#And you can’t use the phrase “’What do we prefer to avoid false readings” and then say there should have been a comma cause blah blah blah

[ineed-moresleep]

My teachers should know that when I correct them, it doesn’t come from a genuine place of curiosity and learning. I simply hate them and they’re wrong.

[deepdonutkid]

Nonsense

A/N:

This took me way too long! I’m sorry, I was stuck on the Polly part for a while after Helen’s death.

Even though there is a part in the middle, which I’m not really satisfied with, I’m still glad, I finished that chapter. I hope you like it. It’s a little sad for a story, that will later focus on... other stuff.

Tbh... I forgot, if Martha died from a disease or something else. That’s why this part is a little vague. But he will talk more about his dead wife much later in the story.

English is not my first language and this is not beta-read, just a small part of it! Thanks to @retromafia​ for helping me out on this chapter! You’re so lovely!

John as mental health issues, but it’s very different to those of his brothers!

tagging: @bonniesgoldengirl​ @theshelbyclan​ @justalonelyslytherin​

Masterlist Do you wanna touch

____________________

All fucking week he had thought about this date and her. John was distracted at work, at home and at the Garrison. His head was somewhere else, preferably with her, the beautiful Russian girl he had met a couple of days ago. He tried to keep this to himself even though he worried others would start to notice his weird behavior. Well, it was pretty hard to shut up about it, when he sat drunk next to his friends in the pub, but John wasn’t really ready to talk about this. It still felt so surreal like this encounter had never happened and it was all in his head. In addition to that, others- mainly his family- would gladly ruin this for him, before it had even begun, which was why he was so reluctant to talk about it.

They would ask him all sorts of stupid questions, which he couldn’t answer at all. He frowned and closed the book. Later he would meet the mysterious woman again and this was his only chance, since he didn’t know her full name or her address or another way to contact her. So he had to go there or he would go crazy thinking about what might have been. But there was a problem with that.

Of course there was a problem as nothing in his life could be easy. Not even once. However he refused to call his kids a problem. His dad called him like this more than once. And if John wasn’t a problem, his name was either accident or brat. Needless to say John was way nicer to his children than his father was to him. John loved all four of them. He really did, but… somebody had to look after them, while he wasn’t at home. So he had to ask either Polly or Ada and he didn’t know what would be worse.

His sister would spread the word of him having a girlfriend faster around than a disease. Maybe she would even spice up the story a little and add some drama just for the fun of it. Then he wasn’t out for a date, but to meet the woman he had impregnated or what else. And Polly, well she was the main reason he was scared to even mention his rendezvous. His aunt had the great talent to investigate his private life like fucking copper. Once she had sniffed something, she wouldn’t let go of it and kept bothering him.

Anyways he had to talk to one of them and the chat wouldn’t be a nice one. A choice between the foul and the evil. Ugh, he was in the mood to flip a coin. There were some on his desk. So why not? He looked around, if anybody was watching him, but he was alone in his office. Then he took a coin from the daily bets and tossed it. Once it was up in the air, he had made up his mind. The coin just proofed it. He should go to Polly and it would fit in his schedule as now was his lunch break and he would eat with the others anyway. If he would go now, he could still catch her alone in the kitchen. A grunt left his lips while he stood up from his chair. His pace was steady, but fast as he made his way through the betting shop. Luckily nobody noticed that he left his table a little too early.

He had never opened or closed a door as quietly as in this exact moment. “Polly?”, he had asked in a careful tone into the empty room. John heard movements from the kitchen. Suddenly her head peaked around the corner. “Yes, John?” She had emphasized every syllable as if he was stupid. Maybe he was just not ready to have this talk. On the other hand he had no chance. This was a now or never situation and he preferred now over never.

John gathered all his courage to approach her: “Would you do me a little favor?” All the sudden his hands were sweaty and no matter how many times he had rubbed them on his pants, it wouldn’t get any less smeary. Usually he wasn’t so nice and polite to his relatives. It was more like he had earned the title arrogant brat rightfully. He scratched his neck and gave her his best puppy eyes. And just to top it off his angelic smile, which had saved him many times before. Most of the times, he could avoid the consequences of his own actions with his charming smirk.

But today it didn’t help. Polly just shook her head. “What is it this time?”

“Just a little thing”, he began, then paused to take a deep breath and gain courage to exclaim his wish: “Can you watch the kids this evening? It’s really important.”

His aunt froze mid movement and starred at him. After a while she started blinking. Her glare was concerning. “Why this time? The last time was just a week ago. Another task from Tommy? He didn’t talked to me about this.”

John pressed his teeth again and shook his head. He looked at the roof and searched for the right words to explain his situation. Why was this so difficult? It was just a date. Yet it felt like so much more.

The Shelby sighed, while his hand was fumbling with his lighter in the pocket of his pants. “I’m meeting someone” was his short answer to a complex problem.

“Did Tommy ask you to?”, she asked once again. No matter if it was business or his private life, Polly liked to be up to date.

Again he shook his head. “No, not Tommy, but it’s still important. So would you please help me?”

Polly clucked her tongue and hurried back to the kitchen. John followed her and leaned against the door frame, waiting for his answer.

