#^^ none of that specifically applies to these two. just in general. im often finding myself not interested in things i can actually make

[bismuthburnsblue]

sooo. im thinking a bit about what cosplay im gonna make next, and i think ive narrowed it down to a couple options, but i want you to have all the options!

other options on the list include: Sailor Neptune (school uniform) - Sailor Moon (i think ive got a group for this!), Janet - The Good Place, Loki - Avengers Academy (the one i started last year), or Female Stede - Our Flag Means Death. a lot of these projects i have some level of plan for & wanna do some day, i just have stronger opinions on Kyoko/Toph. but if any of those sound more interesting to you! i am down. i wouldnt list options i didnt want

propaganda + images below

Kyoko is a costume that i have been planning for SO long, and finally feel like my skills are somewhere where ill be able to do her justice. i have a lot of the materials for this costume, including the wig, and even have a pattern plan for the main part of the garment. HOWEVER. my main material is velvet. and none of my other materials are any nicer to work with. i want to make the boots from scratch, i want to learn new wig making techniques, i want to make the spear to its full potential. this is going to be a big, complicated, time consuming project, and ill probably put it down at least once for my own mental wellness. its a dream costume of mine and i want to do it justice. its going to be a challenge, super technical and precise, but i think itll be worth it. its also going to be less comfortable, corset & velvet are not... the best con combo (also its a shorter skirt than i usually like, so ill be emotionally uncomfortable)

(also the more i think about it the more im... eh about the colour of my main velvet so um. might end up rebuying that)

Toph on the other hand, i have none of the materials for. i do have a source idea for the cream fabrics but nothing else at all. my design plan is sorta NATLA inspired- still the animated Toph costume, just drawing on the fabric and textures the netflix show used (especially with the Kyoshi warriors), which means some Sourcing will have to be done to find fabrics with the right weight & drape for my plans. this style of looser patterning is also new to me, not to mention pants.... though i think Toph would be a good project to avenge myself there honestly.

in general, this is gonna be a much easier make, and a nice comfy costume for cons, but at the same time, its a lot of expense out the gate, fabric shopping i dont neeeeed to do, and definitely still has some areas that test my skills (wig in Particular). i havent put as much time and energy into thinking about this build, but it has been on my list for some time and i wont regret making it.

(pictures of the others i mentioned. obviously no picture for my stede design but i was thinking of drawing inspo from the historical dresses in the show- some of marys, and evelyns, and the crowd scenes- and obviously stede himself, and then also reference real history. i dont own anything suitable for this time period so the first project would be stays i suspect!)

[blondebooklion]

why it drives me crazy when people say c!ranboo has no morals but think c!wilbur and c!ranboo could still have potential to be narrative foils

morals:

loyalty to family/friends: in both his normal functioning and his enderwalk stage ranboo is incredibly defensive of his loved ones. this is 100% the center of his moral compass. he doesn't do certain things he fears will upset others (thus succumbing to peer pressure yes) but i deeply disagree with people argument that that is proof he has no moral backbone. particularly due to a couple of instances:

ranboo visiting tommy in exile: while not directly breaking the rules there was a general expectation, especially the people ranboo spent his time with, of not really visiting tommy. it wasnt really a set rule or anything but ranboo was definitely putting himself at risk by doing so.

protectiveness over michael: when sam and puffy showed up to prank ranboo, he was incredibly defensive over his son. he was ready to kill to protect his son if it came down to it.

rescuing tommy+tubbo: while we have it confirmed this instance was in their enderwalk stage, ranboo going both proves ranboos values in the enderwalk are the same (or i'd argue strengthened even) ranboo moved protectedly in front of tubbo when he and tommy had separated

forgiveness: he is willing to give people more than one chance, he is incredibly quick to judgements but for the most part he does not rely on other peoples opinions of each other to dictate the way he feels about them, he does take it into account in his overall image of them, but like with revivebur, he is willing to offer him a chance.

reciporcity to kindness: when people are kind to him, he is kind back. y'all let this slide as a moral with techno. it counts here. no im not counting it as necessarily loyalty because he is polite and kind even to those he isn't close to.

self-reliance: for better or worse ranboo does not think he needs other people to survive, in many instances he has displayed thinking he and everyone else would be better off if he were isolated. he does not want to depend too much in anyone, which can especially be seen in his desire for wealth. i think it has always been more about i dont have to rely on others, if things go south i can still survive (obviously part or it is needed something to do on stream, im applying other characteristics of ranboo to infer) but we can also see this in him retreating to himself (panic room, not telling anyone about his book being missing) when he is threatened because he believes the best way to handle it is himself

security: ranboo is incredibly driven bu his desire for safety and stability for both himself and for his loved ones. he thrives on consistency. he struggles the most when things begin to change.

difference between foil and antagonist (just for clarity cause some people have been switching up the definitions)

"an antagonist is a character who is in direct opposition to the protagonist. their actions deliberately hinder the protagonist from achieving her goal. this relationship helps build conflict and propels a story forward."

"a foil exists simply to shine the spotlight on certain traits of another character, without necessarily creating opposition or conflict."

credit: masterclass

the opposing traits/beliefs that i think will cause the most conflict between the two (ranboos will be written like this and wilburs like this to differentiate)

leader vs follower

probably the most obvious contention point, pointed out on 5/05 stream by wilbur pressing ranboo on what he stands for. wilbur wants to be in charge. but i think ranboo is how wilbur wanted people to value him. wilbur wanted to be the guy that everyone liked because he believed being liked comes with power. ranboo does not necessarily want to be well liked by everyone, but he wants to at least be neutral so he does do things in order to keep them on his side

conflict driven vs conflict averse

wilbur thrives on chaos and conflict, much like dream he is willing to manipulate situations. rqnboo does everything he possibly can to avoid it

cockiness vs insecurity

wilbur is obviously bold and arrogant. he thinks extremely highly of himself and the postions he does and could potentially hold. he is ruled by this factor and often does not think about the consquences of his rashly made decisions(thats not to say he isn't calculated or intelligent, he is, he just focuses on how things affect him rather than others)

means to an end vs no ulterior motives

all of ranboos bonds are strong because when he cares about people he does what he needs to to take care of them, they usually initiate out of instances of kindness, but he does not seem to expect anything in return. he cares about people because he loves them, nothing more nothing less. wilbur however while some of his relationships were initially based on care the motives became corrupted and its hard to say whether there are any relationships he has at this point that aren't ruled by some kind of benefit for him (my only guess for that would be phil)

similaries: paranoia, trust issues, secretiveness

ranboo and wilbur really are two sides of the same coin, yes they are opposites in a lot of aspects but despite the differences in their values orginate from the same place they jutted of in two completely different directions, they tried to solve the same issue in vastly different ways. ranboos paranoia was attempted to be solved by isolationism, while wilburs mainly tried to solve it through manipulation. ranboo pushed people away and wil tried to force them to be around. both backfired for them and caused them to retreat further into the paranoid states demonstrated by wilbur blowing up l'manburg and ranboo catastrophizing with hearing dreams voice.

I think wilbur's main contenion with ranboo resides in wilbur thinking ranboo glazes through life easily, and that they disagree on what morals means. being more confrontational does not mean you are more or less moral than another person. wilbur does not understand that differing morals does not equal none at all.

I don't think their relationship is going to act as an antagonist because while ranboo is actively keeping an eye on wilbur it wouldn't really make sense for ranboo to suddenly be more confrontational. I know a lot of people are citing the Burr vs Hamilton relationship as parallels in their dynamicI want to remind you that narrative foils are not conflicting in nature. conflict can happen. but the point of them is to highlight the differences in character traits.

likening to burr vs hamilton

burr wanted power but he wanted it to come to him vs hamilton wanting power and actively chasing it

yes this makes sense for wilbur, but it doesnt for ranboo. ranboo doesn't want power. he never has. the reason burr waits on the sidelinesnis cause he is waiting for the chance to act, but ranboo is not waiting for something to happen, in fact he would rather have the exact opposite, for things to be as uneventful as possible.

"Hamilton’s success at the expense of his personal life is countered by Burr’s relative lack of success and his happy family life. Both of these are directly due to the two’s differing goals and approaches to life. Burr and Hamilton are two side of the same coin, opposite results with the same starting conditions."

source

this is exactly what I referenced earlier between the two. ranboo cares about family, wilbur about career. while a lot of their behavior originated from a similar place, their paths rapidly diverged.

hamilton's downfall at burr's hand

i'm gonna be honest i find it extremely hard to believe that a situation will exist where wilbur waits and ranboo acts. however, if one does i still firmly believe it will be revolving around (likely in defense of) the people ranboo loves and cares about, specifically michael, tommy, tubbo. it would be where he is cementing his views of choosing people. but wilbur being hesitant is still difficult for me to think of a scenario on which he would that hesitant? for it to be his downfall?

important to note: ghostbur did also akin ranboo to burr so it is definitely possible that this dynamic is going to countinue to playout in the future

I will shut up now thank you for reading. reminder that this is just my interpretation and analysis, obviously looking at different details could lead to different conclusions. i'm super willing to discuss as long as we are both going to be respectful of each others opinions and courteous <3

[radandcolourful]

A little guide on ao3 (by an ao3 user and writer)

Friendly reminder for mobile users! Ao3 is a website. It doesn't have (as far as im concerned) an official app for mobile, so better get comfy with using crome on your phone.

Some video links ill leave for people who prefer video and audio:

- navigating the fanfiction sites

- popular fandom terminology part 1 and part 2

- shipping etiquette

i really reccomend coley's videos if you want to get to know more fandoms, or get an inside look to how some stuff works. There also might be more vids about fandom's and fan works, so don't hesitate to look through some of her stuff!

the explaining under the 'read more' ao mutuals wont kill me :)

(also tagging @ethanesimp since they asked for this advice )

So, what is Ao3 really?

Ao3 is a website made by fans for fans. There are no ads, and all content is free on Ao3. Anyone can post (with some age restrictions) and they can post anything.

How can I browse Ao3?

Ao3 does not require an account to view stories. You can easily browse as an anonymous user. You just are not able to view certain works, as creators have the ability to show their works to registered users only. Some cases, commenting is possible while anonymous, but again, it's up to the creator of the work.

If you want to be a creator and share works, you need an account.

An account also gives you the ability to bookmark works, so you can re-visit them, mark works for later, keeps a history of the works you've visited and allows you to favourite tags.

How do I get an Ao3 account?

When you first open the site, it gives you the option to "Get Invited". An invitation will be sent to your email anywhere from 24hrs later to a week later, depending on the amount of people in the automated queue.

After the invitation, you are able to set up your account like any other social media account. Pick a username, pseuds (name), description and bio. You can have a profile picture as well.

How do I navigate the site?

There are few ways to do so efficiently, but there's countless of ways you can experiment with to find which is more comfortable.

1st option: As the website loads, you can go to the 'Fandoms' tag.

Then, after clicking on it, this column appears. Through there, you can pick which media your fandom is from and from there, browse the huge list of different fandoms until you spot your own.

The list is in alphabetical order, so if your fandom begins with an "C", it shouldn't be too far down.

2nd option: At the top right, under your profile, and the options 'Post' and 'Log Out' should be a white oval search bar.

(im using my own account for demonstration)

When searching, there are many ways to work around it.

Personally, I press search as it is. It will lead you to a page where all the fanworks of the site are listed. (i believe its easiest, but always feel free to experiment)

From there, you press the 'Edit Your Search' button, located near the top right.

It will then lead you to a page with multiple fields.

Don't panic when you see all the fields. Only half those are of interest when you want to browse works for a fandom.

The most important ones are those under the Field name 'Work Tags'

Whatever you select under this field will be included in the works the site presents you with.

What are the work tags? What do they do?

Lets go through the options.

Fandom(s): when typing on this option, multiple fandom names will autofill in a list under the white space. If your fandom shows up, you can just click on it.

example:

From there, you can select the fandom you want to see works from. If your fandom doesn't show up, it can mean one of two things:

-there are no works for it

-it isn't popular enough to be picked up by the algorithm

After selecting one fandom, you can select another fandom, or more, to see works that are crossovers over universes.

Ratings: Ratings are selected by author. It defines the level of maturity it has in the work

- General audiences is the tag you want to use when nothing bad happens in the work. No swearing, no sexual activities, no violence or gore. It wont contain scenes that minors are not allowed to see.

- Teen and up audiences is the tag used for most works on the site. It is what would be used when you have mentions of/vague sexual content or violence. Normally, the most extreme stuff on there is excessive swearing, heavy angst and hurt/comfort with no excessive details

- Mature is the tag that is for 18+. It is mostly filled with one of following : Violence, Sexual Content, Ab*se, R@pe, Death and SH.

Reader descretion is advised by looking at the additional tags the author has provided, especially for those with triggers.

- Explicit is like Mature, but contains more graphic content. Works rated explicit mostly fall under the 'Graphic depictions of sexual content', 'Graphic depictions of Violence and Gore' or 'Graphic depictions of Ab*se, R@pe, or Self H*rm

Reader descretion is advised, stronger than mature, since it can be much more triggering. The works are scarily detailed sometimes.

- Not rated: the author has not given this work a rating because none of the other ratings fit the work. Pay special attention to the tags.

Warnings: Also known as Archive warnings by older users. The trigger warnings of Ao3. There are 6 archive warnings:

-Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings: The author didn't use the warnings, either because none of them fit the work's theme and warnings, or to avoid spoiling the story. Pay attention to the tags for any warnings.

-Graphic Depictions Of Violence: It is pretty self explanatory. Can contain any sort of violence, from wars, to simple fights, to ab*se of any kind. Can and often contain death. The type of violence is in the tags.

-Major Character Death: A main character in the story will die in this work. Pay attention to the tags always. The name of the character will be mentioned, as well as the way they die.

-No Archive Warnings Apply: None of the warnings apply. It is most times a perfectly safe work. Check the tags to make sure though!

-R@pe/Non-Con: The work contains non-consensual activities. Ranges from non-consensua sex to non-consensual use and ab*se of substances. Very close attention to the tags!

-Underage: The main character(s) in this work are underage/minors. This is normally tagged along sexual content so be aware and pay close attention to the tags!

Categories: This regards the relationships in the work:

- M/M, or better known as mlm or a relationship between two non-woment (men mostly, can include characters under the non-binary umbrella)

- M/F, a heterosexual relationship (is inclusive of trans characters too!)

- F/F, or wlw, or a relationship between two non-men (women mostly, can include characters under the non-binary umbrella)

- Gen, no sexual or romantic relationships are in this work, or if there are any, they arent of main focus.

- Multi: Polyamorous relationships, or multiple relationships are included in this work (this is also where threesomes+ are tagged in sometimes)

- Other relationships: One of the two people in the relationship is non-human (mostly), or the relationships are platonic/family.

Characters: The characters you want to be included in the story. This works just like the 'Fandom' filter, so the same things apply. You can tag as many characters as desirable.

Relationships: The relationships that you want present in the work. This includes both major and minor relationships. It can also include ended relationships (tagged Past x/y) and implied/referenced relationships. This works just like the Characters and Fandom filter.

Additional Tags: These are things the author has included to give potential readers an insight to the story. 'Angst', 'Fluff' and 'Smut' are additional tags. Works like the Relationships filter, so all same applies.

Is there anything I have to avoid/ I should avoid?

There is this very infamous tag, 'Dead Dove: Do not eat.' This tag is a warining to readers that the things in the work are really messed up, and can include anything illegal in it. PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE REST OF THE TAGS IF YOU STILL ARE INTERESTED.

How else can I filter works?

You can choose how they are:

sorted (Titles, Authors, Hits, Kudos, Comments, Bookmarks, and Best Match)

the word count (from 1 word to millions)

the language (most are on there)

the amount of chapters

if the work is complete of not

when it last updated/when was posted

and if there are crossovers.

These are all options that author has to include, and therefore you can sort freely. Most are bulletin options you can click on.

What if I want to find a specific work?

If you happen to know one of these: Author, Title, Fandom or Rating, you will find it. If you were reccomended one, it's better to ask for the author or the title, to make looking for it easier.

Can I find a specific author/ user?

People search is for finding users on the site

Bookmark search helps you look through other people's public bookmarks. Not really used.

Tag search finds works that include this specific tag you searched. Also not used a lot.

People can see my bookmarks?

