#their litmus test has sure given Results

[ssaalexblake]

it’s also baffling to me that tumblr, home of the ‘why are white men Still being cast as the doctor’ for So many years now (For you know, like over a decade.) is somehow not appalled that they hired a white dude to be the next Doctor because look okay it’s okay if it’s This white man. 

I mean, I do not consent to acknowledge that they’ve shoved him in there under any circumstance, but my Only need for the casting of the next person was that it was Not a white man, otherwise i didn’t care who it was, so when they “announced” Gatwa I was satisfied (i am hesitant to say they announced it bc it was more like a tiny footnote than an announcement, oh the disrespect) and it took a whole seven days (it was literally seven days. Yes i counted. it was easy since it was only seven days) it was ‘actually sorry no it’s this white dude we’ve already had before did we forget to mention that???’ and it’s steadily gotten worse and worse. 

That This site of all places is not up in arms about both the situation and how it specifically played out is depressing, but also massively and darkly hilarious.  

Especially since i Also remember nobody on this site thought casting Whittaker was good enough but literally going backward to a previous white man is?? This is not even a metaphor about diversity getting worse, they literally looked backwards. 

But, yeah,  tenn/ant with the ‘what the future looks like’ headline is uh... Good???? Not super worrying and ominous? 

I feel like i’ve been dumped in some weird parallel universe by reactions to all of this on here like??? the whole way this was done was appalling, the situation is appalling, but i guess the bbc/disney should get a rousing round of applause for accurately judging that nobody would care about their poor actions if the specific white guy they cast was popular enough that next to nobody would care. 

( and to the ‘it’s an anniversary ep’ thing, they legit could have just set a couple of eps in the past. i don’t mean they travel to the past. i mean just say ‘hey this ep is set during s4!’ and nobody would care. this show does weirder stuff than this every second episode. and it would still be bad, but how they did it is so much Worse.)

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

A Little Goes A Long Way

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: not any real

Genre: fluff

Summary: You accidentally find out that Steve has a praise kink and take full advantage of it.

***

When you first joined the Avengers and moved into the compound you'd say you befriended most of the team pretty quickly, some you were closer to than others of course but still, you'd say they were mostly your friends. Now when it comes to the boys club consisting of two supersoldiers and a mechanically winged man, your friendships with them are surprisingly variable.

Sam, is the friendliest and therefore was the quickest for you to connect to. Bucky was one tough nut to crack but you'd say you've successfully done so. Which leaves Super soldier 2. Steve Rogers. He has this... commitment to professionalism. Not just with you, it's with pretty much everyone on the team besides Bucky which makes sense given their history, and Sam who could probably befriend a brick if he wanted to. It's not something that bothers you really, just something you've observed especially in comparison to your friendship with Sam and Bucky. He's nice and you get along as well as necessary.

You can't prove it yet, but you're sure Sam and Bucky, mostly Sam actually, are making moves to get him to open up around you. For example yesterday, kind of out of nowhere, Steve asked you if you knew how to cook because he was trying to learn and thought you'd be able to help. Why? Because Sam and Bucky 'rave about your cooking'. You've cooked for them like twice and you know Sam can throw down in the kitchen so why wouldn't he offer to help Steve? Instead, he sent him to you, and now you're helping Steve make breakfast.

"Breakfast feels like a very simplistic place to start." Steve says.

"It is simplistic. Consider it a litmus test. We're just gonna do pancakes and eggs and from that, I will figure out where to start with dinner meals and such." You say.

"What do you mean figure out where to start?"

"Well if you can't fry eggs I'm not gonna try and teach you beef wellington or pho in the next 24 hours."

"What's pho?"

"It's a Vietnamese soup, but do you get what I mean?"

"Yes! But I can fry eggs and make pancakes." Steve says with a nod.

"Then show me Stevie." You cross your arms.

"Okay, where's the pancake mix?" Steve looks around the counter.

"We don't have any. You're gonna have to do it from scratch." You smile.

"I've never done that before."

"That's okay. Here's a bowl. I'll walk you through it." You tell him. Flour, eggs, sugar, butter, milk, salt, and baking powder in appropriate proportions are mixed into the bowl with your instruction. You're not really a recipe user which, stresses Steve out just a bit, but you know what you're doing obviously and the batter turns out perfect. One at a time Steve cooks the pancakes, they're all pretty misshapen and a couple are a little burnt but overall they turn out alright. "Okay, time to scramble some eggs." You tell him grabbing another bowl. Steve cracks several eggs into the bowl with salt, pepper, and butter and pours the mixture into the frying pan.

"This I've done before."

"Good, don't burn them." You say with a pat on his arm before you start to clean up the island. A few minutes later, the eggs are done and everything is put away or in the sink to be washed.

"See? Eggs I can do."

"I gotta taste it first Rogers. I've learned not to assume that watching the process can prepare you for the final result." You say putting pancakes and eggs on a plate for yourself.

"I followed your instructions. How bad can it be?" He shrugs. You take a bite of the eggs first and they're as good as they should be.

"The eggs are good." You tell him.

"I smell breakfast!" Sam announces strutting in from the hallway with Bucky trailing behind him.

"Morning boys. Help yourself, there's enough to go around." You say.

"Morning y/n." Bucky says.

"Good morning Miss Thing." Sam winks. "Who made these pancakes they are mad wonky." Sam laughs as he grabs some.

"I did." Steve frowns.

"They might look a little funny but they taste good so I'd say you did a wonderful job Stevie." You say. You miss the way his cheeks tinge pink and the way Sam and Bucky exchange a look.

"Thanks." Steve mutters after clearing his throat. "So, you'll help teach me to cook better?" He asks.

"If you take instruction this well all the time, absolutely." You shrug. "You should eat, the spoils of your labor and all." You tell him and he's quick to make himself a plate.

And so, for weeks, you teach Steve to cook. He makes dinner almost every day to learn new things. Some days it's meals that he can do in under 20 minutes, others you pick more complicated recipes that take a couple of hours and he probably won't make them again unless he's asked to. He does better with some meals than others but he follows your directions. Honestly, better than you expected since he's so used to giving orders and not taking them. For Steve, it's about the reaction. He does like cooking with you definitely but the best part of your teaching is how you praise him every time he does something well. Apparently, your little cheers of 'good job Stevie' and 'you did so well' and whatnot are extremely good motivators.

It took even longer for you to pick up on his desire for compliments but once you did you had every intention of using it to your utmost advantage. Even outside of the kitchen, you start to slip in little approval comments where you see fit just to watch him blush and freeze up. Like tonight, during game night. The whole team is playing charades on two teams, you, Wanda, Vision, Peter, Clint, and Bucky on one while Tony, Natasha, Bruce, Thor, Steve, and Sam make up the other. The other team is up, with Bruce acting out something and everyone is shouting out answers. Eventually, Steve gets the answer, the first one he's gotten right.

"You got it! Well done Stevie!" You say leaning over the coffee table that separates you to ruffle his hair. It's an action that you've found usually results in a seemingly involuntary catlike nudging with his head.

"I'm calling a timeout!" Sam stands up. "You, come with me." Sam says to you.

"What? Why?" You ask but instead of answering Sam grabs your arm, forcing you off the floor and pulling you down the hall. "Hey! Sammy! Use your words!" You snatch your arm away from him.

"You are doing this on purpose!" He points at you with a glare.

"Doing what?" You blink at him.

"You know what I'm talking about." Sam's face scrunches up.

"It's easier to stay on the same page if you're direct." You tell him. Oh what an actor you are.

"You're distracting him!" 

"Distracting who?"

"Don't play dumb with me y/n."

"Don't mince words with me Sammy." You say with a smirk. This rapid-fire back and forth is pretty common for you and Sam so you know he's not seriously angry with you over a game of charades.

"Look I don't know what you did to Steve but he cannot focus with you around! You speak and he's redder than a tomato and ten seconds from giggling like an elementary schooler dealing with his first crush and you are taking advantage of that! Stop taking advantage of it he already sucks at charades."

"I didn't do anything." You shrug.

"I'm not buying it. You know I'm not buying it, right?"

"I'm not selling anything babe." You smile.

"I hate you."

"You don't. But we should get back to the game. Everyone's waiting on us." You turn and head back to join the rest of the team. And you'd better believe you spend the rest of the night taking full advantage of Steve's newly found little weakness.

~*~*~

"So what's the deal with you and Steve?" Natasha asks. You're hanging out in your room and she's tossing grapes into her mouth.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you talk to him like he's your pet. Are you into him or what?"

"I don't treat him like a pet!"

"I don't mean it in the literal sense y/n. But! Not a day goes by that you aren't going 'good job Stevie' or 'that's wonderful' or 'you did so well' or something like that. Why do you do that?"

"Because his reactions are adorable." You shrug.

"Okaaay but- do you like him? Like is there something there? Does he like you?"

"I have no idea if he likes me." You tell her.

"You have no idea? You haven't asked? He blushes whenever you walk into a room." Natasha scoffs.

"I think he just likes the praise."

"Let's test it!"

"Test it how?"

"Well, right now Steve and Bucky are probably in the training room. Let's go down there, and I'll find a way to throw a 'good boy' at him and see how he reacts."

"That one in particular might be a little difficult to throw out casually. Even I rarely do that one. You can probably get away with a good job or well done." You say.

"I'll see what I can do. Let's go." Nat gets up with her bowl of grapes in hand and the two of you head to the training gym to find Bucky and Steve sparring just like Natasha said they'd be.

"Geez don't you two ever take a break?" You scoff and they both stop to greet you.

"Oh hey, guys. What brings you by?" Bucky asks grabbing a towel.

"Steve catch." Natasha says throwing a grape his way. His head snaps out to catch the grape in his mouth with ease.

"Nice one Stevie. Good job." Natasha says.

"Why did you do that?" Steve asks with confusion on his face. No blush, no stuttering.

"Told ya." Natasha looks at you.

"Told ya what?" Bucky chuckles.

"Bucky your turn. Catch." Natasha tosses a grape at him. Bucky catches the grape in his hand and fixes you both with a look. "Why are you tossing fruit at us like dog treats?"

"Testing reflexes based off of a conversation we were having. Thank you for your contribution, now if you'll excuse us, we have others to test." Natasha grabs your hand and pulls you out of the training room. She waits until you're back in your room to say I told you so. "I told you so! Has less to do with the praise and more to do with you. So what're you gonna do about it?"

"We work together Nat." You say.

"So did Tony and Pepper before getting married."

"That was- kind of predatory of him actually."

"Bad example. Wanda and Vision." She offers.

"Vision's basically a sentient computer."

"My point is; working together shouldn't stop you from being happy. Do you like him?"

"Do you think he'll make a move?"

"Absolutely not. You'll have to play the first card. Do you like him?"

"Well, I'm not doing that." You shake your head.

"Why not?"

"Why bother? Things are fine, you don't mess with things that don't need messing with."

"Chicken." Natasha says.

"Worry about your own love life Romanoff." You roll your eyes.

Unfortunately for you, Natasha was not the only person interested in meddling in your affairs, and the other party happens to be much more hands-on than Natasha was. So much so that a couple of weeks after Natasha tried to push for you to make a move, you find yourself all but barricaded in your room with one super soldier.

The incessant knocking at your bedroom door had pulled you, reluctantly, from the book you were reading, thinking there was an emergency only to find Bucky holding Steve hostage behind a smiling Sam.

"I don't think I want to know what the hell is going on here but you did interrupt my reading so you'd better have a good reason." You'd crossed your arms, waiting for someone to speak.

"You two need to talk. I'm sick of watching you dance around it. We all are." Sam told you and Bucky shoved Steve into your room, forcing you out of the doorway for fear of being knocked over.

"Excuse you?!"

"We aren't letting you out until you talk it all out so everyone can stop watching this weird flirting game you've got going." With that, they pulled your door shut, and sure enough, you couldn't open it. You sat in silence with Steve for a few minutes, contemplating your options.

"I'm sorry." He eventually offers awkwardly.

