#the tweet was essential to add cause like. the way he was so clear about his excitement was the sweetest thing ;-;

[reunitedinterlude]

countdown to phil’s 38th bday - a year in review [19/30]

dnptit era!phil (so far) (preshow vids: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

[cupidhaos]

(2nd attempt lol) So I went through Newsflash! and Move! with a fine-toothed comb...

This is structured into 4 parts to make it a bit easier to read. The first part is interesting information I 'found' again after reading through everything with watchful eyes again. The second part is a listing of everyone who could've done it, and what reasons they may have. The third part is not necessarily informative, but still interesting stuff I 'found' while reading through it again. And last are questions I had or things which didn't add up for me. This is extremely long (the Word document I have is 6 pages long RIP), so grab a drink and get comfy. Also, this is mostly just based on what is in Newsflash! and Move! itself. Hope you'll enjoy!

Interesting information:

“It’s crucial to the plot that you know” (DK in Newsflash! 5) implies there’s a hidden plot, one we don’t see

“You’re going to make plenty of friends soon enough y/n” (DK in Newsflash! 5) Did DK orchestrate Y/N becoming friends with SVT? Why? Does he want to tear SVT down? But why through Y/N?

Oh, remember that girl who told the schoolboard about Jeonghan and Chaeyoung, angry Jeonghan planned on resigning from SVT for Chaeyoung? The one who essentially was the cause for Jeonghan & SVT ghosting Chaeyoung in the beginning of Newsflash! because she got word to Chaeyoung’s father and he threatened to take away their scholarships? Maybe it has something to do with her… (Newsflash! 10)

Joshua said himself that the others give up easily (Newsflash! 10) as soon as the situation becomes a bit dire

Newsflash! 11 “I know what it feels like to just have someone slip away from you when you could’ve done more” (Y/N texting w/ Mingyu) Who?? Is she talking about?? COULD IT BE A REASON FOR SOMEONE TO BE A BITCH TO Y/N???? Adding to that the next text: “You have the chance to fix things before it’s too late” WHEN WAS Y/N TOO LATE?? FOR WHOM??

The Barista from Newsflash! 13 (I FORGOT HER NAME I’M NOT IN THE LOOP WITH GIRLGROUPS) could’ve heard everything SVT+Chaeyoung talked about when they were locked in that back room… maybe that started something? (Edit: okay in Newsflash! 22 several girls comment on Y/N’s tweet and one has the same profile picture as the Barista… so her name is something along the lines of Hyunie?)

Newsflash! 17 DK texting “He’s not the one for you trust me Y/N” makes DK all the more suspicious. How do you know that? Who are you trying to set us up with?

Newsflash! 21 DK knew before Y/N said anything at all that Y/N was out with Jeonghan and that Jeonghan had kissed her. How did he know?

Newsflash! 23 DK texting “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see” makes me think he didn’t actually plan all this… but the use of the emoji makes him still suspicious. But if he didn’t plan this – why does he know so much?! Is he stalking Y/N? Why? For what reason?

Newsflash! 29 Name of one of Jeonghan’s clients was dropped – Eunha. Was she the one who bitched to the schoolboard? Wonwoo calls her ‘VIP client ;)’, which Jeonghan doesn’t really appreciate (“how about u shut the fuck up :)” Has all the passive aggressive energy in the world)

Newsflash! 31 Okay, so Yuta: ex-bf from Japan; Y/N’s first love (what was Joshua then? Didn’t Y/N leave Korea because Joshua didn’t return her feelings in Senior year Highschool?); cheated on her (did he really?); showed her pictures/nudes to his friends;

Newsflash! 31 Am I… the only one who is kind of suspicious of Wonwoo? Like, why was he there? I don’t believe he was there by chance. And even if he was, why would he help Y/N? What does he gain from this? Yeah, SVT’s motto is ‘respect women and make them feel happy’, but… it still seems suspicious to me.

Newsflash! 33 DK texting “that?? wasn’t??? supposed to happen????” “where did he even COME FROM” confirms a suspicion of mine – it wasn’t an accident that Wonwoo was there. Or maybe it was? Ugh, I don’t know. All I know is that Wonwoo and DK are both suspicious as hell.

Newsflash! 34 HOLD ON A MF SECOND JEON WONWOO HAS A CLIENT WHO IS CALLED SOHYE. A CLINGY CLIENT. SOHYE AND SOHEE AREN’T TOO FAR APART. MAYBE SISTERS…? A SISTER WHO IS MAD THAT HER SISTER WASN’T TREATED ALL THAT NICELY BY WONWOO. THAT’S WHY SHE’S AFTER Y/N – BECAUSE SHE THINKS Y/N AND WONWOO ARE ACTUALLY DATING. IT WOULD MAKE SO MUCH SENSE THO BECAUSE CUPIDHAOS ALSO SAID ‘Sohee is connected to SVT but not in a way you think’ THAT WAY SHE’S CONNECTED TO SVT (HER SISTER IS WONWOO’S CLIENT) AND WE DEFINITELY WOULD’VE NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT. YOOOOO

Newsflash! 37 Jeonghan chewing Y/N out… and showing a possible motive.

Also Y/N is a dumbass for believing you can’t get phones in Thailand. HOW DUMB DO YOU HAVE TO BE??? Honestly. I mean, I get it if they were like, in a really rural part of Thailand, but somehow I doubt that

Move! 3 DK not be cryptic for 1 minute challenge: failed. BOI- “oh y/n this is where the story starts my dear friend” ???? Dear friend sounds so threatening. Like, what did Y/N do to you?

Move! 4 Why does Seungkwan want to keep Y/N away from SVT so desperately? Like, if Y/N can prove to them that the whole thread is a lie, she has 6 more people on her side. That would give her a lot more credibility, to be honest. Does Seungkwan have a reason for keeping Y/N away from SVT?

Move! 4 Chaeyoung is… surprisingly good… and QUICK… at getting Jimin’s and Seokjin’s number… even after they changed it… That’s suspicious. How good is Chaeyoung with tech?

Move! 4 Someone wanted Y/N info. And they were willing to pay for it. (This is before Y/N left, right after Jihoon posted the picture of being on the train to Busan with Y/N. So someone planned all this before Y/N even left.)

Move! 4 Jimin’s and Seokjin’s education and jobs have been threatened. (By whom exactly? Schoolboard? Or just a ‘random’ person? An anonymous person? They don’t know either – anonymous.) They were forbidden from talking to SVT (someone wants to prevent SVT from finding out the truth…) or explaining themselves.

Move! 5 Y/N mentions deleting all the photos she had of Yuta from her phone. But maybe Yuta still had some? Also (that happened to me) if you have a Google account and don’t adjust your setting, pictures taken on your phone will be saved on your Google Drive. As a backup. (I once deadass couldn’t get rid of 3 GB WORTH OF PICTURES BECAUSE OF THIS). Maybe that’s how someone got the pictures? Hacked Y/N’s email?

Move! 5 Soonyoung is very quick to point to Yuta. Then again, Yuta looks very suspicious. So… a ruse, probably.

Move! 5 DK “I trust no one and you shouldnt either” just… why should we trust YOU telling us not to trust anyone? Hm?

Move! 5 Vernon still hanging out with SVT (when did he even become friends with them? Nothing of that was mentioned during Newsflash! ? How did that happen??) is very suspicious. Like, isn’t there a conflict of interest? Or is he just stringing along either side? Making SVT believe he is on their side, or making Y/N believe he is on her side. Also, has Vernon met Sohee?? Or did he only hang out with SVT before the thread was posted? (But if that were the case… Minghao wouldn’t retweet it and Wonwoo wouldn’t say ‘we should do that again’.) Vernon, you’re very suspicious now.

Move! 5 Also interesting to note: Vernon practically pushes Y/N into Wonwoo’s direction. First saying that Mingaho isn’t a fan of Y/N anymore (true, I guess), but then leading her to Wonwoo? Did he know Wonwoo was the weakest link/the one who had doubts? Does he know Wonwoo still has feelings for Y/N, and is trying to push them together? Is Vernon playing something???

Move! 6 “You just disappearing out of nowhere was a bit weird” HOE YOU SAW EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED??? SEUNGCHEOL, MINGYU, JEONGHAN AND Y/N WERE IN YOUR APARTMENT ON THAT EVENING??? YOU WITNESSED HOW JEONGHAN YELLED AT Y/N WHEN SHE WAS ALREADY A MESS?? AND YOU THINK IT’S WEIRD SHE RAN AWAY AND NEEDED SOME TIME? BOI-

Move! 6 One of Wonwoo’s answers indicated that he didn’t text Seungkwan or Chaeyoung and never asked for clarification, but just believed Sohee. He also never asked Vernon or Chan (again, why Vernon? And why is DK and Hoshi missing here??)

Move! 7 Jihoon mentions Y/N being pulled into things she didn’t do since Sohee appeared – is he talking about the thread saying Y/N manipulated Wonwoo (a whole lie, and SVT KNOWS THAT), or is there something more? Wasn’t there once the talk of rumors? What kind of rumors? More than what is written in the thread??? Ouf…

Move! 7 Mingyu outright says "Wonwoo I thought you liked Sohee…" Makes me suspicious. Did Sohee specifically target Wonwoo? Or is Wonwoo just pretending to be on Y/N's side? Hm...

Move! 8 DK clearly hinting towards Yuta being behind it all… but can we trust DK.

Suspects and why they would do it:

Chaeyoung:

Might still hold a massive grudge against SVT, and doesn’t want Y/N associate with them (Not logical – why would Jihoon and Wonwoo be okay? Why would she keep them around? They’re SVT too, and they ghosted her too, unlike Joshua.)

Might still hold a massive grudge against SVT and wants to get revenge (Once again – why are Jihoon and Wonwoo fine? They are/were SVT too.) (Thread/Rumors mainly hurt Y/N, not SVT.)

Holds a massive grudge against a specific member (don’t know who – maybe Jeonghan? Maybe one of the guys who overran Y/N?) and wants to ruin them. Orchestrated this whole thing and ‘leads’ the ‘investigation’ so it’ll lead to (a) certain member(s), in order to ruin them or keep them away from Y/N.

Got extremely jealous with how popular Y/N became with SVT. SVT is neglecting her once again, and Y/N is neglecting her as well, hanging out with her new friends instead. So, she wants to keep Y/N away from them, and hopes that this break of trust will cause Y/N to not be friends with SVT anymore, even if the situation gets cleared. She can be friends with Y/N again, Y/N will spend a lot of time with her again, and Chaeyoung’s happy again. (Might be psycho, but who knows…? Some people are crazy. And Chaeyoung seems very bossy with Y/N. (Granted Y/N needs it because DEAR LORD but still…))

General Reason for SVT members:

They feel betrayed and used by Y/N. She just left them, without even saying goodbye to them (she only texted Joshua before she left, as far as we know). They feel manipulated by her, and want to get revenge on her.

Or stereotypical ‘If I cannot have her, no one can have her’ or ‘If he cannot have her, no one can have her’. Y/N doesn’t want to be her girlfriend? (Or the girlfriend of one of their friends – JH and SC, for example.) Then you’ll be no one’s girlfriend. And I’ll drag you down.

Seungcheol:

Angry and hurt that Y/N immediately ran away after he got injured (for her, might I add), so he might feel like he was manipulated 

Jeonghan:

Angered at how Y/N treated Seungcheol and the rest of SVT, unknowingly strumming everyone along. Literally blamed Y/N for ‘everything going to shit’ into her face. Could be prone to enlisting the help of someone to tear Y/N down.

Joshua:

Extremely frustrated with Y/N. Feels betrayed by her and wants revenge. Finally snapped.

(Feels like he doesn’t know his friend anymore, which is why he believes so easily.)

Jun:

Deeply hurt that Y/N just went away without even saying anything. Wants to get revenge on her. Feels like she didn’t give him a chance, and now wants her to pay for it.

Soonyoung:

Frustrated that Y/N is only spending time with SVT now, wants to bring her back to her old circle of friends

Wonwoo:

Fell in love with Y/N, realized there’s too much competition and decided to get rid of them. (But why would he be hesitant when Y/N contacts him? Wouldn’t he want to be immediately on her side, to get into her good graces? But that could make him suspicious again… Hm…)

Fell in love with Y/N before the others did, before Jeonghan ever saw her in Communications class. Knows the others are competition, and wants to separate Y/N from them, hoping the break of trust will prevent Y/N from getting close to them.

Jihoon:

Knows all of the members. Knows they’re not good for Y/N. Wants to keep them away from Y/N. Hopes the massive break of trust will prevent Y/N from becoming friends with them again, even after the situation is cleared up. ’Leads’ the ‘investigation’ with Chaeyoung to lead it away from himself.

DK:

Homeboy knows too much. He said ‘and this is where the plot begins’ when Jeonghan sat next to Y/N at the beginning of Newsflash!. Always knew what was going on, even if it were unlikely for him to know. Could there be a reason for him orchestrating everything? Did Y/N wrong him at some point?

I feel like we all forget that in the first profile post, it’s stated that Mingyu and DK are close friends. Maybe he got über salty at Y/N not getting together with Mingyu, like he wanted to (?)?

Mingyu:

Feels abandoned by Y/N. Wants her to feel the same abandonment.

Minghao:

In the same class as Y/N – maybe a petty ass reason but she could’ve been too much competition? So he wanted to get rid of her? Essentially make her so disliked she’s forced to leave for her own sake.

Seungkwan:

Frustrated that Y/N spent so much time with her new friends, barely finding time for her old friends.

Vernon:

Maybe wanted to get into SVT, but got rejected. Tries to shake them up (Wonwoo and Jihoon left SVT already) so he maybe gets a chance to join SVT.

Seems to know an awful lot; pointed Y/N into Wonwoo’s direction. If not the culprit, then someone who helped? But why would he betray his friend? Well… has Y/N been a good friend?