When bookmarking a work, you are able to do a lot.

if you do not want your bookmarks to be visible to the public, make sure to check off the Private bookmark box at the bottom left.

Common terms thrown around by Ao3 users:

-tags: the additional tags of the work

-kudos: liking a story

-bookmarks: saving/saved stories. makes it easy to revist. you can see your bookmarks from your profile

-hits: the amount of people that have clicked on a story. Isn't necessary they liked it, but they did click on it.

And those are the basics! If you had to take one thing only, its ALWAYS READ TAGS

I hope this helped the clueless souls even a bit :)

Im open to reply to any other questions, and you can send me them in my asks, messages or comments of this post

[rigelmejo]

march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved. 

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side). 

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end. 

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得 地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡 慢慢 高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure  得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for  地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

[ioliteisle]

Tips for Trading on Nookazon

So I’ve been thinking about this animal crossing trading etiquette post by @snickiiee lately, it’s very well done and I highly recommend it especially for AC players that are new to trading!! I’ve also been using nookazon a lot the past few weeks, and while many things listed in that post apply to nookazon well, I thought I’d make my own post specifically with some nookazon trading etiquette and tips!!! So without further ado:

Communication is key. This is a theme throughout this whole list, but when you’ve accepted an offer, let people know where you’re at in the process. Let them know if you’re grabbing the item and opening your gate, if you’re handling a trade or two first, if there’s been some other delay. They’ll appreciate it!

Try to be patient. Shit happens! and people aren’t machines. Even if they have their status set to online, they might not respond right away. Give them more than just five minutes to get back to you. (and fyi, you might be missing out on some fantastic trades because you couldn’t wait out someones pee break)

Be polite, not pushy. If you’re in a hurry or feel out of the loop, feel free to check up on things! but be reasonable and be kind. 

Communicate trading issues. Let someone know if they gave you the wrong item or forgot something and give them a chance to correct it before leaving a bad review. Again, people aren’t machines. Mistakes happen!

Please let everyone know if you’re conducting multiple trades at a time. A lot of people won’t mind it, but it is frustrating when you have other trades to tend to and you’re having to sit through multiple fly-ins you didn’t expect. Also some people are trying to get a quick trade in before they go to work/school or go to sleep, they should know if it might not be one.

Utilize the status feature. It’s really helpful to know if someone’s busy when you submit an offer, and it can result in more patience on the buyer’s end if you’re wrapped up in trades or afk. And if you avoid going offline so your listings will still show up, it might be a good idea to create some sort of status in your description you update regularly. 

Utilize the “On my way” feature, and use it well! I find the best time for this is right before you start talking to orville about flying. It’ll give the person you’re trading with enough time to get to their airport and set up but it’s not a bad wait at all in the case they’re ready to go. Don’t just use it when you’re already flying in, unless their switch is in another room, they know. 

Respond to offers as much as possible, including the ones you don’t accept. Nookazon has a handy feature that lets you deny or cancel offers and explain why. You should definitely use it when you’ve experienced some sort of complication, or when you’ve found a better deal or have no need for an item anymore, but let people know when an offer is too low, or when you’re accepting a better offer from someone else. Responding can help them figure out the worth of things, because...

Not everyone is trying to lowball you when they give you a “low” offer. If they’ve never traded before or have done just a bunch of lowkey chill trades they’re probably going by in-game prices, and in some cases what they offer is all they have. Or their offer is just genuinely fair to them. Help them along, try negotiating, whatever, just don’t leave people hanging?

More of a general kindness thing but if someone gives you a super generous offer, we’re talking like multiple wishlist and rare items for like, 20 NMTs or your tub, check their wishlist. See if there’s anything you can throw their way to let them know how much you appreciate it. If there’s no items you can help them with NMTs, Star fragments (Normal and large), gold nuggets, and pearls which are often needed or at very least useful for other trades. Bells are also still a great option too!! Even if they’re swimming in em, leaving someone a tip of any sort is a sign of appreciation they will appreciate.  

Organization goes a long way. Keep the items you have up for trade in a place you won’t forget, where they’re easily accessible. If you trade with NMTs, always keep some on hand so you don’t have to waste time redeeming them. If you do materials required crafting, include a crafting table and waiting area in or nearby your entrance. If you have other things in your inventory, separate trade items from the rest and keep them together in your pockets so dropping them is easier & quicker. You might think “But its just a game” and yeah!! im not telling you to treat your nookazon like a Serious Proper Business. But doing these things is a way you can be respectful and kind to your fellow players and their time, and keeping organized will make trading a lot more fun for you too!!

Finally: Leave reviews, regardless of whether you were the buyer or seller, and try to be fair! Especially if someone is new to the site and has none or very few! Let people know they can be trusted on their islands (or not!), indicate if they were polite, if they were communicative, quick to respond, etc etc. It makes trading easier and safer for all of us. :)

Long post, I know, but I also know nookazon seems scary or complicated to some people and I want to help :-) It’s such a useful website, and the more people know about it and how to use it/conduct trades over it, the better things will get!!

Feel free to add onto this list, and I’ll probably update it in the future with any additions or things that slipped my mind. 

[soaringsearingphoenix]

Valentine's Day Asks: The Prime Numbers

Wow! I dont know why i didnt see the notification for this one but ok, alright ah

1. do you have a crush on anyone?

I guess so? There are people who Stand Out to me and i call them crushes in my head sometimes but mostly I just want to be friends with them. Like I dont usually get dizzying sweeps of emotion for someone, physical or romantic, but I do get an urgent and baseless desire to hang out with them... maybe take a walk or invite them to get ice cream. So like if we’re on the same page about what I call a Crush on my emotional scale then yes. Theres a couple people.

2. what’s your favorite candy?

I like lemonheads and i will eat them until im sick of them if given half a chance. I also like snickers now because theres peanuts in it so i get to pretend im making a healthy choice

3. favorite love song?

Slow Boat To China, any version but specifically sung by Bette Midler and Barry Manilow. You know, like, just the corniest possible version? Partly for nostalgia, because it was one of like three CDs i remember my mom playing all the time when we were just kind of around the house when I was little. It also has the distinction of being the first duet I learned the words to (though as far as im aware none of my friends know the lyrics... i dont think ive ever actually sung it with someone) and it’s probably gotta be the one that gets stuck in my head the most. Right down to the dumb banter in the middle (“Bette, I didn’t know you felt that way about me.” “I don’t. I need a piano player.”)

I also like “Somewhere Beyond The Sea.” I think, as a general rule, that if there are boats in the words to a love song I will probably like it.

5. what was your last kiss like?

Meaningful

7. do you prefer poems or love letters?

Ahhhhhhhhhh to read or to write? I like writing poems because I think they’re... easier honestly? Writing is so hard, identifying your feelings is hard. Having some constraints makes writing easier, and a rhyme and cadence makes it flow. Besides, it’s more musical that way so I think for me it feels like a more natural expression of love. I do well with more structured expression, and not so much with making just raw, unrefined feelings known.

Not to say writing poetry is easy. It’s less difficult than a love letter, sure, but there are still potential pitfalls. If i make a metaphor that makes me think of science, the rest of the poem WILL be just an extension of the metaphor that gets more and more didactic until I’m just telling you science facts.

11. dinner dates or brunch dates?

Dinner dates. I decided that before i came up with a reason why. I think the reason is that an evening engagement means I have something to look forward to, or be nervous about but then i have time to mentally prepare myself. Whereas morning, even if it’s not “early” morning, I feel more stressed about getting there on time and then afterwards theres a whole rest of the day where i either have to get somewhere after, or its just this unstructured uncertainty. Dinner, youve already done the rest of the day, so you can be present without worrying about what you gotta get to after.

13. favorite perfume/cologne?

I... dont know that ive ever noticed a perfume or cologne and felt it was applied tastefully, because i think if it is insubtle it defeats the point. That said, if it’s actually well applied so that it’s less an overwhelming cloud that trails comically behind people you pass in the quad and more like when someone sits down right next to you om the couch and you get just a hint of their shampoo or conditioner, to the point where maybe you didnt even consciously notice it before but now you say “oh, you’re the reason ive been craving ice cream, you smell minty” if it was only that subtle then i think im generally fond of more smoky incense-y smells like sandalwood, or roses but i am picky about rose fragrances, so it has to actually smell just like fresh roses or i wont be able to overlook that the smell is not roses. I have this friend who went to my middle school, and we were very into scents and making potpourri and things. At the time, his grandma had a hand soap that smelled exactly like roses, it was delightful and he said as much and I said that it sounded amazing but I’d have to take his word for it, but then the next time he visited her he came back with a little jar of it for me just so i could smell it, and he was right, it smelled just like roses. Actually forget the roses, it will make me think of the hand soap and as lovely as that is I dont want to give anyone vying for my affection any reason to feel like they’re in competition with someone, or something. It’s not a competition. Learn to coexist with my memories, because you’re not going to fight my nostalgia and win.

17. what’s the most attractive thing a person could wear?

If you’re wearing something knit or embroidered that you made yourself Im definitely gonna want to talk to you. Also if you’re wearing really comfy looking cargo pants but thats probably because i want to know where you got them so i can get some for me.

19. snow, rain, or sun?

Sun because people will take a walk with me

23. what’s your dream wedding like?

Dont have one but if i did its in a forest or at least a grove of trees. Mostly small gathering, family and close friends. I have a dress for the vows i guess, just because ive seen a lot of Say Yes to the Dress so thats how ive generally pictured it, (which i only really do when im watching Say Yes to the Dress), but ive got comfortable shoes, and im gonna change into pants asap after. We probably do some corny thing thats kind of an inside joke. Each of us has a Best Man or equivalent, who carries a sword — we joke that this makes it a “traditional” wedding, though beyond that it’s really not meant to be. It’s mostly simple, though maybe have a little extravagance or two, like a chocolate fountain, because how often do you have an excuse to have a chocolate fountain. I tend to wander off from other peoples weddings somewhere in the middle, at some point i just get a little overstimulated, and the amount of people that will likely be invited makes this probable. At the reception, when the families and friends are singing and dancing, i probably quietly excuse myself to my spouse and drift away, finding a spot in a tree where i can still hear the music and the laughter from a distance. I am joined not long after by my spouse (and the thought is strange, and even then i cant quite wrap my mind around that word yet, the commitment it implies) who knows where to look for me, and who perhaps pulls a leaf or two from my hair as they join me on an adjacent branch. We sit quietly together for some time until it seems appropriate to rejoin the festivities, as it is our wedding after all, and the slow dance is coming up, and we will spend some quiet time later when everyone has gone home. It is nice, the dancing, and as tired as we are we still drift around the dance floor among loved ones long into the night.

I dont know if this is like... how i intend my wedding to be. Like i said i didnt have an answer going in. But now that im trying to imagine it, this feels realistic.

29. are you single?

Yup!

31. guitar or piano?

Piano. First of all because i am better at piano than guitar and second because you can do duets on one piano

37. do you like to dance?

Aw hell yeah!! I would call myself an... Inexperienced dancer, but if a song has a good rhythm or even if it doesnt and i am full of energy i WILL be moving and twisting and you ARE welcome to join me

41. favorite soda?

I usually go for lighter ones like orange or sprite. I found Lime fanta at a gas station once that tasted like green jello and it was good but ive only seen it maybe twice ever.

43. favorite ABBA song?

Gimme Gimme Gimme always gets me on my feet, and ive listened to it probably the most because it’s on my “Dates and Times Playlist” (the first line says ‘half past 12’ and then the chorus says ‘after midnight’ so its in with a collection of other midnight songs. Any time i hear any of the others i get this one in my head as well. Thatd just how it is.)

47. do you think about love a lot?

No

[desertbroad]

kaj + (inverted) tropes: part two! * * i don’t know all the actual Official TM names for these tropes, so most are made up. also, you might notice the regular trope list (part 1 of this headcanon) is significantly longer. this is because kaj has a few main inverted tropes but tons more regular ones, since tropes are like atoms: they make up everything. i just wanted to focus on the few inversions that created her character and let the rest come naturally! under a read more for length. ** also as of 7/6/19 part one isn’t done yet. yes i know please don’t shame me ok IM GETTING TO IT

fridged woman (aka back from the dead)—

for this one i took inspiration from laura moon from american gods, with a few tweaks (love neil gaiman, but some of the things about her character are...a bit squicky). unlike a good number of women in media, kaj isn’t shoved over gently and pronounced dead so that a man can grow from her pain. in fact, she’s shot in the head twice, pronounced dead, & buried. while her “death” means more pain and character development for the characters surrounding her, it means pain and character development for her, too. truth be told, she survives a hell of a lot more than any average person should, especially one with her low luck stat. half of this is the fun and wacky way new vegas’ world works (obviously, no real person could survive all this), but also because of her good ol’ courier determination. things that should’ve fridged kaj but haven’t include: two shots to the head, numerous combat scrapes, being stabbed, having her brain/heart/spine removed, having a bomb collar attached to her neck, killing an entire fortification of trained legionnaires, stepping on landmines, etc etc. the courier is pretty much the bruce willis of fallout.

world ending vengeance—

specifically applies to certain characters. while most others who piss kaj off get the full brunt of her wrath (see: caesar, mr. house, elijah, general oliver, ulysses), benny, along with dr. mobius & the think tank & mcnamara*, get a pass. in fact, she lets him go not once or twice, but on three separate occasions, even knowing he’s likely to betray her again. the reason why? not even kaj knows. some people speculate it’s because she likes him / slept with him (incorrect; she liked house to a degree, and slept with caesar); others speculate it’s because they’re so similar (also incorrect; she shared an alarming number of similarities with ulysses & elijah). the theory that comes closest to the truth is that she pities him. it fits in line her past behavior with mobius & the think tank, who were physically unable to see the effects of their actions and thus were spared a horrible fate. likewise, kaj seems to have judged benny to be innocent in her own personal court, and though he continues to be a thorn in her side again and again, she refuses to “sentence” him for anything. it helps his cause that his plan helped her take over vegas, and he created yes man, one of the only living beings she’s ever fully trusted. also a slight inversion of kaj’s maneater / black widow trope; the one person she truly should seduce and kill, she doesn’t.

that said, benny doesn’t get away from their encounters without any punishment—after narrowly escaping being crucified, both kaj and benny have matching rope burns around their wrists. it’s her morbid idea of a joke.