"For what? You didn't lock us in here." You say.

"Not technically but it is my fault we're in this mess."

"How do you figure?" You tilt your head at him curiously.

"I get so- awkward around you. It's to the point where everyone can tell and I'm an adult there's no reason I shouldn't be able to behave normally around you."

"And what constitutes normal? Sam and I bicker, Tony and I throw insults back and forth- we're basically frenemies, Bucky likes to just sit in the same space together, Nat and I mostly gossip, Thor is always just about to crush me, I babysit for Clint, and Peter turns 15-minute stories into 90-minute retellings because his brain is in a million places at once at all times. Maybe your normal with me is blushing whenever I speak."

"You noticed." Steve grimaces.

"I didn't at first but uh- you are not exactly very subtle."

"Well- now what?" He asks.

"Now what indeed." You hum. "What is it, Stevie? Why do you feel so awkward around me? Is it because I do things like ruffle your hair or say good job? Are you just, affection starved?"

"No." He pouts.

"Don't just pout at me use your words." 

"I like you." He says.

"There was that so hard? What are you gonna do about it?" You ask.

"What?" He blinks at you.

"You like me. What are you going to do about that?"

"Depends." He frowns.

"On?" You ask.

"If you like me back."

"And if I do?"

"Then, I want to kiss you." Steve says, albeit a little hesitant.

"Kiss me."

"You like me?"

"Just kiss me." You say. Steve pulls you forward and kisses you. It's soft but there's something intense about it as you drape your arms over his shoulders. Eventually, he pulls away with a content sigh. "Well done Stevie."

"Stop doing that." He groans.

"Doing what?" You step back to look at him.

"Complimenting me like that. It drives me crazy."

"I know, that's why I do it." You say and Steve fixes you with a look as he plots his next move.

"I'm- going to take you to dinner tonight." He says.

"Okay." You nod. It's then that your door swings open and Sam waltzes in.

"See how much nicer it is to just talk about things." He sighs as if he's just stepped into the sun after several hours inside.

"I'll see you at seven." Steve says. "You two are... the absolute worst together. I can't believe you." He practically drags Sam out of the room and then down the hall with Bucky in tow and you chuckle at the trio who you can hear for several minutes down the hallway. Who would've thought things could get here from a couple of compliments in the kitchen. 

***

[scoobydoodean]

omg i just finished your emma vs amy takes and the subsequent discourse about it (which was so refreshing to see btw!! love it when adults can be Adults and argue about the topic without insulting the other person) and I might get fried for this but that incident aside, do you have any other scene/episode in mind where sam reacts the same way or does the same thing?

(im sorry if this isn't your cup of tea for asks! your takes have been Enlightening)

You mean another situation where Sam shoots a person with supernatural abilities who hasn't shed blood and has a sympathetic backstory without giving them a chance? Not as overtly—Benny in season 8's "Citizen Fang" certainly comes to mind, but even Benny, Sam at least made a show of giving a chance by assigning Martin to keep tabs on him and make sure he didn't do anything wrong before trying to kill him. (Though whether there was conscious or subconscious sabotage involved when Sam chose Martin specifically—someone he knew to be mentally unstable—is certainly a good question given Sam had already made death threats about Benny before then.)

The fact that Sam's behavior in 7.13 "Slice Girls" is pretty unique is really what I want to point out about this episode in the first place—that Sam's actions in "Slice Girls" are inconsistent with his previous behavior and future behavior as far as "good" monster episodes. We can turn to examples such as:

1.14 where Sam insists they try and talk Max down instead of killing him, because Max's murders are a result of extensive abuse.

Lenore and her nest in SPN's seminal "monsters can be good" episode (2.03)

Sam thinking Andy is responsible for the killings in 2.05 but still waiting for proof before acting.

2.09 where Sam insists they not kill someone they think might be infected with Croatoan virus before he turns and tries to kill them because that doesn't give him a chance.

Two episodes where Sam faces off against Gordon because Gordon wants to kill him before Sam kills someone (2.10, 3.07)

2.17 where Sam and Dean search for a cure for Madison, who is not aware that she has been killing people.

4.04 Metamorphosis where Sam is the one who takes the initiative to research Rugarus, learns that they can survive without giving into their urges, and insist they go and talk to him about how his body is changing (lol) so he has the chance to fight the urge to kill and eat people.

5.06 where Sam and Dean oppose Cas who wants to kill Jesse, who is a child who is not aware that he has powers and is hurting people.

6.02 where Sam, even soulless, recognizes the innocence of a shifter baby.

Then we have Amy and Emma in 7.03 and 7.13 respectively.

8.04 where the brothers let Kate the Werewolf go because she was turned against her will and killed the man who turned her in self-defense.

8.09 Citizen Fang (already discussed)

I'm getting lazy but then we also have Magda and Jack Kline—both children with powers, one severely abused, the other the son of the devil with uncontrolled explosive powers that could end the world, both of whom Sam attempts to help work with their abilities.

Dean has a more structured series of personal "rules"—a litmus test we see from the very beginning—one Sam often follows as well, but I'm not sure Sam ever really fully grasps that Dean thinks this way.

Has this person hurt or killed anyone?

Was it on purpose or was it outside of their awareness?

If it wasn't on purpose, are they capable of learning to control their urges?

We see this code as early as 1.12 "Faith":

SAM Wait, what the hell are you talking about Dean, we can't kill Roy. DEAN Sam the guys playing God, he's deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book. SAM No. We're not going to kill a human being Dean. We do that we're no better than he is.

Dean applies the same reasoning in 1.14 with Max:

SAM These visions, this whole time -- I wasn't connecting to the Millers, I was connecting to Max! The thing is I don't get why, man. I guess -- because we're so alike? DEAN What are you talking about. The dude's nothing like you. SAM Well. We both have psychic abilities, we both... DEAN Both what? Sam, Max is a monster, he's already killed two people, now he's gunning for a third.

Despite the exact opposite being the typical fandom perception, early on we learn that Sam tends to define a monster by their features/abilities, while Dean defines a monster by their actions. We see the same with Amy—she is "a monster who killed four people" (7.07) . She isn't a monster because of what she is but because of what she did. This again—is also why Dean doesn't even consider killing her son right after her kid swears to kill him one day. We see Dean, in the rare cases where it comes up, is also perfectly fine with taking out human serial killers they stumble across (ex: Thin Man).

Sam will also kill a human serial killer at times (and murderous witches by 3.09), but he reserves the word "monster" to describe individuals with supernatural features/abilities... and I think the fact that Sam's definition of the term differs from Dean's is something neither brother ever fully realizes about the other, leading at several points to arguments where they are talking past each other and do not understand one another. Sam hears "monster" and thinks "Dean is talking about me", when Dean is operating under a completely different definition of the term that is based on the actions of a person.

When Sam is in a headspace where he is thinking of himself as one of those monsters, he shows increased or lessened sympathy in turns. For example, he assumes Andy's guilt in 2.05 because he is panicked about becoming evil himself and is comparing the two of them (but again—still waits for confirmation) but his sympathy for Max in 1.14 comes from the same comparison with himself. Sam completely misrepresents Amy in 7.03 as an addict who relapsed but more generally is "managing", as a way to compare her with himself... when Amy didn't feed on anyone herself and her actions have absolutely nothing to do with addiction or battling "monstrous urges".

I've been bitching and moaning a lot, but I will reemphasize that there is a more sympathetic reason that Sam shoots Emma—Sam and Dean are both crowding up to the diving board at the deep end of the pool in season 7. Dean's grieving and is drinking extremely heavily to cope and Sam is hallucinating. They are both unraveling at the seams. Neither of them is in a place where they trust the other's judgement because they both know themselves and each other to be unstable. So if we imagine a reality where Sam and Dean give Emma a chance, and it doesn't take, Sam assesses himself and Dean to be in no mental state to cope with a potential surprise attack. It's just that Sam also erroneously compares Amy and Emma when they are not the same, and by doing so, frames Dean wanting to spare Emma but killing Amy as hypocrisy (because they are both "monsters") when Dean's actions are perfectly consistent with his personal ethical code and his definition of a "monster"... and Sam's actions aren't.

[xipiti]

The Guardrails Failed. Now It’s Down to Us.

-Jamelle Bouie, NYT 10-25-24

Mark Milley is not the only general to call Donald Trump a fascist.

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that,” John Kelly, the former Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff, said during a recent interview with my colleague Michael Schmidt. “So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly even went as far as reading a definition of “fascism” to prove his point. “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Those are the kinds of things, Kelly added, that Trump “thinks would work better in terms of running America.”

And while he is not a general, Mark Esper, Trump’s onetime secretary of defense, told CNN that he thinks the public should take the former president “seriously” when he raises the possibility of using the military against American citizens.

“I think President Trump has learned the key is getting people around you who will do your bidding, who will not push back, who will implement what you want to do,” Esper said.

“And I think he’s talked about that, his acolytes have talked about that, and I think loyalty will be the first litmus test,” Esper added. He also said, following Kelly’s remarks, that Trump “has those inclinations,” meaning toward fascism.

Mark Milley. John Kelly. Mark Esper. Two generals. Three high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. Men with intimate knowledge of Trump’s impulses and private behavior. And here they are, in the crucial weeks before the election, telling the American public — explicitly and without euphemism — that their former boss is a would-be autocrat who will, if given the chance, plunge this country into the darkness of authoritarianism.

This, as I wrote last week, is unprecedented. It’s one of the most extraordinary developments in American political history. To my mind, it is now the only story worth telling about the 2024 presidential election. It should be the only thing Americans talk about between now and Nov. 5. And every one of Trump’s allies and surrogates should have to answer the question of whether or not they agree that their boss is a “fascist to the core,” as Milley put it.

What is there to say about these revelations beyond the obvious point that Trump cannot be allowed to sit in the Oval Office a second time?

I have two thoughts — almost more like observations.

The first is for skeptics: Trump’s own actions in this campaign are confirmation that Milley, Kelly and Esper are right. One thing you’ll notice as we charge toward Election Day is the spate of stories about Trump’s post-election plans. Not transition plans, for how to staff the government if he wins, but plans to challenge and overturn the results if he loses. Plans to prevent certification of electoral votes, plans to throw out votes in states he lost — plans to do everything he can to take the final decision away from the people of the United States and put it in the hands of judges and election officials who support him more than they value their sworn oath to the Constitution. Backing Trump here is a group of billionaire donors who have spent more than $140 million on this second attempt to “stop the steal” should he lose once more at the ballot box.

The mere fact that this is a thing — the mere fact that this is an effort — is evidence alone of Trump’s authoritarian intent.

Put differently, Donald Trump does not respect your right to reject his advances. If the American public declines to give him a second term in office, his plan is to force himself on that public on the theory that the country and its political system are too far gone to stop him.

This brings me to my second observation.

We don’t, in 2024, hear much talk of guardrails anymore. And for good reason. The guardrails failed. Every single one of them. The Republican Party failed to police its own boundaries, welcoming Trump when it should have done everything it could to expel him. The impeachment process, designed to remove a rogue president, was short-circuited, unable to work in a world of rigid partisan loyalty. The criminal legal system tried to hold Trump accountable, but this was slow-walked and sabotaged by sympathetic judges (and justices) appointed by Trump or committed to the Republican Party.

When the states tried to take matters into their own hands, citing the clear text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court stepped in to rewrite the amendment, turning a self-executing prohibition on insurrectionists in office into a mechanism that required a congressional vote those justices knew would never come.

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, that same majority effectively delayed the federal trial for Trump’s role in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It also tried to nullify the case itself with a ruling that gave Trump, and any future president, immunity to criminal prosecution for a broad suite of “official acts.”

To do this, Roberts twisted the Constitution into a fun house mirror of itself, reading into the document an almost unlimited presidential impunity that cuts against the text, history and traditions of constitutional government in the United States. The court’s ruling in Trump v. United States is a vision of presidential power that, as Matt Ford observes in The New Republic, exists in a world “without John Locke, without Montesquieu, without Thomas Jefferson or James Madison or Alexander Hamilton.”