“Well, I got a meeting too, so you better change the appointment with said woman, because I don’t want to change my plans for you”, she replied, while stirring a pot. Afterwards she tapped the wooden spoon against the pot and turned around. “Lunch is ready. Better get your brothers, so we can eat.”

Apparently the conversation was over, because it really started, but John wouldn’t give up right away. “But I can’t”, he protested: “That’s the only night she is available and I don’t know how to reach her.”

Without looking at him, she walked right back into the living room and started putting dished on the table. “Ahh, see? I was right about the woman part… But why do you want to meet somebody you barely know?” Her question was reasonable.

John was so lost in his thought about her and yet he had no answer. No good ones. So he just said the next best thing: “I won a bet and I want to see her.”

Right when he said that his brother came in. Arthur widened his eyes and scratched his chin. “Want to see who?”, he asked. It was horrible how nosy his family was.

There was no peaceful day at the Shelby household. Never ever.

“He has a new girl, but he doesn’t know anything about her”, Polly retorted, before John even had the chance to answer himself.

Arthur chuckled and added: “Oh, Our John was never a man for talking. Right, John boy?”

They had to be fucking kidding him. It felt like he was sixteen again and started to meeting Martha. This was so embarrassing. John nodded slowly and gave his brother a false laugh.

“Well, we had other things to do”, John objected and it wasn’t quite the truth, but close enough. There was just no explanation why he was drawn to this woman, who was a stranger to him, but oh, those kisses really worked some crazy magic on him.

His brother burst out in laughter and slapped his hand on John’s back. “Oh, I know! I fucking know what you mean”, he exclaimed: “Why talk, when you can have fun with a woman?”

And right now, John couldn’t agree less. He wanted to talk with the mysterious woman, but she rushed off into the night before he could even say goodbye to her. Damn, he wished he knew more about her, maybe then he wouldn’t be so nervous right now. The Shelby didn’t feel like his usual cheeky, charming self, more like fucking train wreck.

His face got gleaming red, but he tried to act like was completely cool with it. And it wasn’t like he didn’t want to sleep with her. Gosh, what wouldn’t he give to spend the night with her?

“Pol, you see John’s face. He is red like a crayfish”, Arthur joked and pulled his little brother into a headlock.

Their aunt walked around them, very carefully as she was carrying the big steam pot. She sounded like she was mentally everywhere else, when she murmured: “Yes, Arthur, I see it- shameful red- but now it’s time for lunch, so release your brother and come sit.” Somehow Polly managed to phrase it exactly like their mom used to say it, even though she was only three years older than Arthur, but he’d still respect her.

So he did what she asked him to do and let John go again to take a seat at the table.

It was the perfect timing to beg Polly once again, because he didn’t want to have the same conversation with his sister. “Polly, Please”, he insisted: “I wouldn’t ask you, if it wasn’t really important to me.”

“What is so important about one woman, that you have the great urge to meet her?”

That was the question he was asking himself all week, but okay. Now he needed to come up with an answer or otherwise he would have to get comfortable with the thought he would never see her again.

He licked his lips as he assembled the words in his brain to a convincing answer. “She has…”, he began, but then he got lost again.

“Huge cans?”, Arthur purposed with a big smile on his face.

But John shook his head: “Not that, her tits are average, there is something else about her and I can’t say what yet, that’s why I need to find out…. Or I go crazy.”

He turned to Polly and put on his puppy eyes again. “Do you want me to go crazy, Polly?”

Pol pouted and sighed. “Fine, you get your will again, but that’s the last time and don’t ever bother me with this again.”

His eyes shined bright in the lights of success and more importantly… winning an argument with his aunt. “Thank you and I’ll never bother you again.”

The matriarch went her way around her reign and said to herself: “We’ll see about that.”

Now this problem found its solution, the next question popped up in his head. Where were his kids? Because he was so caught up with his date, he had forgotten to pick them up from school. It wasn’t a serious issue. Three of them could walk home on their own, but the youngest was a different thing.

In his memory of this day, he had left Katie here, but she wasn’t running around like usually. “Pol, where are the kids?”

“The kids?”, she observed: “Oh, the kids you want to get rid of? You mean… those kids? They are upstairs.”

John grunted. That was far from reality and his aunt should know that. “That’s bullshit. I don’t want to get rid of them.”

“Then act like you care for them once instead of fucking around and I might believe you”, Polly chided and gave him the mean side eye, while she filled the plates with stew.

And she acted like a real bitch lately, John wanted to add, but bid his lip to stop himself from saying something he would regret deeply. It was so annoying how she tried to make him feel guilty for having a night off. He was so sick of this. Either he was working or he was with his kids and he had little or no time for himself. Just the few hours when they were asleep and he could go to the Garrison for a beer or two.

“It’s just one date!”, he yelled, but then clenched his fists and swallowed his anger and repeated quietly: “It’s just one date.”

The room was quiet now. Nobody said or did anything for a while.

Then Polly started moving again and explained: “You should focus on getting a wife and not play around with some floosy girl… but you’re an adult now, John, so do whatever you want… just don’t drag me into your mess.”