*mcnamara doesn’t fit within this trope, but kaj spares the bos for veronica & christine’s sake, despite yes man’s warnings. also for the off chance that they might convert to being her allies (they don’t, and this choice helps lend itself to more BOS trouble all over the wasteland).

white man cowboy—

kind of a simple inversion that’s been done before, but an important one and one that i like a lot. for starters, the “john wayne” cowboy is a bastardization of a history that was made up of ethnic minorities and whitewashed for hollywood aesthetic (also fuck you john wayne). while none of my research has come up with anything about women of color or nonbinary people in the western scene, only moc (whether this is intentional or not, i’m not sure), i still wanted to write kaj as non-male. frankly, this is because i wanted her to be an inversion of tired tropes, and that included being a debonair, byronic woman / non gender conforming hero (think gentleman jack) instead of a debonair, byronic white dude. we’ve got 20 of those for every fleshed out woman/enby on screen, lbr. kaj is also a femme fatale, but only by coincidence; she’s more of a wandering heart breaker than a necessarily dangerous woman, much like many of the heroes on screen.

i also find that non-men of color are one of the most underrepresented minorities in fiction—even media that celebrates diversity simplifies them down (hamilton), or centers their narrative and entire purpose around a man (hamilton, again). nevermind nonbinary people / trans folk. for that reason, i wanted kaj’s story to be about a woman of color / someone who doesn’t conform to expectations and doesn’t allow herself to be put in the sidelines for a white person or a male to lead her life. and regardless of whether a woman filling this swaggering, womanizing cowboy role is accurate to history or not, fallout’s setting lends itself an air of exaggeration, so i felt it was appropriate to include her here, instead of arguing with people over whether someone like her existed in actual history (my suspicions say yes, and that these people have simply been erased from the narrative for the convenience of certain people’s feelings, but still).

smarter than you look / deadly doctor (this one actually has a tvtropes page! look it up!)—

from the deadly doctor page : ‘ surely the ultimate example of the morally ambiguous doctorate. one reason for this is due to all his/her training : while having advanced knowledge on the human body can be used to save people, it also gives all the knowledge on how to injure and kill people with minimal effort by knowing all the body's weak points. some more sympathetic examples equate to the medical version of a well-intentioned extremist, who may certainly have good (or at least sympathetic/understandable) intentions but ruthless medical ethics. ’

one of the most important things kaj took from her thorough education is medical training—unable to depend on anyone after being traumatized, trusting any doctor who happened along to treat her illnesses was out of the question. she was also smart enough to know the original kaj wouldn’t be around to heal her up forever. thus, she began her training as a self preservation instinct; but over time, as she grew and relearned how to be compassionate and empathetic, she decided to use healing for good, too. trained as a young girl by the original kaj, and then later trained officially as a combat medic by the ncr, kaj has spent a countless amount of hours inside army tents, healing wounds and assisting doctors with tough cases. she even keeps a medical bag on her person for exactly that sort of situation (especially since supplies in the mojave aren’t exactly easy to dig up). though she’s a big scientist in general (the big mt saw to that), medicine is her specialty. she’s even stitched up her own wounds, though it’s not something she particularly enjoys (it takes a lot of whiskey and something for her to bite down on).

for reference, consider this scene of anton from no country for old men (TW: he’s performing self surgery, so it’s pretty gruesome). though both anton and kaj’s lifestyles are rough and even sadistic at times, they both still have medical training—if not to protect others, then to at least protect themselves. and like anton, it shows kaj’s inability to trust anyone with her most important commodity: herself. this makes her surgery in the big empty doubly as horrifying, given she took specific pains for something like this to not happen. it’s why she refuses to leave without all of her organs (also, stubbornness). all of this is just one of the ways kaj is way more ... well, everything than she looks. which leads into...

underestimate me if you dare, aka femme fatale (sort of?)—

though fallout prides itself on being a soft reset on the world, people’s perceptions of minorities are still ... iffy, due to real world influences by the creators. thus, the people around kaj often jump to assumptions about her based on her identity—mostly, that she’s weak. once, it offended her, but now it’s a perception that she encourages. after all, she’s not flat out strong like your usual hero, but is more of a hamlet-type; smart, perceptive, fast, and willing to strike from the shadows. it’s hard to do any of that if you’re putting on a big performance about your power (though admittedly, she’s been known to go big or go home if she’s planning on killing everyone; if she’s not faking nice and telling you what you wanna hear, trouble’s ahead).

of course, the reality is that kaj is a powerhouse. but these perceptions about her supposed weakness are why posing as a legion member is so easy—those who think she’s weak underestimate her or keep their distance, which gives her leave to do what she wants. she’s viewed more like a pet than a person by most, and though it frustrates her at times to pretend, it also gives her leave to do more, than if she were to simply pose as a man.

all that said, kaj doesn’t exactly qualify as a femme fatale. most of her lovers are just information givers, and they escape from their interaction unharmed. kaj killing her bed mates is actually less likely than her just sparing them and letting them go, none the wiser. of course, you kill one tyrant (maybe two or three) and suddenly you’re a black widow—

[lucysweatslove]

My interpretation-

The heart of the challenge lies in how I’ve been feeling uncertain of myself in the clinic in general, and what I’ve started to think longer term about it: do I continue? Should I continue? Do I think I CAN continue? For transparency, I still love medicine, I enjoy the diagnostics and patient care, I love learning and even though I’m not expected to “learn” anything or have any clinical skills yet, I’m taking the opportunities presented to me. But I’m not feeling that sense of belonging or like I’m even good enougg. I feel awkward around the clinic, unsure what I’m doing on the general social side of things. I’ll be scheduled to meet with somebody, and they’ll have no clue im supposed to meet up / shadow them. I never know if this is how it’s “supposed” to be or an artifact of a busy, understaffed clinic and new coordinator who has never coordinated this before. It’s lead me to question if this whole thing was just a big mistake- if I should have applied regular instead of rural, if I should have accepted admission at another school. At times, even questioning if I should just quit now before I pay hundreds of thousands for a medical degree. Usually it’s not that bad and I just question what specialty I want since I usually feel most out of place around primary care. I don’t really know what I even WANT for sure at this point.

Which brings us to the ramifications of the challenge, what really has me feeling so negative about all of this. Disillusionment, stagnation, feelings of tension- maybe that I’m imagining but I can’t know for sure. I thought my rural experience would be more rural- its rural but also kinda not as one of the larger cities in the state is close by. The clinic has docs from other specialties come in specifically for the rural site- which is FANTASTIC for patients but also leaves me feeling like maybe I’m not getting the same rural experience I might get somewhere else. I thought it would be better organized for me- not that I expect that throughout med school, but I had no way to organize it myself, so I assumed it was supposed to be organized by other people. I did have my two weeks pre-planned, but I’ll find the doc I’m shadowing and they will be totally blindsided by it. Accommodating and kind, but without a clue I was supposed to be there or what I was even supposed to do. I feel more like a burden, which I end up interpreting as tension and hard feelings from the doc, even if I have none for them. Honestly? The excitement I had for this specific rural program (even to start school at all) feels really minimized at this point.

I’m honestly a little wishywashy on the “path to overcome” here, and my intuition is pulling it in two directions (which I find particularly humorous given the card itself). It’s a card about difficult decisions, being at a crossroads- which is also kind of the underpinning of the issue in general. I’m not sure if the two of swords here is telling me that the way to move forward is to make and commit to a decision OR that for right now, I don’t NEED to decide, and I can just decide to deal with the uncertainty (which historically I’m terrified of). I think most likely it’s saying, don’t make a decision yet- I’m too emotionally overloaded and need to give it time and NOT make some kind of rash decision.

Looking into shadow self vs higher self, it seems my shadow self is probably driving me to “act before I think.” I feel a lot a bit powerless in this situation, which I already know is impacting my eating (this isn’t intentional, I know I have to be mindful, but stress and powerlessness often means I start to slip a little into unhelpful thoughts and actions towards my own self). I think maybe this also is saying that the negative self-talk, where I’m over-analyzing my days and somehow convincing myself of how much I suck, is coming from my shadow self’s stress response and isn’t really the truth. My higher self, on the other hand, knows I can use this experience to better myself. Didn’t have a great experience? Motivates me to make the next experience better. Got some imposter syndrome? Learn more- practice my skills, read up on what I’ve seen and dedicate time to really understanding what I’m being exposed to. I know this new adventure is an adjustment and will come with a host of new challenges, not just this one, and the best way to prepare is to get myself organized, temper my expectations (especially of myself) so I can consistently show up to learn how to be a good doc.

Which I think is kind of the point, too. Although I think queen of pentacles is generally seen more on the fiscal side, like a businesswoman, or on the practical side of nurturing like a gardener or homesteader, to me I also think she represents some of the “self” or way of being I want to achieve in life and as a doctor too. Reliable, successful, resourceful, and practical, but nurturing and giving and service-minded too. She’s not the cerebral and logical but maybe a bit cold and out of touch doctor that I think of as some kind of stereotype. She’s like, the frontier doc who is always there for whatever her patients need, whether that’s delivering a baby, setting a bone, or listening to a grieving widow. Her profession and success don’t get in the way of her service- her profession and success are proof of it. Anyway, those are all traits I think I need to develop and balance, and maybe this whole rural thing right now is just helping me along the way. Not that making it through these two weeks means I’ve “gotten there” but that making it through these two weeks are a needed step in the journey.

The final card- three of pentacles to represent the change I’ll experience from overcoming this challenge- is highly focused on teamwork/collaboration and learning and qualification building. Yes, it’s often the reward/recognition/achievement card, but it’s got more nuances here aI think. Although in this deck, it’s represented by 3 bats and it’s a bit unclear, traditionally the artwork suggests some form of apprenticeship, and I can see that in the bats too. The two “higher” bats seem to have some magical something coming out of their mouths- feeding the “lower” bat with this magic. Ultimately what I’m doing for the next 7-8 years or more is apprenticeship; I’m learning from the mouths of my preceptors. It’s not necessarily a “completed goal” kind of card, more so one telling me that I’m on the right track to learning. IMO it’s not saying that overcoming means I will necessarily feel like I’ve learned so much and have integrated and feel like I belong and am respected for my own contributions, but more so that overcoming this little hurdle means I’ll be able to focus more and truly be committed to the learning, taking in all I can from those above me.

I haven’t done any tarot in a long while but I brought a card set with me to this rural thing and decided today, after feeling like crying for some reason I can’t place, to finally do a spread on a current challenge.

Not that it’s super informative. But honestly doing it again feels good, too.

[jeanbaltsubsta-blog]

Online dating messages that work

Dating messages that work This dating site is available in 24 countries and 15 different languages.  The next two are special cases where asking the girl out occurs in the first email.  You can use this line to go straight into your next sentence.  The first message will set the tone for the early part of your interaction and will often make or break you chances with the person you are interested in.  What kind of books do you normally read? Online dating can be unforgiving and for many of us it is easy to make mistakes without even realizing it.

Online dating first messages that work I entered into the experience with an open mind, viewing online dating as an opportunity to meet men outside work and my social circle, and was looking for friendship first, with the possibility of a relationship if we clicked.  I like the fact that I can weed through them with a good set of profile questions.  Basically Im with you all on this and drinks are on me if you come to my local! Putting yourself down or being a little shy or awkward can come across rather endearing.  Girls love when you ask us questions.  Also, remember that this person is a stranger and you're trying to make a good impression, so save the incomplete sentences and purposeful or not typos for when you're dating.  But because it creates opportunity where previously there was none.

How to Write a Great First Message — MenAskEm The only real impact has come from altering my height and income.  Online Dating First Message Example 1 This example is humorous.  Since you like zoology, you will probably like that book.  Say what and who are you are looking for.  Some part of me knows that I would never stroll into a bar announcing my various accomplishments and character traits to a guy I thought was hot—so why would I or anyone in their right mind do the same thing in a message? Writing a great first email message is online dating messages that work critical to success or failure in your dating life.

Good First Message Online Dating I do not enjoy other people, generally.  Here are just a few of my reservations: 1.  Online dating first message examples tend to be all about the person you are writing to.  These unlimited options are everything so good it with the first message.  I travel every chance I can and love being around those I share things in common with.  Questions are a way of showing you are interested in getting to know the person.  Start chatting with some proven things can be very accurate.

Online dating first messages that work While I feel that your profile should be a constant battle between brevity and substance, it should definitely hold enough for someone to make a decision about communicating with you.  On the first day of online dating, that is sort of all you really need.  I should make you feel sexy and vice versa, if you are not highly sexual then be honest about it.  Sure, I'm on a dating hiatus, but before that I was on a holy fucking terror of binge dating the likes of which were mildly, if on not entirely unimpressive… Whatever.  If you are in your mid to late 30s and beyond I think it is unreasonable to disregard all the people that have children.  Messages to say in the types of my now-husband was a place for how to online source for video games.

Tested Online Dating First Emails: Find Out What Works Here! .  I read through your profile and we seem to share a love of adventure, the feel of sand in our toes, and the taste of an authentic french croissant.  Mindful relationships are created out of two whole people.  They might look like people, but then so do you, and you know that all you are anymore is a shell.  Thus I believe that online dating works better for women than for men.

I'm Not Getting Any Messages, Online Dating Isn't Working! I started doing it because I was alone for so long I just wanted to go out and hoped I would meet at least a new friend.  An original, person-specific joke makes you stand out among vague come-ons.  I have met a number of very desirable women.  First, but i download the formula to leave out the funny online dating season, both parties need to.  The good news is there are better ways to go about it.  Nor am I very accepting of change.

First Message Online Dating Formula That Works (With Examples) My in box is flooded with messages.  But some part of me—the part that is familiar with social interactions and general guidelines of human conduct—recognizes that this is neither the most practical nor the most thoughtful way to get to know a person.  Most profiles should have much more information for you to work with but you can apply the exact same ideas: Keep your emails short and positive Also, regardless what any book or person tells you including this guy , you need to be making decisions for yourself.  Dating as an institution is a relatively recent phenomenon which has mainly emerged in the last few centuries.  In any case, here are some all-too­-real examples of negging in action.  Essentially, I do not see myself using a supermarket approach to address an issue of a pretty existential nature.

6 Online Dating Message Dos And Don'ts, Because Complete Sentences Make People Swoon Research programs research groups a-z core facilities public relations job in first test - it doesn't suck lisa.  We poured ourselves glasses of wine and set about describing ourselves in the best, most attractive, most unique, most intriguing ways we possibly could.  If you are even remotely interested, feel free to send me an email.  A good first message has a bit of humor in it.  That will i am really need to know the release of icky single and tricks for.

[suzanneshannon]

How @supports Works

CSS has a neat feature that allows us to test if the browser supports a particular property or property:value combination before applying a block of styles — like how a @media query matches when, say, the width of the browser window is narrower than some specified size and then the CSS within it takes effect. In the same spirit, the CSS inside this feature will take effect when the property:value pair being tested is supported in the current browser. That feature is called @supports and it looks like this:

@supports (display: grid) { .main { display: grid; } }

Why? Well, that's a bit tricky. Personally, I find don't need it all that regularly. CSS has natural fallback mechanisms such that if the browser doesn't understand a property:value combination, then it will ignore it and use something declared before it if there is anything, thanks to the cascade. Sometimes that can be used to deal with fallbacks and the end result is a bit less verbose. I'm certainly not a it's-gotta-be-the-same-in-every-browser kinda guy, but I'm also not a write-elaborate-fallbacks-to-get-close kinda guy either. I generally prefer a situation where a natural failure of a property:value doesn't do anything drastic to destroy functionality.

That said, @supports certainly has use cases! And as I found out while putting this post together, plenty of people use it for plenty of interesting situations.

A classic use case

The example I used in the intro is a classic one that you'll see used in lots of writing about this topic. Here it is a bit more fleshed out:

/* We're gonna write a fallback up here in a minute */ @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; } }

Nice grid! Repeating and auto-filling columns is a sweet feature of CSS grid. But, of course, there are browsers that don't support grid, or don't support all the specific features of it that I'm using above there.

For example, iOS shipped support for CSS grid in version 10.2, but iOS has had flexbox support since version 7. That's a decent gap of people with older iOS devices that do support flexbox but not grid. I'm sure there are more example gaps like that, but you probably get the idea.

I was running on an older version of mobile safari and many many many many many sites were flat out broken that used grid

I’m waiting another year or so before messing about with it

— David Wells (@DavidWells) February 6, 2019

It may be acceptable to let the fallback for this be nothing, depending on the requirements. For example, vertically stacked block-level elements rather than a multi-column grid layout. That's often fine with me. But let's say it's not fine, like a photo gallery or something that absolutely needs to have some basic grid-like structure. In that case, starting with flexbox as the default and using @supports to apply grid features where they're supported may work better...

.photo-layout { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; > div { flex: 200px; margin: 1rem; } } @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; > div { margin: 0; } } }

The "fallback" is the code outside of the @supports block (the properties above the block in the example above), and the grid code is either inside or after. The @supports block doesn't change any specificity, so we need the source order to help make sure the overrides work.

Notice I had to reset the margin on the divs inside the @supports block. That's the kind of thing I find a bit annoying. There is just enough crossover between the two scenarios that it requires being super aware of how they impact each other.

Doesn't that make you wish it could be entirely logically separated...

There is "not" logic in @supports blocks, but that doesn't mean it should always be used

Jen Simmons put this example in an article called Using Feature Queries in CSS a few years ago:

/* Considered a BAD PRACTICE, at least if you're supporting IE 11 and iOS 8 and older */ @supports not (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for non-support of grid */ } @supports (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for support of grid */ }

Notice the not operator in the first block. That's checking for browsers that do not support grid in order to apply certain styles to those browsers. The reason this approach is considered bad practice is that the browser support for @supports itself has to be considered!. That's what makes this so dang tricky.

It's very appealing to write code in logically separated @supports blocks like that because then it's starting from scratch each time and doesn't need to be overriding previous values and dealing with those logical mind-benders. But let's go back to the same iOS situation we considered before... @supports shipped in iOS in version 9 (right between when flexbox shipped in iOS 7 and grid shipped in iOS 10.2). That means any flexbox fallback code in a @supports block using the not operator to check for (display: grid) {} support wouldn't work in either iOS 7 or 8, meaning the fallback now needs a fallback from working in browsers it otherwise would have. Phew!

The big reason to reach for @supports is to account for very different implementations of something depending on feature support where it becomes easier to reason and distinguish between those implementations if the blocks of code are separated.