It is a ruling that ignores the classical republican ideas that underpin the American constitutional order. It is the imposition of pure ideology and a declaration from Roberts that his court doesn’t just interpret the Constitution, it is the Constitution.

The truth, at this point, is that the only real guardrails in the American system are the voters — the people, acting in their own defense.

For too long, too many of us have acted as if democracy can run on autopilot — as if self-government will, well, take care of itself. But it won’t. The reality is that the future of the American Republic is up to us.

We will decide if we live in a country where we govern ourselves. We will decide whether we hand this nation over to a man, and a movement, that rejects the notion of an inclusive American freedom and a broad, egalitarian American liberty. We will decide whether we will continue to seek — and expand upon — the promise of American democracy, as flawed and fraught as the reality has been.

It is, in fact, the great irony of self-government that we can decide to end it. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” observed a young Abraham Lincoln in 1838. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” If we wish, we can vote to hand away the closest thing we have, as a people, to a birthright.

My hope is that we don’t. My hope is that enough of us recognize the plain fact that Trump has been nothing more than a force for corruption, greed, cruelty and cynicism in American life. That he has empowered the worst among us and encouraged the worst in many of us. And that his great accomplishment as a national political leader is to spread the dangerous lie that we can blame the weakest and most vulnerable in our midst for our problems.

My hope, in short, is that enough Americans understand that there is no amount of harm you can inflict on others that will save you, give you strength, make you whole or keep you safe.

[thoughtsonargentdawn]

On the matter of "Faction Conflict" in roleplay.

Hello good readers one and all, it has been a bit of time. I have for the most part been simply busy RPing or generally engaging with that strange realm called 'real life'. I was given a drop about the latest weirdposting thread courtesy of Hatescale/Dargeus/Santern regarding his effusive praise, or some may say delusion, for Faction Conflict RP, or WarRP I suppose you could call it.

RP PvP has always been contentious on Argent Dawn, going as far back as the fabled on and off conflicts between the 'North' Rpers and whatever brand of Undead or Blood Elf roleplayers were present. It has been a source of more drama and discourse rather than actual character development and narrative storytelling. Don't let anyone otherwise tell you. It can be a fun distraction and has been the source of many hilarious memes over the long years of Argent Dawn's existence but it cannot seriously be considered on the same level as normal RP.

I noticed that some friends of mine have pointed out that WarRP is no better than other forms of roleplay that don't really fit with the setting. We're talking on the level of Witcher RP, GoT RP, Boardwalk Empire RP. That is certainly the case these days. The lore is an ever evolving and changing - for better or worse- thing. The era of BIG WAR has passed with Legion and BFA.

But there are a handful of groups - you know who I mean - who are adamant on remaining locked into this clown fiesta of an RP mode. Usually I am of the opinion as those who may have read previous posts I've made, that there's a balance to strike between anything goes and grounded in the setting. Lets not kid ourselves that the primary pursuers of RP PvP are after a power trip rather than actual RP interaction, the mechanics behind it entirely gear towards your standard toxic pvp bros who think that the only meaningful interaction is /duel. Why not settle your differences in Counterstrike? A far more balanced game mechanically.

Even that alone isn't truly the issue, strange players can do strange things as long as they're not infringing on anyone else as far as I care. What truly is the problem is that they elevate their - type - of RP as the sole and only true arbiter of RP, the litmus test for self-awareness, to quote Santern himself.

Had this been in Legion or BFA, sure I'd say WarRP has a place but it's time has long passed. It really started during WoD when the lack of actual expansion relevant material that players could engage in forced players to 'write' their own 'lore'. The results being that many lazy roleplayers got hooked on the quick fix of RP PvP campaigns and did no upkeep on their own guilds, only thriving from one campaign to the other and even recruiting non-roleplayers to make sure that they 'won' their fights.

So by all means engage in your WarRP, but you're no better than the 'Darkshire RPers' - whatever that is meant to mean - or any other niche community.

[ryuuseini]

I'll be honest: sometimes I take those "is your MC a Mary Sue" quizzes, not because I buy into the belief that a Mary Sue is a real thing, but because I want to see how absolutely baffled these tests are when I show up with my 29 year old OC who is arguably very conventionally attractive at the cost of his sanity. But I've noticed as I try to answer yhe questions of these tests - some of which are old and only exist as an archive (the Mary Sue Litmus Test, for example) and some of which that are pretty damn recent - is that some questions are Literally Impossible to Answer.

And look, I get it, you can't account for everyone’s OCs because that's impossible. However, a trend I've noticed is... Every question that revolves around how your OC is seen by others is phrased as if the "other characters" are a monolith.

Let me explain. So I come in with my OC, who I'll refer to as Kaz from now on ('cause that's his name), and come across the question of "how do others view him?" I get the choices of "love him, hate him, neutral, likes him" (for example.) How do I answer this question? No legitimately - how do I answer this question? Because there are two characters who absolutely love him in a found family like way, four characters that hate him, three that like him (and out of those three, one is "likes him enough to put up with him"), and one who has an "its complicated" relationship but ultimately would end up in the "likes" category. So, doing our math, that's:

2 people who love him (and not even in the way we're assuming the question is asking)

4 people who hate him

4 people who like him (with an added caveat that half of them have some sort of disdain towards Kaz)

And like. What do I do here? Because it's an even split, among the named characters at least, between "hate" and "like". And because of how binary these results are, they will heavily screw if your OC is perceived as a "Mary Sue" (which, doesn't exist, but given how often the term comes up to this day, I can see young creators hoping their OCs don't fit into this box).

And sure, you can argue with me "well its just a quiz you're not supposed to take it seriously" and true, you're right, it is just a quiz. But it doesn't represent how much of a sliding scale OC development really is. And that's my major problem.

Character development is a sliding scale. Not everyone will love your OC and in that same breath, not everyone will hate them either. Back to Kaz as an example - he's got an ex-boyfriend (named Reiji) and a girl he has a platonic crush on (named Remi). Kaz and his ex are on bad terms and its justified because they both hurt each other! Meanwhile when Remi first meets Kaz she thinks he's cute (but then kinda... takes it back because of the way Kaz responded to that but she does try to move past that because sometimes first impressions are impossible to judge people on) and then still ends up liking him as a friend. And the reason I bring these two up is because Reiji and Remi are childhood friends! So Reiji vents to Remi about Kaz and Remi goes "oh okay" and adjusts her perception of Kaz to be far more nuanced than what she had understood with their first two interactions, while when Remi talks to Reiji about Kaz he uses it to adjust his perception of Kaz to fall more into the disdain category.

So it's like!! Your OC is gonna be perceived in so many ways by your cast (and the surrounding background characters too!!) that putting them into a box isn't going to help! So like. Please don't take those tests as a way to see where to "fix" your character because they will never account for your whole story. You could have a queen ruling a nation and everyone loves her and people who speak out against her are seen as unreasonable. Would that make her a Mary Sue? Like. Genuine question here. Because I think not, but that is a question on multiple Mary Sue tests.

[owlrageousjones]

So with that huge cliffhanger from TGP, I wanted to pool my thoughts under this Read More. The ‘Test Subjects’, so to speak, have all improved in their own ways... except for Simone, I think. Which I know, controversial opinion. But I’m stuffing my thoughts under this read more.

So, every human has... well, I think of them as their own personal cardinal sins that led to them being sentenced to the Bad Place (well, that and the whole broken system they’re operating in).

Team Cockroach’s were all fairly obvious and embodied by the Judge’s tests for them. Jason was impulsive and never thought about any of his actions. Tahani cared far too much about her image and people’s perceptions of her. Eleanor just... didn’t care about other people. Chidi was so indecisive his test was just about making a choice at all.

Mind-wiped!Chidi is back to his pre-growth state of being incredibly indecisive. John is an incorrigible gossip hound who constantly makes fun of other people. Brent is... well, he’s basically the posterboy for the Patriarchy and all the awfulness that entails.

Simone is the hardest for me to pin down a particular failing, and part of me wonders if that’s deliberate. What if Simone’s ‘major failing’ was just... living in the interconnected modern world where being Good Enough for the Good Place was basically impossible? But it’s not possible. She’d have to have a similar points total to Team Cockroach to be admissible, so I think it might be judgementality? She’s quick to assess someone and once she’s made a decision, it can be hard to change her mind about the result.

I don’t know. But I’ll go into that later, after I talk about how everyone else has improved.

Chidi has the most impressive improvement - Brent’s in trouble? He made a decision, and he carried it through even when nobody was there to help him, risking himself (and getting himself caught in the hole as well). He was decisive. He didn’t faff about pondering whether it would be better to find someone else or get a better rope, or whatever, he made a decision and he risked his life on it.

John kept a secret for six months. A juicy, drama bomb of a secret and sure, he broke his promise about keeping it at the end but! He did it because it was relevant. Simone’s telling them all this stuff about how Things Are Not What They Seem, and Jianyu is literally not who he seems and he knew that! He didn’t share the secret because it would make for juicy gossip! He did it because it might help!

Brent... Brent apologised. He had nothing to gain by doing it, and he did it. It took being told he was in Literal Hell for him and then Chidi driving it home, to do some actual fucking self reflection, but he did it and he took a single step towards improving. It’s nowhere fucking near enough, but that he took a step might be enough.

Because the point of the experiment isn’t ‘Can we take four trashbags and make them into Good People’, it’s that ‘Can people improve’. Every day. That’s the whole series entire message, it’s that people can improve little by little. Give him enough time, and Brent can become an actually decent human being. It’s going to take... a very, very long time, but he can. The others have all proved that humans can grow, given the chance, given the right impetus, that nobody is beyond redemption.

And if, given enough time, people can change for the better, then it means the system should reflect that - it means people shouldn’t be damned to Hell and never allowed to grow because of it. 

And here’s where I go more into Simone.

It means everyone should be given that same chance. Simone’s belief that they needed to give up on Brent is understandable but it’s still not right. Chidi is right, Brent is still a human being, and they should save him.

Given what she knows and believes is going on, giving up on trying to help him become less of a human trashfire is... well, it’s not ‘Good’ but it’s not ‘Bad’ either, because frankly she’s right. But she’s also making that decision based off a mortal perception of time and existence.

In the grand scale of the Afterlife, spending a year or two (or three, four, five, ten, a hundred...) to make Brent less of a shitty person is... nothing. It’s literally nothing. It sucks, and it’s awful, but what are you really risking? If you have to spend eternity with him, then an investment of a thousand years into making him actually likable will have infinite returns (literally infinite!). If I thought we were in Heaven, I’d start doing it just so I wouldn’t have to deal with his shit - that’s not even a Good decision by the TGP’s Point System, because I’m doing it out of self interest.

But at the same time, she suspects (correctly) they’re in some sort of experiment. She doesn’t think she has the time to do that, so refusing to help does make sense. But still, leaving him in the hole? That wasn’t right.

A large part of me still thinks it was Team Cockroach who was being tested (they were constantly trying to get everyone to improve and they, themselves, improved along the way - just look at Jason!), but the rest of me can’t figure out Simone’s deal. Was it just... her snap judgements? Did she not concern herself with ethics and being a better person during life because she did a risk-benefit analysis and decided it wasn’t worth the effort given she probably didn’t believe in an afterlife?

Every other Human had obvious flaws (and in Brent’s case, it was his entire fucking everything) they could work on improving and they did (even if it was at the last fucking minute Brent), but what was Simone’s?

I guess what I’m asking is... if those four were the OG Team Cockroach and rocked up in front of the Judge, what tests would she give them? She’d give Chidi the Hats again, she’d give John a secret to keep (or just have him go into a fancy party and NOT gossip about what anything anyone was wearing and just slowly amp up the Fashion Disasters), Brent... I feel like a litmus test for ‘Has Brent Norwalk become even the tiniest bit of a better person’ would literally be making him acknowledge he did something wrong and apologise properly. But I still (STILL) can’t even guess what Simone’s would be.

