#this video was brought to you by extensive piracy

[yurimother]

Growing up Yurijin: My Childhood Experience with Lesbian Anime and Manga Part I

This article is the first in a two-part personal essay about my childhood experiences growing up around Yuri in an environment where LGBTQ+ identity and culture were normalized. The article was original released exclusively on Patreon in February 2019. You can read Part II on the YuriMother Patreon.

I was recently reading an article by one of the people I admire most in the world, LGBTQ+ manga tastemaker and lesbian icon, Erica Friedman, a person who, in my hubris, I sometimes compare myself to, qualitatively, of course, their achievements far exceed my own. In the essay I was reading, Friedman describes their struggle to find literature that reflected their queen identity in the 1980s. At this moment, it also occurred to me the Friedman had previously spoken about how they discovered anime and manga, which included lesbian elements, more commonly known as Yuri, in adult life, and found an affinity with the genre. Friedman went on to become one of, if not the pioneering individuals in the world of Yuri. As I reminisce on these facts about a person who I so deeply admire and am lucky enough to consider a friend, it occurred to me that, while they adopted the Yuri, I was born into it. Although, funnily enough, my existence as a Yurijin (lit. Yuri Person, an inclusive term for Yuri fans) likely would not have been possible if not for Friedman’s support and love of Yuri, more on that later.

I am rather young. Depending on who you ask, I am either one of the last Millennials or one of the first members of Generation Z, although, like most labels, I find using either one of these titles arbitrary. However, I am always aware of how immense of a blessing my youth is. Yes, being young is fun and dandy, but I am referring to my upbringing's social implications. From a very early age, since before I could even talk, I was exposed to homosexuality as normalcy. I did not think anything of it until I started to grasp the more significant history and circumstance around terms such as “gay” when I was about nine years old. My godmothers are gay women, as are my brother’s. I remember attending their second wedding in 2004, shortly after same-sex marriage was officially legalized where we lived, and I thought nothing of it.

As previously implied, around late elementary school, I discovered that being gay was a distinct identity and had a more serious and complex history around it, one which I learned about but never experienced. I think more than anything, my blessed lack of conflict around sexuality has been my greatest asset. Growing up in a progressive era and the late ’90s and early 2000s, I was never harassed, bullied, or attacked for being queer or talking about LGBTQ politics and media. To this day, I still never “came out” because there was no need to, although I admittedly have never been much of one to put labels on my sexuality. I was always just, queer, and there was never an assumption otherwise. On a side note, there is no possible way for me to express the breadth of my gratitude to the generations who fought for LGBT rights.

The reader needs to understand that, just as I was fortunate to grow up in a bubble that treated where homosexuality normally, so too was I luckily able to experience Yuri at such a young age. By 2010 we were well into Yuri’s third major movement, a period I often refer to as the “Current Era” of Yuri, although “S Revival” may be a more apt description. Sailor Moon had already dominated both Western and Eastern culture (a craze I was ever too slightly young for), brought Yuri into the independent comics market, and exposed audiences to one of the first positive portrayals of a lesbian couple in Yuri.

Additionally, Revolutionary Girl Utena had smashed its way into the anime world, cementing itself as one of the most acclaimed and influential anime works of the 1990s and legitimizing lesbian storytelling in the medium. Most importantly for me, Oyuki Konno’s Maria Watches Over Us light novel series revived the Yuri genre's earliest tropes, known as Class S. Elements of S fiction, such as all-girls catholic schools, piano duets, and temporary lesbian-ish love would permeate the genre for the coming decades. These themes were eventually adopted and intensely exaggerated in the work that set me on the path of Yuri and transformed me into the “Holy Mother of Yuri.”

Furthermore, when I was in the early stages of life, Yuri was beginning to make its way Westward slowly. This expansion was thanks to the publishing arm of Erica Friedman’s organization Yuricon, ALC Publishing. ALC was founded in 2003 and started to publish the first Yuri manga in America, including the Yuri Monogatari series and Takashima Rica’s Rica’ tte Kanji!? A few years later, Seven Seas Entertainment started to published Yuri manga, such as The Last Uniform and Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Around this team, thanks to the internet and anime’s growing popularity, anime and manga were more accessible than ever. Although Western Yuri publishing did not take off until the late 2010s, there was just enough of it readily available to create the perfect storm for my Yuri infection.