Chan:

Same as Vernon possibly.

Mad that Y/N doesn’t hang out with him and the others as much anymore, and wants to bring her away from SVT.

Yuta:

Angry that Y/N won’t take him back, and that she humiliated him in public (she hit him and called him a dick)

First plan (just outright ask Y/N to come back to him) didn’t work. Now, next plan is set in motion.

(Most likely to be a red herring. He’s a bit too obvious.)

Yiren:

Y/N ‘stole’ Jun from her for a moment. He’s back with her now (both of them are Clownsssss), but still – hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It could be a reason why she would want to harm Y/N, and make her stay away from Jun.

Sohye:

Clingy client of Wonwoo. Is not happy AT ALL that her favorite SVT member is spending so much time with another girl, someone who is not a client. Maybe wants to get rid of Y/N and keep Wonwoo to herself?

Sohee: Popular Theories:

Ex of Yuta who’s angry at Y/N because Yuta dumped her to get Y/N back. Wants to ruin her to get back at her.

Related to Seungcheol/Chaeyoung/Seungkwan/Anyone and either isn’t happy with how Y/N treated her (relative is not a dick in this route) or is the henchman of her relative, who holds a serious grudge against Y/N and wants to see her go down.

Ex-friend of Y/N who is angry that Y/N abandoned and forgot about her. (Maybe she was mentioned in Newsflash! 11?)

My theory:

Sister/Cousin/Very close friend of Sohye (clingy client of Wonwoo). Angered to see her sister/cousin/close friend being ignored by Wonwoo and not have his full attention anymore. Also think Wonwoo might be falling for Y/N, and doesn’t want her sister/cousin/close friend to experience heartbreak.

Chaeyoung’s Father:

Already has a history of being controlling over who interacts with his daughter

(Is he still part of the Schoolboard? And does the School still restrict SVT, or is that no more?)

What does he see: His daughter in distress, talking to SVT again, leaving for an entire summer… all because of who? Y/N.

Knows he can’t separate Chaeyoung from Y/N – childhood friends after all – but he can separate Y/N and Chaeyoung from SVT. Then he can start working on separating them.

‘Bitchy’ Client of Jeonghan (Eunha?):

Could be the one who bitched to the schoolboard when Jeonghan wanted to resign from SVT for Chaeyoung – or not.

Could be jealous of Y/N taking Jeonghan away from her, and wants to keep him away from Y/N

Jaehyun:

That one dude Chaeyoung dated for a hot second (were they really together??), best friends with Yuta (makes him suspicious!)

Could be in on the whole plot, planned to get to Y/N through Chaeyoung, but after that failed, they’re now doing Plan B

Unknown:

In Newsflash! 11 Y/N mentioned she once was too late in mending her relationship with someone. (She let someone slip away, as she said it.) Who was it? And could it be that the person is back, angry at Y/N for letting her slip away and wanting to get revenge?

Funny-informative things:

Seungcheol considered Joshua still a brother, even after Joshua left SVT and basically told them to get lost. So it’s extra ironic that he told Jihoon to leave because of a girl he just met ~2 months ago (Newsflash! 4)

You know, it’s really ironic – in Newsflash! 10 Joshua cites the fact that SVT just left Chaeyoung behind as his reason as to why he doesn’t tell Chaeyoung the truth. It’s very obvious he’s angry about them just leaving her. But look at what he’s doing now, leaving his friend of YEARS for… well, poor reasons. At least poorer reasons than SVT had to avoid Chaeyoung. Their education was at stake, while for him… what is at stake?

I like Jun calling Mingaho out on his bullshit in Newsflash! 22. First telling Jun that Y/N doesn’t like him that way and that he should go on a date with Yiren but then later on turn around and tell him ‘omg it was obvious she had feelings for you why did you play with her!!!’ Hao you just sank.

Newsflash! 26 Joshua’s whole tirade about “You should come to me when you need something, I should walk you home at night, it should be me, not Jun or Mingyu or Jeonghan” just rubs me in the wrong way. Like, dude – you weren’t there for her, but others were. So Y/N learned ‘oh, ok, can’t go to Joshua, I’ll go to someone else’. You can’t blame her for that. She went and found a different support system because you weren’t there for her. Stop being so controlling and demanding – even if you’re her friend since childhood, she doesn’t owe you shit. She doesn’t have to rely just on you, and doesn’t owe you a relationship. (Gosh, sorry went off on a tangent.)

Newsflash! 28 Jeonghan saying he’ll wait for Y/N until she’s ready (a whOLE LIE)

Newsflash! 36 Y/N doing the right thing and PUNCHING YUTA LIKE HE DESERVES GOODBYE HOE

THE MF IRONY OF JUN TEXTING “you don’t have any rights rn ur a dick” TO JEONGHAN IN Newsflash! 38 I’M DIEING XD HONEY, YOU ARE DICK YOURSELF. AND YOU’LL CONTINUE TO BE A DICK. GOSH YOU’RE MY BIAS WRECKER BUT HONESTLY SCREW Newsflash!/Move!Jun (Can we please get a moment where Jeonghan is convinced of Y/N's innocence but Jun doesn't believe her stubbornly, making Y/N cry, and then later when he sees he was wrong and tries to apologize Jeonghan pulls a "you don't have any right rn ur a dick" PLEASE???)

Also thank you Lee Jihoon for telling the guys they need to freaking CHILL. “throwing yourselves at her like DOGS” is exactly the phrase I would’ve used. 10/10 (Newsflash! 38)

Newsflash! 40 Joshua being a whole clown and texting “ill wait an eternity for you even if I get heartbroken in the end” like yeah, look at where you are now

Okay so to get this right: Y/N, Chaeyoung and Seungkwan have left for 1 week; Y/N drops her phone into a river in Thailand; that same week the thread was posted (but not on the exact same day?); very soon after that Sohee shows up and lies. That's… quick. How did no one of SVT think "wait, how come she showed up so soon after the thread was posted??" They really have -5 braincells, huh.

Questions I have/Things which don't add up for me:

Why was Chae’s Dad okay with Joshua still being friends with Chaeyoung? Is it because they didn’t have a thing for each other? Also, Chaeyoung's father still could've threatened Joshua. Either by threatening to take away his scholarship (if he has one) or by threatening to kick him out of university. Why was Joshua fine?

Why was it only Joshua who held to Chaeyoung when shit went down back then? I can understand Jeonghan, since his education was threatened, and Seungcheol, since he seems to be close with Jeonghan. But all the others? Did none of them, of all 12 (10) of them, care enough for Chaeyoung to say ‘I am resigning from SVT, I want to keep being friends with you’? My point is: it seems that SVT has a history of dropping people quite easily. Especially girls. Which is ironic, since SVT’s motto/theme is about respecting women and making them feel happy.

Then again - for how long have Joshua and Chaeyoung been friends? For how long have Chaeyoung and Y/N been friends? We know Joshua and Y/N are childhood friends (as far as I remember), but since Joshua said he met Chaeyoung during his time in SVT and only got close to her at that point, I don't think Y/N and Chaeyoung were childhood friends. But we also know Chaeyoung and Y/N were friends in Highschool, or else Chaeyoung wouldn't know about the reason why Y/N left for Japan. So... was Joshua just not aware of Chaeyoung, the best friend of his childhood friend? (How would that work??)

How did Y/N not know of SVT at the beginning of Newsflash! ? Like, she has to ask Chaeyoung who they are, even though Y/N has already been there for 2 Quarters. I get being a reclusive, I am too, but even I know about the very popular stuff going on around me. And SVT has to be popular. A host club/frat like theirs, not popular? They wouldn't bring in money if they weren't. And they do, as far as we know. So... is Y/N so unaware of her surroundings?

What also confuses me – we know Chaeyoung and Y/N have history. We know Y/N and Joshua have history. But Seungkwan and Y/N? We don’t know about them. We’re told he’s close friends with Y/N (Mingyu asking Seungkwan for help for getting Y/N and Seungcheol together, Seungkwan being the one to travel along Chaeyoung and Y/N), but we don’t see it. We see as much of their friendship – even less – than of Y/N’s friendship with Vernon, Dino, Hoshi and DK. I’m just- what’s their history? Why was he the one to travel alongside Chaeyoung and Y/N? Yeah, Chaeyoung said it’s because he’s not trying to get into Y/N’s pants, but… neither is Vernon or Dino. Or Seokmin. Hoshi is on shaky grounds, but I don’t think he wants to either. So, why Seungkwan?

Did DK and Y/N ever actually meet? Either during Newsflash! or Move! ? Because we know Y/N spent time with Vernon, Chan, Seungkwan, Soonyoung, Joshua and Chaeyoung on different occasions, but never was there any talk of DK. Speaking of which - how did DK and Y/N become friends? Was DK just an 'add-on' when Y/N started tutoring Chan and became friends with him? Does that really make them friends?

And... that's all I have. Sorry if I lost some things when I re-submitted them! And let's hope it'll work now!!

I really love what you do. Keep up the amazing work!!! 💕💕

[lilacivories]

welcome to the family

characters: Reid, Morgan, Garcia, Hotchner

pairing(s): none

summary: Reid admittedly doesn’t have much experience with different forms of affection outside of the world of theoretics and academia, and the BAU team helps to introduce him to the real thing

word count: 1686

a/n: I wrote this for @ticklishraspberries after she let me essentially live tweet the first season of criminal minds in her messages <333

It wasn’t odd, Reid realized almost immediately, to find his teammates in affectionate positions around the office. Not only was it his job to observe this type of behavior and take them into consideration, but nobody attempted to hide it. Any unspoken societal rule that existed about these things were either ignored or thrown out the window.

It was shoulder massages at their desks and gentle, barely-there pats on the back while passing each other by in the hallways. It was Hotch letting someone take a nap on the couch in his office and covering them with a blanket he had for the occasion, or JJ allowing Elle to rest her head on her shoulder on a long plane ride back to Virginia. It was something Reid had never expected from FBI agents: Tenderness.

And then there were the more playful days, which became more and more frequent with each case the team worked on together. At first, Reid wasn’t quite sure what type of game they were playing, all of them flinching away from each other, until he was witnessed it first-hand.

It happened rather quickly, with Reid’s only warning being a wink his way from Garcia as she snuck up behind Morgan.

“Hey!” he cried when her fingers found his sides; with his reflexes, there was only a split second delay before he had swiveled around and snatched up her devious hands, his smirk matching hers.

“I knew you were ticklish,” she said, simper sweet as acid. “I’m gonna get you so good once I can keep you from squirming around.”

“I’d like to see you try, baby girl,” Morgan countered, not flustered in the least.

“It actually isn’t his fault,” Reid piped up, stirring his coffee. “Scientists have found that it’s the hypothalamus comes into play when you're being tickled, which coordinates your autonomic nervous system– essentially, it’s a fight-or-flight response. Some evolutionary researchers even think that laughing when you're being tickled is a defense mechanism.”

“Thank you for the lesson, wunderkind,” Garcia joked. She gave him a kind pat on the shoulder as she walked away. Reid appreciated the gesture, however brief, and glanced behind just in time to see her giving Morgan a silent, playful glare.

These forms of affection seemed to be doled out in some form of never-ending prank war, where attacks would happen at random. Even more strangely, the tickling wasn’t undesirable– Reid was more than 95% sure that it was enjoyed by everyone involved. Not one person’s body language indicated that they wanted it to stop, besides the instinctual curling away from the touch.

“That’s gargalesis,” he informed JJ after Elle jabbed her in the ribs and she was left rubbing the area. “It’s a specific type of tickling sensation. Knismesis refers to a light tickling, often used as a defense mechanism against insects. It usually causes an itching sensation and not laughter. Gargalesis, however, is laughter-provoking, usually caused by a harder pressure to the skin.”

JJ chuckled. “Very interesting, Spence, but I think I prefer the real thing.”

None of this specific type of affection was actually shown towards Reid until they were on their way to Montana on a case, everyone taking the time to spread out and relax on the plane as they went over the details.

“Your posture doesn’t have to be perfect all the time, you know,” Morgan teased Reid as he sat next to him. “We have a couple of hours before we actually get to the crime scene.”

Reid frowned and rolled his shoulders; they were a bit stiff, but he didn’t deem it too important, so he merely winced at a small pain here and there before returning to the case file. “Keeping good posture actually prevents fatigue, because the muscles are being used more efficiently. This allows the body to use less energy, as well as– ah!”

It was only a quick jab to his side, but it was enough to derail his train of information. Reid looked down at his own body, which had flinched away, then back up at Morgan. “What was that?”

Morgan was laughing, however. “Oh, Garcia owes me so much money!” he whooped. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?” Reid demanded.

“That you’re ticklish!” Morgan said. “She was so sure you weren’t. Lucky for me, she was wrong. Which means I get to rake in fifty dollars.” His demeanor changed, eyes narrowing and grin only growing. “And now, I have a great way to relax all those rigid muscles of yours!”

An unexpected squeal escaped Reid’s mouth when Morgan started to squeeze at his sides, followed by bright, uncharacteristic giggles.

“No, no, no!” Reid cried, squirming almost frantically, but Morgan had him trapped, pulling him against his chest, strong arms wrapping around his waist.

Red could feel his ears heating up; he hadn’t expected to be so self-conscious about his laugh. It was high and bright and unfettered, and, moreover, completely ridiculous. He just couldn’t control himself.

He could feel his attacker chuckling along with him. “Consider this as making up for lost time, giggle boy,” he teased. Reid wanted to protest against the new nickname, but Morgan had migrated to his lower ribs, and his giggles upgraded to desperate cackles.

“M-Morgan!” he shrieked as they both discovered just how ticklish every inch of his ribs were. It wasn’t long until Morgan was at the very top, digging just right into the spot below his underarms. “Not there, not there!”