[drkungfus-customs]

Mtg Custom Card Competition Round 1: Rabiah

Hello everyone and welcome to the first custom card competition for mtg cards that I have judged. For this round, submissions were gathered from a discord server and the results have been judged by myself and my partner in crime Alyssa. The theme this week was Rabiah. Participants were asked to design a card that could have been printed if the set Arabian Nights was designed in 2019 with modern design sensibilities.

Alyssa says:

Flavourwise, it’s real fun! Trade as a method of getting white card advantage is really nice, and the art, name and flavour text all flow together. It’s not really that exciting, though. There’s nothing particularly mystical about the capitalism of antiquity!

Remember to capitalise Human and Treasure. Is it meant to scale to every Human everyone else plays too? If so, that’s a little too strong. Keep it to Humans you create.

The draw effect being “free” mana-wise isn’t that much of a problem. I’d add a tap to the ability so you can’t abuse it so freely. If this were blue, and cost 3 mana, then that effect would maybe fly, but white doesn’t get that.

Michael says:

So this card seemed a slam dunk at first, it has excellent flavour, very pretty art, and an appropriate white effect as we have seen the colour move into treasure generation a lot more in recent sets to compensate for its core weakness of mana ramp. This was until I got to the last line. Card draw in white is something that must be carefully monitored as it is one of the fundamental aspects of colour balance in magic. A good litmus test for this kind of effect is mentor of the meek, if a card can draw better or draw easier than mentor it probably crosses the line from a bend to a break in white.

Because the card itself produces treasure at a considerable rate, on a good body (thankfully still within bolt/push range), there is no real opportunity cost to the drawing as the treasure tokens also come incidentally by doing things a mono white deck wants to do. If this was a tap ability or had some kind of limiter the card would probably be acceptable but as it stands it represents a potent draw engine in any creature heavy deck, and god forbid what would happen in a Selesnya token strategy or an EDH deck running smothering tithe.

While the human type rider does help to limit this card, it is the most common creature type and so more often or not this card will provide good value even in decks not built around the card. Overall I really dig the treasure creation as a reward for building to a theme but the card draw is far too powerful and generic to be considered acceptable in mono white.

Possible improvements:

o   Currently this card is a break in white, either adding blue or limiting the rate of card draw would bring it into line with whites modern design philosophy.

o   It shouldn’t activate from your opponents Humans, symmetrical tribal effects have been retired due to poor gameplay.

o   It feels a shame to tie it to Humans, which are such a supported type. Making it rewarding to a more obscure tribe such as Advisors could be interesting.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 2/5 (would be a 4/5 with the drawing ability fixed or removed)

Flavour – 4/5

Alyssa says:

The formatting here has several notable issues:

o   As-written, the cast from hand effect gives temporary unblockability but the combat damage Treasure-making effect is permanent because you haven’t given it a duration.

o   Every time you define a token on a card, unless you’re writing a modifier for how many of the same type of token are produced by the same effect under different conditions (like Increasing Devotion, Gather the Townsfolk or Saproling Migration) you need to define those tokens again, so you’ll need to write out the Treasure text for the second effect. Make space on the card by omitting the reminder text on Flashback.

o   Magic uses numerals to refer to life, damage, stats and costs, but everywhere else they write out the numbers, so you create five Treasures rather than 5.

o   The destroy effect on casting it from the graveyard should just be sacrifice. You don’t need to make it a targeted destroy just because the original effect destroys, because you can use the cast-from-graveyard replacement effect to override its targeting, just like how Overload makes a targeting spell into a non-targeting one.

It’s fine as a card, but it feels kind of weak and the two effects don’t feel connected. The first cast feels like a good effect with good flavour ties, but I’m not sure how the second effect ties into it. The first incentivises high creature quality (giving a big beater evasion) while the second incentivises low creature quality (sacrificing a worthless token to get advantage) and while the environment for those two interacting can exist (read: Rise of the Eldrazi) it’s rare.

Triple black feels far too colour-intensive in an effect we’ve seen at 2B and 1B before. I am also not entirely sure what is happening from a flavour perspective when the creature gets destroyed. If it’s being closed off in the Cave of Wonders, how the hell do you get the treasures out?

Michael says:

The flavour on this card is very apparent, showing off an iconic scene with using the alternate flashback effect to progress the story of this card. I very much enjoy how well the flavour and mechanics have been integrated on this card especially in a way that is in-colour for Dimir. However the templating very much needs work, the effect can be unclear on a first read. Something as simple as a paragraph break between the regular and flashback effects would do wonders to the overall card. 

In addition when designing black costs, sacrifice is usually a preferred choice both flavourfully and mechanically as the flashback just becomes a seething song when you possess an indestructible creature. I think this card has very strong flavour and story but has a few formatting concerns that take away from its impact. While the card can go mana positive I think the card is balanced well enough to not create any dangerous situations. Solid workhorse uncommons are just as important as flashy mythic rares and this card could help to signal a more aggressive or saboteur based blue black deck in the limited environment, although the card is a little disjointed in effect possibly due to it being created to match the flavour rather than the other way around.

Possible improvements:

o   Formatting changes as Alyssa has acknowledged.

o   Changing the effect so that it doesn’t split the card’s focus. If you want to get increasing Treasure value, perhaps just make it mono-blue, the flashback cost 2U and make the damage dealing effect create three Treasures instead.

o   Perhaps a small pump of +1/+0 to help solidify its role in limited decks.

Grades:

o   Formatting 3/5

o   Function 2/5

o   Flavour 3/5

Alyssa says:

Flavourwise it’s fine, but not particularly imaginative. Genie wishes have been done before a lot and this doesn’t really do anything new with the effect except some ridiculous efficiency. (I’ll get into that later.) Formatting wise, it’s mostly fine. “It gains suspend” should be its own sentence. You missed “on it” for the land card drop.

Are the extra cards put on the bottom of your deck? I feel like you’re trying to make the “cost” of the effect be that it mills you slightly, which isn’t really that dangerous for reasons I’m going to get into, because the card is ridiculously strong.

It’s not hard to just casually spin this in your opponent’s end step with basic tutors or Brainstorm-like effects to find your best card, put it on top of your library, exile it with suspend and one time counter on it and just drop it like it’s hot. Five mana Emrakul, the Promised End with its cast effect? Anything that isn’t a land obtainable for free as long as you wait till your upkeep for it?

The second effect really doesn’t need to be there and is still really strong. Even though you can whiff, it can still effectively mean colourless 0 mana ramp every turn even if you lose the lands eventually. But it’s not like you’ll really want an effect like this when you’re doing top-deck manipulation to drop your biggest and best cards for free. It’s just overkill at that point.

Michael says:

This card feels intended to be fun but I believe has accidentally became far scarier than intended. I believe this card is firstly a lot more complex than it needs to be. The second ability that searches for lands adds a lot of extra complexity for this card and doesn't really add much to the overall playability. I believe it could be cut without losing the core effect of the card.

I would express serious concerns over power level however. Its nature as a colourless artifact means any deck can include it, miracle shells and cards such as sensei's divining top and scroll rack allow for significant levels of top deck manipulation which would make its random nature a lot more controlled especially in older formats and EDH. Being able to activate this card in your opponents end step for almost no cost also takes away any kind of risk to playing this card as even played fairly this allows for serious cheating on mana costs with a bit of luck.

There is also the slight problem that there is no rider to return the exiled cards to the bottom of the deck which would be standard for this kind of effect. While I assume this was accidental, it means that as submitted this card can mill your entire deck for a jace/lab man kill. There is clear potential in this card as a fun semi-random value piece but as it stands right now it has too few safety valves, and there is a clear risk of variance where one game you mill twenty cards to get to a one drop and the next where you rip Ulamog off the top on turn four. If anyone tried to play this card unfairly, as competitive players will certainly try to, this card will fundamentally break the mana system. Adding a mana cost to the effect and possibly increasing the casting cost is going to be the easiest way to preserve this card's intended purpose without being used as a combo piece, or just tying the suspend cost to cmc as opposed to how many cards milled. Also don’t forget the artist credits, that’s always important to have on custom cards.

Possible improvements:

o   Remove the second ability entirely. It’s superfluous at the best of times.

o   Jack a hefty mana cost on that ability. To keep the artifact at 4 mana, I want to make the ability cost 5 or 6. Alternatively, make you shuffle your library as part of the effect to make it a bit less spooky. Compare to Temporal Aperture or Mind’s Desire, which have a similar effect but deliberately shuffle your library beforehand. One thing you could do is make it a static suspend value, maybe 3, rather than however many cards you flip, because if you have to shuffle your library for that you might get stuff exiled with suspend 7 or whatever.

Grades:

o   Formatting – 4/5

o   Function – 1/5

o   Flavour – 2/5

Alyssa says:

Beautiful flavour. This card looks gorgeous and makes me very happy to read. Your formatting is flawless as well. The flavour clearly stems from his portrayal in the original arabian nights stories so I appreciate the top down design here.

Unfortunately, this card kind of pays for itself with what might amount to an upside in a bad spot by making additional chump blockers/sac fodder, like a bargain bin Bitterblossom. Additionally the downside is also relatively small, as is the payoff. I wouldn’t have a problem with leaving him tapped for a few turns which I feel isn’t good for a sexy black 4 mana 6/6: those stats and that colour want to have a stronger downside for a stronger payoff. Think Phyrexian Obliterator or Death’s Shadow: Black’s big creatures go hard on the pro and harder on the con. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything if he doesn’t make a big splashy impact on the board.

Michael says:

This card I quite like. While it’s unusual to see humans as powerful as a 6/6, that is about the maximum I would realistically expect to see for the tribe so that isn't too much of an issue. The flavour of a mono black king who uses his subjects is absolutely on point though and feels very in fitting for the feel of arabian nights so good job on that front. My foremost concern with this card is that there is no real downside to this card, while the king requires a sacrifice in your upkeep he has a built in method to mitigate this in his automatic ability to create soldiers. However there is a really easy fix to this, just include a cost to his ability to create tokens. Replacing this with a repeatable activated ability for an amount of mana feels too white so instead I would propose adding a cost to his end of turn trigger, possibly discarding a card to ensure that there is a price to splashing the king. Although given humans are the most popular tribe and many cards are incidentally human, I imagine that there will be plenty of sacrifice fodder in both constructed and limited. Overall good work on this one, a strong design that just needs a few tweaks to be good to go and really screams arabian nights flavour (in a good way).

Possible improvements:

o   Include a cost for the human token production. Perhaps “At the beginning of your end step, you may discard a card. If you do, create a 1/1 white Human creature token.” The card disadvantage is a real downer, but you have an option not to if you can’t.

o   Go a bit harder on his power level. Something on the level of a keyword ability such as menace for example wouldn’t hurt.

o   Make the damage life loss. Possibly amp it up to 3.

Grades:

o   Formatting – 5/5

o   Function – 3/5

o   Flavour – 4/5

Alyssa says:

The flavour is nice, perfectly evocative of what Aladdin is. Perhaps it’s a bit too safe? This is what I’d expect Aladdin to do: maybe I was hoping for a little more. The formatting is mostly good, but as of now the steal effect is permanent and not tied to Aladdin staying in play. Was this intentional? Permanent steal effects are Blue’s wheelhouse, not Red’s, making it a colour bend. (Red does get to steal stuff, especially artifacts, but it very rarely gets to keep it.) I wouldn’t be averse to seeing this effect on an Izzet Aladdin for example.

It’s a simple, clean effect that has the potential for sick card advantage. I like it! It feels like something you could open in an artifacts matter set. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar card when we return to Kaladesh.