We'll probably get to a point where we can use mutually-exclusive blocks like that without worry. Speaking of which...

@supports is likely to be more useful over time.

Once @supports is supported in all browsers you need to support, then it's good to start using it more aggressively and without having to factor in the complication of considering whether @supports itself is supported. Here's the support grid on that:

This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.

Desktop

ChromeOperaFirefoxIEEdgeSafari2812.122No129

Mobile / Tablet

iOS SafariOpera MobileOpera MiniAndroidAndroid ChromeAndroid Firefox9.0-9.246all4.47164

Basically, IE 11 and any iOS device stuck on iOS 8 are the pain points. If your requirements are already past those, then you're good to use @supports more freely.

The irony is that there hasn't been a ton of CSS features shipping that have big clear @supports use cases — but there are some! Apparently, it's possible to test new fancy stuff like Houdini:

Using it on my wedding website to check for Houdini support 🎩🐰

— Sam Richard (@Snugug) February 6, 2019

(I'm not sure entirely what you'd put in the @supports block to do that. Has anyone else done this?)

When @supports isn't doing anything useful

I've seen a good amount of @supports uses in the wild where the end result is exactly as it would be without using it. For example...

@supports (transform: rotate(5deg)) { .avatar { transform: rotate(5deg); } }

On some level, that makes perfect logical sense. If transforms are supported, use them. But it's unnecessary if nothing different is happening in a non-support scenario. In this case, the transform can fail without the @supports block and the result is the same.

Here's another example of that shaking out.

There are browser extensions for playing with @supports

There are two of them!

Feature Queries Manager by Ire Aderinokun

CSS Feature Toggle Extension by Keith Clark

They are both centered around the idea that we can write @supports blocks in CSS and then toggle them on and off as if we're looking at a rendering of the code in a browser that does or doesn't support that feature.

Here's a video of Keith's tool applied to the scenario using grid with a flexbox fallback:

This is fun to play with and is very neat tech. But in this exact scenario, if I was able to pull off the layout identically with flexbox, then I'd probably just do that and save that little bit of technical debt.

Ire's tool, which she wrote about in the article Creating The Feature Queries Manager DevTools Extension, has a slightly different approach in that it shows the feature queries that you actually wrote in your CSS and provides toggles to flip them on and off. I don't think it works through iframes though, so I popped open Debug Mode to use it on CodePen.

More real world use cases for @supports

Here's one from Erik Vorhes. He's styling some custom checkboxes and radio buttons here, but wraps all of it in a @supports block. None of the styling gets applied unless the block passes the support check.

@supports (transform: rotate(1turn)) and (opacity: 0) { /* all the styling for Erik's custom checkboxes and radio buttons */ }

Here are several more I've come across:

Joe Wright and Tiago Nunes mentioned using it for position: sticky;. I'd love to see a demo here! As in, where you go for position: sticky;, but then have to do something different besides let it fail for a non-supporting browser.

Keith Grant and Matthias Ott mention using it for object-fit: contain;. Matthias has a demo where positioning trickery is used to make an image sort of fill a container, which is then made easier and better through that property when it's available.

Ryan Filler mentions using it for mix-blend-mode. His example sets more opacity on an element, but if mix-blend-mode is supported, it uses a bit less and that property which can have the effect of seeing through an element on its own.

.thing { opacity: 0.5; } @supports (mix-blend-mode: multiply) { .thing { mix-blend-mode: multiply; opacity: 0.75; } }

Rik Schennink mentioned the backdrop-filter property. He says, "when it's supported the opacity of the background color often needs some fine tuning."

Nour Saud mentioned it can be used to detect Edge through a specific vendor-prefixed property: @supports (-ms-ime-align:auto) { }.

Amber Weinberg mentioned using it for clip-path because adjusting the sizing or padding of an element will accommodate when clipping is unavailable.

Ralph Holzmann mentioned using it to test for that "notch" stuff (environment variables).

Stacy Kvernmo mentioned using it for the variety of properties needed for drop capping characters. Jen Simmons mentions this use case in her article as well. There is an initial-letter CSS property that's pretty fantastic for drop caps, but is used in conjunction with other properties that you may not want to apply at all if initial-letter isn't supported (or if there's a totally different fallback scenario).

Here's a bonus one from Nick Colley that's not @supports, but @media instead! The spirit is the same. It can prevent that "stuck" hover state on touch devices like this:

@media (hover: hover) { a:hover { background: yellow; } }

Logic in @supports

Basic:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) { }

Not:

@supports not (initial-letter: 4) { }

And:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) and (transform: scale(2)) { }

Or:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) or (-webkit-initial-letter: 4) { }

Combos:

@supports ((display: -webkit-flex) or (display: -moz-flex) or (display: flex)) and (-webkit-appearance: caret) { }

JavaScript Variant

JavaScript has an API for this. To test if it exists...

if (window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) { // Apparently old Opera had a weird implementation, so you could also do: // !!((window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) || window.supportsCSS || false) }

To use it, either pass the property to it in one param and the value in another:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("display", "grid");

...or give it all in one string mirroring the CSS syntax:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("(display: grid)");

Selector testing

At the time of this writing, only Firefox supports this sort of testing (behind an experimental flag), but there is a way to test the support of selectors with @supports. MDN's demo:

@supports selector(A > B) { }

You?

Of course, we'd love to see Pens of @supports use cases in the comments. So share 'em!

The post How @supports Works appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How @supports Works published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[siliconwebx]

How @supports Works

CSS has a neat feature that allows us to test if the browser supports a particular property or property:value combination before applying a block of styles — like how a @media query matches when, say, the width of the browser window is narrower than some specified size and then the CSS within it takes effect. In the same spirit, the CSS inside this feature will take effect when the property:value pair being tested is supported in the current browser. That feature is called @supports and it looks like this:

@supports (display: grid) { .main { display: grid; } }

Why? Well, that's a bit tricky. Personally, I find don't need it all that regularly. CSS has natural fallback mechanisms such that if the browser doesn't understand a property:value combination, then it will ignore it and use something declared before it if there is anything, thanks to the cascade. Sometimes that can be used to deal with fallbacks and the end result is a bit less verbose. I'm certainly not a it's-gotta-be-the-same-in-every-browser kinda guy, but I'm also not a write-elaborate-fallbacks-to-get-close kinda guy either. I generally prefer a situation where a natural failure of a property:value doesn't do anything drastic to destroy functionality.

That said, @supports certainly has use cases! And as I found out while putting this post together, plenty of people use it for plenty of interesting situations.

A classic use case

The example I used in the intro is a classic one that you'll see used in lots of writing about this topic. Here it is a bit more fleshed out:

/* We're gonna write a fallback up here in a minute */ @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; } }

Nice grid! Repeating and auto-filling columns is a sweet feature of CSS grid. But, of course, there are browsers that don't support grid, or don't support all the specific features of it that I'm using above there.

For example, iOS shipped support for CSS grid in version 10.2, but iOS has had flexbox support since version 7. That's a decent gap of people with older iOS devices that do support flexbox but not grid. I'm sure there are more example gaps like that, but you probably get the idea.

I was running on an older version of mobile safari and many many many many many sites were flat out broken that used grid

I’m waiting another year or so before messing about with it

— David Wells (@DavidWells) February 6, 2019

It may be acceptable to let the fallback for this be nothing, depending on the requirements. For example, vertically stacked block-level elements rather than a multi-column grid layout. That's often fine with me. But let's say it's not fine, like a photo gallery or something that absolutely needs to have some basic grid-like structure. In that case, starting with flexbox as the default and using @supports to apply grid features where they're supported may work better...

.photo-layout { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; > div { flex: 200px; margin: 1rem; } } @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; > div { margin: 0; } } }

The "fallback" is the code outside of the @supports block (the properties above the block in the example above), and the grid code is either inside or after. The @supports block doesn't change any specificity, so we need the source order to help make sure the overrides work.

Notice I had to reset the margin on the divs inside the @supports block. That's the kind of thing I find a bit annoying. There is just enough crossover between the two scenarios that it requires being super aware of how they impact each other.

Doesn't that make you wish it could be entirely logically separated...

There is "not" logic in @supports blocks, but that doesn't mean it should always be used

Jen Simmons put this example in an article called Using Feature Queries in CSS a few years ago:

/* Considered a BAD PRACTICE, at least if you're supporting IE 11 and iOS 8 and older */ @supports not (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for non-support of grid */ } @supports (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for support of grid */ }

Notice the not operator in the first block. That's checking for browsers that do not support grid in order to apply certain styles to those browsers. The reason this approach is considered bad practice is that the browser support for @supports itself has to be considered!. That's what makes this so dang tricky.

It's very appealing to write code in logically separated @supports blocks like that because then it's starting from scratch each time and doesn't need to be overriding previous values and dealing with those logical mind-benders. But let's go back to the same iOS situation we considered before... @supports shipped in iOS in version 9 (right between when flexbox shipped in iOS 7 and grid shipped in iOS 10.2). That means any flexbox fallback code in a @supports block using the not operator to check for (display: grid) {} support wouldn't work in either iOS 7 or 8, meaning the fallback now needs a fallback from working in browsers it otherwise would have. Phew!

The big reason to reach for @supports is to account for very different implementations of something depending on feature support where it becomes easier to reason and distinguish between those implementations if the blocks of code are separated.

We'll probably get to a point where we can use mutually-exclusive blocks like that without worry. Speaking of which...

@supports is likely to be more useful over time.

Once @supports is supported in all browsers you need to support, then it's good to start using it more aggressively and without having to factor in the complication of considering whether @supports itself is supported. Here's the support grid on that:

This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.

Desktop

ChromeOperaFirefoxIEEdgeSafari2812.122No129

Mobile / Tablet

iOS SafariOpera MobileOpera MiniAndroidAndroid ChromeAndroid Firefox9.0-9.246all4.47164

Basically, IE 11 and any iOS device stuck on iOS 8 are the pain points. If your requirements are already past those, then you're good to use @supports more freely.

The irony is that there hasn't been a ton of CSS features shipping that have big clear @supports use cases — but there are some! Apparently, it's possible to test new fancy stuff like Houdini:

Using it on my wedding website to check for Houdini support 🎩🐰

— Sam Richard (@Snugug) February 6, 2019

(I'm not sure entirely what you'd put in the @supports block to do that. Has anyone else done this?)

When @supports isn't doing anything useful

I've seen a good amount of @supports uses in the wild where the end result is exactly as it would be without using it. For example...

@supports (transform: rotate(5deg)) { .avatar { transform: rotate(5deg); } }

On some level, that makes perfect logical sense. If transforms are supported, use them. But it's unnecessary if nothing different is happening in a non-support scenario. In this case, the transform can fail without the @supports block and the result is the same.

Here's another example of that shaking out.

There are browser extensions for playing with @supports

There are two of them!

Feature Queries Manager by Ire Aderinokun

CSS Feature Toggle Extension by Keith Clark

They are both centered around the idea that we can write @supports blocks in CSS and then toggle them on and off as if we're looking at a rendering of the code in a browser that does or doesn't support that feature.

Here's a video of Keith's tool applied to the scenario using grid with a flexbox fallback:

This is fun to play with and is very neat tech. But in this exact scenario, if I was able to pull off the layout identically with flexbox, then I'd probably just do that and save that little bit of technical debt.

Ire's tool, which she wrote about in the article Creating The Feature Queries Manager DevTools Extension, has a slightly different approach in that it shows the feature queries that you actually wrote in your CSS and provides toggles to flip them on and off. I don't think it works through iframes though, so I popped open Debug Mode to use it on CodePen.

More real world use cases for @supports

Here's one from Erik Vorhes. He's styling some custom checkboxes and radio buttons here, but wraps all of it in a @supports block. None of the styling gets applied unless the block passes the support check.

@supports (transform: rotate(1turn)) and (opacity: 0) { /* all the styling for Erik's custom checkboxes and radio buttons */ }

Here are several more I've come across:

Joe Wright and Tiago Nunes mentioned using it for position: sticky;. I'd love to see a demo here! As in, where you go for position: sticky;, but then have to do something different besides let it fail for a non-supporting browser.

Keith Grant and Matthias Ott mention using it for object-fit: contain;. Matthias has a demo where positioning trickery is used to make an image sort of fill a container, which is then made easier and better through that property when it's available.

Ryan Filler mentions using it for mix-blend-mode. His example sets more opacity on an element, but if mix-blend-mode is supported, it uses a bit less and that property which can have the effect of seeing through an element on its own.

.thing { opacity: 0.5; } @supports (mix-blend-mode: multiply) { .thing { mix-blend-mode: multiply; opacity: 0.75; } }

Rik Schennink mentioned the backdrop-filter property. He says, "when it's supported the opacity of the background color often needs some fine tuning."

Nour Saud mentioned it can be used to detect Edge through a specific vendor-prefixed property: @supports (-ms-ime-align:auto) { }.

Amber Weinberg mentioned using it for clip-path because adjusting the sizing or padding of an element will accommodate when clipping is unavailable.

Ralph Holzmann mentioned using it to test for that "notch" stuff (environment variables).

Stacy Kvernmo mentioned using it for the variety of properties needed for drop capping characters. Jen Simmons mentions this use case in her article as well. There is an initial-letter CSS property that's pretty fantastic for drop caps, but is used in conjunction with other properties that you may not want to apply at all if initial-letter isn't supported (or if there's a totally different fallback scenario).

Here's a bonus one from Nick Colley that's not @supports, but @media instead! The spirit is the same. It can prevent that "stuck" hover state on touch devices like this:

@media (hover: hover) { a:hover { background: yellow; } }

Logic in @supports

Basic:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) { }

Not:

@supports not (initial-letter: 4) { }

And:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) and (transform: scale(2)) { }

Or:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) or (-webkit-initial-letter: 4) { }

Combos:

@supports ((display: -webkit-flex) or (display: -moz-flex) or (display: flex)) and (-webkit-appearance: caret) { }

JavaScript Variant

JavaScript has an API for this. To test if it exists...

if (window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) { // Apparently old Opera had a weird implementation, so you could also do: // !!((window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) || window.supportsCSS || false) }

To use it, either pass the property to it in one param and the value in another:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("display", "grid");

...or give it all in one string mirroring the CSS syntax:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("(display: grid)");

Selector testing

At the time of this writing, only Firefox supports this sort of testing (behind an experimental flag), but there is a way to test the support of selectors with @supports. MDN's demo:

@supports selector(A > B) { }

You?

Of course, we'd love to see Pens of @supports use cases in the comments. So share 'em!

The post How @supports Works appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐CSS-Tricks

[thegloober]

Collagen, kombucha and kimchi – what this Korean beauty eats for great skin

Have you ever wondered what you should be eating to get beautiful skin? Instagram star and former model Sally Olivia Kim reveals what she eats to keep her skin glowing and how she boosts collagen in her diet

My obsession with skincare started when I got burned from a cooking accident.

The oil melted the skin off both of my arms instantly, and I had to turn to prescription ointment and silicone patches, only to find none of it really did much for me. Unimpressed by the options out there, I ended up taking to the internet to find alternative ways to heal my skin.

After just a couple weeks, I saw incredible changes not just on my burns, but my entire skin, head to toe, and also my hair

After some research, I discovered that ingesting collagen was extremely beneficial for skin (and hair, bones and joints). I was fascinated—especially because I always thought collagen was something that was topically applied or injected— and so I started drinking it everyday.

After just a couple weeks, I saw incredible changes not just on my burns, but my entire skin, head to toe, and also my hair.

Image via Instagram: @sallsters

Turns out, collagen is something that’s in our own bodies — actually the most abundant substance in our bodies second to water—and our bodies stop producing it as much when we are in our mid 20’s. I believe drinking extra collagen, however, offsets that decline, returning your skin and hair to what used to be.

I then tried to evangelize it to my aging parents and family, and this was where I saw the problem. No one wanted to take collagen as often as I did and had I not been burned, I probably wouldn’t have drank it so regularly either.

But knowing how beneficial it was, I HAD to have my parents take it.

So I began to flavor the collagen powder with various superfoods—matcha for my mother, coffee for my dad, and hot cacao for my brother— and this led me to find out so much about all of the amazing ‘skin-healing’ foods out there, that we all should try to incorporate more of in our everyday diet for healthy skin and hair.