“Rookie mistake,” Hotch warned too late, never looking up from the case file. “You’ve just given your attacker vital information on a weak spot, and now he has a perfect way of incapacitating you. Do you have a plan for escape?”

Each and every word only worsened Reid’s predicament, especially when one of Morgan’s hands began to claw at his stomach, the other still working diligently to tease the hypersensitive spaces between his ribs. Reid doubled over, hair a mess, but was back to pressing against Morgan’s chest in a futile attempt to get away from the fingers suddenly sneaking underneath his shirt and skittering around his belly button.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Elle said after Reid let out a loud, helpless snort.

“Pl– please! Pleahease!” Reid exclaimed; his ears were red and his cheeks were catching up. He had no clue what he was pleading for, but that certainly didn’t stop him.

“Begging makes the attacker feel more in control,” Morgan said, and Reid wanted to kick him for how coolly he spoke. “It lets them know that you’re entirely at their mercy. You’re just adding fuel to the fire at this point, kid.”

He couldn’t even speak anymore, which Reid hadn’t anticipated– all he could do was shake his head and push at Morgan’s hands until his friend finally got the picture and backed off.

Reid slumped in his hold, panting and giggling. “Looks like someone finally got him to relax,” he heard JJ remark.

“Better than a massage,” Morgan joked. Then, to Spencer: “I didn’t kill you too bad, did I?”

Spencer shook his head, though his breathing still had yet to even out.

“Good, because I am definitely telling Garcia all about this.” Morgan patted his on the shoulder. “Welcome to the family, kid.”

Spencer didn’t speak again until he and Morgan were alone, driving to one of the victim’s houses. Imposing pine trees lined the old road on either side, split up only by flat lengths of grass where nothing else had grown.

“What are you thinking?” Morgan asked, hating the quiet.

“Hm? Oh,” Reid cleared his throat. “Uh, I think the unsub definitely wants an audience. He’s most likely–”

“I don’t mean about the case,” Morgan clarified. “I asked what you’re thinking. It’s usually pretty hard to keep you quiet, so I figured it’s something you can’t quite wrap your head around. And you can always do that with a case.”

Reid shifted in his seat, a light flush rising on his cheekbones at being called out. “I just– I was–” He pushed his hair back nervously. “A-about the plane.”

Morgan glanced at him. “The plane itself or something that happened on the plane?”

“You...tickled me.”

“Oh. I won’t do it again, if you’d prefer. It’s just something the rest of us kind of do.”

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Reid’s cheeks darkened and he only stammered worse. “No, n-no, I mean– well, I mean–” He composed himself enough to admit, “No one’s ever done that to me before.”

Morgan barked out a laugh. “You’re kidding!” he accused, before actually turning to see how apprehensive his colleague was. It hadn’t occurred to him how foreign– or how important– this type of affection might be to the kid.

“Is it weird if I liked it?” Reid suddenly asked.

“Do you think the rest of us do it all the time because we don’t like it?” Morgan countered; he placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, look, of course it isn’t weird. That’s what being part of the family means.”

Reid nodded, still embarrassed, though Morgan could see a small, pleased smile tugging on the corners of his mouth. “Alright,” he conceded.

“Nuh-uh,” Morgan said. “You gotta smile for me now, those are the rules.” He fluttered his fingers over the kid’s ear, smiling when he giggled and snorted.

“Okay, okay!” Reid squealed. “Keep your eyes on the road!”

Morgan stopped and did so, not wanting to send them off the road while trying to cheer Reid up. “Just remember, I’ll wreck your shit as often as I need to if you keep it up with those stiff, skinny shoulders.”

“Actually, ten to fifteen minutes of laughing burns 10 to 40 extra calories a day, which could add up to one to four pounds in a year,” Reid corrected. “Which probably wouldn’t help with the whole ‘skinny shoulders’ thing.”

“You just wait for the flight back,” Morgan threatened. “You’re so getting it.”

If he saw how big Reid’s smile grew at that, he didn’t say anything. He was glad to just see the kid happy.

[kerouacsrevenge-blog]

The true importance of good spelling

Gone are the times of secretarial composing pools and hardback work area word references. Presently, we lead quite a bit of our every day business by brisk flame finger-hitting on minor screens. Be that as it may, ever-littler innovation, and an expanding weight for ever-faster reaction times with the appearance of email, implies it's possible a grammatical error will crawl into our composed correspondence, or more awful, autocorrect will embed an improper word.

We've all been there. Sites and online distributions are covered with grammatical mistakes and even world pioneers once in a while don't delay to check tweets before squeezing 'send'. Who can overlook President Trump's scandalous covfefe tweet?

While some spelling slip-ups are innocuous and amusing, many aren't. The unassuming grammatical error not just has the ability to cause us to seem less insightful than we are. Poor spelling can likewise make disarray, lost clearness and meaning and in extraordinary cases it can cost millions in botched deals and occupation chances. It can possibly wreck client connections and even ruin your opportunity of discovering love on the web.

Yet, in the event that nobody is resistant and innovation is tending to make terrible spelling ordinary – take the ascent of 'content talk' shortenings for instance – is immaculate orthography no longer of significant worth? Also, is it OK to incorrectly spell words?

Spell-check: some portion of the issue

Spell-checking apparatuses may appear the appropriate response, however they additionally make another issue, cautions Anne Trubek, a specialist in new composition innovations and originator of Belt Publishing in the US territory of Ohio.

A long haul examination of blunders in college understudies' papers in the US observed that spelling used to be the most widely recognized mix-up. Be that as it may, the new number one mistake in understudy composing is presently utilizing the 'off-base word', clarifies Trubek. "Spell-check, as the greater part of us know, now and then rectifies spelling to an unexpected word in comparison to planned; if the composing isn't later edited, this PC made mistake goes unnoticed."

New innovations, for example, Apple's Siri work, additionally add to the rising aloofness toward right spelling. "On the off chance that you take a gander at the advancement of advances, regardless of whether it's plume pens to wellspring pens to ball direct pens toward consoles, the objective is to go quicker in light of the fact that you need to coordinate the pace of the thoughts in your mind," says Trubek. "Siri does that the best."

Autocorrection is most likely why an official White House press explanation as of late called for 'peach' in the Middle East, instead of 'harmony', says Simon Horobin, educator of English language and writing at the University of Oxford. "There are a wide range of issues that are going to come up in the event that you think you have a totally safeguard strategy. Regardless you must figure out how to spell," he says.

Already, composed material experienced a procedure of duplicate altering and editing to strip out blunders, yet now online substance goes up in all respects rapidly and there are frequently botches, says Horobin, writer of Does Spelling Matter? also, How English Became English. "Individuals see their transient messages as vaporous, however indeed, some portion of the capacity of the web is that it's consistently there so years after the fact individuals are as yet understanding it," he cautions.

Indeed, you're being judged

An overview of 5,500 American singles in 2016 by web based dating webpage Match.com found that 39% passed judgment on the reasonableness of up-and-comers by their grip of language structure – positioning that more significant than their grin, dress sense or even the condition of their teeth.

What's more, inquire about demonstrates that when individuals detect a spelling botch on a site they'll frequently leave it since they dread it's false.

Organizations know that a bit of their picture settles upon right composition and spelling, says Roslyn Petelin, partner teacher recorded as a hard copy at the University of Queensland in Australia. "Nothing can cause you to lose validity more rapidly and appear to be uneducated than a spelling botch, and that incorporates punctuations," she says.

There have been a few court cases rotating around spelling issues, she says, including the as of late settled instance of Taylor and Sons in the UK – where a multimillion-pound fight in court was pursued over a misstep including a solitary missing letter.

To be sure, an absence of a specific degree of capability might be a hindrance to finding a new line of work by any stretch of the imagination. A ton of managers in Australia presently request that applicants step through composition exams, says Petelin. "Youngsters leaving college may have all the privilege relational abilities, yet on the off chance that they can't compose intelligibly, managers won't give them an occupation."

A 2015 overview of UK managers utilizing by and large more than 1.2 million individuals, led for business hall bunch CBI, found that 37% of bosses were disappointed with gauges of proficiency and utilization of English among college and school leavers.

"It would be an error to tell youngsters that spelling doesn't make a difference in this industry, or in this occupation, in light of the fact that those fundamental abilities are a genuine door to different jobs or to creating different aptitudes," says Pippa Morgan, the CBI's head of instruction and abilities.

Spelling abilities are required like never before, she says. "In case you're managing client administration enquiries by means of Twitter, that may be the one connection clients have with that organization thus the nature of that message, the utilization of language, is extremely significant. It may be similarly as significant as a well disposed face in a store or voice over a telephone," says Morgan.

At the point when it's OK to change spelling

Now and again however, mistaken spelling, truncations or shortening of words is OK. "We for instance use 'business' in our tweeting as shorthand for business," Morgan says.

Furthermore, in certain unique circumstances, casual language is required. "On the off chance that you send an email to a 21-year-old VP that says 'Dear Mr Jones' and you're utilizing excessively formal word usage, that could be an issue," says Trubek.

Be that as it may, even – or maybe, particularly – in the realm of internet based life, self-broadcasted 'punctuation Nazis' will get out spelling botches. Others attempt to cover themselves when messaging from their cell phone by including a rider, for example, 'Sent on the fly by iphone. It would be ideal if you pardon any grammatical errors.'

Where once there were concurred shows for letter composing, the online condition has made another in the middle of type of talk where we don't exactly recognize what the standards are, says Horobin. While loosening up the guidelines of spelling, language structure and accentuation may be satisfactory on Twitter or in a Facebook post, email is trickier to measure, he says. "Email can some of the time sit between the formal and the casual."

Similarly as we adjust our discourse contingent upon whether we're giving an address, taking a prospective employee meeting, or visiting to companions, we have to change our utilization in the computerized world, says Horobin.

So what's the best way to deal with embrace meanwhile?

"Fail on utilizing the customary shows and ensuring that your spelling is adequate. Generally individuals will pass judgment on you on it. That is the cruel reality," says Horobin.

"It's smarter to be correct and to appear to be marginally particular and fusty than it is to attempt to seem to be progressively loose and wind up annoying someone since you've made a type of essential mistake that they feel incredibly unequivocally about." If you are looking for more information about spelling visit Spanish Spell Checker right away.

[bigyack-com]

DealBook: How Did Carlos Ghosn Flee Japan?

… and we’re back! Welcome to 2020 — we’re looking forward to a big year ahead. If you like this email, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you have news tips, send them to us. Now, on with the show.

Carlos Ghosn’s escape committee

The former head of Nissan and Renault managed to evade 24-hour surveillance in Tokyo and spirit himself out of Japan to Lebanon. How he did it increasingly sounds like a movie-level caper.Associates planned the heist for months, the FT reports, citing unnamed sources. They hired private security operatives who worked in multiple countries.Mr. Ghosn made it onto a private plane bound for Turkey and arrived in Lebanon early Monday, the WSJ adds. (A Lebanese news media outlet claimed that he had hidden in a box meant for musical equipment; the world’s tabloids, perhaps with an eye on that movie version, reckon it must have been a double bass case.) He entered Lebanon on a French passport.His Japanese legal team was blindsided. He’d supposedly handed over all of his travel documents. “I want to ask him, ‘How could you do this to us?’” his lawyer, Junichiro Hironaka, told reporters.It’s unclear whether Lebanon helped. The government there recently asked Japan to send Mr. Ghosn for trial in Beirut on corruption charges. But an official denied any involvement in his escape.What’s clear is that Mr. Ghosn has scores to settle. His statements have denounced “injustice and political persecution” in Japan’s legal system. He may also take aim at Nissan, where he accuses officials of plotting against him, and at the French government, for not doing more to help him.____________________________Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael J. de la Merced.____________________________

Tempering hopes for the markets in 2020

Last year was a phenomenal one for nearly every kind of investment: stocks, bonds, gold and more. But there’s reason to think this year won’t be as good.How good was 2019? The S&P 500 rose nearly 29 percent. High-quality American corporate bonds were up 14 percent. Even futures prices for hogs jumped 17 percent. “Rarely in my career has everything worked simultaneously,” Mark Vaselkiv, the chief investment officer for fixed income at T. Rowe Price, told the NYT.But those outsized gains were mostly thanks to the Fed and its unexpected reversal on interest rates. And the central bank has signaled that it’s probably done cutting rates for now.That doesn’t mean Wall Street expects bad things. Bank of America sees the S&P 500 rising about 2.2 percent, while Goldman Sachs — which has declared the economy nearly recession-proof — hopes for a little more.It’s also worth remembering who’ll be left out. Nearly half of Americans don’t own stocks, Thomas Heath of the WaPo points out. Rising student debt and stagnant wages have left many with less money to invest.

The case against C.E.O. activism

Corporate bosses like Walmart’s Doug McMillon and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff have increasingly taken explicit political stands, breaking a longtime rule. The Economist predicts a backlash this year:• Outspoken companies open themselves to charges of hypocrisy, it says. Take Nike, which has pushed virtuous branding but has also “been embroiled in a doping scandal.”• “If there is a recession, C.E.O. activists will struggle to reconcile the interests of employees and their fiduciary duty to shareholders.”• “C.E.O.s hope that by adopting social and political causes they will defuse more radical sentiments. Dream on.”Warren Buffett agrees. Companies shouldn’t impose their beliefs about what’s best for the world on their investors, he told the FT, since “this is the shareholders’ money.”

And the case for C.E.O. generosity

Andrew writes in his most recent column that corporate leaders should be lauded for giving to worthy causes — but pushed to do better at their companies, too.• “Do you know who goes to the food banks that so many support? It is not just the homeless and unemployed. It is, many times, the people we all work with.”• “When you go back to work after the holidays, ask your human resources department what the lowest pay is for any employee at the company. And, just as important, what is the lowest pay for any outside contractor that your company uses?”• “When it comes to giving, the goal shouldn’t be to simply donate more money, as laudable as that is. The aim should be to create a society where we don’t need places like food banks in the first place.”