Michael says:

This card is interesting. As a four cmc legendary creature that fixes a core problem with mono red in an in-colour way, this card is clearly very good in EDH. However this card also is a significant tempo play and value generator in an environment that is heavy on artifacts which would probably give it legs in standard, albeit constrained thanks to the legendary supertype. My main concern with this card is that there is no condition or limitation to the steal effect. Indefinite stealing of cards is a very blue effect, while playing with artifacts is red, so I would like to make this an izzet card, but the flavour clearly does not support blue. Therefore to make this card more in line with the colour pie I would add either an end of turn clause to the steal, a limit on the cmc of the artifact, or at the very least have stolen artifacts return when this card leaves the battlefield. Return on leaving the battlefield seems the most appropriate option to me to help avoid flicker abuse in commander while still preserving the flavour of the card. Other than that good job, this is an excellent effort to provide a balanced and flavourful red card that I believe would excite people to play with.

Possible improvements:

o   Address the colour pie bend, or otherwise tie the stealing effect to Aladdin’s survival.

Grades

o   Formatting 5/5

o   Function 4/5

o   Flavour 4/5

So congratulations to Shanobi and her submission of Aladdin, Prince of Thieves as the winner for this week. It was a close race between Aladdin and King Shahrayah but where we could point to a few areas of improvement for the King, Aladdin felt perfect with just a minor tweak to bring his effect more into red’s area of the colour pie. 

It has been a fun week to judge and hopefully we should see these competitions continue if there is renewed interest in our judging. If any of you have any feedback or improvements to our judging style, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Thank you all for your hard work and submissions!

As a bonus Alyssa and I worked briefly on what our theoretical submission could have been to this contest which we based off a monster from Iranian folklore and posted for fun here in Zahak, Hunger-Cursed.

[dailyrugbytoday]

Rugby Cheetahs, USA Falcons Collide In Litmus Test

New Post has been published on https://thedailyrugby.com/rugby-cheetahs-usa-falcons-collide-in-litmus-test/

The Daily Rugby

https://thedailyrugby.com/rugby-cheetahs-usa-falcons-collide-in-litmus-test/

Rugby Cheetahs, USA Falcons Collide In Litmus Test

The USA Falcons will be seeking a morale-boosting victory over the South African provincial squad Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Friday as part of their preparation in the buildup to their Rugby World Cup Qualifier Series next month.

The American team is a secondary squad—consisting of only Major League Rugby players—and will be playing under the national team banner but competing as the USA Falcons throughout their two-match tour of South Africa.

2022 Free State Cheetahs vs USA National A

In November, the Falcons will have to tough it out against Hong Kong, Kenya and Portugal in Dubai for the final place in next year’s World Cup.

The team will want to test themselves against one of the best provincial teams in South Africa in the form of the Cheetahs.

Similarly, the Cheetahs will look to return to their winning ways after they slumped to a 21-14 defeat against an Emerging Ireland side a week ago. A favorable result against a Gary Gold-coached international team will serve as massive relief for Hawies Fourie’s Cheetahs, who start their inaugural European Challenge campaign in two months.

Admittedly, neither side will be boasting a full-strength lineup. The visitors will be missing all their foreign-based players, while eight first-choice Cheetahs squad members are unavailable for selection due to injury.

For all their attacking prowess, the Cheetahs are notorious for their defensive frailties and given Gold’s experience and intel of the game in South Africa, that is one facet which the American outfit will surely look to exploit to create ample scoring opportunities.

Should the home side continue playing in this way, there is every chance that the outcome of the game will hinge on which team gains supremacy at the scrum, breakdown and lineout.

Cheetahs

15 Cohen Jasper, 14 Munier Hartzenberg, 13 Evardi Boshoff, 12 Frans Steyn, 11 Rosko Specman, 10 George Lourens, 9 Branden de Kock, 8 Teboho Mohoje, 7 Sibabalo Qoma, 6 Marnus van der Merwe, 5 Victor Sekekete (c), 4 Rynier Bernardo, 3 Conraad van Vuuren, 2 Marko Janse van Rensburg, 1 Schalk Ferreira.

Subs: 16 Janus Venter, 17 Cameron Dawson, 18 Hencus van Wyk, 19 Jean Droste, 20 Jeandre Rudolph, 21 Ruan Pienaar, 22 Reinhardt Fortuin, 23 Robert Ebersohn.

United States Falcons

15 Marcel Brache, 14 Mitch Wilson, 13 Bryce Campbell (c), 12 Paul Lasike, 11 Christian Dyer, 10 Luke Carty, 9 Nate Augspurger, 8 Jamason Fa’anana-Schultz, 7 Cory Daniel, 6 Viliami Helu, 5 Nick Civetta, 4 Keni Nasoqeqe, 3 Paul Mullen, 2 Dylan Fawsitt, 1 Jack Iscaro.

Subs: 16 Kaleb Geiger, 17 Chance Wenglewski, 18 Angus Maclellan, 19 Siaosi Mahoni, 20 Cam Dolan, 21 Duncan van Schalkwyk, 22 Tavite Lopeti, 23 Chris Mattina.

[fortunelomo]

Glintsleeve syphoner

#GLINTSLEEVE SYPHONER UPGRADE#

#GLINTSLEEVE SYPHONER FREE#

It can be the aggressor against Delirium and Torrential Gearhulk and play the control role against Zombies or Winding Constrictor. Temur Energy is the midrange-est midrange deck in the format. Most cards in the deck are worth more than a card as a result, most of what is happening here is going to naturally out-grind anything, synergy aside. The Good: This deck does almost the same thing every game. If you’re experienced with the archetype, jam. This makes it easier for control decks to have profitable Sweltering Suns and Fumigate turns, despite Dread Wanderer, Scrapheap Scrounger, and Relentless Dead all being in the deck.įinal Verdict: Zombies being proactive makes it incredibly attractive, but everybody gunning for it makes me skeptical to play it without a large number of reps with the deck. Diregraf Colossus and Cryptbreaker are the best ways to net cards, but they both require their controller to overcommit in order to get much of a payoff. This makes the deck flounder against control despite appearing to crush it on paper. In short, everybody should know how they can perform against Dread Wanderer and company.ĭespite a host of sticky threats, Magma Spray can give the deck fits. This means that it is sort of the litmus test that everybody will be using to know if they can compete in the format.

#GLINTSLEEVE SYPHONER UPGRADE#

Metallic Mimic might be embarrassing, but it sure gets a heck of an upgrade post-sideboard when it Animorphs into Scrapheap Scrounger. Zombies is comfortable sitting back and letting Diregraf Colossus and Cryptbreaker take over while the opponent has trouble finding good attacks.Īgainst control, most of the creatures in Zombies are sticky, and given time they will overpower almost everything in front of them. It’s hard to “just kill their things.”Ĭreature decks have a hard time fighting their efficiency and the low-to-the-ground creature decks are outclassed too quickly for them to reasonably fight on an axis they’re comfortable fighting. The Good: Zombies is proactive and resilient. With zero tournaments since the recent banning of Aetherworks Marvel, people are still trying to figure out what is going on and what they should be playing. I’m rarely formulaic in my writing, but I’ve got a lot of information to cover here and want to talk about (almost) everything I’ve playtested for the tournament, what I learned, and why one should or shouldn’t look to play a deck.

#GLINTSLEEVE SYPHONER FREE#

My recent decision to leave my day job and pursue Magic full-time has afforded me the free time required to test a wide range of decks in the format. Sticking to the same archetype isn’t something I do, and outside of Legacy Prowess, there isn’t any specific deck that I’m really known for championing. I’ve played a plethora of archetypes in my day. We didn’t arrive here overnight, and it’s a process, but what is the process like?įor some people, they lock into their decks early on in testing and work on tweaking said archetypes for the duration of their testing, learning the ins and outs of a single strategy, all in the hopes of being able to out-maneuver whatever they play against, even if it’s a bad matchup. The tournament is tomorrow and most of us are going to be locked in on our decks by now.

[pendingtitle-blog]

overnight

A collection of stories from the CBD 24/7 McDonalds as told by the workers on the battlefields of its busiest nights. The unsung heroes bringing you food at your lowest moments. All their stories and experiences told are true.

“Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

11:00 PM. A Friday night. The horde begins to fill up the Melbourne CBD. A knot forms in your gut. Questions race through the mind: How will tonight transpire? Who will make this harder than it needs to be? What will the toilets end up like? What you do know for sure is the party is about to start. The horde will need to be fed. Sustenance in the form of trans fats and fried goodness. Take a deep breath and enter the barracks. The store is clean for now. Bins are freshly replaced, tables wiped down and the stations stocked up. McDonald’s is ready for it’s beating.

You walk through the kitchen, past the managers' office and into the change room. It’s almost time to clock on. Seven hours of punishment from the general party-going public. Seven hours of providing service with a smile, drained of all energy and enthusiasm. The Japanese warriors of old were recorded to have prepared for battle through specially prepared meals that they would consume leading to a rallying of the troops by yelling “GLORY, GLORY”; which would be met by calls from the generals replying “YES, YES”. The same principle applies in this time. Your special meal is a 50% discounted crew meal or a cigarette behind the store to activate the synapses allowing orders to get out faster. The rallying calls is a change room banter. You shoot the shit with the rest of the crew, hearing horror stories from the past to the soundtrack of your coworkers selected playlists echoing the small room. The guy to your left tells you a story all too common with the disorderly drunks fighting among each other. He’s been here a little longer than you so he’s seen the worst that a Friday overnight can offer.

“I think the worst I’ve seen was this obese woman who started a fight with this guy in the store,” he chuckles “she must have been at least 200kg and she thought this other customer had bumped into her on purpose so she just flew a punch at him,

“It sounded like she thought he was making fun of him for her weight which I’m guessing she was insecure about so it turned into a full brawl with at least five different people trying to hold her back,” he goes on “it ended up with the police being called to break the whole thing up”.

Another question forms in your mind. What in god’s name is driving us to do this? It’s not a complicated motivating factor. Why else would an 18 to 20 year old put themselves through this?

Money. This is what you signed up for.

“Because doing this gets you more money. Also, tons of babes come in and will give you their number if you’re lucky,” he grins.

Time ticks closer. The shift starts soon. One sleeve at a time, button up the front, one leg at a time, tighten the belt, slip your work boots on and tie the apron on. Out into the trenches. Finally, ask to start the shift.

“Yes, yes” the manager replies.

“He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The greatest armies in history have always relied on coordination and careful execution to subdue powerful forces for victory. Nothing has changed in the present day. Armed with grills, beef, chicken, deep fryers and various other products. Rapid fire production is needed to keep the hunger back. A symbiotic relationship between the front counter and kitchen is needed to keep the peace. One without the other on a night like this would surely end in defeat. An army of eight against the never-ending patrons of Melbourne's ever-booming party scene. It should be noted: this isn’t the case all the time. One hour the store could be packed with order numbers being yelled at the top of your lungs and the customers responding with the ever original catchphrase:

“BINGO!”

The next it could be completely dead with the air being filled from the bleeps and blorps of kitchen. This will not be one of those nights.

Wave one begins. The families and oldies finishing off an old-fashioned night on the town with grease and salt. Children demand soft serves and chippies. The oldies wanting coffee at this hour because how else would one want to finish their night off. Police officers also load up on fuel for their all-nighter of a shift patrolling the patrons of the clubs that will eventually end up in the store.

This will be a litmus test for how the night travels. It’ll show you how busy you’ll end up being, which crew are not up to the task and how awful the bathrooms will end up being. It’s almost a given you get a crew member bewildered by the number of people storming the fort. Putting themselves in no good position to be useful and making a stressful situation even more stressful. Can you blame them though? No one can truly understand what an overnight is until you actually do it. It takes a lot of endurance to make it through a night like this. Even with the consistent sales being made, you ask,  

“Well this is busy, how worse could it get?”

Your fellow coworker replies with the smug grin of a veteran who’s seen it all,

“This is nothing.” A favourite phrase among many of the employees who have worked these shifts.

He continues, “You didn’t work the overnight of the Queens birthday public holiday. That was nasty. It was just me and the boss on the front with two others in the back. We were so backlogged with orders that we had someone from kitchen jumping up to front counter to help get rid of the backed up product while more orders were still coming in.”

The thought of this makes you uneasy and stressed. Nothing is worse than a packed house, nothing but noise resulting in orders being unheard and customers angered because they couldn’t hear. Order 116 being screamed into the void.