Here are ten that I try to consume as often as I can throughout the week:

Collagen

For those of you who are unfamiliar with collagen, it is a natural protein that our body produces. It is a major structural component of the human body (different types of collagen make up our skin, bones, muscles, and joints), and we depend on collagen to keep our skin plump, hair strong, bones healthy, joints lubricated, and digestive system working smoothly.

By our mid-40s, our collagen levels may have fallen by as much as 30 percent

And though our body is able to produce ample amounts of collagen when we are young, unfortunately, sometime after the age of 25, our bodily production of collagen begins to decline at a rate of 1.5 percent per year (in addition to the decline in the quality of our produced collagen).

By our mid-40s, our collagen levels may have fallen by as much as 30 percent. Without collagen, our cells lose structure, increasingly becoming weaker, stretchier, and thinner—and essentially, this decline is the true cause of many of our skin woes, such as wrinkles, fine lines, dark circles, dry skin, and cellulite.

But don’t worry; you can make up for the collagen you lose by consuming collagen, the foundation of healthy skin— and daily consumption of collagen has been proven to dramatically improve your skin, hair, and much more.

Collagen contains 18 out of the 20 existing amino acids found in our body— and studies have shown that these 18 amino acids, when ingested, support all of the different various functions of our body in different ways: our in addition to our skin and hair, it benefits the brain, bones, teeth, nails, heart, digestion, muscles, weight, mood, virility, and even sleep.

In 2015, researchers from France, Belgium and Japan found that in their two placebo-controlled clinical trials of daily collagen supplementation for eight weeks, skin hydration improved significantly after eight weeks, while the dermal layer of skin increased significantly 157 after only four weeks. Both of these effects from the collagen supplement lasted more than 12 weeks.

Collagen is sourced from fish, chicken, pigs, and cows— but it’s important to note that it is not in the fillet of a salmon or a piece of chicken breast—as collagen is found in the animals’ skin, joints, bones, cartilage and muscle tissue.

Koreans predominantly ingest marine collagen (it’s common for a meal to include whole-roasted fish with its skin on) and lots of bone broth (most of our meals come with a bone-broth based soup) – and once or twice a week, we will have Korean barbecue (grilled pork belly).

Then there are other side dishes such as jellyfish salad and steamed octopus/squid. And more extreme collagen rich, specialty foods such as chicken feet and pork knuckles!

Americans typically do not generally eat these parts of animals— the closest we get to is bone broth, which is essentially just cooked collagen. And if you aren’t able to cook bone broth daily or lean on fish skin, there are supplements out there to fill that gap.

Suggested serving amount for collagen powder: 10 grams of collagen powder a day (marine collagen preferred, as it is smaller in particle size, therefore more easily absorbed by the body)

Serving suggestion for collagen powder: I like to add collagen powder to almost everything— teas, coffees, smoothies, and even soups.

Salmon

I like to have half a fillet of salmon at least once a day as it contains both omega-3 fatty acids and retinoids. Omega-3 acids increase the number of collagen and elastin fibers in aged skin, while retinoids are known to stimulate the production of new skin cells. And of course, we can’t forget collagen-rich salmon skin!

Kimichi, Kombucha, and other fermented foods

Fermented foods have probiotics are live cultures that help balance the good and bad bacteria in our gut. By supporting our liver, it allows for efficient excretion of radical toxins from our systems, probiotics help our skin become stronger, happier, and healthier.

Probiotics can help fight gut inflammation, help the body absorb certain types of nutrients, and keep the immune system in optimum shape. They may also help alleviate allergic and inflammatory skin disorders by increasing our immunity and optimizing digestion.

And how do these little probiotic soldiers help our skin? What probiotics do for our health and our skin, is almost immeasurable: our stomach, a.k.a. the second brain, is actually the ruler of our overall health. With probiotics, our stomach achieves that needed homeostasis much more easily.

I recommend you look to foods low in sodium and sugar for probiotics. Often, a lot of these fermented foods are prepared with things that aren’t quite so great for you, such as salt, and then packed with preservatives. I take my probiotics in powder form.

Matcha tea

Matcha is a great source of anti-aging antioxidants called catechins, which support your liver’s detoxification process, while the overload of caffeine from coffee can stress out your liver even more. Green tea can also prevent enzyme activity that breaks down collagen.

One of the most well-known catechins is called EGCG for short, and it’s especially great for skin. In one study, EGCG was proven to minimize keloid scars in size in addition to successfully preventing a bigger buildup of new blood vessels that would feed the keloid scar.

Because matcha is loose powder, it sometimes does not mix well in just cold water. If you don’t have an electric whisk, I suggest you mix the matcha powder into a reusable water canister with about 6 oz of cold water. Once you shake a few times, the matcha will dissolve perfectly! Then, mix the matcha elixir into a mug of warmed up almond milk. Aim for about two grams of matcha daily.

Turmeric

Turmeric is an ancient root packed with curcumin, a substance with powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Curcumin is known to boost our immune system’s defense mechanisms, enhance metabolism, increase our white blood cell count, aiding against bacteria and viruses, and support in our liver detoxification process.

By supporting our liver and ensuring that it doesn’t have to work too hard (if your liver is constantly struggling to eliminate toxins such as alcohol, sugars and other chemicals such as medicine out of your body, it will become worn out, and take longer to push these said toxins out).

This prevents your liver from doing its job as well, causing your body to store toxins for longer than it should. This build up can cause your skin to break out more. Curcumin is also reported to increase our body’s collagen synthesis, in addition to helping aid cell regeneration (which allows for faster wound healing in skin).

I love heating up a cup of almond milk / coconut milk and adding turmeric with a pinch of cinnamon and ginger powder, then black pepper on top. Aim for two grams daily of turmeric.

Oranges and other citrus fruits

Citrus fruits such as oranges, limes, lemons and grapefruits are rich in vitamin C and have the ability to help amino acids—specifically lysine and proline—convert to collagen (and we know by now that more collagen means plumper, more hydrated skin overall).

More importantly, without vitamin C, our body actually struggles to synthesize collagen– so not only is it helpful for our skin, it’s integral! Im One study, published in 2007 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that people who consumed about 5 milligrams of Vitamin C daily for three years reduced the appearance of their wrinkles by 11 percent.

Apple cider vinegar

The acetic acid in vinegar has been shown to assist with weight loss due to its ability to inhibit lipogenesis (the formation of fat cells), which is known to lower both waist size and BMI.

The acidity of the skin is essential for enhancing the antimicrobial barrier

Maintaining the skin pH below 5.5 is vital for suppressing the growth of microbes that cause pathological skin infections, including Staphylococcus aureus. The acidity of the skin is essential for enhancing the antimicrobial barrier. Many people use cider vinegar as a way to keep the pH low.

I like to take about 2-3 tsps of ACV a day in the morning (since you haven’t had any other foods yet, your body will absorb rate), diluted in filtered water, with a little bit of fruit juice (my favorite one is pineapple).

Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes are packed with beta-carotene, antioxidants that convert to vitamin A, once consumed– which are great for encouraging the growth of skin cells and elastin in our bodies. And because our skin will see things like hyperpigmentation (uneven skin tone) and dry skin without enough vitamin A in our bodies, it’s essential that we get enough Vitamin A in our diets.

Coconut oil

Fats and oils are actually great for you – especially for your skin – if they are the right kind. I love having a spoonful of coconut oil a day – Coconut oil is packed with antioxidants that help regulate your hormones and make you feel balanced overall throughout the day. With better sleep, less stress, and less junk-food in your system, your skin will feel more refreshed and rejuvenated – and look even better.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes contain lycopene, a natural carotenoid that fights cellular damage and skin inflammation – it helps our body recover from UV rays.

Almonds

Almonds contain magnesium, a mineral that our bodies rely on to produce hyaluronic acid, an integral component of our skin. Hyaluronic acid sounds foreign, but it’s actually a naturally-occurring acid found in our body that acts as a lubrication agent for our hair and skin.

Hyaluronic acid boasts of similar properties as collagen, and plays a critical role in the health of our skin (especially in keeping its moisture levels high, with its impressive ability to hold up to 1000 times its weight in moisture).

Filtered water

Lastly, for your skin to look dewy and glowing, it needs to be hydrated at a cellular level. Usually, dry skin is caused by dehydration of the body or malnourishment of certain fats. So, remembering to drink enough throughout the day is really important.

Depending on the season and climate, you should aim to drink at least 6 cups of filtered water daily. However, some mistake all water to be created equal— it’s not. There are contaminants, microorganisms and unknown radicals in tap water that can harm your skin (both topically and internally).

remember that not consuming certain foods is just as important

Of course, there are so many other superfoods out there that we should consuming more of everyday. However, it’s not the easiest to always be balancing various food groups when you have such a routine– so turn to meal prepping and supplements to fill that gap.

And of course, remember that not consuming certain foods is just as important– so stay far away from sugars and foods that your body cannot digest or process well.

Collagen’s benefit on skin

In another study, a hydrolyzed collagen supplemental drink also containing hyaluronic acid and essential vitamins and minerals given to postmenopausal women had anti-aging properties. The women showed significant and positive effects on skin wrinkling, elasticity, and hydration.

Collagen supplements may also help improve the appearance of cellulite

Collagen supplements may also help improve the appearance of cellulite. In a German and Brazilian study in 2015, doctors gave 105 women who had moderate amounts of cellulite an oral supplement of 2.5 bioactive collagen peptides over the course of six months.

At the end of that period, the women’s dermal skin layer had greater density, and they had a significant reduction in cellulite and in waviness in their thighs. The effects were more pronounced in women who were not overweight.

Collagen’s benefit on hair

Because it contains the amino acid methionine, collagen may improve the appearance of your hair and nails and, possibly, even decrease hair loss.

In one study of 30 people with hair loss, in which one group received a preparation of amino acids together with a Vitamin B complex, and the other group received a placebo, the portion of hair in the growth phase was 10 percent higher in the methionine group than in the placebo group after half a year.

Sally Olivia Kim is CEO of Crushed Tonic and the author of new book The Collagen Glow – A Guide to Ingestible Skincare.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Sally moved to Orange County, California, when she was ten years old.

In her past life, Sally was a model, an investment banker, a venture capitalist, and a digital strategist. Sally went to NYU and majored in English Literature, and loves to write screenplays and short stories.

Follow Sally on Instagram @sallsters

Related Heallthista content:

From dry eyes to itchy skin – 5 signs you need omega 7

11 best face primers for whatever your skin needs

Could a collagen drink REALLY make you look younger?

9 best brightening products to make your face glow

Source: https://bloghyped.com/collagen-kombucha-and-kimchi-what-this-korean-beauty-eats-for-great-skin/

[angrybelieverconnoisseur-blog]

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"state farm snowmobile insurance quote

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

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RELATED QUESTIONS: 

""Why can car insurance base on statistics, but other things can't.?""

Is it women who gossip more at work or men? Is it women who bring their personal life to work more or is it men? Is it women who will have to take a huge break at work because pregnancy or men? Why are women paid lower? Is it men that get in more wrecks then women? Is it men that have the need for speed always in their head while driving? Is it men that buy flashier cars? Why do men pay more for car insurance? So basically we have one type of company that can be sexist on statistics, but what about statistics everywhere else? Also, does the rule not look at soccer mom statistics? I've seen way more women talking on their phone then men. Six parking lot wrecks at my work this year all caused by women in my office (none by men). I drive a 5 speed so talking on the phone isn't something I even like to try. The reason for my complaint is my sister is 17. She has one dui and two speeding tickets. I am 21 I have a clean slate other than a warning for my headlight being out and nothing else. My insurance is $1320 a year her insurance is $720. We drive the same car and have had the same courses. It makes me feel like it makes sense I should be paid more because I pay more because something I can't control.""

Young driver car insurance?

I am a nineteen year old male struggling to find cheap car insurance. any ideas.?

How does a car qualify to be eligble for classic car insurance in the UK?

Are there specific companies that deal in this? Is it generally cheaper due to restrictions on the use of the car?

Motorcycle insurance for new rider?

hi, im 19 and have 4 years clean car driving experience. i got an m1 yesterday and want to find the cheapest insurance on a suzuki sv650. i called around to a few places like statefarm but either im too young for their coverage, dont have enough years driving experience, or the rates are somewhere around 5 grand a year...which is not an option as im a college student only working 1 day a week, that and i wont be using the bike that often.. help me out guys!""

Do red cars have higher insurance rates than other colored cars.?

?

Who has the cheapest car insurance?

Who has the cheapest car insurance?

Anybody know health insurance provider which is inexpensive and trustable?

gimme the name and website address?

Why do insurance companies charge first and last?

I had a nice Allstate agent call me and discuss my insurance with me, give me a lower rate and then come pay time, tell me that they require first and last. When I asked her why the last, she could not provide a good answer. I know not all insurance companies do this, but what is the point? When asked when I would get the last back, she said when I cancel my policy some day!! What if I don't want to cancel..ever? This does not make sense to me at all. Why keep my money there for nothing? When one does cancel the policy, do they get the money back with interest on that? Once confronted with these questions, the agent was not so nice any more. Can someone please answer the above?""

How much would car insurance cost for a 16 year old?

I'm 15, and I am thinking about paying for my own car insurance next year to help my parents out. I was wondering how much it would cost per month given the facts that I am a guy, and I was thinking about buying a used 2005 or 2007 Mustang for my first car. How much would is cost per month for my circumstances?""

How do I get individual health insurance quotes for North Carolina?

I am currently living in New York State and am considering moving to North Carolina. How do I get individual health insurance quotes while still living in NYS? All the websites ask you to provide a North Carolina address which I do not have yet. Thank you.

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I have a Swift car which is one year old. I have to renew its insurance. What can be the likely estimate of insurance amount

What would an insurance company pay for a totalled 2006 Toyato Camery?

What would an insurance company pay for a totalled 2006 Toyato Camery?

Do most parents pay for their children's car insurance?

Ok, don't rant at me, I'm asking this question innocently. Basically, I want to know if it's common for parents to pay for their children's car insurance (I'm thinking of those 17, 18, 19, etc. who just passed their test and haven't moved out), or if the child is usually made to pay it themselves? I don't know if part time jobs will cover the cost or what (especially as I imagine they will usually pay for their own petrol), but 3000 a year does seem quite a bit for a teenager to be able to afford. And seems like more and more youngsters are getting cars... I don't think I would expect my parents to pay for mine when I pass my test, but then again I don't know how I'd be able to afford it myself either... So I'm looking for some insight on the topic.""

What's the best way to get a lower rate when it's time to renew my auto insurance?

my insurance is due next month, but I think I deserve a lower rate, and shouldn't just renew""

How much is car insurance?

for 17-25 yr olds ... approx..

What do I need to apply for a motorcycle license in California?

I am wondering if it is worth getting a 2 wheeler license given the high price of gas. How much does the insurance typically cost for a new driver? I need to commute 8 miles each way to work and back.

Would a pontiac grand prix have high insurance?

the car is a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix SE 4 Door Sedan. I am 24. Would a car like this generally have higher insurance rates than average?

Short term car insurance for foreign visitors?

Me and a few guys (UK citizens) are planning on coming to the US and driving East to West over a few months. We are thinking of buying a car and then selling it before we leave. Is it possible to get short term car insurance for this amount of time? Keeping in mind that we are not from US also? thanks

""I live in California. and need cheaper auto insurance, and have 2 dmv points. Any ideas?""

I live in California. and need cheaper auto insurance, and have 2 dmv points. Any ideas?""

Insurance on a 1987 Z28 Camaro ?

How much would insurance on a 1987 Chevy Z28 Camaro for a 16 year old ? just need an estimate, thanks""

Is health insurance haram?

Hey, We're supposed to write an essay on any topic of our choice and show it relates to well being and opportunity in Canada while addressing inequalities (that part is optional). I'm thinking of writing on Private Health Insurance in Canada. But first i wanna know if health insurance is haram. Also what can I focus on on in terms of health insurance. Should I focus on their good side/bad side, etc. Any suggestions?""

""Someone else got a speeding ticket in my car, does my insurance rates go up?""

My fianc was driving my car when we were coming home from dinner, he was doing about 17 over I believe and got a ticket, however he's a permit driver.. The car is mine and is insured and registered in my name, I gave my license and registration to the cop when he took my fianc permit, the ticket only had his info on it, my plate number and the date my registration expires. No other information of mine is on there. He didn't ask to see my insurance card. So question is, are my rates going to go up because my fianc was driving and caught speeding?""

