to hand out. Uhhhhh despite being Asian myself, I cannot tell the difference between Korean and Chinese people lmao so I have to keep awkwardly asking people which menu they want. *screams*

The manager, Vincent, is so OP though. He knows exactly which menu to get every time. I was like HOW DO YOU KNOW?? He only responded with “working in the business for 24 years.”

Anyway, it was a long and confusing night of people thinking I am a waitress and me not knowing where the spoons are. But I don’t think this job is for me, even if it pays a lot.

There sure is plenty of demand for part-time food service workers and zero demand for full-time graphic designers... sigh. My journey doing random jobs in 2021 continues.

--

My brother graduated pharmacy school last week. In our culture, the older sibling’s shoulders is where all the expectations should rest. Maybe in another AU I would feel small and inferior to my younger and more successful sibling. But I don’t feel anything like that. In fact, if he can take care of my parents while I’m trying to figure out my own life, then I’m just more grateful to him. Maybe my parents don’t expect anything of me anymore, which is okay. Either way, my brother and I have each other’s backs.

--

Berseria I went into it with ZERO expectations because of its infamous predecessor, but I have come out pleasantly surprised. I liked it more than I thought. I’m at the end but I’m not done with the story yet.

I remember expressing my utter confusion about Zesty and everyone was like “play Berseria, it will answer a majority of your questions.” And boy, it did and I’m so glad. I loved all the throwbacks and references and lore that had to do with the previous game. Like, they really had something interesting going on here but it never quite came to fruition last time.

Is it just me, or did it take a very long time to understand all the battle mechanics? Like... I didn’t get the hang of the game until we got to Meirchio. Now I am quite good at playing Rokurou, my main. And it feels way more fun. I usually like mage characters in the old tales games but tbh I wasn’t really into it this time.

After we finish Bersy, we will be moving on to Xillia 2, our final Tales game! Gaius, I’m coming for you.

--

Xenoblade At the same time, I am also finishing up Xenoblade after spending nearly a year on it. I have weeks where I’m just grinding the side quests to unlock the skill trees. When I’m down, traveling and exploring in this game puts my worries to rest. Really though, the maps are so beautiful... And the music! T_T

This is one of the few games where I like every character pretty much equally, though Dundun and Riki win by just a little bit.

--

That’s it for now. Thanks for being here!

[beeprblog]

Beepr Goes To Shows: Governor’s Ball 2021.

In this first installment of Beepr Goes To Shows, I spent all 3-days at this years Governor’s Ball to give you crowd coverage you deserve and concert recaps/reviews you want. Stay tuned for more show write-ups and other updates!

Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist

What happens when you put two legends on the same stage? You get one hell of a fucking show. Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist were on another level that Friday afternoon, delivering classics from Madlib collaborative albums (Crime Pays, Fake Names, Palm Olive, Thuggin), recent singles from Freddie (Big Boss Rabbit, Gang Signs), and all your favorite offerings from Alfredo (Baby $Hit, Scottie Beam, Something To Rap About). The braggadocious swagger Freddie brings to the stage is tempered by Alchemist’s suave production and generally reserved demeanor, making them a very balanced performance. Despite being an acclaimed producer, you get the sense that The Alchemist is there to support Freddie rather than make the performance about himself. Freddie’s natural humor shines through in between songs, cracking jokes while taking tokes and hitting a bottle of Hennessy. Chants of “Fuck police,” cheers for the Alchemist, and concert-goers belting choruses created a deafening atmosphere, rivaling some sold out indoor venues I’ve visited. To call Freddie a cult artist would be disrespectful of all the mainstream achievements (Grammy nominations, cracking Billboard Top 25s, etc), and yet for some reason, he remains on the fringes of superstardom. Part of what people love about Freddie Gibbs is his larger than life personality, as he has an authenticity about him that’s naturally charismatic. If there’s anything I can be certain about after that set, it’s that Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist have undeniable chemistry and I hope they have more on the way.

Phoebe Bridgers

In January of 2018, a report from Nielsen Music identified that rap had surpassed rock in terms of overall music consumption. But Phoebe Bridgers will not allow her genre to go quietly into the night. She very well may be the next iteration of a rockstar. From her band all being in uniform, to the stage production, and most importantly, her diehard fans: Phoebe Bridgers is killing it in all aspects of the game. Apparently, I had been living under rock for quite some time as I only did a deep dive into her music when I saw her on the Governor’s Ball lineup announcement. How foolish was I? Phoebe has an incredible catalogue despite being only 27 (bolstered by her work with groups like Boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center). Songs like Motion Sickness, Garden Song, and ICU feel more like Phoebe hosting a singalong, as the entire crowd is belting back each and every lyric at the top of their lungs with emphatic energy. Tracks like Kyoto also fall into that category, but there’s an immense rush of excitement as the brilliance of Bridger’s music blares through over the speakers for the chorus. Ballads like I Know The End are blissful moments of serenity, as I found myself swaying with my eyes closed in my little spot in the crowd. Her nonchalance in between songs is intoxicating, as it’s a beautiful contrast to her immensely emotive and personal performance. It’s so endearing to see past what’s on the outside and find an individual who profoundly cares about their work. What perhaps is most endearing about Phoebe’s performance is how she’s unabashedly herself: quips like “Fuck nihilism, too” are interjected in between songs, her outfit a glamorized rendition of the classic skeleton t-shirts. While I might have been late to the party in terms of the Phoebe Bridgers hype train, you can bet I’m going to be early to every one of her shows from here on out.  

A$AP Rocky

As Saturday night of Governor’s Ball was drawing near to an end, there were millions of individual conversations buzzing around in the crowd. But almost all of them were centered around one question: When will A$AP Rocky start? At 9:12pm EST, our question was answered, with a bang. Crowd surfing around in an inflatable car, bullhorn in hand, Rocky showed off some new sounds as unreleased tracks (Grim Freestyle amongst the slew of unreleased tracks) boomed over speakers. Mosh pits opened up left and right as the concert slowly evolved into a beautiful, New York block party-esque chaos. Hearing recent work like his features on Slowthai’s MAZZA and Famous Dex’s PICK IT UP were unexpected yet gratifying moments. But what really amplified the crowd was hearing some of the “older” radio hits. I can’t remember a time in recent memory when I’ve been as excited as when the first synths on LPFJ2 and Telephone Calls hit. Classics like Praise Da Lord and Yamborghini High ensured that there were no lapses in energy or excitement. Babushka Boi set the crowd ablaze, as the off-key notes intermingled in the beat acted as cues for the rowdy meter to kick it up a notch. Rocky even gave up some of his set to ensure the rest of the Mob was represented, as he had the DJ play Plane Jane by A$AP Ferg. The softer side of Rocky’s discography was met with equal anticipation as Sundress and A$AP Forever were met with exuberant cheers. Fully embracing his trippy side, after asking us if we liked hallucinogens, Rocky performed L$D to a roaring crowd (he also teased us with the unreleased Mushroom Clouds after asking us if we fucked with mushrooms too). During what felt like a showcase of the Harlem rappers’ ability to generate raucous ovation, the time had the crew informed Rocky his set had to be wrapped up. An earnest plea to keep it going was made, begging to at least get off Peso, but the euphoria was always going to be finite. It’s safe to say, anyone saying Rocky fell off is full of it.

Burna Boy

From start to finish, Burna Boy kept it hot. Bringing plenty of Nigerian flair to the CitiField air, I can safely say that Burna Boy’s set was one of the most enjoyable of the weekend. Even before he appeared, loud chants imploring him to take the stage could be heard ringing throughout the grounds. As his band and mom (who doubles as his manager) patiently waited, you could see them grinning and laughing as they knew we were in for a great show. Burna Boy then graced the stage and we were transported to another world, filled with laid back vibes, political protest, and triumph. Opening up with Gbona, it was apparent that the entire show was going to be electric. Hitting dance moves, grinning from ear to ear, it was obvious that Burna Boy planned on making a stellar first impression at the Governor’s Ball (he also earned major New York brownie points by giving us an animated performance of his velvety feature on Enjoy Yourself by Pop Smoke). Hearing some of my favorite songs live cemented them even further in the favorites category, as his performance adds another level of fun and personality. Collateral Damage, a beautifully subverted political protest anthem, felt truly harmonious as the entire crowd chanted the chorus with their fists in the air. As much as I love my AirPods, the heartfelt energy of both the crowd and Burna Boy I felt in the crowd during Anybody and Dangote could never be matched by speakers. Even the less upbeat songs (such as Wetin Man Go Do) he performed were met with incredibly cheerful reactions as. Live riffs from the band during some of his most popular singles added great spice for those who are familiar but equally exciting for new listeners. It’s apparent that there’s a great sense of camaraderie amongst the whole crew, that their main goal is to put on a memorable and joyous show. I can only hope that Burna Boy and the band make trips to the states more frequently.