His account of events develop further with more horror, “This did not stop from 1 AM to 5 AM. Just constant flow of orders. It would get so bad that I would have to stop taking orders because it would only make it worse. But what resulted was disgruntled drunks now mad about not only not getting their orders quickly but now they weren’t getting served. It was a lose-lose situation for a while.”

A common occurrence on these shifts is that you gain a lot of new perspectives. You don’t have it as bad as you think you have it right now. A lot of this could be a lot worse.

“Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The halfway point occurs and it’s time for your break. Relieved of duty for half an hour to refuel and revitalise yourself. So far the crowds are exactly what you would expect. Drunk, disorderly and disappointing. But the team has held them back well with little to no disruptions. Successful execution as always. However, the constant flow and attention drawn onto appeasing the crowds made you forget one thing: The body needs to sleep. The constant attention to everything but yourself has distracted your body from the recovery and rest it needs. Sitting down for this half hour to eat and scroll through Facebook, the effects become immediately noticeable. Speech: impossible to understand. Motor functions: harder to use. Sanity: warped. Time begins to slow down and speed up meaning this war will never be finished. The 30-minute break turned into five. Time to end this.

You would never guess it during the day, but the dining area during 12 AM to 6 AM in a 24/7 McDonalds is something else. You begin to understand how wasteful of a species we are. A trash dump is one of the first words that come to mind. Paper bags, boxes, half eaten food, sauce spills, drink stains, melted ice cream, lost wallets and phones all strewn across the tables, floors and seats. Overflowing bins create a greasy stench. The homeless of the city sleep amongst this because it's better than sleeping on the streets. A quick glimpse at the toilets reveals a myriad of monstrosities ranging from faeces on the floor and walls, a flood of urine creating ‘stank’ air as a replacement for oxygen, dried up vomit containing half digested cheeseburgers and used tampons littered about. Six million years of human evolution has lead to this moment. Only you and the coworkers around you can turn this dumpsite into a restaurant that families come into during the day. The bags fill up one by one, ready to be compacted. Where is this waste going to end up? Another landfill? You’re not paid to think about this. You’re being paid to hide it from today’s customers.

Except they won’t let you give you the courtesy to that. The final rush of club goers come in at 4 AM to add more waste and more stress. This rush will be particularly nasty. Complete disregard for everything around them. Settling into the areas already clean. Encamping into spots until 6 AM. Leaving more waste than before to be collected. A strain on everyone’s resources stopping the entire crew from finishing what they need to finish. But that's what sets McDonalds’ overnight workers from the rest of the crop. Endurance of all this bullshit. The kitchen crew will still clean and prepare for the next people coming in. The front counter crew will still stock and clean the restaurant while getting orders out the best they can. The manager on shift will still do the bureaucratic work required to make sure the store continues to run on top of doing what they can to help kitchen and front with what’s needed. A formidable force in the hospitality industry. Unbeatable.

And just like that, the pain ends. The store is clean like nothing happened over the last 7 hours. Everyone is gone and the day is starting for everyone else. Except you. It’s time to rest soldier. The journey home begins.

“Who wishes to fight must first count the cost”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The body knows it must rest now. Your eyelids are drawing heavier and you're drifting off into the realm of sleep. However, it doesn’t end there. Your dreams are invaded by the events of the past shift. Surreal nightmares that take away all control. Every worst-case scenario that the brain could create is presented in high definition terror. A customer has been waiting four hours for their order. The monitor is overwhelmed with products you don’t understand. You keep packing the orders wrong. The whole team despises you. Failure. Hate. Fear. All for your viewing.

You only had to do one. Now, what happens if you were to do it four to five days in a row? You’ve heard the stories told to you by the real troopers who put themselves through it again and again, living on a reverse sleep cycle.

One of the kitchen crew had told you their “sleep deprivation would build up so much that by the time I got to a day off I would sleep around 16 hours literally wasting it, making it become, instead, a cycle of sleep and work”. A beast that keeps on consuming time and energy the more you dive deeper into.

The sleep after one of these shifts is enough to make anyone feel like they’ve wasted a day. Sleeping until 4 pm just to eat dinner then go back to sleep. Time stolen because recovery was necessary. To someone who had to do multiples of these it then felt like “a void,” where they “would be back and forth between the same two places, doing the same things” entering into what felt “like I was in a dream and granted how little sleep I got maybe parts of it was”.

This is what you agree to and there’s no shame in it. You need money and this is the lengths you and the people around you will go to get it. The hospitality industry is known for its horror stories and granted the customers are significantly worse at this time; although, a small minority remain kind-hearted in these hours. The knot unties and now you have permission to rest easy until the next time.

[paulhaarman]

Ways to Boost Efficiency in Remote Teams

Organizations around the world have been contemplating a shift towards hybrid work environments and remote stations for a long time. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this shift was given a drastic push. Almost every business that wanted to survive had to create some form of a remote working model advice Paul Haarman. This change however, came with its own set of challenges according to John Doe. From keeping track of employees to ensuring their productivity, a lot has to be taken care of in different ways.

Looking after remote teams and employees presents unique challenges and opportunities. Boosting their efficiency and productivity requires distinct efforts. Businesses need to figure out innovative solutions in this regard so that organizational objectives can be achieved. For remote work, a few things have to be borne in mind. Here are some of the factors that can help organizations manage efficient remote teams.

1.      Set SMART Goals

Besides individual growth, goals are essential for the development of organizations too. Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based goals is crucial for their success. These factors have been carefully calibrated to make sure that a goal is not just words on paper but an actual milestone that teams can aspire towards.

For remote teams, organizations need to set both short term and long term goals suggests Paul Haarman. John Doe states that these are vital litmus tests for ensuring that the members are working in a synchronized direction to achieve the goals that the organization wants. The results of carefully formulated and implemented goals can be extremely potent as well as accurate.

2.      Schedule Regular Video Conferences

Sitting at home can make a person pivot away from organizational cultures with various distractions. Regular video conferences that are aside from meetings can help them get back in the zone. Video conferences are not just a way to influence interaction and communication but also enable employees to remain motivated.

Video conferences help create a sync amongst team members who are working remotely, John Doe highlights. Through this practice, remote workers can connect with the organization, its members both colleagues and senior executives while allowing them to stay in a positive spirit as well. Having regular video conferences is a great way to boost efficiency.

3.      Get a Mentor On-board

Remote work is new for most employees. Employees themselves face a lot of challenges with random things at the places where they choose to work. As much as individuals appreciate flexible work environments, they can’t help some of the distractions that come their way. These factors can disturb their efficiency, timeliness and other elements.

Mentors like John Doe are a great way to get the ball rolling. They can help with raising employee morale through training sessions and discussions that are insightful. These trained individuals understand the challenges that come with remote work and can help employees that are new to the circumstances understand the issues they are facing as well as resolve them effectively.

Conclusion

Boosting productivity in remote teams can require concerted efforts says Paul Haarman. Setting long-term and short-term goals, interacting through video conferences, and mentoring can help motivate employees who may feel disconnected from their organizations for various reasons.

Originally Posted: https://paulhaarman.net/ways-boost-efficiency-in-remote-teams/

[3idatascraping]

The pandemic of COVID-19 proved to be a litmus test for all the businesses worldwide, small, medium, or big. As per the local economic report given by Yelp.com, around 97,966 businesses got shut down because of this pandemic. As business owners are struggling with finding the right solution, there are many things you can do about a marketplace as well as your business also.

Companies at different levels, small or big, can make a huge difference for the customers through leveraging data. Data scraping can assist you in understanding how the products perform in certain markets as well as points out the areas that need improvement. This is a smart and time-effective method of revamping their businesses for smaller retailers as well as assist them in reaching new heights.

The worldwide business has become a leveled field for small as well as medium businesses. So, you must prepare yourself well as well as grab this opportunity.

Post-Pandemic Recovery for Small Businesses

Retail businesses can stay competitive only if they utilize technology for all their everyday operations. From different things like content monitoring to brand monitoring as well as competitive pricing to lead generation, web scraping provides the right mixture of data. You may leverage that in nearly all the daily operations. Let’s see how:

1. Demand Analysis and Product Intelligence

Small retailers have many products in online stores. However, any good retailer understands which the top-performing products are for them and they keep using them to get more profits.

Web data scraping automates this procedure by including products and categories. This can give you deep insights into the performance of every product. So, you can use your marketing tactics for targeted performance boost of top-performing products. Furthermore, product intelligence data assists you in category management and product assortment.

When comes to demands, the top-performing products may not be in most demand. Knowing what your customers need will provide you different ways of getting customer satisfaction. Besides, this will also assist you in doing some changes to the marketing campaigns.

2. Pricing Intelligence

A huge amount of related products is crowding the marketplace. In these circumstances, customer decision-making takes place within seconds. So, you only need few seconds for making your offer so rewarding that they accept that without much thought.

Using web scraping, smaller retailers can have data from different applicable sources. This data could show how the competitors are estimating similar products as well as the profit they make. Besides, you may learn the best pricing for the products, thus recalling your customers with marginally higher pricing. This judgment is a shrill line and web scraping can help you in keeping the balance.

Moreover, retailers these days price their products vigorously, i.e., keep changing product’s pricing within seconds for staying ahead in the competition. Using web scraping, it’s easy to adopt similar tactics as well as beat them in the market.

3. SEO Tracking

SEO is amongst the most important areas to work with while looking forward to establishing an online presence. Small things like keywords and tags you utilize, together with your site link and structure play an important role. Keeping that in mind, you should track your SEO rankings as well as your competitor’s also.

Using web extraction, small retailers could get important data about competitor’s targeted keywords and tags. It will assist you in understanding factors that are driving traffic towards their website as well as engaging the audiences. So, with the right changes in SEO projects, it’s easy to lead the competitive marketplace.

4. Design Targeted Ad Campaigns

Smaller retailers want visibility. As your future consumers are coming back to the marketplace, this is the right time to come back in the game. Data scraping is an outstanding method to understand consumer’s behavior using sentiment analytics. This can also inform you about the social media platforms and applications maximum used by the targeted audience. Together with that, it gives you the insights of driving focused results using well-curated ad campaigns.

So, with the proper adoptions at the right place, you could generate leads as well as attract buyers in the retail stores.

5. Campaign Monitoring

Smaller retailers rely more on creating the right presence amongst their audiences. In marketplaces today, businesses succeed or close down only in one blink! And that is the reason why keeping pace as well as adapting to the active environment is important.

Companies are using many social media websites like YouTube and Instagram for different marketing campaigns. However, just like lead generation is important, the conversion rate is also important. So, the point is where you need to recognize how successful one’s campaign is. So, how can we do it? Here, web scraping can provide you an answer with studying factors including cost per acquisition, click-through rate, and bounce rate to name some.

6. MAP Compliance

Whenever you want to expand to different countries using online stores, the product’s price becomes a very tricky affair. Using web data scraping, smaller retailers can track product price data and identify MAP desecrations.

7. Lead Generation

When you need to make a sale, the sales team is always searching for new leads for pitching a new service or product. In these circumstances where a pandemic hasn’t gone yet, you may take the benefits of web scraping for making a power-packed and fresh start to get new leads.

3i Data Scraping can scrape data from different directories as well as convert that into a working dataset. The employees can easily leverage the data to line up new lead generation.

8. Content Marketing

There are no limits to creativity, products, and services you provide to the customers. Being a smaller retailer, you have to come up with distinctive content from time to time. Using web scraping, you can go through your competitor’s content as well as understand what the customers want. So that, you can provide new content, which appeals to your customers.

Web scraping provides you a time-effective analysis of competitor’s content to ensure that you don’t lose out on any new ideas and concepts.

9. Market Research

The majority of you could be searching for avenues for entering a niche. At times, data scraping helps you understand what pushes certain sets of customers. Moreover, this will assist you in predicting how the products will work in the new marketplaces.