What do I do if I've been denied life insurance?

I'm young(18) I don't smoke or drink, and I don't have cancer, or tumors or anything. Well except epilepsy. I also have a physical disability. I can understand epilepsy being a concern, but I fail to see how anyone can be denied with my physical disability. As it does not in any way shorten your life span. Is this fair? I guess I also have partial blindness. But, it's just a visual cut, not my entire eye or anything. Is there anything I can do? I do have a wife, and plan on having kids soon. I don't want to hear about me being young unless this is related to the reason, or there is a better option. Also, there is NO medical conditions that would be caused by my disability in the future. I had surgery long ago to prevent further problems.""

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I'm not there yet, but I plan to be ready in March of 08 to buy my first house. I've taken 15 hours of credit classes, I have $5k saved up, and I'm trying to get down payment assistance. Does anyone have any additional advice like unexpected costs (besides closing costs) and surprises that maybe happened to you when you bought your first house? I know to stay in my budget and not buy something I really can't afford. But for instance, do I find a lender first and then a house, or is it vice versa? And after I find a house and a lender, how long does it take to close? Is it stressful getting all your paperwork together?""

Will my auto insurance cover liability if my friend is driving a car I rent?

During a vacation, my friend will drive the rental car I pay for. If we have an accident, will my liability/medical coverage pay off if she's driving? The friend has no car & no insurance and doesn't live in my house.""

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

Renault Clio insurance 17 year old male?

I am 17 Years old and wanting to insure a renault clio expression (2001) have you got one? where can i find the cheapest quote? which companies?

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I need dental insurance for my 5 year old son and maybe myself also. Doe's anyone know the best plan to go with? Thanks alot

Is it legal for auto insurance companies to adjust rates based on where you live?

I live in California, and I thought it was now illegal to charge more or less based on where you live. Does anyone know the laws regarding this?""

Best way to save money on car insurance?

I'm 16 now, and I'm planning on learning to drive a car. I heard that if you have a driver license at 16 years old but you DON'T buy a car, which means you don't buy a car or drive a car or anything like that for 3 or 4 years, your car insurance will be deducted. So I have a couple of questions: 1. Is the statement above correct for California? 2. If #1 is wrong, then if I buy a car but don't drive it, will the money still be deducted after 3 or 4 years? 2. Is there any other ways to lower money spending on car insurance? 3. I also heard that you can combine your driver license with one of family members, but the money will be raised up a little bit. Is this true? And how can I combine my license to other family member?""

COBRA Health Insurance Florida?

Where can I find a cheaper health insurance plan to replace my COBRA health insurance offered by my former employer?

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I have served in the US Army for 17 years, I have deployed 5 times in support of many operations to include twice to Iraq and preparing for a 3rd. I took a physical last year for life insurance when I retire and it was found that I have a high level of protein in my urine. I have been denied time after time because of this preexisting condition. Who can I go through so I can get some affordable life insurance. It is sad how this country takes care of it's veterans. I have done everything that was asked of me as a Soldier, now that my time is almost up, my country turns it's back on me. What a shame.""

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Last year I paid my car insurance in one hit, online. This year, renewal price was higher because I got 50 cash back last year. I saved 120 by searching around and went ahead with the new deal. Unbeknown to me the first company renewed my insurance without my knowledge because they had my credit card details from the year before. I ended up being insured with 2 companies for 3 days and I went 109 over my limit on my credit card. Not only is it illegal to be insured by 2 companies at the same time, they did it without my knowledge! Are they allowed to do this? I have, I hope, resolved it but if any charges are incurred either for cancelling my previous insurance or going over my credit limit are these retrievable?""

How much would it cost for insurance for a 2004 Yamaha Blaster?

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GuRLS CAR INSURANCE??

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Car Insurance?

Ok, first does anyone know which states do not require car insurance? Second question is do you have to have full coverage on a financed car? No silliness here real answers.""

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I have Allstate Insurance in California. I got a speeding ticket in Nevada. And it was either hit a semi or rear end a car on the freeway.

What is pip in insurance?

What is pip in insurance?

""Condo Insurance in Tampa, Florida Needed ASAP?""

Now that State Farm Insurance will no longer be providing home or condo insurance, does anyone know another company that has reasonable insurance? I am not necessarily looking for the cheapest but want a reliable one that will PAY if I actually have a claim!""

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I'm interested to see what people pay for their cars and car insurance compared to me. I'm a single 28 year old female living in a city. (RI) I pay $282 for a new Jetta lease and insurance is $157 per month. Just seeing if this is the average.... I'm also moving to NY suburbs and am considering changing my insurance, anyone know if I can do this if I own a home in RI still? RI has month to month sales tax, but has higher insurace premiums and NY wants sales tax up front, but NY suburbs insurance costs half as much as what I pay now. I wonder if its worth it to switch states???""

What are some affordable health insurance companies for young adults?

Im looking for some health insurance. anyone know of some good affordable companies?

Which companies do cheap quad bike insurance for newly passed car drivers?

Bashan 200c 2007 model, any idea how much insurance will be? Im 19 and have car license only.""

""What is the cheapest insurance for a teenager in alex,la for a motorcycle?""

What is the cheapest insurance for a teenager in alex,la for a motorcycle?""

Where can I find cheap car insurance for a 17 year old?

I have a provisional driving licence and am looking for car insurance!! any reccommendations? (please quote prices) What is the 'normal'/average price range?

""I am 17 years old,i am thinking about buying a car,what would be the insurance rate for a 2006 ford fusion?

what would be the insurance rate for a 2006 ford fusion SE/ year?

How many of you are paying around $200 for car insurance..?

if so what kind of car do you have..? i am trying to get a car pay it in cash and just pay for the car insurance..

What would my car insurance be?

my girlfriend needs to know how much her car insurance would be in canada ON if she didnt take drivers ed, was using her parents car and was under their insurance plan""

Auto insurance for a job?

I got offered a full time job delivering for dominos. I need to know what to do about my insurace. My boss told me to raise my minimums and thats it but my mom has been yelling at me about special insurance i HAVE to get blah blah. So what do i really have to do? My insurance now on my suv is 120 a month but the quote from progressive is 5700 a year for commercial do i really have to triple my insurance for this...

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state farm snowmobile insurance quote

Term Life Insurances-Unknown policy?

Could anyone, e.g my ex-wife, open an insurance policy for me and make herself the beneficiary without me knowing. If that can be done how can I confirm that there is such a policy?""

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Where do insurance companies get all the money?

How does an insurance company afford to pay out all that money on insurance claims?

What company offers best auto insurance rates for not so good driving records?

What company offers best auto insurance rates for not so good driving records?

On average how much would it cost for an independent living 15 year old girl to get good health insurance.?

On average how much would it cost for an independent living 15 year old girl to get good health insurance.?

Where can I find info on LOW COST Medical Insurance In Central NY? (Student Artist Musician Business Owner)?

My wife and I are moving soon from PHX, AZ to the greater Syracuse area. I am moving my multimedia business / record label (websites, print design, videography, DVD production and studio recording) and I need information on which companies can provide my family reasonable cost heath insurance. Right now my wife works fulltime so we use her benefits, but we will be starting a family and would like to keep her at home for a few years. In PHX, health insurance for non-group individuals runs about $300 a month - from what I can see in CNY it can cost closer to $1000! Can some one help me with this? Am I looking at the wrong companies or is it just that mush more expensive? Are any loop holes? In some states Students, Artist, Musicians & Small Business Owners can get highly discounted rates - is this true in CNY? Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!""

""How can i get umbrella liability insurance,without home insurance?

I only have fire insurance.please help.urgent.AAG

How much is motorcycle insurance for a 19 year old male?

i bought a motorcycle it is a 2006 cf moto v3 now how much is the insurance going to be a month? im new to riding

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The insurance on my 09 Mitsubishi Lancer went up over $100 since last year. I did not make any claims, was in any accidedents or anything like that. I did not move. I did not have anything done to the car which could cause the insurance to increase. So why would my insurance increase? I am over 40 yrs old and ever since I've been driving and with all the cars I've owned, most of them new, I never had an insurance increase on the same vehicle. It always decreased from year to year on the same vehicle. Never went up. I want to get some opinions here first and maybe get a legitimate explanation before I call my insurance agent and ask why they increase my rate or look to find a different insurer.""

How much does it cost to add a person on ur insurance?

i was wondering how much it would cost to add someone with their permit on to ur car insurance, this dont have to be an exact number just and average number. If any of you know plz let me know cause i am trying to figure this out, thanks for your help.""

Adding fiancee to insurance?

How far before the wedding should I start the paperwork to put my fiancee on my insurance?

Comparing and contrasting life insurance?

was looking for some experianced and educated perspectives on taking the best approach considering life insurance for the first time at age 28 with 3 kids?

Why does the engine size of a car make so much difference in car insurance quotes?

How is it that cars with bigger engines are much more expensive to insure? Surely a 1.0 litre car and a 2.5 V6 car both travelling at 70MPH for example will cause the same amount of damage (albeit the car that weighs more may have more momentum). I can't seem to work out the other side of this arguement. Is there anyone who could explain the difference please? Thank You! 10 points for best answer.

Will women protest being forced to pay LESS for life and auto insurance than men?

No? I didn't think so.

How Much Will My Car Insurance be?

I am a 16 year old boy, the type of Car Im look at is probably a 1999 Toyota Four Runner for about $3000-$4000. I got my liscence about a week ago and now I just need to get to a 3.0 GPA so that my insurance will go down. Can anyone tell me and estimate of how much money I'm looking at paying monthly for insurance with and without the 3.0 GPA? Thank You""

Cheapest car insurance????

looking for a cheap car insurance guys, plz help""

Health insurance for 1099?

I am forming a corporation that will bring on several 1099 contractors as consultants, almost like a consortium of consultants. I'd like to offer them group health insurance. is this possible given that they are all 1099 contractors?""

""Brak wants to know, Should married women have higher auto insurance rates than men ?

Sure seems like women have a discount on car insurance and married people have it cheaper. But it's the housewives who I see driving gas guzzlers around with soccer stickers on the back. Talking on their mobile phone while driving with coffee in their other hand. They are worse drivers than me. I'm a 24 yr old bachelor & a safe driver.

Is a Honda Civic expensive to insure?

I'm looking into buying myself my first car. Hoping for a newer used. I've been asking some of my friends about what car I should get, and many have said the Honda Civic. However none of them own this car themselves (many said if they could go back & change this they would.) But what I'm wondering is it expensive to get insurance for?? I've heard yes & no, so I'm just confused!! Thank you!""

Questions about motorcycle insurance?

I am planning on buying a 150cc scooter in the Spring. In Michigan, my home state, these are considered motorcycles. Also, in Michigan, they must be insured. My questions are: (1) If I am only riding my scooter for three months out of the year, will I still have to pay for insurance during the fall and winter? (2) What is the cheapest motorcycle insurance out there, and typically, how much would I be paying per month? I am a new cycle rider, but have driven a car for 5 years without an accident.""

Does anyone know approximately how much liability insurance costs for an old school VW Van?

I'm looking into buying a 1979 VW Van/Bus, I was just wondering what kind of insurance I'm looking at.""

What is the New York disability insurance rate and NYS Unemployment rate?

What is the New York disability insurance rate and NYS Unemployment rate?

What is the cheapest car to insure for a 17 year old girl?

i am looking at buying a car when i pass my test, was just wondering what would be the cheapest way to insure a car and what cars are cheap for insurance?""

Where can I find out insurance rates for US postal services with letters to the UK?

Each envelope would contain an item worth around the $30 mark, but as they would be going international I want them to be insured. I can find UPS rates, but not USPS rates for insurance.""

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

How much could I save by switching to GEICO Car Insurance?

How much could I save by switching to GEICO Car Insurance?

Who has the cheapest auto insurance policies in Pennsylvania?

I'm purchasing a '97 GTI VR6. I don't have insurance, because I currently own no other vehicles. What would everyone recommend as far as a decent and affordable auto insurance policy? I'm 19 years old. No accidents and no tickets of any sort. Thanks in advance!""

Car Insurance and And Accident?

I was hit from behind on Tuesday morning, called my insurance right after, the next day got my police report (like I was told) and gave me insurance the information, I also called the persons who hit me insurance and gave them the information, it turns out that on Wednesday this woman hadn't even filed a claim yet, nor picked up the police report (by law in NY state any accident that has damage reaching over $1,000 has to be sent to Albany by the people) I sent mine Tuesday morning. I was told within 24 hours a rep would call and send someone out to see my car, I figured that being it was late Wednesday already by Thursday or Friday I'd hear something. Turns out nothing yet, and when calling again this woman STILL hasn't filed a claim or picked up her police report. I plan on calling my insurance again but what is going on? How long must I wait for this, my car is damaged badly and needs to be fixed and I feel this woman should pay for this, and all she has caused me? What should be my next move here?""

Can't we make a compromise between all out socialized healthcare and private health insurance?

Can't we do something like give insurance companies tax breaks for covering x amount of people who earn low wages at a sharply reduced price? Or have a smaller government program only for those who cannot afford insurance?

Cheap health insurance?

anyone know of any cheaper health insurance (maybe like $ 50/mo) i am a single student. i know my school provides insurance in case of emergency. but i am looking for something to help cover my prescriptions & doc visits.

How much is insurance for a single male under 25 on a DODGE CHARGER?

??

Best place for car insurance for a 17 year old...?

I have a 1.1 litre Citroen C2, where's the best place to find cheap car insurance. Anything that isn't I-kube or anything like that... They;'re cheaper but only marginally...""

Car insurance changes depending where you live?

My sister has had a car for awhile now that was given to her by a family member, and she had her insurance and all set up and she was fine. We moved pretty much across the street but when you cross this street you live in a different town, the borders are in the middle of the road. So she called to change her address and they charged her 30 some odd dollars cause apparently the costs of living in this down is higher on your car insurance, so can anyone please explain to me why this is? Why would moving from one town to another, [across a road] take any effect on car insurance?""

What insurance companies are in massachusetts?

I believe that insurance in mass is horrible, but I don't know if there are even other insurance companies here where can I find out?""

How much would insurance be for me?

I'm 16 and I've had my license for about seven months now. We've had financial problems so we've held off getting insurance. But, now we have a situation where I would need to drive the spare car to and from school. (I would only be driving a total of 16 times, 32 if you count round trips) It's a Hyundai 2010 Elantra, but I may also be driving the 2012 Mercedes C250. Would it be more affordable if I were to go under my mom's insurance? Possibly my father's? My parents are divorced. My main guardian is my mother, but my father only has had one car incident while my mom has had several. All, however, have been minor. And, separate question, but is it possible to only get insurance for a month? If so, I think I would be able to pay for it myself, but if not, I would need a fairly cheap insurance policy.""

Whats happens if I don't get car insurance?

I have a speeding ticket on my license, I'm about to go to court for another speeding ticket (19 over) and a reckless driving ticket (for burning tires). I am 18, with a Nissan 300zx (2 seater sports car) My insurance is currently $120 a month for liability (I think) , and will probably go WAY up I was thinking, what if I don't renew my insurance? Will I just get a $200 ticket when I get pulled over for it? $200 ticket >>> $300 a month for insurance More knowledge the better, cuz the 2 tickets I just got are gonna cost me out the ***, and insurance is ridiculous anyways, I have 0 wrecks, I'm considered high risk with tickets even though its just speeding and burning tires. Speeding on old highways with nobody on them, the worst thing I have to worry about is deer. Burning tires in secluded areas on roads nobody drives on really.""

Car insurance in new york?

hey guys, I'd like to know what would be the ballpark for insurance. I'm 24 years old and have had my driver's license since 2003 and never have had parking violations, points taken off my license or any type of moving tickets. I'm looking to buy a 96-00 civic and would like to know around how much I would be quoted""

Provisional insurance to full licence insurance?

I'm 18 years old and I am 2 (and abit) months away from taking my driving test. If I take out provisional car insurance can I change my insurance to full once I have passed my test? The reason why I want provisional insurance is because I heard it was cheaper, then once I pass my test I would only have to pay 10 months of full licence insurance, correct? But anyway how much it cost me to increase my premium from provisional to full licence insurance?""

Insurance premium increase for life insurance.?