Ellie Goulding

Have you ever felt the urge to forget everything that’s worrying you and just live in the here and now? Then you should go to as many Ellie Goulding shows as humanly possible. There’s a good chance you’re already familiar with some of her work (I’ll get to that in a bit), but it’s an entirely other thing to see her bring them to life. Hidden under the surface of a soft-spoken, singer-songwriter is a powerhouse performer, ready to give the show and attendees her everything. Watching her confidence grow during the set, seeing her come out of a shell that had likely developed as a result of not touring, was a beautiful sight to behold. In between comments about how grateful she was to be performing, quips about her outfit, you really got to watch her conviction begin to grow and take root. Anthemic at every instance, the crowd was equally ready to return the same energy Goulding graced us with. The only thing that was all over the place about her refined and poised performance was the eclectic mix of work she pulled from. From Lights (and yes, if you’re curious, that shit slapped) all the way up to her latest album, Brightest Blue, we got treated to the Ellie Goulding evolution set. Intermingling a solid slate of collaborations like Diplo’s Close To Me (I don’t know if I’ve ever sung along as fervently as I did for that one), Calvin Harris’ I Need Your Love (okay, I lied, this is the one where I lost my voice), and Major Lazer’s Powerful, there was a reference point regarding how they discovered Goulding for everyone in the audience. Hearing oldies like Aftertaste, Anything Could Happen, and Only You instantly transported me to simpler times, back when bills and deadlines seemed like an abstract concept. In another edition of music star leads a sing-a-long, the crowd could have taken over for Lights and Love Me Like You Do. Thankfully, we got to hear Ellie too. It’s a magical moment when a few hundred (maybe a full thousand) are all united by one common goal: to embrace the present and shower the performer with adoration in the form of knowing every lyric. Harmony amongst total strangers, tied together through a common love of music. Ellie Goulding gave us more than one of the best sets from the weekend, she gave us a sense of unity and togetherness unlike any other I’ve experienced.

Post Malone

When you find a superstar, with millions of fans and millions in the bank, that you feel like you can still crack open a crispy Bud Light, you’ve found something special. And we all know that Post Malone loves a cold one. The final chapter of Governor’s Ball 2021 ended with Post Malone’s Sunday night set, a perfect way to wind down the weekend. Opening up the set with an inquisitive “Hello?” to test out the mic, this show was one of the most authentic and down-to-earth concerts I’ve been to in quite some time. It almost feels like you’re just hanging out hearing some song ideas from your friend Austin Post, wearing some regular denim shorts and a “Where’s Waldo” style striped shirt, until the audible roars from the crowd of “Posty” remind you you’re at a headliner. Arguably the most larger-than-life aspect of Post’s set was his entrance on the stage, via a smoke-cloud suspended platform adorned with metal chains. With a healthy mix of beerbongs & bentley’s, Hollywood’s Bleeding, recent singles and old hits, Post Malone was showing us all of his repertoire. Chugging beers at the request of the crowd, checking in with all of us in between songs, calling for celebration and happiness, Post goes to great lengths to ensure that the crowd is with it and that everyone is having a good time. Tracks like Psycho were somehow both relaxing and energizing at the same time, as the chorus transformed the venue into an incredible echo-chamber. We also got to see how many friends Post has, as we got guest appearances from Young Thug (performing Goodbyes), Roddy Rich (gracing us with Every Season and The Box), and 21 Savage (to perform Rockstar, which Post Malone did his best to embody all night). With each feature, the crowd seemed to kick into another fear of excitement, but that’s not to say people didn’t lose it for some of Post’s solo work. Stay, which Post performed seated strumming an acoustic guitar, was as heartfelt as it could get in its stripped down state. Despite previously admitting to not being able to sing without autotune, you could see how much he cared about capping off the weekend right while performing that song (without autotune in an effort to be as real as possible). White Iverson and Congratulations were both barn-burners, as the whole festival grounds were chanting lyrics and bouncing along. After a very long weekend of raging and raving, Post Malone’s set managed to run through the whole gambit of festival emotions: joy, excitement, surprise, and relief. It’d be disingenuous to say anything other than Austin Post has mastered the art of headlining.

[mysitesfasterwpspeedoptservice]

How To Speed up WordPress: In-Depth Guide

The faster your website loads, the better user experience you provide — it's as simple as that. Better user experience leads to higher conversion rates, lower bounce rates, and more. Learn how to speed up your website and improve your users' experience.

If you want to create successful WordPress websites for yourself or your clients, learning how to speed up your WordPress site is essential.

While many people rightfully focus on the design and content of a website, how quickly that website loads is just as important, if not more. Load times will affect your site’s user experience, SEO rankings, conversion rates, bounce rates, and more.

However, understanding all the ins and outs of WordPress performance can be complicated, which is why we’ve created this huge guide on how to speed up your WordPress site.

In this post, we’ll cover everything that you need to know. We’ll start by explaining what slows down WordPress sites, why speed is important, and how to test your site’s current performance.

Then, we’ll share a full list of actionable tactics you can use to improve your WordPress site’s performance today.

Find Out Which Plugins Are Best for WordPress Caching

Table of Contents

Why Is Your WordPress Site Slow?

Why Is WordPress Site Speed Important?

How To Measure WordPress Site Speed

What Do the Test Results Mean? What About "Scores"?

What's a Good Website Load Time?

How To Optimize WordPress Site Speed

Why Is Your WordPress Site Slow?

There are two broad categories of issues that could be slowing your WordPress site down:

Backend performance – in broad terms, this is how long it takes your server to deliver files.

Frontend performance – this is how optimized your WordPress site is itself.

Backend performance problems generally come from your hosting. For example, using slow hosting is one of the biggest culprits of poor backend performance. You can also speed up backend performance by making your server more efficient with tactics such as page caching, using the latest version of PHP, optimizing your database, and more.

Frontend performance problems depend a lot more on the choices you make when building your WordPress site. Some of the common issues here include:

Using too many poorly-optimized WordPress plugins

Using a heavy WordPress theme

Loading large, unoptimized images

Having unoptimized JavaScript or CSS

Loading too many third-party scripts

If you want to maximize your site’s performance, you need to optimize both types of performance. For example, even a site with perfect frontend optimization might still load slowly if it’s on really slow hosting (and vice versa).

Our tips below will cover fixing both types of issues.

Why Is WordPress Site Speed Important?

If you’ve ever used a slow-loading website, you intuitively know how frustrating dealing with a slow website can be. It’s annoying, and your visitors will be annoyed if they have to wait around for your content to load (especially on mobile devices).

So at a basic level, one big problem with a slow WordPress website is that it creates a really poor user experience for your visitors, which is something you should always aim to avoid.

However, there are also lots of specific downsides to having a slow website:

SEO rankings – Google uses site speed as a ranking factor in both its desktop and mobile results. It will also start using Core Web Vitals metrics soon, which include a speed metric. Site speed can be especially important in competitive niches with lots of strong sites, where it’s a differentiator between two equally-strong sites. Here’s Google’s take.

Conversion rates – slower load times lead to lower conversion rates. Even just a 100-millisecond delay can hurt conversion rates by 7%, according to Akamai. Deloitte also found that just a 100-millisecond improvement in site speed led to shoppers spending 10% more.

Bounce rate – slower load times lead to higher bounce rates. For example, Pingdom found that the time-related bounce rate for a page that loads in two seconds is 6% but that jumps to 38% for a page that loads in five seconds. On mobile, Google found that the probability of someone bouncing jumps from 32% at 1-3 seconds to 90% at 1-5 seconds.

Site speed is also especially important on mobile, where 53% of mobile visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.

How To Measure WordPress Site Speed

The easiest way to test your WordPress site’s performance is to use a speed test tool. With such a tool, all you need to do is enter the URL of the page that you want to test and the tool will give you a bunch of data to assess its performance.

Some of the best free speed test tools are:

WebPageTest – offers a lot of testing variables to collect more useful data.

Fast or Slow – tests from multiple locations all around the world to assess global load times.

GTmetrix – quite flexible if you register for a free account.

Google PageSpeed Insights – provides real-world speed data from Google, along with testing from Lighthouse.

If you want accurate data, there are a few test variables you need to pay attention to:

Device – try to test both desktop and mobile devices.

Test location – ideally, you should test from the location that’s nearest to your target audience. If your audience is all over the world, you should test from multiple locations.

Connection speed – the speed of your visitors’ Internet connections will affect how quickly your site loads. However, some speed test tools use an ultra-fast connection to test, which makes your site look faster than it will be to real users. Ideally, you want to choose a connection speed that matches your users’ real-world situations.

For example, here’s a test configuration to test your site’s speeds for mobile visitors on a 4G connection:

What Do the Test Results Mean? What About "Scores"?

Once you run a speed test, you’ll get a lot of different numbers (the exact numbers depend on the tool you use).

In general, you should focus on actual load times, not “scores”. While scores can provide useful guidance to help you optimize your site, your visitors only care about how long it actually takes your site to load.

In terms of actual load times, you’ll see different numbers. In general, you’ll want to pay attention to both fully loaded time times (how long it takes your entire site to load) and “user experience” metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how long it takes your site’s “main content” to become visible (even if your site is still loading below-the-fold content and scripts).

What's a Good Website Load Time?

In general, a good website load time is under two to three seconds. For mobile users, Google recommends under three seconds. And for eCommerce stores, you should aim for under two seconds.

However, remember that your site’s fully loaded time isn’t the only important metric. You’ll also want to focus on your site’s “perceived” load time, which is how fast your visitors “feel” like your site is. In Google’s words:

“Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is an important, user-centric metric for measuring perceived load speed because it marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded—a fast LCP helps reassure the user that the page is useful.”

Google recommends that your LCP time is under 2.5 seconds and will start using this criterion as an SEO ranking factor in 2021.