So, you can make an all-round analysis about the pros as well as cons of entering any new marketplace. It will assist you to understand the strength of data-driven decisions.

10. Brand Monitoring

The majority of you could be searching for the chance of rewriting brand image. So, finally, the right opportunity has come to you. The tiresome job of studying reviews and datasets on different online channels becomes a stress-free job if you use web scraping.

The majority of you could be searching for the chance of rewriting brand image. So, finally, the right opportunity has come to you. The tiresome job of studying reviews and datasets on different online channels becomes a stress-free job if you use web scraping.

Try 3i Data Scraping for Web Scraping Services!

In today’s post-pandemic world, you will have many new areas to discover. With the right insights about how to make the right impacts on the right audiences, you may leverage this extraordinary calamity into somewhat favorable for yourself as well as for your customers.

We cope with different data forms as well as present them in user-friendly formats. Therefore, making sure that you use it in the best way. To understand more about how you can reach heights with data scraping, contact 3i Data Scraping!

Original Blog: https://www.3idatascraping.com/how-web-scraping-can-help-small-retailers-in-regaining-their-business-post-pandemic-situation-of-covid-19.php

[makingmoneyonlinemethod]

8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science

 The cutthroat inbox of your standard consumer roils with marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and scores of attention-seeking emails. With over 144 billion emails sent each and every day, email marketing remains one of the elite channels for business communication. So how does the signal separate itself from the noise?

To be sure, finding the key to a stand-out message is critical to your bottom line—whether that bottom line is cold, hard cash or community engagement or anything in between. What follows are eight inbox-tested email marketing strategies that successful senders have used to get their emails clicked.

1. Personalize your email without using the recipient’s name

No more “Dear [INSERT NAME HERE]”.

The practice of personalized email greetings is not nearly as effective as it may seem. In fact, research by Temple’s Fox School of Business suggests that this particular kind of personalization could be harmful.

Given the high level of cyber security concerns about phishing, identity theft, and credit card fraud, many consumers would be wary of emails, particularly those with personal greetings.

A significant element of email marketing is relationship. Does a recipient trust you? Does a recipient even know who you are? When an email jumps the gun by forcing familiarity too soon, the personalization comes across as skeevy. Intimacy is earned in real life, and it would appear to be the same way with email. Take this example from my inbox; no one has called me lowercase kevan l lee in years.

 Faking familiarity with the subscriber turns many wary email readers off. But this isn’t to say that all forms of personalization are off-limits. In fact, a particular brand of personalization can pay off big time: Sending email that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality (e.g., purchase history or demographic).

(The study) also found that product personalization, in which customers are directed to products that their past purchasing patterns suggest they will like, triggered positive responses in 98 percent of customers.

The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.

 2. The long and short of subject lines

When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters. Marketers refer to this as the “dead zone” of subject length. According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report, there is no increase in either open rate or clickthroughs at this 60-to-70 character length of subject line.

Conversely, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content, and subject lines 49 characters and below tested well with open rate.

In fact, Adestra found that subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%.

Short subjects came in vogue with the success of President Barack Obama’s email fundraising. He saw incredible engagement with subjects like “Hey” and “Wow.”

 So the question becomes: Do you want to boost clicks (response) or opens (awareness)? Go long for clickthroughs; keep it short for opens.

Either way, a helpful email strategy is to squeeze out more words or cut back just a bit to avoid that 60 to 70 character dead zone.

3. 8:00 p.m. to midnight is the prime time to send your email

While many a quality email may be built during business hours, the ones with the best open rates aren’t being sent from 9 to 5. The top email strategy is to send at night.

In their quarterly email report for 2012’s fourth quarter, Experian Marketing Services found that the time of day that received the best open rate was 8:00 p.m. to midnight. This block not only performed better for open rate (a respectable 22 percent) but also for clickthrough and sales.

 The chart above shows that the 8:00 to midnight window is also the least used—a key factor in helping those late night emails outperform the rest. From Experian:

Optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding, and the deployment times of other marketers.

Inbox crowding and the deployment times of other marketers go hand-in-hand; if your email goes out when few others do, it stands a greater chance of getting noticed (so quick, start sending between 8:00 and midnight before everyone else catches on).

Optimal mailing for your customers’ needs will be up to you. Test, test, and test some more to find out how your customer ticks and when he/she opens email.

4. The best content is free content: Give something away

Consumers love a free lunch—or a free template.

In a study on their email list of 6,300 subscribers, Bluewire Media tested various types of content to see what led to the highest rates for opens and clicks. The winner was templates and tools, just the kind of freebies that email readers want.

Here is a freebie example from Help Scout:

Many a consumer will ask, “What’s in it for me?” When it comes to resources, Bluewire Media’s test results say that templates and tools outweigh ebooks, expert interviews, brain teasers, and even photo albums. You will want to test with your own list, but certainly use Bluewire’s research as a head start.

5. Mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens

Mobile opens accounted for 47 percent of all email opens in June, according to numbers provided by email marketing firm Litmus. If your email list accounts for $100,000 in sales each month, could you afford to wave bye-bye to $44,000 just because your email looks funky on a mobile phone?

Design responsively to ensure that your email looks great no matter where it’s read. Here are some quick mobile design tips:

Convert your email to a one column template for an     easy mobile fix.

Bump up     the font size for improved readability on smart phones.

Follow     the iOS guideline of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall.

Make the     call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Above the fold is preferable.

Consider     ergonomics. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important     tappable elements in the middle of the screen.

 6. Email still reigns over Facebook and Twitter

Social media may be the young whippersnapper nipping at email’s heels, but the content king of the inbox still holds sway in social influence, according to a study by SocialTwist. Over an 18-month period, SocialTwist monitored 119 referral campaigns from leading brands and companies. The results showed a significant advantage to email’s ability to convert new customers compared to Facebook and Twitter.

Of the 300,000 referrals who became new customers, 50.8 percent were reached by email, compared to 26.8 percent for Twitter and 22 percent for Facebook.

Email ruled supreme, by almost double.

7. Send email on the weekends

While not as overwhelming a winner as the 8:00 p.m. to midnight time of day, Saturday and Sunday did outperform their weekday counterparts in Experian’s study of day-of-week performance.

 Again, the volume of email sent on the weekends is low, just like the volume for evening emails, which could help those messages stand out more. The margins for clickthrough, open, and sales rates were not substantial, but in email marketing, every little bit counts.

8. Re-engage an inactive group of subscribers

Your list is huge. Great! The only problem is that two-thirds of it may be inactive.

Research has found that the average inactivity for a list is 63 percent, meaning that once someone joins they are less likely to ever follow-up with your follow-up emails. Email marketing firm Listrak goes so far as to identify the first 90 days as the window for turning a sign-up into a devotee (and they lay out a plan for doing so).

What’s to become of that inactive 63 percent? Re-engagement campaigns are an excellent place to start.

Recently, a re-engagement campaign from Digg wound up in my inbox. The subject was catchy (“This Is Not An Email From 2006”), and the content helpfully explained what the email was all about.

 As with everything that we call science, it’s all about doing experiments. Very likely, if you are doing your own experiments, you might actually have found different results. What are your best email strategies and email marketing tips? Tell us in the comments below!

[dailynewswebsite]

COVID-19 vaccine: how the ‘mum test’ can help ensure take-up

The UK's Deputy Chief Medical Officer has urged his personal mom to take the Covid-19 vaccine when it's launched. Facundo Arrizabalaga

One of many many classes of the pandemic considerations the significance of communication: how the authorities body a message may be as influential because the content material of the message itself.

Within the earliest stage of the pandemic, as an example, we had been taught to clean our fingers for 20 seconds. That recommendation turned extra memorable, or “sticky” within the language of entrepreneurs, when it was framed as singing “Comfortable Birthday” twice.

The authorities are nonetheless conserving framing in thoughts. The UK’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van Tam, lately took a human strategy to reassuring that every one due checks will probably be utilized earlier than any coronavirus vaccine is authorized. Requested whether or not he’d be among the many first to take the vaccine, he mentioned he would however he isn’t among the many most high-risk in society.

He then invoked “the mum take a look at”, stressing that he’d need his personal, aged mom to have the vaccine: “I’ve already mentioned to her, ‘Mum, make sure that once you’re referred to as you’re prepared, be able to take this up, that is actually necessary for you due to your age.’”

Vaccination is a matter that’s emotive, politically charged, psychologically advanced and has been beset by an notorious case of scientific fraud. At a time when persons are afraid and faux information abounds, it is important that the authorities get their communication good.

The science of the ‘mum take a look at’

Van Tam’s assertion is attention-grabbing. There have been many approaches that might have been taken in an try to reassure us. Scientists typically fall again on statistics at such occasions. However, not everybody understands primary statistics. When researchers requested a consultant pattern of the US inhabitants to transform 20 out of 100 to a share, 28% failed to take action precisely.

Even those that are able to understanding statistics could not make investments the trouble essential to see past their very own prejudices. When a gaggle of volunteers had been requested questions on information purportedly from exams of a skincare product, their statistical reasoning was considerably higher than when the identical information was offered as from a gun-control examine. When it got here to gun management, individuals had been extra more likely to interpret goal statistics as aligning with their pre-existing beliefs.

Maybe it’s unsurprising then that alcohol training analysis has discovered that statistics are extra persuasive than anecdotes when preaching to the transformed, however the reverse is the case when chatting with sceptics. Relating to the necessary enterprise of fixing minds, anecdotes trumps statistics.

A vaccine is coming – quickly. VP Brothers/Shutterstock

Van Tam went for a private message, however not too private – he might have mentioned: “I’ll take the vaccine.” Was it the best factor to do on this case?

A sequence of experiments have proven that many medical doctors suggest procedures to their sufferers that they might not select for themselves. The variations are hanging.

One analysis group requested US physicians which of two therapies – one with a barely increased demise price however fewer unwanted side effects and one other with decrease demise charges however extra unwanted side effects – they might endorse to deal with an avian flu virus. The outcomes confirmed 63% selected the therapy with the upper demise price for themselves, however 49% beneficial this for sufferers. So it appears physicians had been extra keen to just accept a given threat of demise with the intention to keep away from different antagonistic results of a therapy after they had been making a call for themselves than when recommending a plan of action to others.

What’s extra, science exhibits that we are likely to make much less biased selections if we’re making them on behalf of another person. By making his personal mom the litmus take a look at, Van Tam nailed it. Not solely will the point out of the phrase “mum” have evoked optimistic neurological responses in listeners. His story additionally gave his viewers a sticky and significant illustration of simply how secure this vaccine should be earlier than being scaled up for launch.

Wider classes

Regardless of being an professional on behavioural science, I didn’t know that the mum take a look at existed till I heard information stories about Van Tam’s speech. I rapidly realised there’s loads of analysis to again it up.

I’ll even use it myself when negotiating. After we’re shopping for one thing, we’re typically reliant for data on the very one that has most to realize by promoting to us. The mum take a look at provides a helpful technique for overcoming this battle of curiosity.

A intelligent experimental strategy reveals that persons are far more keen to report a fact that they know to be deceptive than they’re to inform an outright lie. So, a salesman may really feel fairly snug giving an affirmative reply to the query “is that this product value the additional £200?”, as a result of it’s true that the product is value the additional cash to a really area of interest group of consumers who require a selected characteristic. However the identical salesperson may baulk at giving an affirmative reply to the query “is that this the product you’ll suggest to your mom?”

It’s nice to see that the federal government is heading in the right direction to making sure that folks take up the COVID-19 vaccine when it comes. Van Tam’s human strategy to communication is a welcome signal that evidence-based behavioural insights are being efficiently utilized to coronavirus.

David Comerford doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/covid-19-vaccine-how-the-mum-test-can-help-ensure-take-up/ via https://growthnews.in

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The Future As A Result of Coronavirus

This post should take you roughly 13 minutes to read

A little over 78 years ago America was attacked by the Japanese in perhaps the most monumental military strike in modern history. The results of the attack were catastrophic for the Americans: 2,335 young men and women lost their lives, 1,143 more were wounded, 4 battleships were sunk and over a dozen more were damaged. In the ensuing world war the United States lost over 400,000 lives and the national debt climbed from $42 billion to $269 billion.