Can my insurance company increase premiums (from $175.29 a quarter to $331.86 per quarter)when ever they wish? I retained my group life insurance for myself ($70,000)and for my husband ($50,000)after leaving my employment 15 years ago. Connecticut General(CIGNA Group) recently increased the premiums to the amount specified and said if we did not like it we could cancel. I've paid so much money into these policies and I do not wish to cancel now. There's no cash value on either one. We are in our fifties and preparing to retire and will not be able to afford premiums this high. What can we do, if anything? Any light you can shed on this issue is greatly appreciated. Thanking you in advance for your time and assistance.""

How much is car insurance for an rx8 in nyc?

I work for EMS n im gonna pay around 16 cash for a 05 rx8 with 30 k miles on it. how much would car insurance b a month ?

Car Insurance questions for quotes?

on insurance websites where they do lots of quotes from different insurers, the question they ask bout your licence is what type is it, ie full or provisional or full or automatic etc and how long have you had your licence. On the norwich union website, it specifies that it wants you to say how long you have held a licence from the time you got your provisional licence. The others dont say whether this is what they are asking or not. Ive had a provisional licence for 18 years, but when I pass my test (hopefully this month) I will then have had a full licences for less than a year. What answer should I give for the question, how long have you held a licence? Its not clear on the websites....""

Im a new biker what is teh best bike for insurance?

ive just passed my cbt i can drive up to 125 cc what is the best bike (under 2000 pounds) for insurance and what company are best most of my insurance quotes seem to be in the 1000's range

Car insurance or is it?

My truck was broke into a couple of hours ago and my pistol was stolen. i called the insurance (farmers) and they said the gun isn't covered by car insurance, it's only covered by homeowners insurance, and no my truck was not at my house. does this sound right to anybody? i don't understand what full coverage means if they don't fully cover everything.""

Cheap car insurance..?

I need to know a cheap place around here that is under $80 for three people. I tried looking it up, but where I am staying at right now the Internet sucks on my phone. I'm 20, my parents are over 50. And we live in Cleveland, Tx So, I guess what I'm asking is if someone can look up a cheap place for me.""

How much a month for loan and insurance for a 350z?

Ok so I'm gonna be 20 in a couple months and I'm tired of driving my crappy integra. I've been saving up and I'm set on getting a 350z. My price range is about 12,000 tops. If I put a down payment of about 5 or 6 grand how much would I pay per month for the loan. And how much would I pay a month for the loan along with the insurance. I'm on my parents plan. I don't know much about interest rates. Can you give me estimates on different lengths of loans and interest rates Thanks ily""

If i change my car insurance will my lien holder be notified?

I want to change to a different insurance company and have a an auto loan through my bank so my question is if i change will my bank be notified? I know it is wrong but for a few months i only had liability and if they are notified they can take my car if they see i didnt have full coverage right? I want cheaper insurance but dont want to get in trouble!

UK CAR INSURANCE QUESTON?

I've recently cancelled my car insurance and started a van insurance and used my no claims bonus from my car for the van, I've now decided that im best to keep the car and im wanting to insure it again, I got quotes without my no claims bonus and its stupid prices even though I said that I have the no claims on the van If I used the no claims on the car it brings it right down to a more sensible price Can I use my no claims bonus on two cars? If not can I tell my van insures that I want my insurance with 0 no claims and for them to amend my policy- ive only just took out the policy and am still in the process of sending off the no claims proof from the car Regards im advance""

Does anyone understand how rental cars work? Insurance/fuel fees... Think I got taken to school on this.?

I just had to bring my car to the shop for a repair. They ended up needing to keep it. Now a rental was covered under the warranty. So at least the rental was covered. But the guy had me signing off on insurance and what not. I guess the insurance on my car would cover the rental if I had an accident. But they would take from my cars deductible. So I basically signed off on a Collision Damage Waiver and also personal accident insurance. I did decline supplemental liability insurance though. Should the warranty be covering these fees or was this an extra that I got talked into? Because if the warranty covers the rental they aren't making anything. My understanding is it could be better because I am covered under their insurance if I have an accident and it wouldn't come off my own cars deductible? Kind of new to this and probably wouldn't have been worth trying to argue it after the fact that I signed off on stuff.So if I use this car for like 3 days I'm in it for like $60 in insurance. Also does anyone know how this buying the tank of gas works? I understood it as if I use so much then I pay there price of $5.60 a gallon. But I got told it was best to just buy the whole tank at $3.30 per gallon(best option seeing as gas is so much these days) And then to return it as close to empty as possible to get my moneys worth. If anyone can help me out so I know for next time if I can decline stuff or did I take the right steps and take there insurance so mine wouldn't be charged? After the fact I see I could have declined these.

Can I drive my second car without insurance?

Hi, I bought a second car, the insurance on my first car allows me to drive any other vehicle with the owner's permission. Is it illegal to not insure my second car?""

Is insurance for a classic car cheap or expensive?PLEASE ANSWER!!!!!!?

i have a 1968 ford Thunderbird i want to insure but i would use it as my daily driver. would insurance still be cheap?even though i would drive it everyday.

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

state farm snowmobile insurance quote

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lincoln-burial-insurance-jose-flores/"

[trendingnewsb]

Issa Rae: ‘So much of the media presents blackness as fierce and flawless. Im not’

The creator of Insecure talks the dating totem pole, films obsession with slavery and the gender-race pay gap as season two begins

I dont want the stench of the current administration on this show, says Issa Rae. I dont want people to look back and be like: Oh, this was a Trump show. I want them to look back and say Insecure was an Obama show. Because it is: Obama enabled this show. The sharp, pithy, Los Angeles-set comedy, dubbed by US fashion and beauty site the Cut as the black, millennial Sex and The City, which Rae co-created, writes and stars in, first aired on HBO last autumn, exactly a month before the US election. Culturally, Obama made blackness so present, and so appreciated; people felt seen and heard; it influenced the arts, and it absolutely influenced how I see blackness, how I appreciate it, says the 32-year-old Rae. When a black president is a norm, it enables us to be, too.

Being a norm is a matter of some import to the actor and writer, who in spite of her personal allegiances had no desire to make an overtly political show. She never wanted Insecure to be, as she says with a generous eye-roll, a story about the struggle or the dramatic burdens of being black. At the heart of the series is the relationship between her on-screen iteration also named Issa, who works for an educational nonprofit called We Got Yall and raps soliloquies to herself in the mirror and her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), a high-flying corporate lawyer. Together, they navigate the professional and personal challenges of late-20s urban life.

I just wanted to see my friends and I reflected on television, in the same way that white people are allowed, and which nobody questions, continues Rae. Nobody watches Divorce [a HBO stablemate, starring Sarah Jessica Parker] and asks: What is the political element, what is the racial element driving this?

Watch the trailer for season two of Insecure.

But so rare is it to see what its creator describes as a show about regular black people being basic in contemporary entertainment Insecure has nonetheless been hailed as revolutionary. It wasnt always so. Growing up, Rae was an avid fan of the predominantly black US sitcoms Moesha, Girlfriends and A Different World. Then they disappeared, she says of the film and television landscape. Somewhere along the way, being white became seen as relatable, and you started to see people of colour only reflected as stereotypes or specific archetypes. So much of the media now presents blackness as being cool, or able to dance, or fierce and flawless, or just out of control; Im not any of those things.

It is a hot and swampy summer afternoon in Manhattan, and Rae is in town doing the requisite rounds of late-night talkshow appearances ahead of Insecures season two premiere. On arrival, she seems a little lethargic entirely understandable, given her promotional schedule. But once seated in a buzzy restaurant, specifically chosen because its the sort of spot that the on-screen Issa and her girlfriends would patronise, Rae immediately perks up, emanating charismatic good humour.

Born in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, Rae real name Jo-Issa Rae Diop is the third of five children, her father a Senegalese doctor, her mother a teacher from Louisiana. The rapid rise in gang violence in the city prompted Raes parents to move the family to Senegals capital, Dakar, when Rae was five years old. Her father tried to open a hospital there but things didnt work out and, three years later, they came back to the US, but to Potomac, Maryland, on the east coast, where Rae attended a predominantly white private school. When the family moved once again, this time back to LA, Rae entered a largely black and Latino school. Everybody thought I was lame and hated me, she says, matter-of-factly. It was a huge culture shock.

Part of the on-screen Issas insecurity of feeling not black enough for black people and not white enough for white people is, Rae says, something that I have been called out for by kids in my life. Ive experienced a real sense of feeling out of place. But with admirable chutzpah, she found a creative solution: I wrote a play and cast all of my bullies, and they loved it. They thought I was cool after that. She pauses, and gives a wry smile. Well, cool is a strong word. But I wasnt on their shit-list any more.

Big society … Raes character with co-worker Frieda (Lisa Joyce). Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While studying at Stanford University, Rae began to notice that many of the television shows she loved, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, were all-white comedies. Of course, sense of humour is relative, is subjective, but there is an assumption that black people wont find certain things about white comedies funny, she says. I got really frustrated and just wanted to start making my own stories. She conceived and directed Dorm Diaries, a mock reality show with an all-black cast, in the style of MTVs The Real World. When she posted it to Facebook, it quickly circulated, and Rae realised that she had a talent for portraying everyday black life; she has called it my epiphany moment. A few years later, she created what would be her breakthrough web series and the forerunner to Insecure, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

A web show is one thing, of course, a mainstream television show on a high-profile cable network quite another. I ask her about the sociologist and civil rights activist WEB Duboiss concept of double consciousness, which she has referenced in the past, defined as the psychological challenge of always looking at ones self through the eyes of a white society. Does she feel that even more sharply now than before?

Absolutely. I didnt create this show for white people, I didnt create it for men; I created it, really, for my friends and family, and for their specific sense of humour, she nods. But now that we know we have an audience including HBO executives the double consciousness comes into play, because youre always wondering: How do they see what I am writing? Are they laughing at this specific joke for this particular reason? When season one aired, I had Asian women coming up to me on the street, saying: Oh my gosh, this reminds me of me and my best friend, she recalls. And thats wonderful thats what you want for a show but you are always wondering: What elements do they relate to the most?

I suggest that in future she stops fans and asks for further, more detailed feedback. She throws her head back and laughs. Yes. Excuse me, but why do you like the show? Tell me right now, please.

Boyfriend material … Jay Ellis as Lawrence in Insecure. Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While Insecure may be only inadvertently political, this second season is noticeably more charged with social commentary, and examples of everyday discrimination. Through Molly, the show explores the gender pay gap, with an added issue to unpick: is she being paid less because of her gender, or her ethnicity, or both? These are questions that we constantly have to ask ourselves, as minorities, or double minorities, or triple minorities, nods Rae. In terms of the intersectionality of it all, you are constantly asking yourself: Which part of me is being discriminated against? Which part of me is being targeted? If not all parts of me.

The often-dispiriting experience of modern dating features prominently, too. At the start of this series, Issa has recently broken up from her long-term boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), and thrown herself into the choppy waters of Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. Dating in todays digitally enabled world is rough enough but there is, Rae believes, an added dimension for her characters. Black women are at the bottom of the desire chain, of the dating totem pole; were not the trophies, she says.

In rap culture, especially, theres always an idea that once you achieve an amount of success, your trophy is the white girl on your arm. However, she asserts, thats not limited to hip-hop. Its not scientifically proven, but theres evidence, in dating apps for example, that were the last to be chosen, the least desirable. The theory is also explored in Aziz Ansaris Netflix show Master of None, which includes a scene in which one of his dates, a black woman, tells him: Compared to my white friends, I get way less activity [on app dating sites]. I also find that I rarely match with guys outside of my race.

Lawrence, meanwhile, is also experiencing discrimination, albeit in a different form. In one scene spoiler alert! he is picked up by two non-black girls at a grocery store, who lure him to their apartment, where they proceed to seduce him. Their fetishisation of his blackness has echoes of Get Out, Jordan Peeles racism-thriller which triumphed at the box office earlier this year.

That was based on a real-life situation that one of our writers shared, says Rae of the uncomfortable tryst. It didnt end well, which had nothing to do with his blackness, but we thought: How can we make this story apply to fit our show? Every show can have a threesome story gone awry, but how can we make it unique for Insecure?

Off the clock … Rae in New York last month. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

There is a show-within-the-show too, an antebellum-era television drama that several of Insecures characters are glued to. Last year, our show-within-a-show was Conjugal Visits, which was a comment on the trash TV that consumes us all. Setting it in a prison a system which, in this country, incarcerates mainly black and Latino people and making that entertainment, was definitely meta-commentary, nods Rae.

This seasons skewering of popular culture is no less pointed. Theres [been] such an obsession with depicting slavery that the last few years, I have been kind of slaved-out, she sighs. So we thought it would be funny to have the characters obsessed with this new slave interracial drama. A guest-starring role for Sterling K Brown, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden in The People Vs OJ Simpson, ups that meta ante even further, but Rae is quick to assure me that this wasnt a casting that she chased down. No! We actually have an anti-celebrity policy on the show, she insists. We were doing something together for the Independent Spirit awards, and he was, like: I love your show, if you ever want to cast me The musician Syd, another self-proclaimed fan of the show, also makes a brief cameo.

Although Rae resists comparisons between Insecure and Girls and of herself to its creator Lena Dunham: I get the inclination to compare us because were both young women, but the stories were telling couldnt be more different, she says the two share a deliciously frank depiction of female sexuality. Broken Pussy, one of Issas raps, became something of a refrain in season one, after she speculates that Mollys run of bad luck with men might be the result of a defective filtering system.

My friend and I have a thing where we talk in, um, pussy sounds, Rae laughs. I think that most women know whether they want to sleep with a guy or not within the first five minutes of meeting him, and so we speak in Marge Simpson voices about whether or not a guy could get it. She demonstrates. If its a yes, well say: My pussy was like: [Perky, eager voice] Mm-hm, girl. Or, My pussy was like, [Low, negative tones]: Mm-mm. So, the conversation about Molly feeling like she wasnt attracting the right type of guys was me suggesting her pussy might actually be broken.

What did her mother make of this particular piece of dialogue? She only saw it at the screening! Rae laughs. She pulled me aside afterwards and was, like: That mouth, were going to wash it out but, good job.

Insecure continues on Thursday 10 August, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic

Read more: http://ift.tt/2utz7rj

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How @supports Works

CSS has a neat feature that allows us to test if the browser supports a particular property or property:value combination before applying a block of styles — like how a @media query matches when, say, the width of the browser window is narrower than some specified size and then the CSS within it takes effect. In the same spirit, the CSS inside this feature will take effect when the property:value pair being tested is supported in the current browser. That feature is called @supports and it looks like this:

@supports (display: grid) { .main { display: grid; } }

Why? Well, that's a bit tricky. Personally, I find don't need it all that regularly. CSS has natural fallback mechanisms such that if the browser doesn't understand a property:value combination, then it will ignore it and use something declared before it if there is anything, thanks to the cascade. Sometimes that can be used to deal with fallbacks and the end result is a bit less verbose. I'm certainly not a it's-gotta-be-the-same-in-every-browser kinda guy, but I'm also not a write-elaborate-fallbacks-to-get-close kinda guy either. I generally prefer a situation where a natural failure of a property:value doesn't do anything drastic to destroy functionality.

That said, @supports certainly has use cases! And as I found out while putting this post together, plenty of people use it for plenty of interesting situations.

A classic use case

The example I used in the intro is a classic one that you'll see used in lots of writing about this topic. Here it is a bit more fleshed out:

/* We're gonna write a fallback up here in a minute */ @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; } }

Nice grid! Repeating and auto-filling columns is a sweet feature of CSS grid. But, of course, there are browsers that don't support grid, or don't support all the specific features of it that I'm using above there.

For example, iOS shipped support for CSS grid in version 10.2, but iOS has had flexbox support since version 7. That's a decent gap of people with older iOS devices that do support flexbox but not grid. I'm sure there are more example gaps like that, but you probably get the idea.

I was running on an older version of mobile safari and many many many many many sites were flat out broken that used grid

I’m waiting another year or so before messing about with it

— David Wells (@DavidWells) February 6, 2019

It may be acceptable to let the fallback for this be nothing, depending on the requirements. For example, vertically stacked block-level elements rather than a multi-column grid layout. That's often fine with me. But let's say it's not fine, like a photo gallery or something that absolutely needs to have some basic grid-like structure. In that case, starting with flexbox as the default and using @supports to apply grid features where they're supported may work better...