John nodded and went upstairs to get his kids. Yes, he was still bitter about the things Polly said to him, but he wouldn’t let this ruin his day. After all he had plans. Maybe he gripped the banister a little too tight, well, at least he didn’t bellowed at his children, when he found them making a mess in his old room.

All four were sitting here and around them were all the toys they had. Most of them were his old toys or some from his brothers.

“Lunch is ready”, he grunted and waited for them to get up, so they would follow him. They just stared at him with wide eyes.

His oldest daughter was the first to talk: “We heard you yell at Aunt Polly…”

He didn’t answer instead he just moaned and leaned against the wall.

“You’re away tonight”, she added and tilted her head. There was curiosity in her eyes. It didn’t bother him, but something else did. She had the same eyes as her mother. Like a dagger it pierced his heart, whenever she gave him this look. Martha used to do this as well.

Slowly he nodded. He couldn’t lie to his kids at all. “Yes, but you’ll be staying here and Polly will bring you home, when it’s bed time.”

Breanna thought about this for a second and then like this whole conversation had never happened, she stood up and helped her little sister to get on her feet as well. “Well, it’s time for lunch now”, she declared and look at her twin brother: “C’mon, James, we still got homework to do.”

Now that she was standing, John could see how small she was actually. Sometimes he forgot, she was still a child, but the way she acted was different. His oldest daughter had picked up a lot from Polly and her mother, while he was in France. However he tried to not treat her like an adult. She wasn’t and her childhood shouldn’t be ripped from her. Breanna didn’t need to protect her siblings from anything and yet she still thought it was her job.

James on the other hand was quite the opposite. Loud, angry, such a brat, he picked up fight, whenever he could, much like his father at that age.

Luckily his older brother Colin was also a voice of reason and not as chaotic as James. Colin was the oldest and he didn’t actually talk much, but on somedays and with certain persons he wouldn’t shut up. Most of the time Colin did good in school, read a lot, unlike his uncle Finn who was just five years older than him. And more importantly… Colin did everything his father asked him to.

And then here was Katie, the youngest. Just three years old and a sweet girl, but she was of fragile condition. She was born prematurely and was also the reason why Martha died. John tried to ignore the fact, because even though she was the reason, it wasn’t her fault. How could she? She didn’t pick her time to be born. However from time to time, Katie managed to make him cry. After the war, he rarely shed tears, but every time she was sick and he had to go with her to the hospital, he lost his nerves. She was still his little baby and the thought of losing her too wrecked him.

They were all on their way downstairs and John followed them back. He held Katie’s hands while walking down the stairs.

The lunch was very silent. There was still tension left in the room, but John didn’t cared. Katie was sitting on his lap and they both ate from the same plate, like they always did. But it wasn’t a cute ritual, more like a space problem, with all the family members around the table, it was a little cramped. Too cramped for Katie to have her own stool. Another reason, why he needed a wife. So he and his family could eat in his kitchen and they would all have enough space again.

A part of John was worried Polly or Arthur mentioned his date to Tommy, who would gladly take the opportunity to ruin his day. His older brother would pick all the question, John had been asking all week and then make him look stupid in front of the whole family. But apparently Polly was too pissed about the fight to say anything that day and John thanked god for this.

Somehow Katie spilled the stew all over his pants, but he had no time to go back home and change his pants. He still needed to finish the books and after that, he could get dressed for his date.

So John sat in his office in a damp suit and tried to fix what he did wrong before lunch.

Maybe the luck was on his side today after all, because he managed to get everything done early. Somethings didn’t went as smooth as he had wished for, but at least it worked out so well, that he could go to the date and it was still a win for him.

As fast as possible without running he walked home and sprinted up the stairs to the master bedroom. Now he could change his cloths and he was indeed very happy about it. The stew had dried on his leg, which made his skin itchy. Basically he ripped his clothes off the second he arrived in his room.

“Fuck.” A curse left his lips, because he got stuck in his pants and almost hit the floor. Last second he got his balance back and then threw his pants in the opposite direction. He could care about this later.

First he had to clean the stains from his body. So he rushed to the kitchen, just in his underwear and rubbed his leg with a wet cloth. This had to be enough. With the time he had left, he couldn’t take a bath.

Back in his room again, he stood in front of the cabinet and picked the first suit he had in his hand. There was no discussion about this. Suits were suits and he had plenty of them, all of them looked good on him and she wouldn’t even mind, would she?

While he button up his shirt, he stopped all the sudden. What if she would mind? Slowly he walked backwards to the cabinet. Should he wear his Sunday suit? Thought and thoughts came rushing in. She seemed like a fine lady, but yet she agreed to meet with him. Maybe she wouldn’t, if it wasn’t for the bet.

He got headache since his argument with Polly and it got worse. Maybe he would go to the spot, where they should meet and she wasn’t there. The possibility, that she tricked him, hadn’t occurred in his mind until now.

Honestly, John felt so stupid, when he realized how weird the coincidence was. What were his chances to be so lucky? To meet a beautiful, wealthy and unmarried woman, who was also funny and charming and mysterious and he could find a ton more of adjectives to describe her? And then win the round and the bet, he had made with her? What were his chances for that? So either he was one of the luckiest men in this world or a goddamn idiot.