Shortly after I started to gain awareness of LGBTQ+ rights, identity, and… existence, I was exposed to my first Yuri, although I did not recognize it as such. My middle school library had an extensive collection of manga, including the Tokyopop adaptations of Strawberry Marshmallow. I never read them, but a friend did and talked with me about them. Curious, I went home and searched the title online and found that there were anime videos uploaded to YouTube, with each episode separated into three parts (this event was before I was aware of what piracy was and how harmful it is to creators). I watched all of them with my brother, and we had an absolute blast. To this day, Strawberry Marshmallow is one of our favorite series to watch together and have a huge laugh at.

Although Strawberry Marshmallow had subtle Yuri elements (this was before the 2009 OVA, which contained an actual kiss), I did not recognize them. However, this series led to my brother and I showing each other different anime series, in one of which I was very clearly able to see lesbian representation. I do not remember the exact year, but it must have been about 2010 when, sitting in our mother’s office waiting for her to finish with meetings, my brother pulled up an episode of Studio Madhouse’s Strawberry Panic anime and changed my life forever.

Part II of "Growing up Yurijin" is available to read as part of The Secret Garden series. The Secret Garden is YuriMother's exclusive series of monthly articles, available only for Patrons. If you want to access it and help support Yuri and LGBTQ+ content, subscribe to the YuriMother Patreon.

[commandtower-solring-go]

Tom Scott said something really interesting in his video Youtubers Have to Declare Ads? Why Doesn't Anyone Else? To paraphrase him, he said that people tend to set their ethical boundaries just bellow what they are currently doing. In the video he said this in relation to declaring ads; that everyone's standards for declaring sponsored content was different and there didn't seem to be much of a creator consensus. And in particular, he intended this purely as observation. But I've never been one not to take away observations as life lessons. I've been using this lesson as a foundation for understand my own ethics and trying to challenge them. If I'm always letting my ethics lie bellow my own actions, is my ethical understanding growing? No. Its simply staying the same. So instead of allowing my actions to dictate my ethics in this way, I'm trying to revaluate my ethics to dictate my actions.

What brought this up was a discussion around piracy. I've always been a staunchly pro-piracy individual. I genuinely believe that copyright law and IP ownership is out of hand and is often used to abuse employed workers. The fact that all works created by employees at Disney while they're working at Disney are the property of Disney is fucked. The idea that anyone could even begin to implement such laws is worse. Piracy represents reclaiming consumer control.

In particular I was pro-piracy around games. This was because in the industry, it is rarely for AAA developers to reap fair rewards of a game's success, despite them being among the most important people in the production process. In this, piracy represents a way of acquiring content in a way which doesn't impact the developers themselves. Moreover, digital piracy rarely represents lost product, only potential lost sales. So it also represents a way for people to access otherwise unpurchaseable content.

However I recently heard a discussion which has made me question this arguments. It isn't about piracy itself, but the methods of achieving piracy. That is, the fact that piracy is so often roped in with groups like homebrew developers, serves only to harm those developers. As console developers work harder to prevent piracy, it becomes harder for homebrew developers to develop for newer hardware.

This got me thinking real hard about my perceptions about developers. My bias is towards already 'successful' developers, those who make money and an income from the games they make. In a sense, developers who have income security because they work in the AAA industry. Independent developers, freeware developers, or any dev group which is funded fairly on units sold or ads viewed stand only to be hurt by piracy.

On the other hand, the issue these smaller devs have with piracy is more rooted in the developers trying to prevent it than those trying to pirate. If these devs stopped trying to prevent piracy, there wouldn't be an issue.

On the other other hand, smaller devs would still be hurt.