How To Optimize WordPress Site Speed

Now, let’s get into some actionable tactics you can implement to speed up your WordPress site…

1. Use Fast WordPress Hosting

2. Use Page Caching

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

4. Optimize Your Images

5. Optimize CSS

6. Optimize JavaScript

7. Use a Fast Theme

8. Use Fast Plugins and Limit Plugin Usage

9. Optimize Your Database

10. Limit or Disable Revisions

11. Optimize Your Comments

12. Offload Media Files

13. Use Gzip Compression

14. Use Browser Caching (Cache-Control and Expires Headers)

15. Use Preconnect and Prefetch for Important Resources

16. Manage Your Scripts To Avoid Sitewide Loading

17. Beware Autoloaded Data From Plugins

18. Limit Third-Party Script Usage

19. Use a Speed Enhancing Plugin

1. Use Fast WordPress Hosting

Choosing performance-optimized WordPress hosting is one of the biggest things you can do to improve your site’s backend performance.

Put simply, if your hosting is slow, there’s a high chance that your website is going to be slow, even if you do a really good job at front-end optimization.

For the absolute best performance, you should consider managed WordPress hosting options such as Kinsta, WP Engine, or Flywheel. If that’s out of your budget, cheaper options such as SiteGround and A2 Hosting can still help you achieve fast load times.

For more options, check out our list of recommended WordPress hosts. We also have a guide on how to choose WordPress hosting to help you with your decision.

When choosing a host, you should also pay attention to the available server locations. The physical location of your server will have an effect on your page load times because physical distance affects download speeds.

Ideally, you’ll want to choose a host that offers a server located in the same location as your primary target audience.

Another important consideration is to look for modern technologies, such as HTTP/2, which can improve HTTPS performance and also is better at handling lots of small HTTP requests.

2. Use Page Caching

Implementing page caching is one of the biggest things that you can do for your WordPress site’s performance, especially if you’re starting from cheap shared hosting. If you’re on cheap shared hosting, you might even see your load times cut in half just by activating caching.

Normally, your WordPress site’s server needs to assemble each page from scratch whenever someone visits your site. This involves executing PHP to “build” the page and querying your site’s database to get the content for the page. Once it does this, your server delivers the finished HTML to a visitor’s browser.

This process takes time and also uses resources, which has two negative effects on your site’s performance:

It makes individual visits take longer.

It uses more resources for each visit, which means your site will slow down even more during high-traffic periods.

Page caching eliminates this problem by storing the finished HTML product of a page in a cache. Then, for future visits, your server can just deliver that HTML without doing the behind-the-scenes work.

Many WordPress hosts now implement page caching for you automatically, including most of the options we recommended above.

If your host doesn’t, you can still implement page caching using one of the many quality caching plugins. Here are some good options:

WP Rocket (which works great with Elementor)

WP Super Cache

WP Fastest Cache

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN) speeds up your site’s global load times by caching your static content on a huge network of “edge” servers all around the world. Then, when someone visits your site, that person is able to download content from the nearest edge location rather than from your main server. Because the physical distance is shorter, the files download faster and your site loads quicker.

Some good CDNs for WordPress users include:

KeyCDN

Stackpath (formerly MaxCDN)

BunnyCDN

Cloudflare

Many managed WordPress hosts also offer their own built-in CDN services at no extra cost.

Excluding Cloudflare (which has its own setup process), you can set up a CDN as follows:

Sign up for the CDN service and add your site.

Use a plugin such as CDN Enabler to configure your WordPress site to load certain content from the CDN.

4. Optimize Your Images

On average, images comprise around half of the file size of the average website, according to the HTTP Archive. This makes them a huge opportunity to reduce your site’s size and speed it up.

In terms of the images themselves, there are two parts to optimization:

Resized dimensions – you want to resize the image’s dimensions based on how you’re using it. If you’re including the image in a blog post with a content area that’s 800 px wide, the absolute max you would want that image to be is 1,600 px (doubling the dimensions to account for Retina screens).

Compression – once you resize an image, you should compress it to further reduce its file size. There are two types of compression – lossy (some loss in image quality but huge file size savings) and lossless (zero loss in quality but smaller file size savings).

For most sites, a good strategy is to:

Resize images to their display width (or 2X the width at max for Retina screens).

Compress images using lossy compression (unless you’re a photographer or in another niche where image quality is paramount).

One option is to optimize images before uploading them. Tools like BIRME (resizing) and Kraken (compression) offer bulk optimization, as does Adobe Photoshop.

Or, you can use a WordPress image optimization plugin to automatically optimize images as you upload them to WordPress. Here are some good options:

ShortPixel

Imagify

Smush

Optimole (learn more here)

You can also use tactics such as lazy loading. WordPress now supports native browser lazy loading for images, or you can also use WP Rocket or the free Lazy Load plugin.

Finally, instead of using heavy GIFs for animation, consider using a short MP4 video and the Elementor video widget, which offers a much lighter approach.

5. Optimize CSS

Your site’s CSS code provides another opportunity for front-end optimization.

Two baseline strategies to optimize CSS are:

Minify CSS code to reduce the file size by eliminating whitespace and redundant characters.

Combine separate CSS files to reduce HTTP requests. Generally, one large HTTP request is more efficient than multiple small HTTP requests (though the difference isn’t as large if your host uses HTTP/2).

To improve user experience performance metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint, a more advanced optimization tactic is to inline critical CSS in thesection and defer loading the rest of your CSS until later.

The Autoptimize plugin is a popular free option that lets you perform these optimizations. Or, many performance plugins offer these features, including WP Rocket.

6. Optimize JavaScript

Just as with CSS, you should minify and combine your JavaScript as much as possible. However, you might need to exclude certain JavaScript files from combination to avoid causing issues.

You can achieve both optimizations with the Autoptimize plugin or WP Rocket:

Beyond that, you should defer loading JavaScript as much as possible to avoid blocking loading above-the-fold content. You can do this with the Async JavaScript plugin from the same developer or WP Rocket.

7. Use a Fast Theme

As the foundation of your site’s front-end content, your theme plays a big role in your site’s front-end optimization.

If you’re planning to use Elementor Theme Builder to build your WordPress site, we recommend the free Hello theme, which is the fastest theme for Elementor because it eliminates all unnecessary features. Put simply, you won’t find a more performance-friendly foundation for your Elementor designs:

Other quality lightweight themes include the following:

Astra

GeneratePress

Neve

All three themes include deep Elementor integrations and starter sites.

8. Use Fast Plugins and Limit Plugin Usage

While there are lots of great plugins out there, you need to pay attention to your plugin usage if you want to speed up your site. In general, every plugin that you install adds its own weight in the form of database queries, HTTP requests, and file size.

For that reason, a good general rule of thumb is that the more plugins you install, the slower your site will be.

However, it’s not just the quantity of plugins, but it’s also the quality. Even just a single slow plugin can have a huge negative effect on your site’s load times.

Here are some basic principles to follow when it comes to plugins:

Try to limit how many plugins you use. If a feature isn’t necessary to the functioning of your site, consider leaving it off. This also limits the chance for compatibility issues, which can further affect load times.

Only use plugins from reputable developers with good code quality.

One easy way to eliminate the need to install excess plugins is to use Elementor and/or Elementor Pro.

Because Elementor includes built-in widgets for a number of important actions, you can use it to avoid installing more plugins and speed up your site. For example, you can use Elementor for contact forms, social share icons, sliders, galleries, and more. These are all features you’d normally need a separate plugin for.

9. Optimize Your Database

Your WordPress site’s database is what contains all of your site’s content and settings (including your Elementor designs).

When someone visits your WordPress site, your server needs to query the database to get all of the information that it needs to render the page (though, as we covered above, page caching can eliminate this process for most visitors).

In general, the larger and more complicated your database is, the longer these queries will take, which will hurt your site’s performance and also waste your server’s resources.

For that reason, you should make a regular habit of cleaning your site’s database. Here are some plugins that can help:

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions (pictured below)

WP Rocket

WP-Optimize

10. Limit or Disable Revisions

One big cause of clutter in your database is post revisions. By default, WordPress stores unlimited revisions every time you hit the Save Draft button while working on a piece of content.

To prevent this clutter, you should disable, or at least limit, post revisions.

You can do this with the free WP Revisions Control plugin. Or, you can add one of these code snippets to your site’s wp-config.php file:

Limit (store two revisions):

define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 2);

Disable:

define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);

11. Optimize Your Comments

If your site has a busy comments section, it can be a surprising drag on your site’s performance. By default, every single comment adds an external HTTP request to Gravatar to load the user image. Comments also add weight to your database and extra database queries to load comments.

If you don’t find value in comments, one option is to disable comments completely:

Go to Settings → Discussion

Uncheck the box to allow people to submit comments

However, comments sections are important to many sites, so you might not want to get rid of them completely. Here are some tips to optimize them:

Lazy load the native WordPress comments section with the free Lazy Load for Comments plugin.

Disable avatar images to reduce HTTP requests (Settings → Discussion and uncheck Show Avatars).

Use a third-party comments system like Disqus or Facebook Comments and then lazy load it using the free Disqus Conditional Load or Lazy Social Comments plugins.

12. Offload Media Files

If you use a lot of media files (e.g. images), that can be a big drain on your server because your server needs to store and serve up all those images.

One way to reduce this strain is with a CDN. The CDN will “pull” the images from your server into the CDN cache and then serve images from the cache. However, this still uses resources because the CDN needs to query your server to pull those images in the first place.

To fix this, you can consider offloading your media files to external storage such as Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage, etc. You can still use your CDN, but your CDN will now “pull” its media files from the cloud storage instead of your site’s server.

To set this up on WordPress, you can use the WP Offload Media plugin from Delicious Brains.

13. Use Gzip Compression

Gzip is a technology that lets you compress data at the server level, which can result in a 70%+ reduction in your site’s file size.

Most WordPress performance plugins can enable Gzip compression for you, including WP Rocket. Or, you can use the standalone Enable Gzip Compression plugin.