Or maybe… his mind tricked him. He was pretty drunk after all and in his twisted mind the details of this scene got lost. Maybe he didn’t win the round, but because he wished so bad for it, he had changed his memory of that said night. Maybe he was so lonely he made up this perfect woman, because he couldn’t bare his poor existence anymore.

And did he think about his stupid suit so much?

Yes, he was nervous, but this was no explanation for this nonsense.

Right now, John was freaking out about a woman he barely knew. It reminded him of a time, where he did the same thing… but with Martha, a girl he had known all his life. Back then and today he was well aware of why he was so nervous around his first wife. He loved her and he was afraid of saying or doing something very stupid.

But he didn’t loved that Russian woman. He couldn’t, not after only one kiss. It was impossible and yet the kiss felt so real. The memory of her lips was burned into his mind and it drove him crazy.

And he didn’t know, why he had this feeling, which wasn’t love and he didn’t even know what it was, and suddenly he had more questions in his head than he ever had in his whole life.

Usually, he didn’t think that much about anything. He wasn’t the guy who put much thought into every little thing that happened around him.

Everything he wanted to do now was to yell. He couldn’t even put his frustration into words anymore.  His head was full of white noise.

Barefooted he stood on the wooden floor of his bedroom, which he used to share with the love of his life. John took a few deep breaths and looked around. Everything was still the same. After the war he had no energy to change something in here, even though it was just fueling his mental health issues. There was still her cabinet with her dresses and her stuff and sometimes when he was particularly lonely, he felt the fabric and imagined her soft body under it. It didn’t smell like Martha anymore, but sometimes he wished.

It felt like suffocating. He couldn’t breathe nor cry, even though tears filled his eyes.

He walked over to his nightstand and looked at the photograph of her. “You don’t get to fucking judge me”, he whispered: “Like you always did. You died and I’m still here and I love you and I always will, but don’t ruin this for me.”

“You put all these questions in my head, so I’ll fuck up and ruin everything”, he argued… with his dead wife like she was there. And he could imagine her so well, standing next to him with her arms crossed in front of her chest and that piercing look in her eyes.

Even before she died, he talked a lot to her and about her and sometimes just to himself, but it just got worse, when he came home from France. He can’t handle the silence in the room nor the void his head. Suddenly he said with a soft voice: “I know, what I promised you back then and when I made that promise, I believed every word of it, but you can’t be the only woman I’ll ever love now. You are dead.”

He wasn’t there when she died and the worst part was… he hadn’t even known until he got home. Polly said, she was about to write a letter, but then she couldn’t, because she didn’t want to bother him, while he was in the trenches. Of course, he had worries, when he didn’t get a letter from his wife in months. John just thought she was mad at him, because she was pregnant again while he was away. And then he came home and his house was empty. No Martha and no kids. So he walked back to Polly’s Place and then she told him. His wife was dead and he was surrounded by his family, but he had never felt so lonely in the world.

To this very day, this memory haunted him in the worst way.

And yet, he refused to crumble right away. Not before it had even started. Life was going on and he refused to just stand there, while the time passed. He would walk, run away from this memory if he had to.

“Let me try it at least”, he bargained: “You don’t know her and neither do I. She could be a beast, a real bitch and maybe, just maybe I don’t want to see her again. And maybe I’ll do, but that’s not your decision. I make my own decisions now, because that’s how things work for the living people, Martha.”

It hurt to say her name, but he had to. The word had so much power over him and he took this power back, by saying it. Then he flipped the photograph over and walked back to the cabinet.

Without a second doubt he picked his finest suit and just like that Martha was gone. She would come back eventually, but right now he had other things to do. Like do his hair and drink a little sip of whiskey for confidence.

With a toothpick in his mouth, he left the house and walked the road. All alone.

[quanf99]

Sovereign Citizens, and the Definitely Not Real Global Domination Pandemic

It was 12:40am when I got out of bed to check my mail box, behind yet another fridge magnet from Josh Frydenberg was a postcard from the Protector Party, a political awareness group warning of a ploy by governments to control the masses through the current coronavirus pandemic, or something along those lines. The Protector Party are tied to the resurgence of sovereign citizens, members of society who believe they may choose exemption from the laws of society, a right supposedly outlined in the Magna Carta. While fringe political beliefs have always floated around, they're gaining traction in Australia after strict lock down laws imposed by the Andrews government. I was familiar with such ideas, but this was the first time I'd encountered said ideas in my mail box. I decided to look into sovereign citizenry some more, who were they? And what gave them the right to leave insane post cards in my mail box?