.photo-layout { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; > div { flex: 200px; margin: 1rem; } } @supports (display: grid) { .photo-layout { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)); grid-gap: 2rem; > div { margin: 0; } } }

The "fallback" is the code outside of the @supports block (the properties above the block in the example above), and the grid code is either inside or after. The @supports block doesn't change any specificity, so we need the source order to help make sure the overrides work.

Notice I had to reset the margin on the divs inside the @supports block. That's the kind of thing I find a bit annoying. There is just enough crossover between the two scenarios that it requires being super aware of how they impact each other.

Doesn't that make you wish it could be entirely logically separated...

There is "not" logic in @supports blocks, but that doesn't mean it should always be used

Jen Simmons put this example in an article called Using Feature Queries in CSS a few years ago:

/* Considered a BAD PRACTICE, at least if you're supporting IE 11 and iOS 8 and older */ @supports not (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for non-support of grid */ } @supports (display: grid) { /* Isolated code for support of grid */ }

Notice the not operator in the first block. That's checking for browsers that do not support grid in order to apply certain styles to those browsers. The reason this approach is considered bad practice is that the browser support for @supports itself has to be considered!. That's what makes this so dang tricky.

It's very appealing to write code in logically separated @supports blocks like that because then it's starting from scratch each time and doesn't need to be overriding previous values and dealing with those logical mind-benders. But let's go back to the same iOS situation we considered before... @supports shipped in iOS in version 9 (right between when flexbox shipped in iOS 7 and grid shipped in iOS 10.2). That means any flexbox fallback code in a @supports block using the not operator to check for (display: grid) {} support wouldn't work in either iOS 7 or 8, meaning the fallback now needs a fallback from working in browsers it otherwise would have. Phew!

The big reason to reach for @supports is to account for very different implementations of something depending on feature support where it becomes easier to reason and distinguish between those implementations if the blocks of code are separated.

We'll probably get to a point where we can use mutually-exclusive blocks like that without worry. Speaking of which...

@supports is likely to be more useful over time.

Once @supports is supported in all browsers you need to support, then it's good to start using it more aggressively and without having to factor in the complication of considering whether @supports itself is supported. Here's the support grid on that:

This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.

Desktop

ChromeOperaFirefoxIEEdgeSafari2812.122No129

Mobile / Tablet

iOS SafariOpera MobileOpera MiniAndroidAndroid ChromeAndroid Firefox9.0-9.246all4.47164

Basically, IE 11 and any iOS device stuck on iOS 8 are the pain points. If your requirements are already past those, then you're good to use @supports more freely.

The irony is that there hasn't been a ton of CSS features shipping that have big clear @supports use cases — but there are some! Apparently, it's possible to test new fancy stuff like Houdini:

Using it on my wedding website to check for Houdini support 🎩🐰

— Sam Richard (@Snugug) February 6, 2019

(I'm not sure entirely what you'd put in the @supports block to do that. Has anyone else done this?)

When @supports isn't doing anything useful

I've seen a good amount of @supports uses in the wild where the end result is exactly as it would be without using it. For example...

@supports (transform: rotate(5deg)) { .avatar { transform: rotate(5deg); } }

On some level, that makes perfect logical sense. If transforms are supported, use them. But it's unnecessary if nothing different is happening in a non-support scenario. In this case, the transform can fail without the @supports block and the result is the same.

Here's another example of that shaking out.

There are browser extensions for playing with @supports

There are two of them!

Feature Queries Manager by Ire Aderinokun

CSS Feature Toggle Extension by Keith Clark

They are both centered around the idea that we can write @supports blocks in CSS and then toggle them on and off as if we're looking at a rendering of the code in a browser that does or doesn't support that feature.

Here's a video of Keith's tool applied to the scenario using grid with a flexbox fallback:

This is fun to play with and is very neat tech. But in this exact scenario, if I was able to pull off the layout identically with flexbox, then I'd probably just do that and save that little bit of technical debt.

Ire's tool, which she wrote about in the article Creating The Feature Queries Manager DevTools Extension, has a slightly different approach in that it shows the feature queries that you actually wrote in your CSS and provides toggles to flip them on and off. I don't think it works through iframes though, so I popped open Debug Mode to use it on CodePen.

More real world use cases for @supports

Here's one from Erik Vorhes. He's styling some custom checkboxes and radio buttons here, but wraps all of it in a @supports block. None of the styling gets applied unless the block passes the support check.

@supports (transform: rotate(1turn)) and (opacity: 0) { /* all the styling for Erik's custom checkboxes and radio buttons */ }

Here are several more I've come across:

Joe Wright and Tiago Nunes mentioned using it for position: sticky;. I'd love to see a demo here! As in, where you go for position: sticky;, but then have to do something different besides let it fail for a non-supporting browser.

Keith Grant and Matthias Ott mention using it for object-fit: contain;. Matthias has a demo where positioning trickery is used to make an image sort of fill a container, which is then made easier and better through that property when it's available.

Ryan Filler mentions using it for mix-blend-mode. His example sets more opacity on an element, but if mix-blend-mode is supported, it uses a bit less and that property which can have the effect of seeing through an element on its own.

.thing { opacity: 0.5; } @supports (mix-blend-mode: multiply) { .thing { mix-blend-mode: multiply; opacity: 0.75; } }

Rik Schennink mentioned the backdrop-filter property. He says, "when it's supported the opacity of the background color often needs some fine tuning."

Nour Saud mentioned it can be used to detect Edge through a specific vendor-prefixed property: @supports (-ms-ime-align:auto) { }.

Amber Weinberg mentioned using it for clip-path because adjusting the sizing or padding of an element will accommodate when clipping is unavailable.

Ralph Holzmann mentioned using it to test for that "notch" stuff (environment variables).

Stacy Kvernmo mentioned using it for the variety of properties needed for drop capping characters. Jen Simmons mentions this use case in her article as well. There is an initial-letter CSS property that's pretty fantastic for drop caps, but is used in conjunction with other properties that you may not want to apply at all if initial-letter isn't supported (or if there's a totally different fallback scenario).

Here's a bonus one from Nick Colley that's not @supports, but @media instead! The spirit is the same. It can prevent that "stuck" hover state on touch devices like this:

@media (hover: hover) { a:hover { background: yellow; } }

Logic in @supports

Basic:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) { }

Not:

@supports not (initial-letter: 4) { }

And:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) and (transform: scale(2)) { }

Or:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) or (-webkit-initial-letter: 4) { }

Combos:

@supports ((display: -webkit-flex) or (display: -moz-flex) or (display: flex)) and (-webkit-appearance: caret) { }

JavaScript Variant

JavaScript has an API for this. To test if it exists...

if (window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) { // Apparently old Opera had a weird implementation, so you could also do: // !!((window.CSS && window.CSS.supports) || window.supportsCSS || false) }

To use it, either pass the property to it in one param and the value in another:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("display", "grid");

...or give it all in one string mirroring the CSS syntax:

const supportsGrid = CSS.supports("(display: grid)");

Selector testing

At the time of this writing, only Firefox supports this sort of testing (behind an experimental flag), but there is a way to test the support of selectors with @supports. MDN's demo:

@supports selector(A > B) { }

You?

Of course, we'd love to see Pens of @supports use cases in the comments. So share 'em!

The post How @supports Works appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How @supports Works published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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Issa Rae: ‘So much of the media presents blackness as fierce and flawless. Im not’

The creator of Insecure talks the dating totem pole, films obsession with slavery and the gender-race pay gap as season two begins

I dont want the stench of the current administration on this show, says Issa Rae. I dont want people to look back and be like: Oh, this was a Trump show. I want them to look back and say Insecure was an Obama show. Because it is: Obama enabled this show. The sharp, pithy, Los Angeles-set comedy, dubbed by US fashion and beauty site the Cut as the black, millennial Sex and The City, which Rae co-created, writes and stars in, first aired on HBO last autumn, exactly a month before the US election. Culturally, Obama made blackness so present, and so appreciated; people felt seen and heard; it influenced the arts, and it absolutely influenced how I see blackness, how I appreciate it, says the 32-year-old Rae. When a black president is a norm, it enables us to be, too.

Being a norm is a matter of some import to the actor and writer, who in spite of her personal allegiances had no desire to make an overtly political show. She never wanted Insecure to be, as she says with a generous eye-roll, a story about the struggle or the dramatic burdens of being black. At the heart of the series is the relationship between her on-screen iteration also named Issa, who works for an educational nonprofit called We Got Yall and raps soliloquies to herself in the mirror and her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), a high-flying corporate lawyer. Together, they navigate the professional and personal challenges of late-20s urban life.

I just wanted to see my friends and I reflected on television, in the same way that white people are allowed, and which nobody questions, continues Rae. Nobody watches Divorce [a HBO stablemate, starring Sarah Jessica Parker] and asks: What is the political element, what is the racial element driving this?

Watch the trailer for season two of Insecure.

But so rare is it to see what its creator describes as a show about regular black people being basic in contemporary entertainment Insecure has nonetheless been hailed as revolutionary. It wasnt always so. Growing up, Rae was an avid fan of the predominantly black US sitcoms Moesha, Girlfriends and A Different World. Then they disappeared, she says of the film and television landscape. Somewhere along the way, being white became seen as relatable, and you started to see people of colour only reflected as stereotypes or specific archetypes. So much of the media now presents blackness as being cool, or able to dance, or fierce and flawless, or just out of control; Im not any of those things.

It is a hot and swampy summer afternoon in Manhattan, and Rae is in town doing the requisite rounds of late-night talkshow appearances ahead of Insecures season two premiere. On arrival, she seems a little lethargic entirely understandable, given her promotional schedule. But once seated in a buzzy restaurant, specifically chosen because its the sort of spot that the on-screen Issa and her girlfriends would patronise, Rae immediately perks up, emanating charismatic good humour.

Born in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, Rae real name Jo-Issa Rae Diop is the third of five children, her father a Senegalese doctor, her mother a teacher from Louisiana. The rapid rise in gang violence in the city prompted Raes parents to move the family to Senegals capital, Dakar, when Rae was five years old. Her father tried to open a hospital there but things didnt work out and, three years later, they came back to the US, but to Potomac, Maryland, on the east coast, where Rae attended a predominantly white private school. When the family moved once again, this time back to LA, Rae entered a largely black and Latino school. Everybody thought I was lame and hated me, she says, matter-of-factly. It was a huge culture shock.

Part of the on-screen Issas insecurity of feeling not black enough for black people and not white enough for white people is, Rae says, something that I have been called out for by kids in my life. Ive experienced a real sense of feeling out of place. But with admirable chutzpah, she found a creative solution: I wrote a play and cast all of my bullies, and they loved it. They thought I was cool after that. She pauses, and gives a wry smile. Well, cool is a strong word. But I wasnt on their shit-list any more.

Big society … Raes character with co-worker Frieda (Lisa Joyce). Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While studying at Stanford University, Rae began to notice that many of the television shows she loved, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, were all-white comedies. Of course, sense of humour is relative, is subjective, but there is an assumption that black people wont find certain things about white comedies funny, she says. I got really frustrated and just wanted to start making my own stories. She conceived and directed Dorm Diaries, a mock reality show with an all-black cast, in the style of MTVs The Real World. When she posted it to Facebook, it quickly circulated, and Rae realised that she had a talent for portraying everyday black life; she has called it my epiphany moment. A few years later, she created what would be her breakthrough web series and the forerunner to Insecure, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

A web show is one thing, of course, a mainstream television show on a high-profile cable network quite another. I ask her about the sociologist and civil rights activist WEB Duboiss concept of double consciousness, which she has referenced in the past, defined as the psychological challenge of always looking at ones self through the eyes of a white society. Does she feel that even more sharply now than before?

Absolutely. I didnt create this show for white people, I didnt create it for men; I created it, really, for my friends and family, and for their specific sense of humour, she nods. But now that we know we have an audience including HBO executives the double consciousness comes into play, because youre always wondering: How do they see what I am writing? Are they laughing at this specific joke for this particular reason? When season one aired, I had Asian women coming up to me on the street, saying: Oh my gosh, this reminds me of me and my best friend, she recalls. And thats wonderful thats what you want for a show but you are always wondering: What elements do they relate to the most?

I suggest that in future she stops fans and asks for further, more detailed feedback. She throws her head back and laughs. Yes. Excuse me, but why do you like the show? Tell me right now, please.

Boyfriend material … Jay Ellis as Lawrence in Insecure. Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While Insecure may be only inadvertently political, this second season is noticeably more charged with social commentary, and examples of everyday discrimination. Through Molly, the show explores the gender pay gap, with an added issue to unpick: is she being paid less because of her gender, or her ethnicity, or both? These are questions that we constantly have to ask ourselves, as minorities, or double minorities, or triple minorities, nods Rae. In terms of the intersectionality of it all, you are constantly asking yourself: Which part of me is being discriminated against? Which part of me is being targeted? If not all parts of me.

The often-dispiriting experience of modern dating features prominently, too. At the start of this series, Issa has recently broken up from her long-term boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), and thrown herself into the choppy waters of Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. Dating in todays digitally enabled world is rough enough but there is, Rae believes, an added dimension for her characters. Black women are at the bottom of the desire chain, of the dating totem pole; were not the trophies, she says.

In rap culture, especially, theres always an idea that once you achieve an amount of success, your trophy is the white girl on your arm. However, she asserts, thats not limited to hip-hop. Its not scientifically proven, but theres evidence, in dating apps for example, that were the last to be chosen, the least desirable. The theory is also explored in Aziz Ansaris Netflix show Master of None, which includes a scene in which one of his dates, a black woman, tells him: Compared to my white friends, I get way less activity [on app dating sites]. I also find that I rarely match with guys outside of my race.

Lawrence, meanwhile, is also experiencing discrimination, albeit in a different form. In one scene spoiler alert! he is picked up by two non-black girls at a grocery store, who lure him to their apartment, where they proceed to seduce him. Their fetishisation of his blackness has echoes of Get Out, Jordan Peeles racism-thriller which triumphed at the box office earlier this year.

That was based on a real-life situation that one of our writers shared, says Rae of the uncomfortable tryst. It didnt end well, which had nothing to do with his blackness, but we thought: How can we make this story apply to fit our show? Every show can have a threesome story gone awry, but how can we make it unique for Insecure?

Off the clock … Rae in New York last month. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

There is a show-within-the-show too, an antebellum-era television drama that several of Insecures characters are glued to. Last year, our show-within-a-show was Conjugal Visits, which was a comment on the trash TV that consumes us all. Setting it in a prison a system which, in this country, incarcerates mainly black and Latino people and making that entertainment, was definitely meta-commentary, nods Rae.

This seasons skewering of popular culture is no less pointed. Theres [been] such an obsession with depicting slavery that the last few years, I have been kind of slaved-out, she sighs. So we thought it would be funny to have the characters obsessed with this new slave interracial drama. A guest-starring role for Sterling K Brown, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden in The People Vs OJ Simpson, ups that meta ante even further, but Rae is quick to assure me that this wasnt a casting that she chased down. No! We actually have an anti-celebrity policy on the show, she insists. We were doing something together for the Independent Spirit awards, and he was, like: I love your show, if you ever want to cast me The musician Syd, another self-proclaimed fan of the show, also makes a brief cameo.

Although Rae resists comparisons between Insecure and Girls and of herself to its creator Lena Dunham: I get the inclination to compare us because were both young women, but the stories were telling couldnt be more different, she says the two share a deliciously frank depiction of female sexuality. Broken Pussy, one of Issas raps, became something of a refrain in season one, after she speculates that Mollys run of bad luck with men might be the result of a defective filtering system.

My friend and I have a thing where we talk in, um, pussy sounds, Rae laughs. I think that most women know whether they want to sleep with a guy or not within the first five minutes of meeting him, and so we speak in Marge Simpson voices about whether or not a guy could get it. She demonstrates. If its a yes, well say: My pussy was like: [Perky, eager voice] Mm-hm, girl. Or, My pussy was like, [Low, negative tones]: Mm-mm. So, the conversation about Molly feeling like she wasnt attracting the right type of guys was me suggesting her pussy might actually be broken.

What did her mother make of this particular piece of dialogue? She only saw it at the screening! Rae laughs. She pulled me aside afterwards and was, like: That mouth, were going to wash it out but, good job.

Insecure continues on Thursday 10 August, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic

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