If you’d prefer not to use a plugin, you can also enable Gzip compression by adding this code snippet to your site’s .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>  # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml    # Remove browser bugs (only needed for ancient browsers)  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html  Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>

To test if it’s working, you can use this Gzip compression test.

14. Use Browser Caching (Cache-Control and Expires Headers)

Browsing caching lets you tell a visitor’s browser to store static assets on a visitor’s local computer. For subsequent visits, the visitor’s browser will load those files from the local cache, rather than your server, which speeds up load times.

To control browser caching behavior, you can use two tactics:

Cache-control

Expires headers

These let you tell visitors’ browsers how long to store certain types of files in the browser cache. For example, “store PNG images for 30 days before re-downloading them”.

Both achieve the same effect, but cache-control is the newer and more flexible option. You can use both – just make sure the storage lengths match.

There are two ways to add cache-control or expires headers:

Plugin

Code

Many WordPress performance plugins already include features to implement browser caching for you including WP Rocket. Or, you could use the standalone Add Expires Headers plugin.

If you feel comfortable working with code, you can also set this up by editing your site’s .htaccess file (if using Apache) or Nginx config file (if using Nginx).

Here are the code snippets that you’ll need:

Apache cache-control (.htaccess):

<filesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg|js|css|swf)$">        Header set Cache-Control "max-age=84600, public" </filesMatch>    

Apache expires headers (.htaccess):

## START ADD EXPIRES HEADERS ## <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/svg "access 1 year" ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year" ExpiresDefault "access 2 days" </IfModule> ## END ADD EXPIRES HEADERS ##  

Nginx cache-control:

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|svg|ico)$ { expires 30d; add_header Cache-Control "public, no-transform"; }  

Nginx expires headers:

location ~*  \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|svg)$ {        expires 365d;    }    location ~*  \.(pdf|css|html|js|swf)$ {        expires 2d;    }    

To test your headers, you can use this free browser caching checker tool.

15. Use Preconnect and Prefetch for Important Resources

Preconnect and prefetch are two tactics to speed up DNS resolution time for third-party resources, which can speed up resource download times. For example, you could tell browsers to preconnect to your CDN or the Google Fonts CDN.

You can learn more in this post from WP Rocket.

16. Manage Your Scripts To Avoid Sitewide Loading

Many WordPress plugins load their scripts on your entire site even if you only use the plugin on certain pages. This can cause an unnecessary performance hit on pages where you aren’t using that plugin.

For example, let’s say you’re using WooCommerce as the payment processing system for your online course. Even though you’re not creating a full eCommerce store, WooCommerce will still load its scripts on every single page as if you’re running a WooCommerce store.

To fix this, you can use a plugin that lets you conditionally control script usage on a page-by-page basis. Two good options are:

Asset CleanUp – free (pictured below)

Perfmatters – paid

The goal is to only load each script on content where it’s absolutely needed and disable it everywhere else:

17. Beware Autoloaded Data From Plugins

Just as some plugins load their scripts sitewide, some plugins also use a similar tactic in your database via autoloaded data in the wp_options table. Even worse, many plugins don’t clean their data even if you delete the plugin. This can slow down database query times, especially on older sites.

You can check out this guide to learn how to clear autoloaded data.

18. Limit Third-Party Script Usage

Third-party scripts are items such as:

Tracking scripts – Google Analytics, Hotjar, etc.

Social Media – Facebook Pixel, “like” buttons, etc.

Third-party ads – Google AdSense, Media.net, etc.

Some A/B testing tools – Google Optimize, VWO, etc.

Etc.

Using third-party scripts can be especially tough on website performance because you have a lot less control over optimizing those scripts. For example, you can’t control their browser caching behavior and each third-party script also adds additional DNS resolution time.

For that reason, you want to limit your use of third-party scripts as much as possible. Think long and hard whether each script adds enough value to your site to justify the performance hit.

For more control, you can also consider locally hosting some scripts, such as:

Google Analytics – use CAOS or WP Rocket

Facebook Pixel – use WP Rocket

19. Use a Speed Enhancing Plugin

Some of the aforementioned tasks can be performed using a WordPress speed plugin. In fact, using these plugins could prevent the issues from occurring in the first place by ensuring that your WordPress site is optimized correctly when adding media, or content.

A highly recommended plugin is WP Offload Media. This speeds up your WordPress site by offloading your media to cloud storage, such as Amazon S3 or DigitalOcean Spaces, and then serving it lightning fast with a CDN. (It also has an Elementor integration).

Balance Great Site Speed With Great Site Design

Beyond everything we’ve examined, it’s important to remember that there is no perfect solution for speed.

It boils down testing and retesting, and above all, finding the balance between what we need our site to deliver and how fast we get it there.

As web creators, sometimes our mission is to blow our audience’s minds, but sometimes we’re risking speed. But this is precisely where creativity and ingenuity thrive — within limitations.

Related Link https://www.pressadvantage.com/story/43869-my-site-s-faster-offers-wordpress-speed-optimization-service

[bendandfly]

Becoming The Hero Of Your Yoga Practice In 2021

We believe there is a hero within each and every one of us waiting to be awakened into the world. This year, we’ve decided to focus our energy on stepping up to that level of greatness by becoming the heroes of our Yoga practice. When we realise how to become the heroes of our Yoga practice we naturally begin to become the heroes of our entire lives.  Let this year be the year you transform your life by channeling intention, consistency and compassion to achieve your yoga goals (& life goals). Let’s awaken. 

What Does It Mean To Have A Yoga Practice? 

Put simply, having a Yoga Practice is all about self devotion and creating habits around Yoga in-studio and at-home.  Sound’s delightful. But for many, creating yoga practice that we show up for regularly is no piece of cake. And we are not just talking about students here, teachers too! Despite common belief, most teachers don’t find the time to practice Yoga as regularly as you might think. So, as part of our collective New Year resolution, we have decided to share our insight into these the heroic qualities – Intention, Consistency and Compassion – to support you to become the hero of your yoga practice.

From Good Intentions To Healthy Planning 

From here, you might want to get clearer by creating a plan for how you’re going to achieve these intentions. We suggest planning and mapping out your weekly Yoga time, just like you’d schedule a meeting or brunch with friends. 

CONSISTENCY IS KEY 

If we can learn to do something consistently, then we can begin to see that we are completely capable of changing our behaviour. This is where the superpower lies. 

So, for us to become our own Yogic Hero’s we must first learn to become consistent students. This doesn’t mean a 60 min class a day; let’s be real, we can’t all fit that into our schedules. But, consistency asks us to carve out equal(ish) time each week for yoga. Remember, it’s more beneficial to do a little something regularly than a 60 minute power class every once in a while. So, honestly consider your lifestyle and how much time you have each day to dedicate to the practice. Maybe it’s 3 classes a week and 2 shorter self-practices at home. Maybe it’s less, maybe it’s more. Whatever your weekly yoga schedule looks like, aim for consistency

From Consistency To Incorporating A Self-Practice At Home 

We get it — life gets busy and getting to more than 3 classes a week isn’t compatible with everyone’s lifestyle. This is why we believe every yogic hero must remain open to cultivating a little self-practice at home. Realising that you can practice Yoga, breathwork and meditation anytime, anywhere will empower you to practice yoga more consistently than ever. With our new BFTV at-home yoga classes, you can make your practice your own, choosing your own style of yoga and  length of class based on how you feel that particular day. How empowering! 

Starting Slowly 

The key to becoming your own hero is to start slowly. To create a consistent routine, make sure you start small, set realistic goals, and build in recovery days. With the B+F app, it’s easy to plan your classes.  You can select classes that align with your current fitness level, time availability, and desired intensity and style. If you’re wanting some shorter classes to cultivate your at-home practice, our on demand class library will meet all your needs. At Bend and Fly there is truly something for everyone.

 Listening To Your Body 

It’s easy to get swept up in the charisma of our Yoga instructors (they are incredible!). However, sometimes we focus so much on them that we may lose track of us. The only way to honour your own body compassionately is to continually ask for its feedback.

Paying Attention To Your Peak

In many classes there’s generally a moment where we feel like we want to stop—and that’s a good thing. Most classes have a peak. A peak feels great because you’ll know you’ve pushed yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone. So while it might feel like a challenge, pushing yourself can sometimes be one of the most compassionate acts. Key word: Sometimes. Make sure you don’t push yourself beyond what’s right for you.

Practicing Gratitude

A gratitude practice is a quintessential ending for every practice. Too often, we beat ourselves up over what we didn’t do or our bodies limitations, rather than acknowledging our growth and progress. If you missed a class and end up doing a walk or 15 minute BFTV class instead, remind yourself that a little movement is better than none. To be compassionate is to practice gratitude for your amazing body without exception.

THE LEVEL OF GREATNESS

Cultivating a Yoga practice is more than just a physical journey, it is also an inward journey. Let this year be the one where you step up, create new habits and new practices which will empower you to live on a whole new level, the level of greatness. Let this year be year where you become the hero of your Yoga Practice. 

 Visit us : https://bendandfly.com.au/

[writing-in-the-tiny-house]

Villains and Dialogue!

Today’s episode is all about the baddies and what they say!

Become a patron at patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to get early access, an additional monthly episode, and even spend time collaborating with me!

Today’s book is The Cabinet of Curiosities, by Preston and Child. Please follow this affiliate link to purchase it for yourself: 

https://amzn.to/2TO9lB9

The following is the transcript for this episode. If you are viewing this through a podcast app, only the first part is available to you. But the full transcript can be read on the show’s website.