In case you missed it

• Boeing fired its C.E.O., Dennis Muilenburg, as it struggles to get the 737 Max airborne again.• Travis Kalanick quit Uber’s board, ending all ties to the ride-hailing giant that he once personified.• The F.B.I. is reportedly investigating Ghislaine Maxwell, a top associate of the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, and others on suspicion of facilitating sexual abuse.• How corporate lobbyists won big tax breaks from the Trump administration.

How David Stern remade U.S. sports

The former N.B.A. commissioner, who died yesterday at age 77, led the basketball league for 30 years, helping transform American professional sports.His focus on worldwide marketing and expansion meant that “N.B.A. stars were the first from North America to achieve global renown like their soccer counterparts, with the biggest becoming household names even in the remotest regions of the world,” according to Marc Stein of the NYT.“Instead of trying to snuff out the rising power of players — an approach that had cost baseball and football hundreds of millions of dollars and huge chunks of seasons — Stern figured out how to embrace the change and capitalize on it,” Matthew Futterman of the NYT writes.Andrew has his own memories of Mr. Stern: “#DavidStern helped launch my career at 15 years old when he agreed to an interview and he never let me forget it!” he tweeted. “The world lost somebody special today.”

Are job auditions out of control?

The days of getting hired on the basis of a résumé and a few interviews are gone. Job applicants face ever more hoops to jump through, Maridel Reyes of the New York Post writes:“Interviewers are increasingly making absurd demands on applicants’ time, assigning intensive take-home work to demonstrate skills and show how they’d approach the role for which they’re interviewing,” Ms. Reyes writes.It often seems that applicants are working for free. Nicole, a strategist in New York, said she had been asked for an entire year’s marketing plan — and was then passed over in favor of an intern at the company. “I was furious that I’d essentially consulted for them,” she told The Post.Here’s what to do if you’re asked to audition, according to Ms. Reyes: Know what’s normal, do your homework on the potential employer and negotiate the terms of the process.

The speed read

Deals• Last year was the fourth-best on record for global M.&A., thanks to American corporate buyers. (FT)• A group led by Tencent of China agreed to buy 10 percent of Universal Music Group, whose stars include Drake and Billie Eilish, at a nearly $34 billion valuation. (Business Insider)• Warren Buffett declined to buy Tiffany & Company, paving the way for the jeweler’s deal to sell itself to LVMH. (FT)• Hospital chain mergers were meant to improve quality of care. A new study suggests that they haven’t. (WSJ)Politics and policy• President Trump said he planned to sign a “phase one” trade deal with China on Jan. 15. (NYT)• The F.D.A. plans to announce a ban on most flavored e-cigarettes as soon as this week. (NYT)• A California law that extends legal protections for freelancers like Uber drivers went into effect yesterday. Some workers fear that it will hurt them. (NYT)• Senator Bernie Sanders disclosed that he had raised more than $34.5 million in the fourth quarter, surpassing his Democratic presidential rivals. (NYT)Tech• Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon now have a combined market value of about $4 trillion. (Quartz)• Google said it would stop using an Ireland-based loophole that saved it hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes. (FT)• An A.I. system from Google is often better at finding breast cancer on mammograms than radiologists are, a study has found. (NYT)• In South Korea, the 5G wireless future is here, but is often a bit disappointing. (WSJ)Best of the rest• In Germany, electric cars are an economic threat. (NYT)• That said, here are the models to watch this year. (NYT)• Companies are increasingly forcing workers to train their foreign replacements. (Axios)• Insomnia could cost you your job. (Yahoo Money)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com. Read the full article

[biofunmy]

Thank God for Judy Blume

When I share information in my gynecology and obstetrics practice and on social media, one of the most common responses I get from women is, How did I not know that?

And I hear this from women of all ages.

Many women have experienced medical gaslighting — having their symptoms dismissed and being told their lived experience is imagined. Women tell me this makes them feel uniquely broken, as if something is wrong with their body only.

This happened again last week when I answered a question in the Well section about options for a teen who doesn’t want periods. When explaining some of the treatments, and how they could help with cramping and unpredictability, I mentioned they may also help other symptoms like menstrual diarrhea.

To those among us who do not get their periods: Yes, that’s a thing.

Menstrual diarrhea is experienced by more than 25 percent of otherwise healthy women who menstruate, and yet I didn’t realize how abnormal so many women with it felt because it’s rarely — if ever — discussed. Even in the doctor’s office.

So I tweeted about my own experience and within 24 hours the tweet had close to 20,000 likes, and that’s not counting the public responses and private messages.

Menstrual taboos are very real. They are also an effective way to oppress half the population. Menstrual shame keeps women from knowing how their bodies works.

Whether it is being cruel to a teen who has leaked blood onto her clothes at school or a woman excluded from religious services, the implication is clear — there is something dirty about menstruation.

The squeamishness is not about blood, it’s about menstrual blood. After all, we don’t shame people for bloody noses, right?

Add diarrhea on top of blood, and who is going to talk publicly about that? (Well, other than me.) You might as well bring in the fainting couch for the non-menstruating public.

The response to my tweet caused me to think about my own experience with my reproductive tract and what that tells us about education, choice and trusting people to make decisions about their own bodies.

Many people assume that because I discuss reproductive health so freely, I must have had a very body-positive upbringing. But it was quite the opposite. As far as my mother was concerned, I may as well have had doll genitalia (i.e. none). Among the things I was told about my body: there would be “blood from down there,” tampons were evil and sex was even worse.

It’s easy to judge mothers like mine harshly, but her generation and every generation before had been taught next to nothing about their own physiology. Speaking directly about menstruation or vaginas? That would be unladylike.

As a teen, when my mother woke up covered in blood with her first period, she thought she was dying. Her own mother laughed and pointed. Not exactly a warm welcome to the sisterhood.

Thank God for Judy Blume.

Image

Credit…Illustration by Claire Milbrath

I had the privilege of a decent class on the body and menstruation in grade six, and access to a public library with a wonderful librarian. I checked out books about the human body and — after reading “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” — prepared myself.

But I wasn’t prepared for the crippling cramps and horrible diarrhea. The girls in my class who had already started their periods had never mentioned either and my mother had nothing to offer. So I missed school one or two days each month.

My periods were catastrophically heavy. I tried to donate blood when I was 18, but was declined because the point of care test suggested I had an iron deficiency. I would learn later that the cause was my periods, but my doctor just said heavy periods and cramps were “normal.” Her prescription? Eat liver.

I want to blame that doctor for dismissing me, but I have complex feelings. After all, she was my mother’s age and had probably trained in the 1960s. What would she have been taught about menstruation? Probably very little, beyond the fact that it existed.

Medicine was very invested for a long time in concepts of “female complaints” being weak or hysterical. Imagine you are a woman in your medical training in the 1960s and everything you hear about the female body is associated with weakness, nevermind the culture of purity?

My understanding of my own period changed when I started medical school. I was 20 years old (yes, 20), so I received quality information about the body very early, relatively speaking. I learned that it wasn’t normal to bleed or cramp the way I did and that these things could be treated.

I also learned what may have caused the diarrhea — prostaglandins, which are substances released during menstruation that, among other things, help the uterus contract — but only because I had learned in another lecture that prostaglandins could also cause diarrhea.

I put two and two together. After class I asked the professor if prostaglandins from menstruation could also cause diarrhea?

“I don’t see why not,” he said. (And I later confirmed in my training that my theory was correct, but as menstrual diarrhea is essentially unstudied, other inflammatory substances may also be involved.)

Armed with facts, I sneaked into one of the OB/GYN clinics and took three sample packs of the birth control pills. I’d learned they might treat my heavy periods and cramps and that they reduced prostaglandin production, so I hypothesized they might also help my diarrhea.

I was right. I never had an overly bothersome period again.

It shouldn’t be that hard for anyone to feel better — no one should need to attend medical school or risk arrest for breaking and entering — and yet, it often still is.

The lack of women in medicine meant the medical canon about menstruation was first created by literally the least informed people: those who had never had a period.

And while a doctor doesn’t need to have a symptom or condition to treat it effectively, if medicine is erroneously downplaying the significance of menstrual symptoms, having one or two women around who could have said, “Well, actually … ” might have made a big difference in how we treat women medically.

If we educate women about menstruation, they can make choices that work for them — whether it’s finding the right menstrual product, knowing when symptoms might warrant treatment or investigation, or knowing when to advocate for themselves if they are not being heard. And if oral contraceptives were over-the-counter — which we know is safe — many people could start first-line therapy if they so choose.

Even just arming people with the knowledge of why their bodies behave in certain ways, and giving them the freedom to talk about it without shame, is potent medicine.

Dr. Jen Gunter is an obstetrician and gynecologist in California. She is the author of the “The Vagina Bible” and writes The Cycle, a column on women’s health that appears regularly in Styles.

Sahred From Source link Health

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[syberiawinx]

What NicoB Did To Me.

I’ve debated making this post for a long time, largely because there isn’t a big Nico community on Tumblr, and I doubted anyone would listen or care.  This whole incident showed me how some of his fans can act, turning a blind eye to the truth just because of their love for Nico, even when he is in the wrong.  But I’m in agony, and I can’t just let Nico get away with the horrible thing he did.  Even if none of you believe me, hopefully, someone will at least see this and know the truth.

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

Once upon a time, I was one of Nico’s biggest fans.  He was one of my favorite YouTubers, and like many of you, his humor helped me through a lot of hard times.  That’s what made what eventually happened so much more painful.  I had been a member of the community for years, had a lot of friends, had never had any real problems or fights, and had been helping the mods to the point where they were saying I was such an asset to the community and talking about making ME a mod.  They’d literally just thanked me and said as much mere minutes before it happened.

I suddenly found myself banned.

There was no warning or explanation-I wasn’t even told I’d been banned.  No notice from YouTube is given when this happens, your comments just become invisible to everyone but you.  As such, you could go years or even your whole life without ever realizing you’ve been banned.  Thankfully, I realized not long after it happened, but that didn’t help much.  I felt...humiliated.  I’d been talking cheerfully with you all, and not one of you could or would ever see a word of it.  All my past comments were gone too.  My whole existence had essentially been erased from the community.

I suffer from a very severe anxiety disorder.  Suddenly being banned, being unable to watch one of my favorite YouTubers, and having my very existence erased...it made me have an attack.  I desperately reached out to Nico for answers, confiding in him about my anxiety and just how bad a place I was in, but he never replied.  Due to a glitch in YouTube, I was able to reach out to the mods and another regular user via an existing comment thread we’d all been a part of.  I told them of my anxiety too, as I was getting more and more worked up as this dragged on, and I wanted them to understand how I felt and how desperately I needed answers.  Initially, they reassured me, with Miles Hikari-one of the mods and my main contact throughout all this-telling me that several of the mods actually suffered from similar disorders and understood.  The regular user, Anon, seemed confused by my ban too.  We did not get along, but he acknowledged I’d never done anything that should warrant that.  The mods had no idea what was going on either and attempted to contact Nico.  I made it clear I was not looking for a “second chance”, as I knew I had done nothing to ruin my first one.  I wanted answers, and preferably, this ban lifted.

When the mods got back to me, they passed on Nico’s reasons for banning me, and keep in mind he said these things knowing the dark place I was in at the time.

He told me he hated me.  He told me all of you hated me.  He said I had no friends in the community, and that everyone wanted me gone.  According to him, I’m an abusive bully who is a toxic presence-who poisons everything she touches.  He claimed that he had spoken to several of you and none of you had anything good to say.  

I...wanted to die.  I truly and utterly wanted to die.  This pushed me into an even darker place.  I’d never had any real fights with anyone, the mods seemed to like me, and I was under the impression I had a lot of friends.  Whether it was true or not, hearing this destroyed me.

But at the same time, I knew something was off.  Who had said these things?  I could not see any of you hating me that much, because I couldn’t think of any thing I had done that would warrant it.  They would not give me a single name.  So I instead asked them to show me some examples of me being abusive or toxic, because I knew I had NEVER behaved in such a way, let alone over the course of many years.  They refused to provide me with a single post.  To top it all off, it seemed weird.  If I was this hated, why had Anon and the mods seemingly been unaware of it when they learned I had been banned?  If I was this awful a person, surely they would not have been surprised and confused by this occurrence?  In fact, if I’d been behaving like that for years, why had I not been banned or even warned ever before this?

It didn’t add up,   I pointed these things out to the mods, and they dragged things out longer, claiming they were “talking with Nico”.  I repeatedly asked to be part of a group convo with all them, because I was stressing out worse and worse as time passed, and I knew the best way to resolve this would be for us all to talk, but they refused.

When they finally responded, it was not to post the proof I had asked for.  They’d actually abandoned their original claims  Instead, they talked down to and humiliated me.  They found out about aggressive bullying I’d been subjected to on a certain site that had been blamed on me and a girl on DA I’d commissioned to do art for me who’d falsely claimed I harassed her.  The mods used these upsetting incidents from over THREE YEARS AGO to justify my ban, telling me my behavior was unacceptable, and that while they were willing to give me a second chance, they would be watching me.

Naturally, this just made me more upset...and more livid.  I told them off as politely as I could, as did Anon.  They then abandoned THAT line of arguing and brought up several recent “incidents” Nico told them about that they said were the REAL reasons I was banned.  The “Ni No Kuni Freakout”, the “Fire Emblem War”, and me allegedly spamming Nico with panicked/demanding messages and threatening him on Twitter.  

Since my comments are invisible, I have included a screenshot of the alleged “Ni No Kuni Freakout”, which was the last comment I made before the ban.  As you can see, it was clearly not a freakout, nor deserving of a ban.  I don’t remember which video the Fire Emblem discussion took place on, but it was just that-a discussion.  Anon, who was part of it, remembered that, while me and him disagreed about things, we were not hostile or fighting.  It was no war.  The mods, when this was pointed out to them, instead claimed that I had brought up Fates solely to START a fight and to drag the thread off-topic, even though that specific mod was actually the one who encouraged it, and the original topic was Fire Emblem to begin with.