Its complicated and I'm not sure where I am about it. In either case, the ethics of piracy as either affirming or negative both hinge on future consequences and, by extension, participant intentions. To believe piracy is good relies on a future where it does good. To believe it does bad relies on a future where it does bad. Neither consequences are grounded in reality today, only coulds and shoulds. So I'm not sure.

I think so long as you can be confident that the people you pirate from, the people who worked hard, don't suffer for it, you're good.

[londiniumlundene]

Museum of London Docklands

Located in a 19th Century warehouse at West India Quay, this outpost of the Museum of London is dedicated to the capital’s history as a port. Though slightly smaller than its better-known sibling, the main galleries spread over two floors will still take at least half a day to fully explore – but probably longer if you want to read every panel, watch every video, and try out all the interactive exhibits.

The museum begins with a look at how the building itself operated in its life as Warehouse No. 1, before backtracking to ca. 1600, when trade to the port of London begun to expand with the rise of the merchant class. As the quantity and value of goods being brought up the river increased, so did the level of piracy – this gallery ends with a reconstructed gibbet, illustrating the fate that befell those pirates caught in the act.

The next gallery hits hard, telling the story of London’s role in the slave trade. The West India Docks were built from the proceeds of the sugar industry, the product of which was stored in the warehouses, having been grown on plantations by enslaved Africans. The cruel instruments of slavery sit alongside portraits of wealthy merchants and the fine implements used for preparing and handling sugar in the kitchens and parlours of Britain.

Continuing onwards, the museum details the great changes that came to the Thames in the early 19th Century, when major construction of docks was needed to support the expanding coal and whaling industries. A reconstructed ‘Sailortown’ gives an idea of what the dark, seedy alleyways around Wapping, Shadwell and Ratcliffe were like in the days they were filled with crews enjoying shore leave.

All this builds towards London becoming the principle port of the British Empire, sometimes called the ‘Warehouse of the World’, where every conceivable commodity could be found – just a fraction of which are on display. It wasn’t great for all though, as a section devoted to the 1889 dockworkers strike tells.

This hub of global trade wouldn’t last. The penultimate gallery tells how the docks were a major target for the Luftwaffe in the Second World War: the nostalgic artefacts such as gas masks, air raid shelters and mobile canteens are accompanied by film footage of the devastation caused by the bombing, and bleak paintings from war artist William Ware.

The lives of those associated with the docks post-war were filled with ups and downs. Exhibits show how reconstruction brought modernisation – but this meant automation and standardisation, leading to massive job losses. The final gallery packs in the stories of the Docklands Development Corporation, the fights against regeneration by local communities, the construction of Canary Wharf, and ends not, as one might expect, on the river, but on the Underground, looking at the Jubilee Line extension that better linked the Docklands to the rest of the capital.

[bestnewsmag-blog]

New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/micro-center-sees-surge-in-gaming-pc-salesicro-center-sees-surge-in-gaming-pc-sales/

Micro Center sees surge in gaming PC salesicro Center sees surge in gaming PC sales

Popular laptop parts and electronics chain inside the United states is seeing a spike in gaming Computer income, and it offers partial credit to the developing recognition of sports for the uptick.

That chain is Micro Middle, the go-to region for picking up Pc elements that often sell for much less than they do on-line at places like Newegg and Amazon. The caveat is that the tantalizing prices are usually in-shop simplest, and Micro Middle simplest operates 25 shops in 16 states throughout the U.S. In comparison, Fine Purchase has nearly 1, four hundred stores.

In spite of its comparatively small footprint, Micro Center’s vice president Kevin Jones says the chain has seen its income of gaming Computers grow 25-30 percent on-yr in 2016, and 2 hundred to 300 percent from a yr in the past, Digitimes reviews. He expects extra of at some point of 2017.

Part of the success is because of sports activities. Jones was taken into consideration Laptop gaming a niche market as recent as five years ago, however, says that sports have placed it on the map in a huge manner. Mixed with mid-variety expenses on gaming Desktops, Jones says the marketplace clearly ballooned in 2016.