Transcript:

Devin Davis: Does your modern fantasy novel take place in 2021, but your modern villain sounds like he came from 1921. Then, my friend, we need to talk about villains and dialogue today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and today we are going to be talking about villains and how they should be talking. Again, I am a father of boys living in a tiny house in Northern Utah. And I am here to show you that the novel idea that you have bubbling around in the back of your head, it is 100% possible to write that no matter how busy you think you are.

[00:01:17] I know that a lot of my listeners are family people. I know that a lot of my listeners have full-time jobs. They have a lot of hobbies when they get home, they have kids, they have all the things. And so there are a million reasons not to write a book, but I am here to show you with this podcast that is entirely possible to write at least that one book. 

[00:01:40]With today's episode, I actually don't have a lot of announcements. I have been doing a lot of prep for the upcoming weeks with this podcast. Like I said in the previous episode, I've been interviewing my head off and it hasn't changed. And I'm excited about that. Interviews are awesome.

[00:01:58] Interviews are very well supported on this podcast and they bring such wonderful value to everyone, to  the listeners, to myself. It's fun to build those relationships. Additionally, it helps the podcast grow and it helps the guests grow, whatever it is that they're growing, whether or not they just finished writing a book, whether or not they are an editor, whether or not all the things, it's a way that we help each other achieve our goals.

[00:02:29] And I'm all about that. I think that's really good.  There is an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." And I just like that. It just the idea of linking elbows and everybody going across the finish line together and achieving our goals by helping each other out.

[00:02:53] I think it's a wonderful idea. Today, however, we do not have a guest. We have me and I am here to bring you the second episode of this series on villains. Like I said in the previous episode, villains are actually near and dear to my heart. I love a good villain. I love a convincing villain. There is so much value that a good villain brings to a story.

[00:03:20] And I am all about that. It's important to have a good, main character. It's important to have a good hero, but I would dare say it is equally important if you are writing the type of story that has a prominent villain to have that villain be amazing. So with today's episode, we're going to be talking about dialogue and I'm going to bring up four pitfalls to avoid if you want to write a convincing villain.

[00:03:54] This is not a comprehensive list. This is just what I think is important. For me, dialogue is a big part of any type of a story. I love dialogue. I love seeing the exchange between two or more people especially when they have different ideas and they help each other come to conclusions and help each other out that way.

[00:04:15] I love seeing an author conveying these different personalities, meshing together through dialogue. It's one of my favorite parts of any story. And my own work tends to be pretty dialogue heavy, just because I love that. I love establishing relationships through words like that, so the first item  on writing a convincing villain.

[00:04:39] So let's take a step back and let's think about your work in progress, or think about a really good book that you read recently, or even a good movie. What type of story was being shared? Was there a villain at all? And if there was a villain, was he or she prominent throughout the entire story and what type of cool things did they do?

[00:05:04] What type of cool things did they say?  If I bring up those subjects and they make you giggle, usually means those things weren't done effectively. And I'm sorry, but a bad villain is something to laugh at. Seeing bad dialogue and seeing a horrible cliche villain is actually one of my favorite things to laugh at. I'm kind of weird like that. I love a bad villain, almost as much as I love a good villain, just because they are a perfect example of what not to do.  

[00:05:33] The first pitfall that I have on my list is witty banter. If you are writing scenes where the villain comes into contact with the main character a lot it depends on the atmosphere that you are building in your story. If your story is witty, if it's funny, if it's making fun of a cliche, then witty banter is fine. However, an exchange between a villain and a main character, you need to really pay attention to what their relationship actually is. If they knew each other beforehand, it's possible that they would say more to each other during these encounters while the main character is trying to foil the villain. For instance, if the villain is the dad or if the villain is the neighbor or a teacher or something like that, it's entirely possible with that pre-established relationship that they would talk to each other or that they would have more to say, or the tone of the conversation would be more desperate, more pleading rather than more demanding, or there would be more of an attempt to find common ground. That means that if this prior relationship exists already, it needs to be established in a really good way before these other encounters, when this character has stepped into the role of the villain. Otherwise,  the witty banter, the back and forth smart crack of the whip things, if that is the tone of your story, then go for it. Otherwise I say, don't do it. For me, it makes a lot more sense to have a villain say nothing if the villain and the main character encounter each other, but don't know each other. It makes a lot more sense to me if under the pressure of whatever this big master plan is going on, that there would be a lack of words and there would be a lot more emotion without the words. And that's something that I personally would avoid. Again, pay attention to the overall tone of your story though. 

[00:07:56] The second pitfall is wordy or unnatural insults. That kind of goes hand in hand with witty banter, but it seems like the old school cartoon villain always had something stupid to say to the main character, to our hero. Sometimes it rhymed. Sometimes it made fun of their outfit. Sometimes it made fun of their special ability.

[00:08:24]I don't know. I remember a lot of recent superhero movies though, where the insults were pretty on the nose and pretty bad. And I personally don't like that. To have that type of really bad crappy insult really puts me out of the story. And I personally wouldn't do it. I like things to be more believable than that.

[00:08:50] And that is usually the tone of my book anyway. I tried to make it as realistic as I can, even if it is a fantasy story filled with magic. I like the relationships to be authentic. And so insulting someone? Well, first of all, if your superhero is wearing underwear over their tights, and then they're in a cape, I think that can be done away with, and I think that you already realize what type of a problem that would be. But make sure that the insults are believable and make sure they're not wordy. Wordiness isn't okay, guys. When we try to create emotion around a person or around a situation or around an event that's happening, sometimes we think the best way to build that emotion is to say a lot of words and to say like five words when we could say only one instead. I was recently critiquing for one of my critique partners.

[00:09:46] And she was so excited about this chapter that she sent to me. And it was kind of a wild chapter. It was a dream sequence, a nightmare sequence where like every other page was a different scene in this dream sequence. And the main character was super confused. And then a few paragraphs later, she would be in a different place and she felt really unsafe and didn't understand what was happening.

[00:10:15] And then at the end there was the really big villain. And the big villain was saying stuff that a real person wouldn't say unless they had a prior relationship. And I was sure to note that in my critiques for this critique partner. I said, make sure that your villain is a person before they are a villain.

[00:10:38]We are not writing Power Ranger episodes, and we're not writing 1950s superhero comics anymore. Unless you are. If you are, that's fine, then you can disregard this entire episode. But make sure that they are a person before they are a villain. And the same can be said with your hero. Make sure your hero is a person before they are a hero.

[00:11:01] And so with some of the dialogue in this critique that I did for this critique partner, I went through and just made little notes out in the margin saying if you can follow what your villain is saying with that evil maniacal laugh, I mean, I, I don't really want to do it into the microphone, but if you can follow what they said with that evil maniacal laugh, then you need to change what they said, because that evil, maniacal laugh has no place in your book. Or at least it shouldn't, it doesn't have a place in my book. So avoiding wordy and complicated and unnatural insults and other just language as well, also weak language.

[00:11:50] So this is the third pitfall that I have on my list. Weak language. A lot of us think that all language needs to be flowery and that all villains need to speak properly. Especially if it is a villain who is doing the master plan type of thing. If he's a big, strong brute, sometimes we naturally tend to give him different dialogue and to say things differently. But if he's the secret elaborate plan maker, if he's the guy who is taking over the world because he is smart and he has this intricate plan to do so, we tend to sometimes think that that guy would speak with proper English. And with kind of older English, I have been reading a book recently that is fantasy. It takes place in kind of that typical medieval Europe fantasy world, where a lot of fantasy novels take place. And the dialogue between the hero and the king and the King's evil advisor, those stock characters, is not natural because they're making it old. And the thing is they don't need to make it old.

[00:13:18] They can have it be more natural than that. I'm not saying that they need to modernize their dialogue much, but the thing is, the world is made up already. And this place, even though it resembles medieval Europe, it is not medieval Europe. And so the dialogue can be whatever you want it to be.

[00:13:40] And so it doesn't need to necessarily have the references to pop culture and it doesn't need to have the slang and whatever else, but when they start referring to things in a really old fashioned way, when we start talking about well, when we start whipping out the insults that my grandmother would use, I don't think that is as convincing as just better natural language conversation, to be perfectly honest. And this is another thing. One of the things that we come up against as a writer is we find that our writing tends to be really revealing of ourselves.

[00:14:20] I read a meme the other day, that writing is supposed to be embarrassing in the way that it makes us feel naked. And that suggests that as a writer, we get to be brave. And for many of us, sometimes that gets to involve our relationship with language, and sometimes our relationship with swear words.

[00:14:45] If you don't want to use foul language in your book, you certainly don't have to. It is 100% possible to write a convincing villain and a good hero and a wonderful world without having foul language if you don't want it there. If you want to appeal to a younger audience and have it be cleaner than that, that is 100% up to you.

[00:15:04] However, I'm going to paint a picture on purpose to demonstrate a point. If you have a villain, and she grew up on the wrong side of town, and she has a drug problem and she beats her kids. And at the end of the book, it finishes with her killing her husband. And yet the F-word tends to make her clutch her pearls, I don't buy it. I'm not saying that you need to incorporate the F-word into your book, but that was a big obstacle for me to face. And I have a villain kind of similar to the situation I just described. And I don't know, growing up on the wrong side of town and a drug problem and whatever, whatever else, just painting that picture of a rough bad guy. And then thinking of the language that they would use, I got to kind of get over my apprehension of using strong language, just because I don't use strong language like that. I don't use strong language towards my kids, but it made sense that he would. And so it was one of those things where I could either have clean language or I could have the proper effect. And I couldn't choose both. I didn't want to choose both. And so I got to kind of swallow my apprehension with the foul language and I got to include it in my manuscript. I'm not saying that I'm going to keep everything that's there just because I'm on my first draft, but you may encounter a similar problem.