As for Twitter, this was where it became clear Nico had not only exaggerated, he outright lied.  See, I’m not active on Twitter, so anyone who goes to my profile under this same username can see the FOUR messages I sent him.  

This is the first Tweet, sent to him after a certain AAI2 video went up:

“Nico, you do realize tthis thumbnail is kind of a big spoiler? Some people are pretty upset, so you might wanna change it.”

The remaining three were sent several days later, when he addressed the spoiler thumbnail in his next AAI2 video.  One had to be split in two due to the character limit: 

“A spoiler is a spoiler-that thumbnail ruins a really big moment.  Please remove it before anyone else sees it?"

“Also, you knew it was a spoiler, then put it IN your next vid? You may be able to hide it via annotation, but it was a bad move."

“Sorry if any of this annoys you.  Twitter's character limit doesn't let me say what I want how I want."

And there you have it.  No spam and certainly no threats.  The last Tweet was even an apology, because my anxiety had me so worried he’d take offense to how blunt Twitter’s character limit forced me to be.

It was at this point that I lost Anon’s support.  Throughout the whole thing, he’d been on my side, but saying that Nico must have just made a mistake.  Once it became clear he had purposefully twisted facts and lied, Anon flipped out and turned on me, unable to accept it.  The mods also started ignoring me, and I was banned from the Steam community, the Facebook, and who knows where else.  I can’t watch Nico’s videos anymore, and I’ve been unable to get in touch with any of my former friends in the community.  

It’s been about six months since then, and every day I feel worse.  I miss you all, and the fact that Nico did all this for whatever unknown reason and said all those horrible lies about me, when I was already in such a bad place...  He acts so nice, and everyone thinks he is this sweet, lovable guy, but he is not.  No kind person would do this.  I don’t care what his personal reason for hating me is, I did not deserve to be banned, and he should have been honest about it.  I’d love it if the ban was lifted and Nico apologized, but let’s face it, that’s not going to happen.  I mean, he didn’t care how badly he hurt me, and he didn’t care if I hurt myself.  My life means nothing to him.  

If you bothered to read all this, thanks.  I still doubt anyone will believe me, but at least the truth it out there.  It feels good to expose it.  And Nico, if YOU ever happen to read this, though I don’t see that ever happening, you can still make this right.  You have to know what you did and how you handled this was wrong.  If you had a problem with me, you could have talked to me.  You didn’t have to ban me, and you didn’t have to lie.  You abused your power as a popular YouTuber and caused me months of emotional anguish and depression that still has not gone away.  Only you can end this.  

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/state-of-the-union-trumps-address-will-be-postponed-claims-pelosi-aide-live/

State of the Union: Trump's address will be postponed, claims Pelosi aide – live

2.59pm EST14:59

Two senators have introduced legislation to require the special counsel to directly submit a report to Congress rather than simply to the attorney general.

Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand)

Dem Sen. Blumenthal and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley have introduced The Special Counsel Transparency Act, which “requires that a Special Counsel submit a report directly to Congress and the public at the conclusion of an investigation,” or if he/she is fired or resigns. pic.twitter.com/2x1WbC72DL

January 28, 2019

2.17pm EST14:17

Another Democratic presidential candidate will enter the fray tonight.

New Age author Marianne Williamson will announce her bid.

Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson)

Join me tonight as I formally announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. Live in Los Angeles, the Saban Theatre 8440 Wilshire Blvd. 7:30PM, or livestream at https://t.co/zVBvuNdwg8

January 28, 2019

Williamson travelled to Iowa last summer exploring a bid.

1.51pm EST13:51

Gwyneth Paltrow has a podcast?

Allan Smith (@akarl_smith)

Schultz told Gwyneth Paltrow on her podcast there’s “a lack of civility” and “a lack of respect” in the U.S.

“We are imprinting a young generation with a lack of civility and hate and fear – and I don’t think we’re going to know the consequences of that for quite some time.”

January 28, 2019

1.34pm EST13:34

Trump ‘very pissed off’, ‘really hopping mad’

According to Politico he is, anyway – over claims made by former aide Cliff Sims in the new book Team of Vipers.

Sims’ book is due out tomorrow but was scooped up by the Guardian last week. It tells the now familiar tale of White House chaos, bickering and skullduggery. And apparently it has really upset the president.

From Politico:

President Donald Trump is “very pissed off” and “really hopping mad” at former aide Cliff Sims’ new book that reveals firsthand the chaos and infighting that is ever present in his White House, according to several current and former White House officials.

Trump is asking aides: “Who is this guy? Why is he writing this book? He wasn’t even in meetings,” the sources said. He also dismissively refers to Sims – who served until last May as director of White House message strategy and a special assistant to the president —as “the videographer” because he also helped Trump with the weekly video and radio addresses, according to three current and former White House officials.

Trump: mad. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 1.39pm EST

1.20pm EST13:20

Potential billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has thrown some shade at potential billionaire presidential candidate Howard Schultz, claiming an independent run for president would “end up re-electing” Trump.

Schultz announced this weekend that he is considering running for the White House as a “centrist independent, outside of the two-party system”.

On Monday Bloomberg, who is considering running as a Democrat, said he has crunched the numbers – and all an independent run would do is split the anti-Trump vote.

It’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it.

The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before.

In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.

Bloomberg: don’t do it, Schultz. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Updated at 1.22pm EST

1.03pm EST13:03

Poll! Poll! Poll!

This one is from Marquette Law School, who have surveyed Wisconsin voters. It seems 42% of Wisconsinites approve of the job Trump is doing, while 52% disapprove.

That approval rating is better than the national average, but it’s down from October, when 47% approved of Trump’s performance.

Worse news for Trump – who narrowly won in Wisconsin in 2016 – is that not many people say they will vote for him in 2020:

Among all registered voters, 27% say they would definitely vote to reelect Trump if the 2020 elections were held today, 12% say they would probably vote to reelect him. Eight per cent would probably vote for someone else and 49% would definitely vote for someone else.

Updated at 1.13pm EST

12.38pm EST12:38

Sanders to give White House briefing

Martin Pengelly

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is due to give an on-camera press briefing at 3pm ET.

Ordinarily that would not be news but these are not, as many eminently qualified people have observed, normal times. Sanders last briefed the White House press corps on camera on 18 December, Trump recently tweeted that he had told his press secretary “not to bother”, and the general dwindling of this once-glorious illustration of the power of the first amendment/blast of sound and fury signifying nothing has become a story in itself.

Amid the usual economies with the actualité and tetchy exchanges with grandstanding reporters with on-camera presences to think about, Sanders will doubtless be asked whether Trump is going to shut down the government again if he doesn’t get his money for a wall. On Sunday, the president spoke to the Wall Street Journal and said he thought the chances of bipartisan negotiators producing a deal on border security funding he could accept were “less than 50/50”.

The president also said he doubted he would accept less than the demand for $5.7bn for his border wall that caused the last shutdown, and doubted whether he would accept any deal involving a path to citizenship for young undocumented migrants, a Democratic priority.

Earlier the same day, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney went on the talk shows and was duly asked if Trump was prepared to shut down the government again in three weeks’ time, if his prediction proves accurate and no deal is produced.

“Yeah, I think he actually is,” Mulvaney said. “He doesn’t want to shut the government down, let’s make that very clear. He doesn’t want to declare a national emergency.”

Most observers assume Trump will in fact do the latter, in an attempt to bypass Congressional budget control altogether.

“The president’s commitment is to defend the nation, and he will do it either with or without Congress,” Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday.

Acting without Congress would likely trigger both legal challenges and intense political and philosophical debate about the extent and/or abuse of executive power.

So that will be fun.

Updated at 1.16pm EST

12.05pm EST12:05

An early endorsement for Kamala Harris, from Congressman Ted Lieu:

Ted Lieu (@tedlieu)

I endorse @KamalaHarris for President.

Known Kamala for many years & worked together on various issues. She embraces the future, not the past, and is the person we need to move America forward.

Watch the #HarrisTownHall tonight at 7 pm PT / 10 pm ET to learn more about Kamala. https://t.co/P4ywl9U3Op

January 28, 2019

The Iowa caucuses are just 12 months away! Could this be a game-changer?

Updated at 12.07pm EST

11.57am EST11:57

Will Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, mount a presidential primary challenge against Donald Trump?

Probably not, but it hasn’t stopped news organizations from speculating. CNN is particularly keen on the idea, noting that Hogan “enjoys high approval ratings” in Maryland.

But CNN adds, a little underwhelmingly: “There’s been no indication of any concrete steps toward a primary bid and a spokesperson for Hogan did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.”

Larry Hogan, applauding about something or other. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

11.24am EST11:24

There’s nothing like a bit of Brexit news to make one feel better about US politics.

The latest development in the ongoing shambles is that a top EU official believes the risk of a “no-deal Brexit” – which essentially amounts to the UK crashing out of the EU with no clear plan forward – is now “very high”.

The Guardian’s man in Westminster Andrew Sparrow has the latest developments.

Shakespeare. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

And if you’re still confused – like me – about terms like “backstop”, “Norway plus” and “SuperCanada”, then here’s a handy guide.

Updated at 1.15pm EST

11.17am EST11:17

Shutdown cost the economy $11bn, says Congressional Budget Office

The border wall-inspired government shutdown cost the economy $3bn in the fourth quarter of 2018 and is expected to cost $8bn in the first quarter of 2019, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Some of $11bn that will be recovered once federal workers start getting paid again, the CBO says. But not all:

Although most of the real GDP lost during the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 will eventually be recovered, CBO estimates that about $3bn will not be. That amount equals 0.02% of projected annual GDP in 2019. In other words, the level of GDP for the full calendar year is expected to be 0.02% smaller than it would have been otherwise.

The CBO says the cost to the economy is due mainly to “the loss of furloughed federal workers’ contribution to GDP, the delay in federal spending on goods and services, and the reduction in aggregate demand (which thereby dampened private-sector activity)”.

Trump wanted $5.7bn for the border wall, in exchange for ending the shutdown.

Updated at 11.26am EST

10.46am EST10:46

Pelosi: no State of Union on Tuesday

Donald Trump will not give his State of the Union address on Tuesday, according to an aide to Nancy Pelosi.

CNN reports that the address – Trump’s second – is not going to happen as had been scheduled before the shutdown.

The back-and-forth over Trump giving his State of the Union speech in the House chamber was a running sidenote to the government shutdown.

Pelosi asked Trump to postpone the address until after the shutdown ended, citing security concerns. Trump rejected that, saying he was going to do it anyway. Pelosi again said he would not be allowed to. The master dealmaker then caved, agreeing to postpone the speech.

It’s now unclear when Trump will address the nation.

Updated at 11.59am EST

10.19am EST10:19

There’s more bad news for Trump today – in the form of a Washington Post-ABC poll that finds the president “has largely underperformed the even modest expectations that Americans had for him as he took office”.

Nearly six out of ten Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump as a person, according to the survey. A majority of people also “doubt his empathy, honesty and ability to make political deals”, according to the Post.

The poll compares the expectations people had for Trump in January 2017 to current views of the president.

The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)

Midway through first term, Trump is failing to meet the public’s expectations for his job performance, Post-ABC poll finds https://t.co/ukVYXSIcWc

January 28, 2019

When Trump took office 50% of people thought he would do a good job on reducing the federal deficit, according to the poll. Now only 33% think he is doing well.

The federal deficit was a longtime rallying cry for Republicans under Obama, but McConnell and co were strangely silent as Trump’s tax cuts caused the deficit to balloon to $779bn in 2018 – an increase of 17%.

Updated at 10.20am EST

9.37am EST09:37

Martin Pengelly

Howard Schultz. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Howard Schultz’s announcement that he is considering a run for the White House as an independent has caused consternation among Democrats, who fear a third-party run from a candidate with many of their policies – Schultz himself told CBS he’s a “lifelong Democrat” and listed some progressive-ish policy positions – could split the vote and hand a second term to Trump.

Trump himself duly tweeted about the former Starbucks chief executive on Monday morning, saying that Schultz is not “the smartest person” … because he is. No presidential nickname has yet been coined.

Schultz himself acknowledged that his ambitions are not for everyone, telling the news site Axios he knows he is:

going to create hate, anger, disenfranchisement from friends, from Democrats.

Axios reports that the billionaire businessman is, however, convinced he is doing the right thing. He’s certainly doing the write thing, releasing a campaign-oriented biography today with a launch in his native New York.

It’s called From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America. Before you rush to the store to order it, consider this from the Guardian’s Lloyd Green, on the often (if not always) dubious pedigree of the presidential campaign book:

9.09am EST09:09

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the day’s political news.

In Washington and around the country, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will return to work for the first time in 2019 as museums and national parks prepare to open. A surprising climb down by Donald Trump ended the longest shutdown in US history on Friday, but it could be a several more days before employees receive their pay.

Congress has less than three weeks to present Trump with a border security plan he likes. A bipartisan group of members were selected to lead the negotiations but Trump has already dismissed the prospect that they will come up with a proposal he would sign. In that case, Trump has vowed to declare a national emergency to build his wall along the south-western border. And on the talk shows on Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the president could shut down the government again.

Trump has no public events scheduled today but that doesn’t mean we haven’t heard from him and won’t be hearing more.

Already this morning he has tweeted about tarrifs and bible study classes. He also taunted former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz, saying he doesn’t have the “guts”’to run for president.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

January 28, 2019

[mastcomm]

Pangolins Are Suspected as a Potential Coronavirus Host

In the search for the animal source or sources of the coronavirus epidemic in China, the latest candidate is the pangolin, an endangered, scaly, ant-eating mammal that is imported in huge numbers to Chinese markets for food and medicine.