For many residents of Melbourne, Dan Andrews tough lockdown laws herald the rise of an all-powerful authoritarian state. These laws have made it illegal for people to visit other households, or leave home past 8pm, they force Melbournians to wear face masks when leaving home. Democracy is truly at threat when I can't order from the McDonalds drive-thru at 12am. Fighting on the frontlines against totalitarianism is a group calling themselves sovereign citizens or, Freeman of the Land. Freemen argue that laws only apply to corporations, which on their terms include the government. Birth certificates are a contract with the government as corporation and only apply to a person if he or she consents to it. This sort of imaginary legal argument has existed long before the coronavirus  pandemic and Dan "Stalin" Andrews' lockdown, cropping up whenever somebody gets summoned to court for unpaid driving tickets. Recently these pseudo-legal ideas have gained traction via Facebook groups. Through social media, thousands of middle-aged Australians are rallying behind the cause, who else will defend our rights to get pissed in the backyard on a Friday night. I thought I'd join one of these groups to get a read on the sovereign citizens. I found one group, Truth and the Unknown - Australia, it tends to focus on conspiracy theories in general but has recently shifted to uncovering the facts regarding coronavirus. The discussion surrounding the pandemic comes from livestreams of really intelligent looking people explaining to audiences that, coronavirus is not a virus, that even if it was viruses can't be caught by body, that coronavirus mortality rate is so low, no one should be worried even if they do catch it, despite 894 people dying in Australia. Unsurprisingly almost all of the information posted in Truth and the Unknown - Australia, contains no sources backing up any of the information provided. Discussion then shifts to memes explaining how 5G internet connections weaken the body making it more susceptible to coronavirus, a virus that isn't actually a virus, and even if it was you can't catch it. Further down the rabbit hole, GMO foods, vaccines causing autism, Rockefellers and Freemasons, government ties to Satanic cults and Bohemian Grove. All of this was mildly funny and maybe a little disturbing, but I was having trouble finding any concrete political ideas from any of these sovereign citizens. I decided to get in contact with the man who first sent me down this rabbit hole, that's when I got in touch with John Tiger Casley, leader of the Protector Party. Mr Casley is an older man, he speaks in old Australian figures of speech which find a balance somewhere between endearing and condescending, responding to you with phrases like "Alright young fella". Mr Casley used to be a history teacher, he now resides in Brighton presumably retired, spending his time making YouTube videos and sending people weird post cards. I asked "What do you think the end goal supposedly is for this deep state?" to which he replied "I believe their goal is psychopathic humanoid control over human bodies via violent injections and 5G, as well as human perception through media propaganda and AI." Q: Do you think this current climate of politics, sovereign citizens, and a general openness to these ideas will result in positive changes to politics in Australia? J: I believe it depends on the amount of human power given away to the Psychopathic Humanoids in JFK's Monolithic Conspiracy, although I've never known opportunity for political engagement to be higher. Q: How did you first become aware of things like, JFK's Monolithic Conspiracy? J: I began reading, gratefully, the logic, evidence, experiences and suffering of the most amazing mind of this century - David Icke's. While my interview with Mr Casely was interesting it revealed little in the way of concrete political beliefs, again it felt more like I was hearing a conspiracy theory check list be ticked off, rather than any solid politics. I decided to look into David Icke afterwards. Icke is a former football player from the UK, who writes about an inter-dimensional race of reptilians who run the Illuminati and have hijacked the Earth. These reptilians are known as the Anunnaki, ancient Sumerian deities of the Underworld. Again the formula for these ideas feels tried and true, pick an ancient pre-Judeo Christian deity (preferably from Mesopotamia) and center them around a secret shadow government conspiracy to rule the world. Whether its democrats sacrificing babies to Moloch, or underground Illuminati lizard men, the pattern feels obvious. Next I spoke to Zac Galloway, a practicing lawyer with a law degree from University of Tasmania. After moving to Melbourne a few years back, Mr Galloway has become active in promoting the truth about the pandemic through platforms like Facebook. I figured Mr Galloway would have to be well educated if he was a practicing lawyer, and should be able to back up his views better than the average Facebook conspiracy theorist. Q: I'm interested to know, are you connected to any particular groups or organisations? Mr Galloway: I'm not connected with any organisations, although I do follow a few Facebook pages where people share and spread information. I don't believe everything that gets spread in these groups and take most of it with a grain of salt however. Q: Do you believe the virus is real? Or a ploy by the government towards some other agenda? Z: I believe the virus is real but our perception of it is far from the truth. There seems to be overwhelming evidence the virus was man made and originated in a laboratory. Whether this was done intentionally doesn't matter as much to me, I think there's a clear agenda from government worldwide involving mass control and surveillance of the population. Q: Have friends and family been receptive to your message, or do you find a lot of push back regarding your ideas? Z: I find a mix of responses, I've got many people who message me frequently to show support, wishing they were brave enough to speak up. Q: What do you think the rising trend of belief in the sovereign citizen movement says about Australia's current political climate? Z: I think it shows that people are willing to stand up for their rights which to me is a no brainer. There's a very slippery slope between freedom and tyranny and when people voluntarily give up their rights so easily I become gravely concerned. To me it is good that people are willing to stand up for their rights. Although I think much of what he said was shaky at best I was glad someone could give me answers beyond vague gestures to Moloch and vaccines. I don't want to give Mr Galloway too much credit though, perhaps there's something even more troubling in the way he dresses up blatant disregard for the social contract as 'logical reasoning'. It can be harder to discredit arguments about Daniel 'Karl Marx' Andrews using coronavirus hysteria to destroy the economy, when they have more formal validity. And one can't avoid the irony of someone who supports sovereign citizenry, utilising his institutionally given power to practice the law. Regardless of the validity behind  any of the ideas I've gone over here, these ideas and their rising popularity represent something more troubling, perhaps more disappointing. It's undeniable that society is structured to segregate the common person from the powerful, while every day people are led along by the false promise of enough hard and honest work, those born into wealth use loop holes to consolidate their position on the throne. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be mistrusting of governments and those in power, reasons that don't have anything to do with mass mind control, vaccines, 5G towers or ancient sub-terranean lizard people. I spoke to Dr Lauren Rosewarne, cultural commentator and lecturer at Melbourne University. Q: Do you think the popularity of the sovereign citizen movement ties in with the rise of conspiracy theories coming closer to public consciousness? Things like the death of Jeffrey Epstein, or Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Elections? Dr Rosewarne: Sovereign citizens are nothing new in Australia. The internet however, has enabled them to connect, recruit and have a public platform for their views thus giving them greater visibility. Q: Do you think the rising visibility of such a platform, and these sorts of fringe political ideas in general, might suggest deeper political unrest in society? L: I'd be more inclined to say that Covid serves as a rallying cry for these people in a way that few previous events have. Whether that persists as unrest in a post-Covid world, only time will tell. When people take up these conspiracy theories, its disappointing to see how close to the nerve they hit, clearly something larger than everyday people puts us on an uneven playing field. Why then, do we look for answers beyond the real quantifiable structural devices that shape society? There are many complex reasons, the simplest one being that its much easier, much less ambiguous to imagine some sinister, wholly evil force is pulling things behind the scenes. It's easy to laugh at conspiracy theorists, a lot of the things I've seen people post are honestly insane. However, I think it's worth remembering too, that when people start believing these theories, a part of them must recognise the way things are really stacked against us, and from that place maybe we can hope that more people are on the path to greater political consciousness. Or who knows, maybe the democrats really do drink the blood of newborns in exchange for eternal youth.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