He additionally credits the increase to being capable of taking in customers from smaller retailers that closed down because of opposition. Alongside tight partnerships with emblem vendors, Micro Center’s sales have climbed to $60 million in line with 12 months.

This isn’t always a surprise to everybody who has been paying attention. Even marketplace studies corporations that typically submit gloom and doom scenarios for the Pc market are noticing the effect of gaming Pcs. Gartner, as an instance, predicts that gaming Computers with develop from 6 million devices in 2016 to 8.7 million units in 2020 and could account for thirteen percentage of consumer Laptop shipments.

Gartner isn’t always alone right here. A document from Jon Peddie studies (JPR) earlier this 12 months confirmed that Pc gaming hardware jumped beyond the $30 billion mark for the first time ever in 2016. Prior to that document, JPR figured the $30 billion thresholds would not be reached till 2018, so the marketplace for Pc gaming hardware is growing quicker than expected.

An increasing number of humans are hooked on gambling online video games. With lots of recent and thrilling games to select from, human beings of all ages are now searching into first-rate online video games. Nowadays, there are online present playing cards you should buy to buy the video games you need to play. These playing cards can even be used to buy your favorite songs, films, and Television suggests. Professionals shared some of the pros and cons of online gaming.

Blessings

You could strive it earlier than shopping for – on-line gaming systems provide demos made for gamers with a purpose to try playing that feasible purchase as well as decide how a great deal they might want Prior to making an investment. Furthermore, You could additionally Buy games proper then and there, without the need to rush out to the store.

Get right of entry to one-of-a-kind content – This one of the First-rate reasons for choosing to play online games. You get to have Access to the unique content for whatever it’s far that you are playing.

Speak with other human beings – online gaming will permit people to interact whilst gambling, supporting people to keep extremely good relationships through communicating with own family and friends all around the international. Without a doubt, this could be very useful for gamers. Team building talents can be reinforced. additionally, more tactical and strategic factors could be delivered to game-play. In flip, this will help boom your reminiscence as well as develop lateral thinking.

Aggressive – It allows you to compare your playing into center distinct games and sales. There’ll Truly be an experience appropriate aspect in understanding that you are a miles better participant than someone else. Being aware that you are not against synthetic intelligence will installation more competitiveness. And because you are not always going to be the Quality, you may discover ways to display good showmanship.

Hazards

Device updates – In case you are approximate to download the sport you need or possibly play on-line, there will be a time while a System update suddenly pops up and put off your sports time. You need to await it and then reboot.

Server problems or glitches – system defects are viruses in game inflicting it to run irregularly. That is actually a trouble with all recreation sports; however, they are extra commonplace to online games. You could revel in a sequence of server problems that are very irritating for game enthusiasts.

Piracy – There were incidences of breaching copyright legal guidelines, scandal, and letting customers to pirate video games illegally. And These conditions have offered a huge problem for the world of on-line gaming. In reality, the scandal brought about lots of controversies so there are a few games that have been close down. sales enablement continues to be a key motive force in increasing income overall performance.

B2B income leaders should examine their income enablement practices relative to their Group being geared up to gain intention. With Nice-in-magnificence sales enablement practices in the region, your income Crew has a great benefit to satisfy sales quotas and increase ROI.

We dissect the pinnacle 6 sales enablement Exceptional practices to help B2B sales leaders determine in which to cognizance for expanded income productiveness:

1) broaden

while sales representatives are capable of broadening new promoting strategies based totally on customer conduct, not only are clients greater efficaciously engaged by means of a sales rep however additionally the customer enjoy is advanced, growing purchase probability. The position of the B2B income leader is to make sure proper sales education and the income control infrastructure is in location to encourage utilizing the equipment and client intelligence human beings want to increase a more personalized consumer enjoy.

as an example, a sales rep is better ready for a verbal exchange when he/she has to Get entry to the intelligence that a specific patron has already had three touchpoints, considered one of which changed into downloading a white paper this is aligned with a purchase selection.