The market in pangolins is so large that they are said to be the most trafficked mammals on the planet. All four Asian species are critically endangered, and it is far from clear whether being identified as a viral host would be good or bad for pangolins. It could decrease the trade in the animals, or cause a backlash.

It is also far from clear whether the pangolin is the animal that passed the new virus to humans. Bats are still thought to be the original host of the virus. If pangolins are involved in disease transmission, they would act as an intermediate host. The science so far is suggestive rather than conclusive, and because of the intense interest in the virus, some claims have been made public before the traditional scientific review process.

As a result, some researchers who specialize in studying diseases that spill over from animals to humans have expressed frustration about conducting discussions about scientific claims without the life breath of science: publicly available data and accounts of how the research was done that have been vetted by other scientists.

While scientists wait for details on genetic studies, there is a gaping hole in the more mundane, but equally important, detective work involved in tracking the path of a disease. To be certain of what happened with the new virus, researchers need to know exactly which animals were present in the market in Wuhan which may have been instrumental in the spread of the disease.

The virus was found in people associated with the market, and in the market environment — on surfaces, for instance, or in cages. However, some of the early cases, including what might have been the first reported case, were in people who were not associated with the market. Jon Epstein, vice president for science and outreach at EcoHealth Alliance in New York, said this means the first jump from animals to humans may not have occurred in the marketplace. People may have contracted the disease from animals at another location or earlier, as yet unknown cases may have contracted the disease at the market and passed it on to other people.

Further complicating matters, animals at the Wuhan market seem to have been quickly disposed of, although reports from China were that samples from those animals tested negative for the virus.

Updated Feb. 10, 2020

What is a Coronavirus? It is a novel virus named for the crown-like spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people, and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

How contagious is the virus? According to preliminary research, it seems moderately infectious, similar to SARS, and is possibly transmitted through the air. Scientists have estimated that each infected person could spread it to somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures.

How worried should I be? While the virus is a serious public health concern, the risk to most people outside China remains very low, and seasonal flu is a more immediate threat.

Who is working to contain the virus? World Health Organization officials have praised China’s aggressive response to the virus by closing transportation, schools and markets. This week, a team of experts from the W.H.O. arrived in Beijing to offer assistance.

What if I’m traveling? The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who recently traveled to China and several airlines have canceled flights.

How do I keep myself and others safe? Washing your hands frequently is the most important thing you can do, along with staying at home when you’re sick.

“That’s the black box we have, what animals were there, what animals involved,” said Dr. Epstein.

In previous coronavirus outbreaks, SARS in China in 2003 and MERS in Saudi Arabia in 2012, interviews with people who had contact with animal hosts were essential to finding the source, Dr. Epstein said.

Palm civets turned out to be an intermediate host of SARS and camels an intermediate host of MERS. In both outbreaks, researchers eventually found that the origin of the virus was in bats, where the virus could live without sickening the animals. From bats, the viruses seem to have jumped to intermediate hosts and then to people.

An earlier indication that pangolins could be a possible source of human coronavirus infection appeared in a report that predates the epidemic. Chinese researchers published a report in October that documented that pangolins can host a variety of coronaviruses. They released the genetic sequences from their analysis to public databases where they could be analyzed.

Then, on Friday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that researchers at South China Agricultural University had found a virus in pangolins that had a 99 percent match to the novel coronavirus that has now sickened 40,000 people and killed more than 900. That would be the closest match so far.

The news report did not say the finding was conclusive, but that the result means “pangolins may be an intermediate host of the virus.” Scientists in the field are eagerly awaiting publication of the findings, and until then, they are impossible to evaluate.

In addition, a post on the website Virological, suggested that a coronavirus from bats could have recombined with one from pangolins to form the new virus.

Joseph Petrosino, at Baylor College of Medicine, said Matthew Wong, a bio-informatician in his lab, posted an analysis he had done. Dr. Petrosino said he expected the work to be posted on bioRxiv shortly and that he and his colleagues have submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal.

In essence, he said, data mining of genomic data posted in the last 12 months — most importantly the October report on pangolins — indicated that a portion of a coronavirus in pangolins was nearly identical to one in the new virus. That portion involves the way that the virus invades human cells. Therefore, they propose, the bat virus and pangolin virus may have combined, perhaps in pangolins in the wild, perhaps in another animal.

Dr. Petrosino said he’s eager for the peer review process, but the intensity of attention to the new virus made public discussion somewhat inevitable. The website Virological, he said, is like “Twitter for geeks,” not a place where news is usually made. His lab’s research was first reported in the Daily Maverick, a South African news site.

What might have been early hints of hypotheses or preliminary findings in another context now attract global attention. CITES, the international organization that lists endangered species, tweeted that #Pangolins may have spread #coronavirus to humans.”

That drew a response from Hume Field, science and policy adviser for EcoHealth Alliance in Australia, who worked on both SARS and MERS. He responded

“I appreciate CITES genuine concern for pangolins and the devastating illegal trade, but to seek to further their cause by propagating this unsubstantiated news release only adds to confusion and rumor.”

Public databases enable any lab, anywhere, to investigate and analyze genetic sequences published for bat and pangolin coronaviruses, and hypothesize what may have happened.

Benjamin Neumann, chairman of the biology department at Texas A&M University, is one of the scientists who have been looking at the sequences in his lab and talking to other scientists examining them. “Similar analyses are taking place in labs around the world right now,” he said.

But, he said, “While the pangolin-associated viruses appear to be related to the novel coronavirus that is infecting people, it is not yet the smoking gun that tells us how 2019-nCoV originated.” That’s what the virus causing the epidemic is called.

He pointed out that the pangolins could have been infected by the same virus that sickens humans, but be just another victim rather than the source.

Determining the transmission of a virus from an animal to a human requires much more information, Dr. Epstein said.

He said, “The smoking gun here is finding people who were healthy before they were handling pangolins, or any other animal. They handled the animal, they got sick after they handled the animal, and the same virus that made them sick was present in the animal they handled.”

Coincidentally, this Saturday, Feb. 15, is World Pangolin Day.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/pangolins-are-suspected-as-a-potential-coronavirus-host/

[denver-seo-experts]

How to write SEO-oriented content

When a person responsible for the creation of contents of a company receives the order to write a text, it has a specific purpose. It can be to answer the doubts of a user, encourage the sales of a product, inform about a new event, etc. In any case, it is essential that said article has a good positioning, so that it achieves the widest possible reach. Therefore, it is important to know how to write a SEO-oriented post.

Like any other type of writing, writing a SEO-oriented post requires skill. To keep the reader interested, you must think about the structure and create attractive content. Thus, he is being helped to understand the central concept of a publication.

If people understand and like an article, they are more likely to interact with it and share it, something that will improve their ranking.

SEO-ORIENTED POST: TIPS TO FOLLOW For many people, writing an SEO article or doing it to attract and captivate the audience are two different things. This is a serious error that, in addition, has negative consequences in the positioning.

If a content is not to the liking of the reader, it will leave the web prematurely. As an effect, the authority of the page before Google falls. For example, excessive use of keywords can hinder readability. These are some of the most used tricks to write a good SEO-oriented post.

Keys to search engine positioning (SEO) CHOOSE A VALUE KEYWORD If a publication is not classified by the correct keywords , time is being wasted. Before starting to write, you have to think what terms the users would use if they were investigating the topic that is going to be discussed.

Once the keyword is selected, you should investigate about it. For example, it is essential to know if the volume of searches is important enough to justify an investment. Also, you have to understand the user’s intention (what you want when you use that term). Finally, you should assess if you have the necessary resources to build something that can compete with the content that already appears in the search results.

THINK BEFORE WRITING This point is really a previous step, but inescapable. If the message is not clear, what is meant or answered, it is impossible to create good content . A great advice is to write down on a paper what is the purpose of the article and what you want to get readers to do when they reach the end of the page.

DESIGN A STRUCTURE Another step before starting to write is to create a clear structure . All articles must have a type of introduction, a body in which the main message is prepared and a summary conclusion.

USE PARAGRAPHS Everyone uses paragraphs to separate parts of the article, but few do it well. There must be a logical reason for each jump. That is, each section must have its own idea or theme .

A good trick to know how to separate paragraphs is to try to summarize each one with a single sentence. If this is impossible and several are needed, it means that that part of the text needs more separations.

USE HEADERS Headers structure the entire page, so they should be used. They are important not only for readability, but also for writing a SEO-oriented post . The titles help Google capture the main themes of a long publication and, therefore, influence its ranking. In addition, they encourage readers to find their way through the text and guide them to scan the content and clarify the structure.

Some of the headings should contain the keywords , but not all. This would result in a clumsy and unnatural text, which will cause a negative reaction in the people.

USE SIGNAL WORDS Signal words help to scan the text and capture the main ideas. Let’s say, for example, that there are three reasons why people can buy your product. In that case, you should use connecting words such as: ‘first of all’, ‘second’ and ‘finally’. In addition, others such as “however”, “safe” and “in fact” give clear clues to readers. This way they know instantly that they will get a conclusion after terms like “consequently,” “so” or “for this reason.”

OPTIMIZE THE DURATION OF A SEO-ORIENTED POST Articles must have a minimum of 300 words. Google likes extensive content, however, if a text is too long, it can scare the reader. The ideal length is around 700 words . In addition, as a general rule, you should try that the search terms occupy approximately between 1 and 2% of the total.

LINK PREVIOUS CONTENT If content has already been written on the same topic as the current publication, it is important to link it. This will increase the value of the post because it shows some authority on the subject. In addition, the structure of links is also key to the rank in Google . And, of course, readers may also be interested in reading more related aspects.

SEO on page ADD CONTENT REGULARLY Add new content is one of the techniques that should be done after the writing of a SEO-oriented post . This shows Google that the website is active. Otherwise, the search engine will crawl it less frequently, and this could negatively affect the ranking.

The days when simple SEO tricks were enough for a website to have a good position on Google have disappeared. Today, quality content is king. In addition, this generates more likes and actions of Facebook, tweets and visitors that return to the page. To achieve this, it is essential to optimize as much as possible and write SEO-oriented post.

The post How to write SEO-oriented content appeared first on DENVER SEO EXPERT

[patrick-watson]

This Trade War Will Start a Recession, or Worse…

The logic of Donald Trump’s multi-front trade war, if there is any, is increasingly obscure.

The tangled mix of policies isn’t accomplishing its stated goals and seems unlikely to ever do so. Meanwhile, it hurts the Americans it should supposedly help.

Regardless, it’s happening, and it has consequences… none of them good.

The president’s latest move to impose escalating tariffs on imports from Mexico is the trade equivalent of “going nuclear.”

Judging by his tweets, Trump thinks it will solve multiple problems: trade, drugs, immigration, and crime.

That’s doubtful at best. And as with real nuclear weapons, the blast wave isn’t going to discriminate. It will hit everyone.

If you think the trade war hasn’t affected you yet, brace yourself. You’re about to feel it.

Tariffs Will Raise Prices

A tariff is a form of sales tax on imported goods.

The importer has to give the government cash. Then it recovers it by charging more, accepting lower profit margins, or some combination of both.

So far, President Trump’s tariffs are showing up as higher inflation. It’s not obvious in the broad inflation measures like the Consumer Price Index because only a few goods have been affected. But in those segments, the impact is clear.

Goldman Sachs recently compared price changes in nine tariff-impacted CPI categories vs. those that weren’t. Since the first tariffs in 2018, an index of those categories rose more than 3%. Meanwhile, all the other core goods categories showed a slight decline.

This impact is about to spread. The president is raising tariffs on almost all Chinese goods and is threatening the same for Mexico.

Again, we won’t necessarily see this in retail prices right away.

But if we don’t, it will be only because merchants have stockpiled inventory or decided to absorb the cost out of their profits.

If it’s the latter, it’s still not good.

Companies with shrinking profit margins usually try to recover them somehow, like laying off workers or postponing expansion plans.

Still, consumers will certainly notice if the latest tariff increases persist more than a few months. Top retailers depend on Chinese and Mexican goods. Those prices will probably rise.

This might actually stimulate some activity as people try to avoid tariffs or find substitute goods. But mostly, we will see it as higher prices and lower disposable incomes.

But that will only be the beginning.

Trump’s Plan Won’t Work Out

Remember when politicians actually worried about government debt? I know, it’s been awhile.

We used to think high debt would cause inflation. That hasn’t happened, for reasons John Mauldin explained recently in “Why Debt Won’t Spark Inflation.”

Essentially, debt-fueled fiscal stimulus fades quickly to be replaced by weaker business conditions. Demand falls enough to keep consumer prices and interest rates from rising much, if at all.

Tariffs are similar in some ways. President Trump, at least, thinks he can make companies move production to the US and hire American workers, so stimulating growth.

That may happen a little bit, here and there. But it won’t be much.

The business leaders who make those decisions know full well that Trump’s unilateral tariffs may disappear when he leaves office, or maybe sooner if he changes his mind.

Few businesses are going to make major capital investments based on a whim that could change tomorrow. So initially, we will just get the higher prices.

Then It Will Be Too Late

In the near future, US manufacturers will reduce output because the imported parts on which they depend are too expensive. And no alternate sources exist in the US.

Laid-off manufacturing workers will tighten their belts and reduce spending, hitting the retail sector and possibly making some stores close. Those workers will lose their jobs, too.

Then the same will happen in the farm states as Mexico and China shift their once-large grain and meat purchases elsewhere.

By that point, President Trump may see the light and change his mind. But the damage will be done. Business leaders will have seen what can happen. Their willingness to take risks and invest in new capacity will be lower.

Then we may see some highly leveraged companies default on loans that never should have been made in the first place. Lenders will tighten standards and starve even viable companies of financing.

The Fed may try to counteract this with rate cuts or QE. But if we’ve learned anything the last decade, it’s that monetary policy no longer has the same effects it used to.