[00:16:49] If you are a more proper person who uses more proper language, or if you would never dabble in some of the things that you want to include in your book. Like if you have always been straight laced and you've never done drugs, or if you never had premarital sex or whatever, if those things are not a part of your life, you may not want to include them in your book.

[00:17:16] But like I said, Sometimes you get to either choose between the content you leave out or the effect that you want to have, or that you want to convey to your reader. And it's just something to consider. I'm not saying that every scene needs to have the F word or that every scene needs to have sex or that every scene needs to be some grownup harsh thing.

[00:17:41] I would never say that; it's your story. You get to write it the way that you want. However, if we sit back and we consider these things to be more like tools that convey a specific emotion and reaction to our reader, then suddenly they're not so scary. And language is one of those tools. I understand that strong language offends many of my readers, or at least it's not something that many of my readers would use all the time or whatever, especially towards their kids or towards their loved ones. And so I very consciously get to pick and choose the type of language that the bad guys or bad women, whatever, in my manuscript get to use, because I know that that type of language conveys and inspires a very specific reaction to many readers.

[00:18:34] So kind of a long rant there. The final thing on my list is the closing monologue. And this is a cliche that has been made fun of a lot in many superhero movies, specifically the Incredibles from Pixar. The first movie, we know that at the end Syndrome has the family kind of arrested and detained and he starts monologuing and it buys the family some time to do something. And then Syndrome catches himself in the monologue. The thing is, the pull towards the final monologue is actually very appealing if you have not structured your story to not need the closing monologue. The reason why we want a closing monologue is because we want to show the reader just how clever we have written this villain.

[00:19:31] We want to reveal his backstory perhaps, or we want to reveal every step of this elaborate plan that just got foiled or is on the cusp of being revealed to us on the cusp of being accomplished. We as the writer, we want to convey to the reader just how genius this guy actually was. And a closing monologue seems like the good way to do it.

[00:19:58] However, my friends, there are ways to avoid the closing monologue. You can have clues along the way. You can have an investigator or another person reveal this or that. You can have the bad guy's right hand man abandon that side of the conflict and join the other side and then share secrets.

[00:20:18] There are a million different ways to do it, but the closing monologue is something that we have read enough of and it has been made fun of enough that you don't get to include the closing monologue in your fantasy novel with your villain unless you want to. If you do choose to include it, prepare to have snobs like myself call you out on it.

[00:20:44]And that brings us to today's book review, just very quickly wrapping this up. The book that I want to bring some attention to is The Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston and Child. This book is a mystery whodunnit thriller. And so the nature of books like these is the actual villain of the story is in the shadows and not revealed until the very end.

[00:21:16] So why would I mention this book in this episode specifically? The reason why is because there are so many subplots in this book that tend to bring conflict and to clash up against one another. And as those subplots figure themselves out and get resolved and move the story forward, there are so many conversations between people who are antagonizing each other.

[00:21:51] So there's the investigator. And then there is the institution getting in the way of the investigation, or the people trying to shut down the museum, or the person working at the museum trying to keep their job. There are a lot of different examples like this. And so, in a way it's like there's a handful of mini villains running around throughout this book.

[00:22:13] This has very good examples of dialogue between people who are causing trouble for each other. People who have separate agendas and want to achieve those agendas and are trying to stop each other and are trying to get ahead and get away and whatever else. And so it, it has wonderful, believable, fun dialogue throughout the book that's not just insults and awkward accusations.  There are a lot of wonderful things in this book, but this has a very good example of dialogue between people who hate each other and are getting in the way of each other. And it's good. This book is wonderful.

[00:22:59] This is a part of a collection of books. Preston and Child are two authors who wrote many books with this common FBI investigator as this common thread throughout the books. There are a lot of them and this one is possibly the most successful of them all. It's hard to say. But the collection is called the Pendergast novels.

[00:23:29] Pendergast is the gentleman who is the common investigator throughout all of these books. And like I said, they, they are all whodunnit mystery thrillers. So that is what I recommend. I definitely give this book five out of five stars. It is wonderful. And check it out today.

[00:23:48] That is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me with this episode of Writing in the Tiny House where we discussed villains and dialogue. The next episode is going to be on villains and action. We're going to talk about the entire secret elaborate plan and how that gets to look, or at least the things to avoid when developing your own secret elaborate plan for your villain.

[00:24:11] So thank you for joining me again. If you want to support this podcast, feel free to sign up with our Patreon. Go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up for one of the tiers today that comes with its own perks. Again, thank you for the patrons that I already have. And for the generous donations  that you are sending to this podcast every month. Be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis. My Twitter handle is @authordevind, and we will see you next time. Thank you so much, guys. Have fun writing.

Check out this episode!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 5, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last night, in a speech to honor Independence Day, President Joe Biden used his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic to defend democracy.

Biden urged people to remember where we were just a year ago, and to “think about how far we’ve come.” “From… silent streets to crowded parade routes lined with people waving American flags; from empty stadiums and arenas to fans back to their seats cheering together again; from families pressing hands against a window to grandparents hugging their grandchildren once again. We’re back traveling again. We’re back seeing one another again. Businesses are opening and hiring again. We’re seeing record job creation and record economic growth—the best in four decades and, I might add, the best in the world.”

The president was referring, in part, to the jobs report that came out on Friday, showing that the nation added a robust 850,000 non-farm jobs in June.

But he was also talking about how the United States of America took on the problem of the pandemic. Coming after two generations of lawmakers who refused to use federal power to help ordinary Americans, Biden used the pandemic to prove to Americans that the federal government could, indeed, work for everyone.

The former president downplayed the pandemic and flip-flopped on basic public health measures like masking and distancing. Unlike most European and Asian countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the Trump Administration sidelined the country's public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, considered to be the top national public health agency in the world. Trump downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus out of fear of hurting the stock market, and turned over to states the process of dealing with this unprecedented crisis. The U.S. led the world in COVID-19 deaths. More than 603,000 Americans have died so far.

When he took office, Biden had already begun to use the government response to coronavirus as a way to show that democracy could rise to the occasion of protecting its people. The day before his inauguration, President Biden held a memorial for the 400,000 who had, to that date, died of COVID-19. He put Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a renowned infectious disease expert, at the head of the CDC and reinstated the CDC at the head of the public health response to the pandemic. And he made vaccines accessible to all Americans. Fifty-eight percent of American adults have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus; 67% have had at least one shot. The U.S. has one of the highest vaccine rates in the world and is helping to vaccinate those in other countries, as well.

Biden recalled that the United States of America was based not on religion or hereditary monarchy, but on an idea: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights—among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

We have never lived up to that ideal, of course, but we have never abandoned it, either. Those principles, he said, “continue to animate us, and they remind us what, at our best, we as Americans believe: We, Americans—we believe in honesty and decency, in treating everyone with dignity and respect, giving everyone a fair shot, demonizing no one, giving hate no safe harbor, and leaving no one behind.”

But, he said, democracy isn’t top down. “Each day, we’re reminded there’s nothing guaranteed about our democracy, nothing guaranteed about our way of life,” he said. “We have to fight for it, defend it, earn it…. It’s up to all of us to protect the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the right to equal justice under the law; the right to vote and have that vote counted; the right.... to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and know that our children and grandchildren will be safe on this planet for generations to come… the right to rise in the world as far as your God-given [talent] can take you, unlimited by barriers of privilege or power.”

Biden’s speech recalled that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 5, 1944, upon the fall of Rome during World War II. It was Italian leader Benito Mussolini who articulated the ideals of fascism after World War I, envisioning a hierarchical world in which economic and political leaders worked together to lead the masses forward by welding them into a nationalistic, militaristic force.

In his 1944 speech, FDR was careful to explain to Americans how they were different from the Italian fascists. He talked about “Nazi overlords” and “fascist puppets.” Then, in contrast to the fascists’ racial hierarchies, FDR made a point of calling Americans’ attention to the fact that the men who defeated the Italian fascists were Americans from every walk of life.

And then he turned to how fascism treated its people. “In Italy, the people have lived so long under the corrupt rule of Mussolini that in spite of the tinsel at the top—you have seen the pictures of it—their economic conditions have grown steadily worse. Our troops have found starvation, malnutrition, disease, a deteriorating education, a lower public health, all byproducts of the fascist misrule.”

To rebuild Italy, FDR said, the troops had to start from the bottom. “[W]e have had to give them bread to replace that which was stolen out of their mouths,” he said. “We have had to make it possible for the Italians to raise and use their local crops. We have had to help them cleanse their schools of fascist trappings….”

He outlined how Americans had anticipated the need to relieve the people starved by the fascists, and had made plans to ship food grown by the “magnificent ability and energy of the American people,” in ships they had constructed, over thousands of miles of water. Some of us may let our thoughts run to the financial cost of it,” he said, but “we hope that this relief will be an investment for the future, an investment that will pay dividends by eliminating fascism, by ending any Italian desires to start another war of aggression in the future….”

FDR was emphasizing the power of the people, of democracy, to combat fascism not only abroad but also at home, where it had attracted Americans frustrated by the seeming inability of democracy to counter the Depression. They longed for a single strong leader to fix everything. Other Americans, horrified by FDR’s use of the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, wanted to take the nation back to the 1920s and in so doing had begun to flirt with fascism as well.