2) Position

Qe frequently find ourselves reinforcing the criticality of imparting the “proper message at the right time” to potentialities. This is an important aspect of lead control. income reps have to consistently and time and again make stronger your organization’s cost proposition to prospects within the proper context for the purchaser.

as an example, a sales rep that reinforces the price in their products for a selected enterprise utility is positioning the business enterprise’s products in a manner that is contextually applicable to that patron.

3) Discover

With the intention to execute at the ultimate Nice practices, it’s far vital to seize the client touchpoints which might be applicable for the ones in sales positions whilst having patron conversations. Advertising plays an especially crucial position in things:

Implementing the systems to elevate purchaser insights

Growing the assets for income rep to equip income to continue the verbal exchange with a prospect.

for example, Advertising can guide income’ patron conversations with the aid of presenting precious purchaser insights which include what white papers and articles have particular possibilities downloaded.

4) ALIGN

possibly the most complicated of the B2B sales enablement Pleasant practices is the required internal organizational alignment. In order for an income rep to fully apprehend the characteristics in their customer, Advertising and marketing and sales groups must align to share insights, manipulate leads and Get entry to assets.

“Agencies whose income and Advertising groups are aligned attain 208% better Advertising and marketing sales whilst compared to misaligned teams.” five) Engage

For an income rep to efficiently near a deal, they ought to attain stakeholders concerned in the purchase choice throughout a purchaser’s business enterprise. With Get right of entry to to those selection makers, those in sales positions have to Talk the particular fee of doing enterprise together with your corporation in a manner that resonates with each stakeholder for my part.

As an example, once income representatives realize which stakeholders play roles in a buy decision, they are able to efficiently have interaction with every stakeholder, presenting applicable product records for the given audience.

6) Assemble

it’s miles crucial for income businesses to effortlessly produce a 86f68e4d402306ad3cd330d005134dac suggestion that enhances the value proposition and this is aligned with the needs of the purchaser. This very last sales enablement First-class practice requires seamless alignment with economic, accounting and felony companies to make this step much less time eating and extensively extra efficient. no longer best does this efficiency advantage growth income pressure potential, but it additionally improves the customer’s revel in.

This is a facility that offers its clients an area that has workout system for the purpose of getting bodily match The memberships of these fitness facilities may be as inexpensive as $10 a month or as a lot as $700 a 12 months. It depends at the location of the Middle and the amenities and device provided. While you are choosing a fitness center there are many things that you have to bear in mind before making your final decision.

one of the foremost things which you need to remember is your degree of consolation. The reasons That is critical is that In case you are self aware or uncomfortable approximately working out then you definately are most likely not going to stay prompted to go on a everyday basis. On the subject of your stage of comfortableness with the fitness center, there are also different troubles to reflect onconsideration on. You ought to ensure that the Middle is nicely lit and easy, that it has the kingdom of the artwork equipment and is it in proper restore. Is there an trainer to reveal you in how to use the extraordinary pieces of equipment nicely? You are going to a gymnasium to get match and healthful so it is vital which you realize how to maximize the benefits from the different pieces of gadget. You furthermore may want to ensure that there are private, easy showers and restrooms.

Every other crucial consideration is the area. You want to make sure that it is without problems placed close to your home because no one desires to power twenty miles or so as to a fitness center. You need to be sure that it’s miles placed in an area this is safe and nicely lit, in particular in the event that they provide early morning or past due night hours. Take a look at to peer in the event that they have a respectable length automobile parking space and that it is also well lit.

Some other key thing is the availability or the hours that the Center is open. no one works the equal hours nor has the identical hours that could go to the gymnasium so the hours open want to suit your schedule. a few health centers Nowadays are open twenty-4 hours an afternoon seven days every week however nonetheless have certain hours that they’ll be open and feature instructors in the Middle. To make use of the Center after the ones hours you’ll to have a skip card, like a lodge makes use of, To be able to get into the fitness center. For These sorts of centers, it’s miles very critical that the parking is close to the constructing and the parking lot may be very nicely lit. The final two elements is the fee according to month or year and if the Middle offers any fitness training.