All this adds up to one thing: recession.

The Last Straw

Now, we are overdue for recession even without tariffs. This (historically weak) growth cycle has to end eventually. If tariffs don’t trigger it, something else will.

But tariffs could easily be the last straw. This trade war could make the recession happen sooner, last longer, and cause more pain than it otherwise would.

What aggravates me most are the people saying we have to accept some pain in order to fix the problems with China.

First of all, there is zero reason to think tariffs will solve the problems. So we’ll get more pain but little or no gain.

Second, those who so want other Americans to suffer tend to be wealthy, powerful people. They won’t lose their jobs.

They have great health insurance and don’t have to worry about foreclosure and bill collectors. Those who actually are suffering will notice.

This next recession could easily become more than a recession. People in pain do radical things. And those who caused that pain probably won’t like where it leads.

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

 New York Times best-seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could trigger in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now. Learn more here.

[mrmichaelchadler]

The Wild, Messy Road to Oscar Night 2019

This Sunday is already guaranteed to be a historic night for the Oscars. But aside from its highly unpredictable results, tuning into the Academy Awards this year feels to be based more in morbid curiosity than the usual sense of celebration: these past few months have been extremely awkward and public for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it’s clear we're seeing the Oscars in the middle of a major identity crisis. At the age of 91, Oscar is torn between being a popular television event and being the one time a year when a worldwide television audience can appreciate the art form of movie-making beyond looking at mega stars. We’ll see on Sunday where this season's wild course of events has taken us, but as of now, the Oscars are like an enterprise without assured direction, and an industry bonanza that threatens to call out its blatant lack of progress with its top winners, instead of its desire for it. 

Let’s take a step back to August 2018. It was a slightly more innocent time. No one had seen Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born” yet, but it smelled like the multi-Oscar winner to beat. It also felt like Lynne Ramsay or Debra Granik or Chloe Zhao might even pop up in the Best Director category, and that it wouldn’t be an all-male roster this year. You know, those types of dreams. 

But nonetheless, the Academy had a strange development for us on August 8: the introduction of the Best Popular Film category, the qualifications for such an absurd award to be revealed later. In natural fashion, we memed about it quickly, but ignored the stuff under the headline: Inside the “Best Popular Film” announcement was a note about how not all the awards were going to be broadcast, though it was not listed what they would be. From August, the Oscars introduced their new attitude: it wasn’t concerned with the movies so much as popularity. It wouldn’t be the last time they lost a sense of their true self to the cause of being liked and powerful. 

The Oscars have bungled their attempts at such popularity, even when it brought on one of Hollywood’s biggest stars to host. Kevin Hart was originally brought on in December to take the role, something that he had previously talked about as a career goal. But he refused the Academy’s demand to apologize for homophobic jokes (on Twitter and on stage), citing that he had already touched upon that material in previous times. Hart did eventually apologize, but it came in the same tweet as an announcement that he was stepping down from the hosting position, “to not distract from the amazing talented people,” he wrote. In an interview with Josh Rottenberg at the Los Angeles Times, the producers shared that they had considered going host-less back in October—even if that is the case, the void of a host has now become a type of mascot for a show that is relying on a lot of people behind the scenes to help give it an on-stage personality. 

The Oscars have long been concerned with its runtime. One solution was floated around from industry insiders, with the consideration that only two songs from its Best Original Song category would be performed at the show. Variety had heard from multiple sources that Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “All the Stars” from “Black Panther” and Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” from “A Star is Born” were the select two, though the Academy never confirmed which tunes it would be—but the let’s assume that one of them wasn’t “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings” from “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” It was a reflection of the Oscars’ disinterest in showing off the diversity of its roster, and weak interest in accommodating popular taste. 

Within days it was publicly confirmed that all songs will be performed, but two more developments have already occurred: “All the Stars” will now no longer be presented, as Kendrick Lamar has said that he doesn’t have the time to prepare a proper performance for the song. And in what will certainly be a boost in the right direction, and put “Bohemian Rhapsody” even more center stage, Queen will be opening the show. 

Not even winners from last year could escape the Academy’s isolating and self-inhibiting new attitude, as Oscar pretended to not know the likes of Allison Janney, Sam Rockwell, Gary Oldman and Frances McDormand, recipients of acting awards last year. In an Instagram post that was deleted shortly after being posted, Janney expressed her initial heartbreak at not being asked to present this year, a decision from the Academy that would go against the usual tradition of having past winners on stage to announce the latest winners. The Oscars cemented that she was invited with a tweet that soon followed, but it was another moment in which the awards show looked like it had lost its way. 

But Oscar saved perhaps its most dramatic touch for last. On February 13, it was announced that the four major awards would not be shown in the live broadcast. with two to three-million-dollar commercials to air in their place: Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Live-Action Short, and Best Makeup. I use the word “major,” not just because there are no categories more worthy of screen time than others, but because they’re essential to the very existence of movies. An impressive amount of Academy members, not just filmmakers, responded immediately, co-signing a letter that quoted a Seth Rogen tweet. Again, the Academy took back its decision. But even just the glimpse of an Oscars that openly did not value cinematography or make-up more than it did time for commercials, was incredibly disturbing and disheartening. 

As for the actual top contender movies this year, well. We can debate the quality of “Green Book” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but it’s clear that they are problematic. “Green Book,” an offensive Peter Farrelly film and not in the intended way, had its story of brilliant pianist Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his chauffeur dismissed by family member Maurice Shirley to Shadow & Act as “a symphony of lies,” down to the detail where Dr. Shirley is removed from his family in the story. In the larger picture, it’s queasy that this tale about an exceptional and talented black man is told from the perspective of a mediocre white man, that of Viggo Mortensen’s Tony. Add in co-writer Nick Vallelonga’s history of an anti-Muslim tweet (which he has since apologized for), and it’s nauseating to think about how “Green Book” epitomes the problems about who is the storyteller in certain cases, and how that perspective then directly impacts how a narrative is framed.  

Then there’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which is my current pick for “This Will Win Best Picture, But Absolutely Shouldn’t.” It’s only been a year since #MeToo and #TimesUp, and yet the film’s campaigning has been able to dodge that it’s been directed by Bryan Singer, the subject of numerous sexual assault allegations. Best Actor contender Rami Malek has been able to navigate a season that has welcomed his imitation of Freddie Mercury, and the editing has been hailed for simply getting it to the finish line. That’s just the politics though, as the movie itself, aside from its weak portrayal of Freddie Mercury’s sexual history and its Three Stooges-esque, PG-13 depiction of a prominent rock band, is blatantly dishonest. That hasn’t stopped the movie from becoming a frontrunner, but it’s again nauseating to think that a movie would value a shiny image and its song catalogue over looking at its subject’s history head on, or at least not working with a filmmaker, accused on multiple occasions before production even began, of being a pedophile. 

This Oscar season has been so backwards that the “smear campaigns” brought against these two films in particular were more about showing the true heart behind these productions than taking unfair swipes at the respective projects. Politically timed as they may be, the various pieces and revelations that challenged each individual movies’ PR campaign only revealed the superficiality in which they told their very complex, human stories, all for the sake of achieving a rotten crowd-pleaser status that in turn made them so awards-friendly. If “Bohemian Rhapsody” were to win Best Picture especially, it would only affirm just how selective our collective memory is, or that the act of canceling has more asterisks than some may think in a post-Harvey Weinstein era. 

As much as I’m curious about who will win and what the ceremony will even look like on February 24, I’m excited most about what’s going to happen after. With this Oscar season officially behind us come Monday morning, the powers that be will have a new shot at stabilizing what the Oscars should celebrate, and what values are most important to the ceremony. The extremely public nature of this season's messiness has me hoping that they’ll be considering the past choices of what not to do, of what parts of tradition to not touch. I have hope that they’ll see how movie fans have become so outraged. We’re protecting a special part of movie love—the ability to support projects we think are worthy of such distinction, and the thrill of watching talented individuals, not just movie stars, ascend to golden prominence. Along with the movies themselves, it’s a huge part of what keeps us coming back to the Oscars each year. 

from All Content https://ift.tt/2GEgPyg

[samuelpboswell]

Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content

Authenticity: it’s treasured, but in short supply. TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden had it right when he wrote recently that trust in marketing is at risk. The statistics speak for themselves: Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer reflects a general lack of credibility for businesses, and one poll from HubSpot found “marketer” to be among the least trustworthy professions. The commonality among occupations ranking at the bottom of that HubSpot list (marketer, car salesman, politician, lobbyist) is that they all have perceived agendas and motives. This is where the unique value in adding user-generated content (UGC) to your content marketing strategy lies. Not convinced? Let’s explore.

UGC: An Avenue to Authentic Awareness and Trust

Even the most well crafted and relatable content is inevitably viewed through a certain lens when it comes from a brand. Developing a genuine rapport with your audience takes time, and even then, there’s an inherent recognition that any public-facing message from a company is strategic and carefully positioned. User-generated content offers a method to overcome this disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. If your content marketing goal is authenticity, there’s no better bet. [bctt tweet="#UGC offers a method to overcome disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] One interesting section of the aforementioned Edelman report features data around the content people trust most: As we see, folks are far more likely to trust content from a company they already patronize (60%) than one they don’t (31%) — not surprising, but also not great for businesses looking to attract new customers. Ranking well ahead of both those sources, though, is “People like me” (66%), an option that’s second only to “My friends and family” (71%). It only makes sense that a person would put more stock into the opinions and viewpoints of someone similar to them, especially where buying considerations are concerned. Global research from Nielsen famously showed that 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over ads and branded content. This is why customer testimonials and case studies are so powerful, but such material sits toward the bottom of the funnel. Prospects are unlikely to encounter it unless already along the purchase path, or actively taking an interest in your brand. The beauty of user-generated content is its function as a top-of-funnel asset for building brand awareness in an authentic and real way.

Benefits of User-Generated Content

#1: Making the Customer Your Story

Storytelling is one of the most essential tactics in content marketing, and customer-centricity is among the discipline’s central tenets. UGC presents a way to merge these two by actually making turning your customer into the storyteller. Not only is this an extremely engaging role for the individual whose content is featured, but it makes that content vastly more relatable for those consuming it. When TINT polled marketing professionals for its 2018 User-Generated Content Marketing Report, the most-cited advantage of UGC was its ability to “humanize marketing,” with 73% agreeing this form of content “makes marketing more authentic.”

#2: Building a Community and Boosting Engagement

Once others start noticing the presence of user-generated content on your website, blog or social media feeds, it can cause a contagious effect. In general, people like to participate in trendy or connective ventures, especially if there is a compelling and creative hook (Ice Bucket Challenge, anyone?). For example, social media management platform Buffer introduced the #BufferCommunity hashtag on Instagram and receives regular submissions from all around the world. The content – which is frequently regrammed on the company’s official account, with credit – isn’t promotional, but it’s not supposed to be. It brings the product’s users together and raises general awareness for the brand. Organic content in action is a beautiful thing (literally, in this case):

#3: Implementing Visuals

As we often preach here at TopRank Marketing, visuals are essential to content marketing but often difficult to produce with limited resources. UGC is primarily visual in nature so it represents an easy way to strengthen this dimension of your content mix. Plus, when regular people see other regular people in photos or videos, rather than models or actors, it adds to that relatable authenticity factor. Via Travis Wright at Marketing Land:

Currently, photos and videos are the most popular forms of UGC. Fifty-four percent of adult internet users regularly create and share photos and videos, according to Pew. Photos are also the most common form of UGC created by Millennials, according to Statista.

#4: Conserving Your Budget

The costs of UGC can vary. Oftentimes brands will compensate contributors in exchange for the rights to feature their content. In other cases, there’s enough intrinsic motivational benefit for the user so as to make that unnecessary. (For instance, in the #BufferCommunity example cited above, there’s a major draw for Instragrammers in getting their work exposed to Buffer’s 40,000 followers.) In either case, licensing user-generated content tends be less expensive than producing it professionally in-house.

How To Make UGC Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

There are a number of ways that brands encourage and leverage user-generated content. Here are a few for interested marketers to consider: 1. Invite social media users to post about your brand, and curate those posts on your own feed or embed them in relevant content. One of my favorite examples of UGC is the @SlackLoveTweets Twitter account, which chronicles posts about Slack* from raving fans. Not only does this allow the brand to broadcast genuinely glowing remarks about its product, but the tweets can also be used elsewhere. For instance, in this blog post a brief embedded user comment helps credibly substantiate the usefulness of a particular feature: 2. Run a contest that incorporates your product or service in a creative way. Everyone loves a contest, especially if there’s a fun twist. Say your company sells apparel; you could prompt customers to share pictures of their cats wearing (or sleeping on, or hopelessly entangled in) your t-shirts, with the winner earning a freebie. If the promotion catches on, not only you will end up with a bounty of great content to share on your social accounts or elsewhere, but you might even sell some extra t-shirts to people who are adamant about sharing pictures of their cats online (which, by my calculation, is roughly 95% of internet users). 3. Crowdsource opinions and perspectives for your blog posts. In the past, I’ve talked about the power of social media polls, which can allow your audience to become active participants in directing your content. The same concept can be applied with UGC. If you have an engaged social following, and you’re writing about a topic important to them, you could ask for their opinions and then round up the responses in a blog post, alongside stats and analysis. By no means should UGC be viewed as a replacement for the high-quality content produced by marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement.  [bctt tweet="#UGC isn't a replacement for the high-quality content produced by #marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] 4. Turn customer reviews into testimonials on your website. There’s nothing wrong with enlisting a happy customer to cooperatively produce a testimonial advocating for your product or service. But organic reviews — appearing on neutral websites or social media channels — tend to come off as more earnest and unbiased. You could find a few positive ones and turn them into testimonials on your website or post on your blog (with the author’s permission, of course). In fact, if you’re really feeling bold, you could take a negative review from one of these sources and honestly address it.