As he celebrated the triumph over democracy in Italy, he was also urging Americans to value and protect it at home.

Biden, too, is focusing on how efficient his administration has been in combating the coronavirus to combat authoritarianism both abroad and at home. With its support for the Big Lie; congress members like Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who openly associates with white nationalists; and its attack on voting rights, the modern-day Republican Party is moving rapidly toward authoritarianism. But the former president botched the most fundamental task of government: protecting its people from death. In contrast, more than 60% of Americans approve of how Biden has managed the coronavirus pandemic, with 95% of Democrats approving but only 33% of Republicans in favor.

Biden’s approach appears to be helping to solidify support for democracy. A recent PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll showed that two thirds of Americans believe democracy is under threat, but 47%— the highest number in 12 years—believe the country is moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, that number, too, reflects a difference by party. While 87 percent of Democrats say the country is improving, 87 percent of Republicans say the opposite.

Biden conjured up our success over the coronavirus to celebrate democracy: “[H]istory tells us that when we stand together, when we unite in common cause, when we see ourselves not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, then there’s simply no limit to what we can achieve.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/05/remarks-by-president-biden-celebrating-independence-day-and-independence-from-covid-19/

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/02/june-jobs-unemployment-shortage/

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/561513-67-percent-of-adults-have-received-at-least-one-shot-of-covid-19-vaccine

https://docs.google.com/document/d/162VvK8TyM_3xNJbZtd0vLcNiLuK1bzpV0zqcD8o0TuM/edit

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/2-out-of-3-americans-believe-u-s-democracy-is-under-threat

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[arcticdementor]

You know what America needs? More mirrors for princes—the Renaissance genre of advice books directed at statesmen. On the Right, we have many books that identify, and complain about, the problems of modernity and the challenges facing us. Some of those books do offer concrete solutions, but their audience is usually either the educated masses, who cannot themselves translate those solutions into policy, or policymakers who have no actual power, or refuse to use the power they do have. Scott Yenor’s bold new book is directed at those who have the will to actually rule. He lays out what has been done to the modern family, why, and what can and should be done about it, by those who have power, now or in the future. Let’s hope the target audience pays attention.

The Recovery of Family Life instructs future princes in two steps. First, Yenor dissects the venomous ideology of feminism, which seeks to abolish all natural distinctions between the sexes, as well as all social structures that organically arise from those distinctions. Second, he tells how the family regime of a healthy modern society should be structured. By absorbing both lessons and applying them in practice, the wise statesman can, Yenor hopes, accomplish the recovery of family life. (Yenor himself does not compare his book to a mirror for princes; he’s too modest for that. But that’s what it is.)

…

You will note that this is a spicy set of positions for an academic of today to hold. You will therefore not be surprised to learn that Yenor was the target of cancel culture before being a target was cool. He is a professor of political philosophy at Boise State University, and in 2016, in response to Yenor’s publication of two pieces containing, to normal people, anodyne factual statements about men and women, a mob of leftist students tried to defenestrate him. Yenor was “homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic.” (We can ignore that the first two of those words are mostly content-free propaganda terms designed to blur discourse, though certainly to the extent they do have meaning, that meaning should be celebrated—I would have given Yenor a medal, if I had been in charge of Boise State.) They didn’t manage to get him fired (he has tenure and refused to bend), but the usual baying mob, led by Yenor’s supposed peers, put enormous pressure on him, which could not have been easy. He still teaches there; whether it is fun for him, I do not know, but it certainly hasn’t stopped him promulgating the truth.

…

Yenor begins by examining the intellectual origins of the rolling revolution, found most clearly within twentieth-century feminism. One service Yenor provides is to draw the battle lines clearly. He does this by swimming in the fetid swamps of feminism; I learned a lot I did not know, although none of it was pleasing. He spends a little time discussing so-called first-wave feminism, but much more on second-wave feminists, starting with Simone de Beauvoir, through Betty Friedan, and into Shulamith Firestone, this latter a literally insane harridan who starved herself to death. The common thread among these writers was their baseless claim that women had no inherent meaningful difference from men, and that women could only be happy by the abolition of any perceived difference. This was to lead to self-focused self-actualization resulting in total autonomy, and a woman would know she had achieved this, most often, by making working outside the home the focus of her existence. Friedan was the great popularizer of this destructive message, of course, which I recently attacked at length in my thoughts on her book The Feminine Mystique.

…

After this detailed examination of core feminist ideas, Yenor suffers more, slogging through the thought about autonomy of various two-bit modern con men, notably Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. He analyzes the dishonest argumentative methods of all the Left, in general and in specific with regard to family topics—false claims mixed with false dichotomies and false comparisons, what he calls the “liberal wringer,” the mechanism by which any argument against the rolling revolution is dishonestly deconstructed and all engagement with it avoided. The lesson for princes, I think, is to not participate in such arguments, and to remember what our enemies long ago learned and put into practice—that power is all.

Yenor describes how the modern Left (which he somewhat confusingly calls “liberalism,” but Rawls and his ilk are not liberal in any meaningful sense of the term, rather they are Left) uses the law to achieve its goal of the “pure relationship,” meaning the aim that all relationships must be ones of free continuous choice, that is, without any supposed repression. This leads to various destructive results when it collides with reality, including the reality of parent-child bonds, and more generally is hugely destructive of social cohesion. From this also flow various deleterious consequences resulting from ending supposed sexual repression; this section is replete with analysis of writings from Michel Foucault to Aldous Huxley, and contains much complexity, but in short revolves around what was once a commonplace—true freedom is not release from constraints, but the freedom to choose rightly, to choose virtue and not to be a slave to passions, and rejection of this truth is the basis of many of our modern problems.

…

Finally, Yenor turns to what should be done, which is the most noteworthy part of the book. As he says, “Intellectuals who defend the family rightly spend much time exposing blind spots in the contemporary ideology. All this time spent in the defensive crouch, however, distracts them from thinking through where these limits [i.e., the limits Yenor has just outlined in detail] point in our particular time and place. Seeing the goodness in those limits, it is necessary also to reconstruct a public opinion and a public policy that appreciates those limits.” Thus, Yenor strives to show what a “better family policy” would be.

This is an admirable effort, but I fear it is caught on the horns of a dilemma. The rolling revolution does not permit any stopping or slowing; much less does it permit any retrenchment or reversal. Our enemies don’t care what we think a better family policy would be. And if we were to gain the power to implement a better family policy, by first smashing their power, there is no reason for it to be as modest as that Yenor outlines—rather, it should be radical, an utter unwinding of the nasty web they have woven, and the creation of a new thing. Not a restoration, precisely, but a new thing for our time, informed by the timeless Old Wisdom that Yenor extols. The defect in Yenor’s thought, or at least in his writing, is refusing to acknowledge it is only power that matters for the topics about which he cares most. But presumably the future princes at whom this book is aimed will know this in their bones.

Yenor himself doesn’t exactly exude optimism. Nor does he exude pessimism, but he begins by telling us that “we are still only in the infancy” of the rolling revolution. This seems wrong to me; in the modern age, time is compressed, and fifty years is plenty of time for the rolling revolution, a set of ideologies based on the denial of reality, to reach its inevitable senescence, when reality reasserts itself with vigor. This is particularly true since every new front opened by the revolution is more anti-reality, more destructive, and more revolting to normal people, who eventually will have had enough, and the sooner, if given the right leadership.

…

For most purposes, what Yenor advocates would be a restoration of family policy, both in law and society, as it existed in America in the mid-twentieth century. I’m not sure that’s going back far enough for ideas. You’re not supposed to say it out loud, and Yenor doesn’t, but it’s not at all clear to me that even first-wave feminism had any virtue at all. To the extent it is substantively discussed today, we are given a caricature, where the views of those opposed to Mary Wollstonecraft or John Stuart Mill are not told to us, rather distorted polemics of those authors about their opponents are presented as accurate depictions, which is unlikely, and even those depictions are never engaged with. But we know that most of what Mill said about politics in general was self-dealing lies that have proven to be enormously destructive, so the presumption should be that what he said about relations between men and women was equally risible.

…

Penultimately, Yenor addresses such new frontiers being sought by the rolling revolution, with the implication that the rolling revolution might, perhaps, be halted. Here he talks about the desire of the Left to have the state separate children from parents, particularly where and because the parents oppose the revolution, but more generally to break the parent-child bond as a threat to unlimited autonomy. He says, optimistically, “No respectable person has (yet) suggested that parents could be turned in for hate speech behind closed doors.” But this has already been proven false; Scotland is on the verge of passing a new blasphemy law, the “Hate Crime and Public Order Law,” and Scotland’s so-called Justice Minister (with the very Scots name of Humza Yousaf) has explicitly noted, and called for, entirely private conversations in the home that were “hate speech” to be prosecuted once the law is passed. A man like that is beyond secular redemption, yet he is also a mainline representative of the rolling revolution. The reality is that discussion does not, and will never work, with these people, only force. Still trying, Yenor presents a balanced picture to his hoped-for audience of princes, such as discussing when state interference in the family makes sense (as in cases of abuse). However, such situations have been adequately addressed in law for hundreds of years; the rolling revolution is not a new type of such balancing, but the Enemy. Discussions about it will not stop it. No general of the rolling revolution will even notice this book, except in that perhaps some myrmidons may be detached from the main host to punish Yenor, or to record his name for future punishment.