to your expert german ears, how was the german in the Argentina bar scene in X First Class?

The bar scene!

So, first things first, the guys playing the Nazis hiding in Argentinia are respectively Wilfried Hochholdinger and Ludger Pistor who are German, don’t have an accent and are good to go. They don’t have the typical regional accent I’d associate with being from Düsseldorf. Instead they speak Hochdeutsch (Standard German) which means they don’t feel out of place either. I guess for their time they’d come across as a little snobbish speaking that way and the probably unintended implication is that they come from a pretty wealthy, educated background so it’s not unlikely that they were high-ranking officers and since that one guy insists that his father made the best suits in all of Düsseldorf, that actually seems likely.

Which leaves Michael Fassbender. (the bartender is German too according to imdb but he only speaks Spanish). I already once wrote about Fassbender’s accent when someone asked me how to get rid of their English accent when speaking German and I referenced the bar scene in Inglorious Basterds as a frame of reference.

I wondered for a a long time how much German Fassbender actually speaks (as much as I hate to speculate about actor’s private lives usually) but I always found it weird that his German seems a lot more natural to me in Inglorious Basterds than it does in this bar scene in First Class. My lovely friend @timemngmtoptimisationproblems who's an insider in the business suggested once it might be a budget thing and that re-shooting and changing a scene can be very expensive so maybe they simply did more shoots in Inglorious Basterds and gave him more instructions than they did in First Class? because IB definitely puts a strong emphasis on language. Plus accents and fluency actually have a huge influence on the plot of the film. Meanwhile in First Class, Fassbender and Bacon phone it in pretending to be native German speakers. (It’s kinda funny how the main-Nazi in the film is played by an American and one of the German main-characters is played by a Scottish guy, an Irish guy and … I’m not sure where the kids are from. And Nightcrawler was also not played by a German. But they actually imported real Germans for the roles of these two extras. I don’t mind but it’s…a strange priority to make sure that these two random guys who get killed after saying a few lines are native speakers)

Because I was curious about it, I read a few interviews a while ago where Fassbender speaks about his German background and he’s downplays it a lot and says he speaks very, very little. Basically a few words. Which honestly surprised me, because he does a pretty solid job acting out his German-speaking scenes, emphasising the right words (even if the doesn’t necessarily emphasise the right syllables) and he seems pretty effortless compared to that flashback scene with Schmidt young Erik who are clearly have to focus on their words. Also directors clearly seek him out to play Germans so he seems to have a reputation that he can do that. A lot of my questions were answered when I found an interview of the Dark Phoenix cast in a German show where Fassbender actually speaks some German with the interviewer (× - starting at 2.00) -and he seems to be the ‘understands more than he can speak’ type. He definitely can speak more than a little German and hold a solid conversation, but he struggles with finding the right words sometimes. That’s obviously not a problem when you have a script but it also explains while he seems as little…stiff with his pronunciation and phrasing sometimes and why he misses some mistakes in the script.

To answer your actual question – I said that Fassbender’s German is not as good as in First Class Inglorious Basterds, but he actually does a solid job. You can tell that he knows what the words coming out of his mouth actually mean. Which is rare when English-speakers play Germans. Not so rarely, we have to turn on the subtitles to figure out what’s going on. And yeah, we’re not the only one with that problem. So I’m really nit-picking here. His acting is fine, you understand him and he doesn’t do the thing where an actor makes an effort to ‘sound German’ by hissing and snarling and making weird guttural sounds.