Ready to Get Down with UGC?

The advantages of UGC are tough to argue: it is relatively inexpensive, community-driven, and highly customer-centric. But at the end of the day, it all comes back to that crucial imperative: authenticity. Letting actual people become the voice for your brand is as real as it gets. But it’s not a simple matter of snapping your finger and making it happen. In order for UGC to work, you need to build it into your overall content marketing strategy, develop clear objectives around it, incentivize submissions, and – above all – foster an enthusiastic following that is excited to talk about, participate with, and advocate for your brand. For inspiration to get you started, check out these examples of B2B user-generated content in action. *Disclosure: Slack is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2018/09/user-generated-content-marketing/

[befoundonlinemarketing]

Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content

Authenticity: it’s treasured, but in short supply. TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden had it right when he wrote recently that trust in marketing is at risk. The statistics speak for themselves: Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer reflects a general lack of credibility for businesses, and one poll from HubSpot found “marketer” to be among the least trustworthy professions. The commonality among occupations ranking at the bottom of that HubSpot list (marketer, car salesman, politician, lobbyist) is that they all have perceived agendas and motives. This is where the unique value in adding user-generated content (UGC) to your content marketing strategy lies. Not convinced? Let’s explore.

UGC: An Avenue to Authentic Awareness and Trust

Even the most well crafted and relatable content is inevitably viewed through a certain lens when it comes from a brand. Developing a genuine rapport with your audience takes time, and even then, there’s an inherent recognition that any public-facing message from a company is strategic and carefully positioned. User-generated content offers a method to overcome this disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. If your content marketing goal is authenticity, there’s no better bet. [bctt tweet="#UGC offers a method to overcome disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] One interesting section of the aforementioned Edelman report features data around the content people trust most: As we see, folks are far more likely to trust content from a company they already patronize (60%) than one they don’t (31%) — not surprising, but also not great for businesses looking to attract new customers. Ranking well ahead of both those sources, though, is “People like me” (66%), an option that’s second only to “My friends and family” (71%). It only makes sense that a person would put more stock into the opinions and viewpoints of someone similar to them, especially where buying considerations are concerned. Global research from Nielsen famously showed that 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over ads and branded content. This is why customer testimonials and case studies are so powerful, but such material sits toward the bottom of the funnel. Prospects are unlikely to encounter it unless already along the purchase path, or actively taking an interest in your brand. The beauty of user-generated content is its function as a top-of-funnel asset for building brand awareness in an authentic and real way.

Benefits of User-Generated Content

#1: Making the Customer Your Story

Storytelling is one of the most essential tactics in content marketing, and customer-centricity is among the discipline’s central tenets. UGC presents a way to merge these two by actually making turning your customer into the storyteller. Not only is this an extremely engaging role for the individual whose content is featured, but it makes that content vastly more relatable for those consuming it. When TINT polled marketing professionals for its 2018 User-Generated Content Marketing Report, the most-cited advantage of UGC was its ability to “humanize marketing,” with 73% agreeing this form of content “makes marketing more authentic.”

#2: Building a Community and Boosting Engagement

Once others start noticing the presence of user-generated content on your website, blog or social media feeds, it can cause a contagious effect. In general, people like to participate in trendy or connective ventures, especially if there is a compelling and creative hook (Ice Bucket Challenge, anyone?). For example, social media management platform Buffer introduced the #BufferCommunity hashtag on Instagram and receives regular submissions from all around the world. The content – which is frequently regrammed on the company’s official account, with credit – isn’t promotional, but it’s not supposed to be. It brings the product’s users together and raises general awareness for the brand. Organic content in action is a beautiful thing (literally, in this case):

#3: Implementing Visuals

As we often preach here at TopRank Marketing, visuals are essential to content marketing but often difficult to produce with limited resources. UGC is primarily visual in nature so it represents an easy way to strengthen this dimension of your content mix. Plus, when regular people see other regular people in photos or videos, rather than models or actors, it adds to that relatable authenticity factor. Via Travis Wright at Marketing Land:

Currently, photos and videos are the most popular forms of UGC. Fifty-four percent of adult internet users regularly create and share photos and videos, according to Pew. Photos are also the most common form of UGC created by Millennials, according to Statista.

#4: Conserving Your Budget

The costs of UGC can vary. Oftentimes brands will compensate contributors in exchange for the rights to feature their content. In other cases, there’s enough intrinsic motivational benefit for the user so as to make that unnecessary. (For instance, in the #BufferCommunity example cited above, there’s a major draw for Instragrammers in getting their work exposed to Buffer’s 40,000 followers.) In either case, licensing user-generated content tends be less expensive than producing it professionally in-house.

How To Make UGC Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

There are a number of ways that brands encourage and leverage user-generated content. Here are a few for interested marketers to consider: 1. Invite social media users to post about your brand, and curate those posts on your own feed or embed them in relevant content. One of my favorite examples of UGC is the @SlackLoveTweets Twitter account, which chronicles posts about Slack* from raving fans. Not only does this allow the brand to broadcast genuinely glowing remarks about its product, but the tweets can also be used elsewhere. For instance, in this blog post a brief embedded user comment helps credibly substantiate the usefulness of a particular feature: 2. Run a contest that incorporates your product or service in a creative way. Everyone loves a contest, especially if there’s a fun twist. Say your company sells apparel; you could prompt customers to share pictures of their cats wearing (or sleeping on, or hopelessly entangled in) your t-shirts, with the winner earning a freebie. If the promotion catches on, not only you will end up with a bounty of great content to share on your social accounts or elsewhere, but you might even sell some extra t-shirts to people who are adamant about sharing pictures of their cats online (which, by my calculation, is roughly 95% of internet users). 3. Crowdsource opinions and perspectives for your blog posts. In the past, I’ve talked about the power of social media polls, which can allow your audience to become active participants in directing your content. The same concept can be applied with UGC. If you have an engaged social following, and you’re writing about a topic important to them, you could ask for their opinions and then round up the responses in a blog post, alongside stats and analysis. By no means should UGC be viewed as a replacement for the high-quality content produced by marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement.  [bctt tweet="#UGC isn't a replacement for the high-quality content produced by #marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] 4. Turn customer reviews into testimonials on your website. There’s nothing wrong with enlisting a happy customer to cooperatively produce a testimonial advocating for your product or service. But organic reviews — appearing on neutral websites or social media channels — tend to come off as more earnest and unbiased. You could find a few positive ones and turn them into testimonials on your website or post on your blog (with the author’s permission, of course). In fact, if you’re really feeling bold, you could take a negative review from one of these sources and honestly address it.

Ready to Get Down with UGC?

The advantages of UGC are tough to argue: it is relatively inexpensive, community-driven, and highly customer-centric. But at the end of the day, it all comes back to that crucial imperative: authenticity. Letting actual people become the voice for your brand is as real as it gets. But it’s not a simple matter of snapping your finger and making it happen. In order for UGC to work, you need to build it into your overall content marketing strategy, develop clear objectives around it, incentivize submissions, and – above all – foster an enthusiastic following that is excited to talk about, participate with, and advocate for your brand. For inspiration to get you started, check out these examples of B2B user-generated content in action. *Disclosure: Slack is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content posted first on http://www.toprankblog.com/

[christopheruearle]

Why Content Marketers Everywhere Need to Get Down with User-Generated Content

Authenticity: it’s treasured, but in short supply. TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden had it right when he wrote recently that trust in marketing is at risk. The statistics speak for themselves: Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer reflects a general lack of credibility for businesses, and one poll from HubSpot found “marketer” to be among the least trustworthy professions. The commonality among occupations ranking at the bottom of that HubSpot list (marketer, car salesman, politician, lobbyist) is that they all have perceived agendas and motives. This is where the unique value in adding user-generated content (UGC) to your content marketing strategy lies. Not convinced? Let’s explore.

UGC: An Avenue to Authentic Awareness and Trust

Even the most well crafted and relatable content is inevitably viewed through a certain lens when it comes from a brand. Developing a genuine rapport with your audience takes time, and even then, there’s an inherent recognition that any public-facing message from a company is strategic and carefully positioned. User-generated content offers a method to overcome this disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. If your content marketing goal is authenticity, there’s no better bet. [bctt tweet="#UGC offers a method to overcome disconnect, by amplifying the voices of real people and actual customers. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] One interesting section of the aforementioned Edelman report features data around the content people trust most: As we see, folks are far more likely to trust content from a company they already patronize (60%) than one they don’t (31%) — not surprising, but also not great for businesses looking to attract new customers. Ranking well ahead of both those sources, though, is “People like me” (66%), an option that’s second only to “My friends and family” (71%). It only makes sense that a person would put more stock into the opinions and viewpoints of someone similar to them, especially where buying considerations are concerned. Global research from Nielsen famously showed that 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over ads and branded content. This is why customer testimonials and case studies are so powerful, but such material sits toward the bottom of the funnel. Prospects are unlikely to encounter it unless already along the purchase path, or actively taking an interest in your brand. The beauty of user-generated content is its function as a top-of-funnel asset for building brand awareness in an authentic and real way.

Benefits of User-Generated Content

#1: Making the Customer Your Story

Storytelling is one of the most essential tactics in content marketing, and customer-centricity is among the discipline’s central tenets. UGC presents a way to merge these two by actually making turning your customer into the storyteller. Not only is this an extremely engaging role for the individual whose content is featured, but it makes that content vastly more relatable for those consuming it. When TINT polled marketing professionals for its 2018 User-Generated Content Marketing Report, the most-cited advantage of UGC was its ability to “humanize marketing,” with 73% agreeing this form of content “makes marketing more authentic.”

#2: Building a Community and Boosting Engagement

Once others start noticing the presence of user-generated content on your website, blog or social media feeds, it can cause a contagious effect. In general, people like to participate in trendy or connective ventures, especially if there is a compelling and creative hook (Ice Bucket Challenge, anyone?). For example, social media management platform Buffer introduced the #BufferCommunity hashtag on Instagram and receives regular submissions from all around the world. The content – which is frequently regrammed on the company’s official account, with credit – isn’t promotional, but it’s not supposed to be. It brings the product’s users together and raises general awareness for the brand. Organic content in action is a beautiful thing (literally, in this case):

#3: Implementing Visuals

As we often preach here at TopRank Marketing, visuals are essential to content marketing but often difficult to produce with limited resources. UGC is primarily visual in nature so it represents an easy way to strengthen this dimension of your content mix. Plus, when regular people see other regular people in photos or videos, rather than models or actors, it adds to that relatable authenticity factor. Via Travis Wright at Marketing Land:

Currently, photos and videos are the most popular forms of UGC. Fifty-four percent of adult internet users regularly create and share photos and videos, according to Pew. Photos are also the most common form of UGC created by Millennials, according to Statista.

#4: Conserving Your Budget

The costs of UGC can vary. Oftentimes brands will compensate contributors in exchange for the rights to feature their content. In other cases, there’s enough intrinsic motivational benefit for the user so as to make that unnecessary. (For instance, in the #BufferCommunity example cited above, there’s a major draw for Instragrammers in getting their work exposed to Buffer’s 40,000 followers.) In either case, licensing user-generated content tends be less expensive than producing it professionally in-house.

How To Make UGC Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

There are a number of ways that brands encourage and leverage user-generated content. Here are a few for interested marketers to consider: 1. Invite social media users to post about your brand, and curate those posts on your own feed or embed them in relevant content. One of my favorite examples of UGC is the @SlackLoveTweets Twitter account, which chronicles posts about Slack* from raving fans. Not only does this allow the brand to broadcast genuinely glowing remarks about its product, but the tweets can also be used elsewhere. For instance, in this blog post a brief embedded user comment helps credibly substantiate the usefulness of a particular feature: 2. Run a contest that incorporates your product or service in a creative way. Everyone loves a contest, especially if there’s a fun twist. Say your company sells apparel; you could prompt customers to share pictures of their cats wearing (or sleeping on, or hopelessly entangled in) your t-shirts, with the winner earning a freebie. If the promotion catches on, not only you will end up with a bounty of great content to share on your social accounts or elsewhere, but you might even sell some extra t-shirts to people who are adamant about sharing pictures of their cats online (which, by my calculation, is roughly 95% of internet users). 3. Crowdsource opinions and perspectives for your blog posts. In the past, I’ve talked about the power of social media polls, which can allow your audience to become active participants in directing your content. The same concept can be applied with UGC. If you have an engaged social following, and you’re writing about a topic important to them, you could ask for their opinions and then round up the responses in a blog post, alongside stats and analysis. By no means should UGC be viewed as a replacement for the high-quality content produced by marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement.  [bctt tweet="#UGC isn't a replacement for the high-quality content produced by #marketing professionals, but it can absolutely be a helpful supplement. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] 4. Turn customer reviews into testimonials on your website. There’s nothing wrong with enlisting a happy customer to cooperatively produce a testimonial advocating for your product or service. But organic reviews — appearing on neutral websites or social media channels — tend to come off as more earnest and unbiased. You could find a few positive ones and turn them into testimonials on your website or post on your blog (with the author’s permission, of course). In fact, if you’re really feeling bold, you could take a negative review from one of these sources and honestly address it.

Ready to Get Down with UGC?

The advantages of UGC are tough to argue: it is relatively inexpensive, community-driven, and highly customer-centric. But at the end of the day, it all comes back to that crucial imperative: authenticity. Letting actual people become the voice for your brand is as real as it gets. But it’s not a simple matter of snapping your finger and making it happen. In order for UGC to work, you need to build it into your overall content marketing strategy, develop clear objectives around it, incentivize submissions, and – above all – foster an enthusiastic following that is excited to talk about, participate with, and advocate for your brand. For inspiration to get you started, check out these examples of B2B user-generated content in action. *Disclosure: Slack is a TopRank Marketing client.

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