Yenor ends with a pithy set of responses to the tedious propagandistic aphorisms of the rolling revolution, such as “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.” And, laying out a clear vision of a renewed society based on the principals he has earlier discussed, he tells us, “In the long term, the goal is to stigmatize the assumptions of the rolling revolution.” No doubt this is true; cauterizing the societal wound where the rolling revolution will have been amputated from our society will be, in part, accomplished by stigmatizing both the ideas and those who clamored for them or led their implementation. How to get to that desirable “long term,” though, when their long term is very clear, and very different from the long term Yenor hopes for? He says “Prudent statesmen must mix our dominant regime with doses of reality.” Yeah, no. Prudent statesmen, the new princes, must entirely overthrow our dominant regime, or not only will not a single one of Yenor’s desired outcomes see the light of day, far worse evils will be imposed on us. Oh, I’m sure Yenor knows this; it’s the necessary conclusion of Yenor’s own discussion of those eagerly desired future evils. He just can’t be as aggressive as me. I’m here to tell you that you should read this book, but amp up the aggression a good eight times—which shouldn’t be a problem, especially if you have children of your own, whose innocence and future these people want to steal.

[litabrown]

Inclusion And Diversity In One Of The Leading Tech Companies

As 2020 draws to an end, people begin to encounter multiple review articles showcasing how businesses have managed to navigate a surprisingly exceptional year.

For Twitter, the company's contribution to understanding and fighting structural racism in the United States and around the world has been consistently promoted to defend and help workers amid a global epidemic. But it will be a hindrance to all the hard work that has taken place around the company to concentrate only on the transitions that the year has presented. At the start of the year, Twitter launched an ambitious new strategy for 2025 and its initial roadmap for the hard work needed to accelerate momentum around the business.

Promoting Diversity through Accountability

Considering the uncertain dynamics of 2020, the company has already made tremendous strides in these targets. A brief update of the goal Twitter set out earlier this year by 2025 is that at least half of the company's working group will be women, and at least a fifth of the US workforce will be represented by minorities. Check out the Q4 diversity figures to see the steady strides the company achieved in 2020.

Along with that ambitious goal, as a company, they have doubled deeper commitments through leadership, openness, and accountability. This has been driven with a goal in mind to accelerate change along the path and be the most diverse and progressive tech corporation in the world.

Accountability becomes the main priority of the company. In addition to the corporation's objectives set for the composition of the workforce, the company has worked with the management team to explicitly identify their share of responsibility for achieving change, taking into consideration the scale of the firms they lead, keeping their staff numbers open, finalizing the expected recruiting speed, and managing the average tariff rate.

For the approach to work, any person working for Twitter needs to be associated with what the company is trying to achieve. It is not only limited to the knowledge of the executive staff. This is why in 2019, Twitter built an internal diversity platform so that every employee can watch, in real-time, how they counter labor inclusion targets by gender globally and racial issues. This is to keep the company accountable for any implications.

Recently, Twitter released version 3.0 in their Diversity Dashboard, which significantly increases clarity around these metrics, offering insight around the board. This has provided Tweeps the ability to objectively evaluate how their team is performing and be part of the change. In version 3.0, the only occasions where the company limits access to the diversity dashboard is when the size of the group is too big to keep the Tweeps confidential.

Accountability for I&D success lies to all employees. That's why the latest dashboard also contains an action plan detailing five simple measures every Twitter worker must take to make strides in their roles in the company.

An employee must remember their voluntary Self ID Workday commitment. By deciding to join, each member will help ensure that the number of members in their respective teams is accurate. Members should also participate in the Global Business Resource Group (BRG) and take part as a community in BRG meetings. The BRGs are Tweep-led advocacies for under-represented communities while promoting a dynamic and inclusive workplace.

Furthermore, employees should double-check to ensure that everyone on their team has attended the I&D training sessions including the "Healthy Conversations", "Words Matter", and "Allying 101". They must also create an action plan to boost the Diversity Ratings of their teams for the next employee interaction. Lastly, they should schedule an hour for the group to watch the #TwitterTogetherTalk including notes on how to be an anti-racist and hold a debrief using the company's conversation guides.

Applying Transparency

The company has spent 2020 investigating opportunities to draw on industry-leading openness of employee participation to include effects or outcome-based indicators. Representation in leadership positions and equal pay is one of the items they are looking at. The first step in this new field is to explore gender gaps, which they will share in the annual report early next year. Progress is now ongoing to improve pay transparency and, beginning in 2021, the company plans to expedite individual jobs.

The promotions were another significant body of work this year. Like other businesses, they also get inquiries from Tweeps who want to get a better understanding of how promo choices are made. So in addition to processing the findings of the promotion audit that they undertook, the management launched a Consistency & Fairness Task Force to review the promotion process through Twitter from end to end.

Finally, the company is delighted to have achieved even more progress in the equal amount of recruiting this year. Building on lessons learned from the test program in 2019, Twitter extended its Diverse Slates Initiative (DSI) from Senior Director positions to all managers and roles in the firm. Going forward to open a job offer on any available position, the company affirms that at least one woman (global) and one Black or Latinx candidate (US) must be accepted by the interview panel.

The extended DSI is accompanied by an inclusive recruiting e-learning module based on five concepts that every Tweep would like to recognize and follow. These include recruiting one of the most eligible applicants, starting with an applicant pool representing close communities, and ensuring a fair and inclusive recruiting process. It is also important to educate applicants of core strengths and values to employ sophistication and promote the equality and diversity of the entire interview process.

Conclusion

To take stock of what was going right in 2020 is quite a flex. Retrospectively, the steps the company has undertaken in its incorporation and diversity efforts in leadership, openness, and responsibility are important. They reflect the exceptional efforts of its employees in every aspect of the industry. Thanks to every member's support, the corporation manages to take brave measures to drive the business forward without hesitation.

[ecardon1]

Profitability Inside an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC)

ASCs continue to perform more than half of all U.S. outpatient surgical procedures, and they can expect to see greater volumes as the number of outpatient procedures increases an estimated 15% by 2028. However, analysts predict this number will be even higher based on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) 2021 final rule on the Outpatient Prospective Payment System and ASCs. With the goal of giving Medicare beneficiaries more choices regarding surgical services, the rule begins to eliminate the Inpatient Only (IPO) list over a three-year transition period. The IPO list is a series of 1,700 procedures for which Medicare will only pay when performed in the hospital inpatient setting. Under the new rule, over 250 musculoskeletal-related services that previously could only be done in an inpatient setting can now be done in an outpatient ASC.

In addition, CMS added 11 services to the ASC Covered Procedures List—including total hip replacements—continuing the agency’s efforts to shift more inpatient hospital care to outpatient settings.

With many ASCs focused on orthopedic services, the rulemaking could significantly increase ASC volumes. As new CMS rules allow more procedures to be done in an outpatient setting, it is possible that by 2030, 90% of all surgeries completed in the United States will be done on an outpatient basis. This potential growth, fueled in large part by CMS incentivizing the shift in surgical procedures from inpatient to outpatient settings, means healthcare organizations (especially large health systems) continue to see investment in ASCs as a critical strategic move.

Here are some ideas to incorporate in ASC planning to take advantage of the potential increasing levels of ASC business on the horizon.

1-Pay attention to reimbursement rates. As reimbursement continues to evolve, ASCs must evolve with it. Not only CMS reimbursement rates but also private insurers have incentivized the outpatient trend as they refuse to pay for inpatient surgery except for a few specific exceptions (and that list is shrinking rapidly).

Hospitals have tried to insulate themselves from this trend by focusing on high-revenue procedures that can only be performed in an inpatient OR. They have also been buoyed by higher reimbursement for ambulatory procedures performed in a hospital outpatient surgery department.

However, this favorable pay differential is steadily decreasing as CMS moves toward reimbursement structures that support site neutrality. Health systems must incorporate a robust outpatient surgery strategy or watch their profit margins decline.

2-Pay attention to ASC size/design. The most important aspect of designing an ASC is right-sizing it based on volume and case mix. If you build a bigger surgery center than your volume can support, you incur costs every month, regardless of whether you have the cases to support it—when your volume or case mix changes, you can’t reduce the size of a building like you can reduce the number of FTEs. A single-specialty ASC can be sized efficiently to reduce extraneous storage, redundant equipment, and underutilized space. However, this approach may compromise your ability to accommodate additional service lines in the future. Remember to plan for anticipated growth.

3-Pay attention to scheduling. Understanding the impact of physician schedules is critical in designing an ASC. Hospital-based surgeons specializing in high-reimbursement inpatient procedures have a great deal of influence in the scheduling of ORs. Consider having a discussion with these physicians to see if you can achieve better OR usage efficiency before adding unnecessary ORs. If you plan the number of ORs based solely on these physicians’ preferences, you may overbuild by including ORs that would be unnecessary if one of the physicians changes their scheduling pattern or is replaced with a new physician with their own scheduling ideas.

4-Not all services lines are equal. Service lines have unique requirements regarding OR and recovery timing. For example, ophthalmology surgery may take 15 minutes followed by 30 minutes of recovery while more complex orthopedic surgeries may take anywhere from 2.5 to seven hours, with the patient spending about the same length of time in recovery as they did in the OR. Understanding these differences can help you lay out ORs and recovery areas to maximize efficiency and throughput.

Most ASCs need to reevaluate their facilities every 10 years to keep current and relevant with care delivery. The types and complexity of procedures offered in an ASC environment evolve so quickly that when planning your ASC, you must consider future flexibility for additional growth. Plan for future volume increases by including easy access for later electrical and medical gas additions. Remember to update interior finishes regularly in order to remain competitive with newer ASCs.

Ed Cardon

EPC Search International LLC

470-345-0846

ed@epcsearchinternational.com