Especially “Was hat Sie nach Argentinen verschlagen” und “Meine Eltern kamen aus Düsseldorf” almost sound native, although he does struggle with the “e”s a little (he either pronounces it too much or too little like an ä and honestly, I feel like a horrible person for faulting him for that bc it’s really the line between a perfectly fluent C2 German speaker and a native speaker to get something like that right. It’s really instinctive and not…a mistake, it’s just a very subtle difference and honestly, I do the same thing when I speak English.  

Another thing that English-speakers in particular struggle Is the German “r” (one good example of him getting it right is in Alien: Covenant in the final scene when he asks the computer to play “Das Rheingold” by Wagner) but here, we can tell he doesn’t quite roll it the way it’s supposed to when he says: “Was würden Sie gerne zuerst verlieren.” Which is a lot of r-s to be fair.

Now, for me one of the biggest issues is when he says his parents had his names taken away from them (….) “pig farmers”! And “tailors”! – because the preposition in the middle is missing, changing the entire impact of the comment depending on which preposition you mentally insert into that line.

What he says is: “Ihre Namen wurden ihnen weggenommen” *clinks glasses* “Schweinebauern! Und Schneidern!” – “Their names were taken away from them. Pig farmers and tailors.”

And yeah, there should be a preposition between that. It should either be:

“Ihre Namen wurden ihnen weggenommen – von Schweinebauern und Schneidern” – their names were taken by farmers and tailors” or –

“Sie hatten keine Namen. Ihre Namen wurden ihnen weggenommen. *clinks glasses* Auf Schweinebauer und Schneider!” - “Their names were taken away from them. (clinks glasses)(here’s TO) pig farmers and tailors.” – which would from Erik’s perspective be a really sarcastic way and cynical way of saying  “you false cowards are a dime a dozen and I know your type and I hold you responsible” while at the same time keeping them guessing about who he is and what he is about to do until he finally reveals the tattoo on his arm. So yeah, what he says is definitely wrong but also…you can’t just set it right in your head because…you don’t know what he is supposed to be saying. (according to the subtitles it’s supposed to be “von/by” which also fits that he’s using the genitive case instead of the nominative, but honestly, I would prefer ‘auf/to’ because that would be darker, sharper and wittier and really has that very peculiar sense of sarcasm that people associate with Magneto.)

In short – he really does a good job. He couldn’t trick anyone into believing that he’s a native German speaker, but I saw people comment that in the bank scene his French is better than that of the guy who plays the banker and that while he has a strong accent while speaking Polish, he still puts in a good effort so I’m going to commend him for consistently doing his best. It’s just weird that he…starts speaking English at the end of the scene which honestly. Doesn’t make any fucking sense whatsoever. Like imagine you’re speaking to some guy and you’re both English native speakers and there’s a Spanish guy in the room too and suddenly he starts speaking…Italian? That would be weird. But the scene is fine and the accent doesn’t really distract you from the gravity of the scene (like it does in that flashback scene in the beginning). Honestly, I’m probably not going to see the day they cast a Jewish German actor for the role of Magneto (and honestly, I give the first part priority over the German-thing because you can simply have actors speak English and pretend it’s German) but I also prefer having him speak German over speaking English WHEN IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO SPEAK ENGLISH. Imagine if they had kept the entire film in English. They would have avoided the weird accents in French, German and Russian AND I wouldn’t have had to wonder for the rest of the franchise why Magneto is speaking English in a particular situation. Why is speaking English to Schmidt? Why is Frankenstein’s monster IN ENGLISH? Why is he speaking English to his Polish daughter? Why is he speaking English to his Polish coworkers who are …. Factory workers in cold war Poland. He’s speaking English to god too. I know it’s to make these scenes more dramatic but at least be consistent. So yeah for me it's an either or situation in the greater context but the scene itself is good.

[itsclydebitches]

Prompt: since the show lacks actual communication, can we have some funny miscommunication that turns serious? Or starts off serious and deters into two old men being mushy with each other?

Hello, friends! Writing has sadly gotten hard lately. Particularly RWBY writing. And I kinda... didn’t fulfill this prompt? But in all honesty I’m counting anything on paper to be a win right now I’m so sorry, anon 😓

Updated prompt list is here. 

“You don’t honestly expect me to believe that.”

“I confess I’m not sure why you wouldn’t.”

Ozpin had a patented look for every possible situation. His Kindly Headmaster expression was the most common worn around Beacon, adopted for all the students who felt like they were drowning under their newfound life and responsibilities. There was the Unflappable Leader for when the inner circle was getting antsy, picture-perfect poise that never failed to loosen Glynda’s shoulders, even when she knew it was bullshit. Ozpin even had a Scheming Politician look he merged with a more generic Potential Ally for every official function, convincing the smarmy men around him that he was one of their own. There wasn’t a scenario under the sun that Ozpin didn’t have a mask and a ten-page action plan for. It was, at times, as impressive as it was disheartening.

Glynda liked to think of his current expression as a simple, Who Me? helped along by him nonchalantly moving to check the time. It looked as if he’d forgotten his pocket watch though; the master down one tool.