The attack caught the Americans completely flat footed and entered us into the second world war before the country was fully prepared to do so. Hindsight being 20/20, we can play MMQB and say that the U.S. should have been better prepared for such an attack given Pearl Harbor’s vulnerability and its strategic position in the pacific. It was no secret that Japan was taking over the Pacific rim as it needed resources to fuel its war machine. When the Americans established an oil and gasoline embargo on Japan in 1941 leaving them with less than two years of reserve supplies it was only a matter of time before Japan would do something desperate.

Despite our Commander in Chief's dubious leadership qualities and his lack of ability to unify the country, I believe in the future the way we view the American response to Coronavirus will be similar to how we now view the American response to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing World War.  We were proven to be greatly underprepared for both catastrophic events which caused extraordinary damage, significant losses of life and economic damage that will take years to recover from. The only difference is 45 may not provide a speech that resonates throughout the ages like FDR did.

The reason I reference this history lesson is that I hope we can take a moment and think about a few lessons both of these events have taught us:

First off, the United States has always found a way to overcome the obstacle in question despite significant odds and no matter how grim the prospects look. This isn’t the first pandemic we have ever faced and it certainly won’t be the last.

Secondly, we also learn a great deal from adversity and come out the other side with a new perspective and brilliant understanding of previous errors in judgment. The focus on mobilizing for war ultimately led to the invention of synthetic oil & rubber, radar, jet engines, helicopters, and aircraft with pressurized cabins. Our culture has been yielding the dividends for these inventions for nearly 80 years now.

I hope to share a few predictions I have of the innovation and learning I believe will happen as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and use it as a springboard for discussion. These projections are the way I envision certain innovations developing post pandemic. As with everything there are pros and cons, I will try to build counterarguments and the downside of each thought. But the main focus of this article is mostly about potential upside and there are only so many hours in a day.

I’m also sure in a few years I’ll look back and have the good fortune to observe how off base I was and what an idiot I am. But hey, at least we’re learning.

Oh - one more thing. These are merely opinions and predictions that might spur on conversations of what our world might look like after this is all over with. Please don’t take any of this personally, this isn’t that serious.

Ok, let’s dive in.

Remote Learning Demonstrates It’s Ready for the Big Time

The global pandemic has forced many of the world's learning institutions to switch from an in-person educational model to a remote learning model quite literally overnight. The switch has been an interesting case study and in the coming months and years we will learn of its impacts both positive and negative. Despite being drastically underprepared, our educators are making do with what they have and adapting to continue teaching despite the less than desirable circumstances.

This new learning format may not actually be a great challenge to our students given the malleability of a children’s mind and their sponge-like ability to learn new concepts. Their teachers however may have greater difficulty in adapting. Our public school teachers are trained in how to deliver information in person and how to adapt their curriculum to meet the needs of different learning styles. Our nation’s education institutions also aren’t equipped with the technical infrastructure to pull off this remote learning switch.

Up, Up, Upside

Remote learning has the potential to provide incredible utility to our global population. While I don’t foresee or advocate for public schools moving to an entirely remote model, I do think it can be a wonderful compliment for our nation's public schools and a more realistic alternative for secondary education that is both more cost effective and accessible.

With access to remote learning, students are not limited to the material that is taught by the educators at their high school, university, or trade school. A 10th grader in West Virginia may now have access to advanced Spanish, classic american art or the basics of fluid dynamics education she was previously not exposed to simply because of where she was born. Or a 10th grader in Queens may not have the help he needs on his homework because both of his parents work past his bedtime, but he will now have access to a tutor to prepare for his algebra exam he needs to pass in order to earn his High School Diploma.

One of the greatest challenges underrepresented groups face today is the lack of access to a good education, let alone the best education. The scale of remote learning will allow our best teachers and educators the ability to deliver information to more students across the country and even the globe. Remote learning provides the ability for lectures and workshops to be distributed to students who would not previously have access to such material because of their location or socioeconomic standing.

I have the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented software engineers that deliver training and enablement on the subject of how modern enterprise software should be built in the cloud. Previously a customer had to have both the budget and the engineering talent to validate bringing our engineers on site and this greatly limited the number of students we could reach. Due to the restrictions from the virus we have been forced to pivot to a remote delivery model which has afforded us the opportunity to reach people who previously couldn’t access the training. It remains to be seen if the quality of our enablement is sacrificed, but I believe there is a balance here where a minor sacrifice in effectiveness is worth it if we can reach more people.

Downside

The most concerning aspect of remote learning as it stands today is that students of lower socioeconomic status may not have the appropriate technology to participate in remote learning at home. They are also less likely to have the same level of support from their parents or guardians as their peers in middle and upper class families. This challenge may further exacerbate the gap in income disparity we are currently wrestling with on a national and global level. If remote learning is to be adopted on a more permanent basis in our nation's public schools, we will have to figure out how to ensure all children have access to proper technology and are equipped with a stable internet connection at home.

Attendance for remote learning during the pandemic is hard to track and you can bet your bottom dollar that some students will find a way to use any lack of in person accountability to their advantage. Students from underserved communities as well as kids who are bullied and students with learning disabilities who are more likely to skip school in the current model will have an easier time playing hooky or not paying attention in remote classes.

A drawback my team is dealing with in delivering remote software development enablement is a drastic reduction in the ability to read the room through the screen. It is much more difficult to identify who’s paying attention or who’s struggling with the concepts and who’s at the head of the class.

But why now?

One major obstacle of effective online learning is the lack of connectivity. Internet speeds and useful remote communication tools like Zoom and Slack are fully baked products ready for primetime to host lectures, group projects and one on one tutoring. This is a critical piece of the puzzle that is going through a major litmus test this past month as public schools were forced to switch from an in person teacher led training to virtualized remote training environments essentially overnight.

Orthogonal thoughts on remote education

Inflation of the cost of higher education is a real problem in this country and making secondary degrees cost prohibitive for many Americans. The rising cost of education is leaving many of our young adults with a debt burden that alters their life decisions

Ideas of how to combat this issue such as nationalizing higher education have been discussed at great length. Some states like the one in which I live have already begun to implement such programs. Although this reduces the cost of education for the individual, does it actually lower the cost of education?

We’re not going to tackle that in this post, but I do think organizations like Kahn Academy and Codecadamy have demonstrated how powerful remote learning can be. Imagine if we harnessed this progress and adapted it to our formal education programs.

Possible Near Term Outcomes

Children derive so much utility spending time with their peers at school and I cannot imagine depriving any young person of that necessary social interaction. However I can foresee a mixed model where students enroll in remote classes for special classes not offered at their campus, from home when they are sick, or if another emergency occurs.

Higher education will continue to be disrupted and paying top dollar for a meal plan and a dorm room is no longer required to receive quality secondary education. Leading tech companies are already eliminating the requisite Bachelors/Master’s degree check box for all employees. I expect the rest of the rest of the world to follow suit.

Remote Work Becomes the New Normal

When I worked at Apple Nearly 8 years ago now, I started off as a sales rep in the retail store selling Macs and iPhones. Eventually I got promoted to a B2B sales role which involved me getting an iMac and a phone in a little office in the back of the store. When I was interviewing for the job one of the managers asked me if I knew this job wasn’t just surfing the internet all day in the back office.

That question seems kind of ridiculous to me today and I think the push back a lot of employers have with remote working employees will feel similarly in 10 years. Yes I have more than a few non work tabs going on my Mac at all times, but that doesn’t mean my work is suffering or that’s all I’m doing.

Prior to this pandemic it wasn’t unusual for me to work from home somewhere between 1-3 days per week. This is commonplace for many of my peers, many of whom are very high performing professionals. A lot of people I work with almost exclusively work from home and some don’t even live in a city where my employer has an office. Which has me wondering, if technology companies can work from home effectively, why can’t other organizations?

FWIW I do not buy the argument that people in tech are more disciplined or more trustworthy than workers in other disciplines, I think we just have more practice.

Work productivity tools like Zoom and Slack are so seamless in their integration to our workday already that making the jump to fully remote really isn’t that difficult for most organizations to imagine.

Enter Coronavirus and most of the world seems to be handling the new change quite well. Long term the answer probably lies somewhere between a 100% remote staff like my buddies at Tackle.io and the 40 hour per work week in a physical office. There is too much utility gained from in person meetings and social engagement with our colleagues to go entirely remote. Like education, a hybrid scenario where office space shrinks and employees are assigned 2-3 days to come in to have 1:1’s with their boss, customer meetings, or team get together.

Employee Benefits

Employees benefit greatly from the flexibility to work from home a few days per week. It affords greater flexibility to do chores or errands, easily pick up kids from school, work remotely to tack on a few extra days of travel or on a vacation. Given that the average American spends nearly an hour commuting (almost 8% of waking hours) that’s a lot of extra time added back into your day.

Employer Benefits

The benefits for the organization might not be quite as obvious and there are probably plenty of solid counter arguments, but here it goes: If a majority of your staff was coming in 2-3 days per week you could reduce the amount of office space you need to rent thus lowering your opex. Employee flexibility to work from home will reduce the need for employees calling out sick or for personal reasons. Especially after this global event, the tolerance for people coughing and sneezing in the office will hopefully be lower. Parents who can be home with their kids more often will want to work for companies with flexible work environments. If you have this policy you will attract those people.

Air Travel Disrupted

Do you remember flying before 9/11? I don’t. But I would imagine the impact of this pandemic will force a major overhaul of the way we are screened before hopping on our next flight. I don’t have a good idea of when I expect to fly again, but let’s just say it won’t be until July or August of this year. I would be surprised if the next time I fly I do not have my temperature taken before heading through TSA.

If TSA starts to restrict flying privileges to people registering a fever this will be a major change in the way we travel. If you are told you can’t catch that flight to the Bahamas because you have a fever you will certainly hate it, but this change might help reduce the impact of future infectious diseases.

Doctor-As-A-Service Becomes The New Default

Once upon a time when you were sick the Doctor came to you to make a house call. That kind of service sounds incredible to me because I hate visiting the doctor’s office. For one, that’s where the other sick people are congregated, and I don’t want to be anywhere near that huddled mass. Secondly, it’s one of the greatest bureaucratic tar pits one can get stuck in and just an overall black hole of personal time and energy. Online doctor appointments have shown its usefulness more and more in this time of Coronavirus and I truly hope it is a trend that will stay.

The concept of telemedicine is not a new one. In fact, it’s a lot more widely used than I had realized. My fiancé shared how she has leveraged a remote doctor for several non urgent medical needs in the not too distant past. I recently logged into my medical insurers website and the landing page presented me with two options: “Select Primary Care Provider” and “Connect with a Doctor Online”. Next time I need to visit the doc for something other than my annual checkup, I know I’m going to do a virtual doctor’s visit.

The main utility the teladoc provides is whether or not you should seek in-person medical attention, or can it wait until tomorrow. Additionally, if you need to visit a doctor in person to seek further diagnosis if you should visit the ER or you could just go to the neighborhood urgent care? The National Center for Biotechnology Information estimates that between 13.7 and 27.1 percent of all emergency department visits could be treated at either an urgent care or retail clinic with a potential cost savings of approximately $4.4 billion annually to boot. Imagine the ER with just 13% fewer patients in the waiting room...

Delivery services like DoorDash are now offering pharmacy deliveries so if you’re sick, not only can you visit the doctor from your home but you might also be able to avoid visiting the pharmacy. This kind of service could be quite impactful in preventing future pandemics.

TL;DR

For the most part, I’m very bullish in the future of humanity and more narrowly the USA post-Coronavirus. We have always found a way to take difficult situations and improve them. We are also not perfect and will probably make lots of mistakes coming out of this, but given the relatively low fatality rate of Coronavirus, I believe we will learn from this and be much better off because of it.

Thanks and stay safe.