She leaned across the table they shared, bypassing coffee, sugar bowl, plates with muffin crumbs to tap her nails against the metal. “You and Qrow are just friends? Really?”

Ozpin hummed, deep in the back of his throat. He picked up his own cup, shooing at Glynda’s fingers like they were an errant, unwanted fly. “Have I ever given you any reason to doubt my word?”

“Plenty.”

His lips thinned, evidence of a smile. “Let me rephrase: Have I ever given you reason to doubt my word when it comes to my personal life?”

“Humph.” With a scowl Glynda sat back, pretending to survey the view in order to give herself time to think. Not that she needed it. Ozpin held enough secrets that he preferred to keep as many direct lies out of his mouth as possible, a byproduct of his unique position that Glynda knew, thanks to a decades-long friendship and a particular knack for opening men up, rested heavy on Ozpin’s soul. So yeah. He was more likely to flat out avoid answering questions about himself or his past. Whatever you managed to get? That was the truth.

Just good luck dragging it out of him. Like now. 

The view was spectacular though. And her long-finished muffin divine. The Fall semester was always an exhausting one, breaking in first years and dealing with all the crises that ultimately heralded the new year. This little cafe was a gem that did much to soothe Glynda’s nerves. With a focus on quality over elegance, it was a simple setup that took up the balcony of a three story apartment complex, overlooking Vale’s water. You had to climb an old, winding staircase to reach the establishment and all payments were routed to “tabs” that, as far as Glynda had seen, were never actually paid off. It was the sort of place that didn’t show up in any guidebook and whose existence was carefully passed from one chosen individual to another. Despite the fact that all diners were in full view above the street, no one ventured up without an invitation. You just knew. Or if you didn’t you learned quick.

It didn’t surprised Glynda in the least that Ozpin had garnered such an invitation for himself. Who knew how long ago that had been.

“I know you twist words,” Glynda said, twisting her own mouth in a parody to take some of the sting out. After all, she’d been known to do the same. You didn’t live their lives without utilizing the art of the synonym; an ambiguously crafted sentence or well-placed assumption. “For all I know you’re choosing to be entirely honest here about the ‘friend’ portion. You two are, in fact, friends… and that ‘just’ is easily overlooked.”

“Or hardly understood. Very ambiguous,” Ozpin agreed, smiling around his mug. “Your definition of ‘more than friends’ could be quite different than mine. After all, Qrow is family. One of my most trusted allies. A man I would give my life for. Surely that means more than simple friendship?”

“Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse.” Glynda’s own coffee was long gone, a rare indulgence that Ozpin had known she was in need of after such a harrowing week. She disliked not having something to do with her hands though, so Glynda snatched the mug straight out of Ozpin’s. His expression was worth it, even if the overly sweetened cocoa was not.

He wagged a finger at her. “Rude. On both accounts. You must keep in mind that I am quite old, Glynda. Language changes so quickly and you can’t possibly expect me to keep up with—”

“Oh stuff it. Now you’re just trying to piss me off.”

“Why, Glynda! Never.”

Ozpin’s smile told a different story though. For the second time that day he reached for his pocket watch, only this was obviously an attempt to ruffle her further. On any other occasion he would have made a show of reading the time, waiting for her to snipe about how he clearly had somewhere better to be. Ozpin would reassure her no, in as exaggeratedly false a tone as he could muster, and Glynda would segue into pointed questions about how he was never in this kind of hurry to complete Beacon’s paperwork. Their faux arguments were as much a development of those skills as they were pure, peaceful routine. However, finding his belt once again empty, Ozpin settled on stealing back his mug.

“You’re surprisingly nosy,” he said, aiming for an insult and failing once again. Nosy was what kept Beacon standing. “Why the sudden interest in my love life?”

Glynda snorted. “Nothing sudden about it.”

“Hmm. True enough. Why the incessant interest then?”

“I just like to keep my eyes and ears open…”

The look Ozpin cast her was withering. It was a phrase he himself had used on numerous occasions, along with ‘Keeping tabs’ and ‘Preparing for all eventualities.’ Glynda never had a hope of beating this man at chess, but this was, perhaps, the next best thing.

“Witch,” he muttered, another laden word between them. Glynda smiled sharp.

“You can’t be the only one to have fun around here,” she said, standing and depositing a useless stack of lien on the table. It would appear back in her pocket sometime today, unnoticed. “Besides, you’re my friend.”

“Funny how that’s the case and yet no one assumes we’re sleeping together.”

“Please. Everyone assumes that.”

Watching Ozpin choke on liquified sugar was a glorious sight. Glynda used the moment to move closer, hand resting on his shoulder… before trailing down to his hip.

“I only bring it up, Oz, because if you’d actually been sleeping in your own room you would have found your pocket watch hidden under your pillow. It’s been there three nights now. You’re not the only one capable of moving about unnoticed. Perhaps you and Qrow can pick it up together?”

This time Glynda didn’t bother looking at his expression. It couldn’t be any better than what she was already picturing in her mind.

However, the strangled sounds of this frustrating man losing all dignity? She’d happily carry that sound to the grave.

[iliketowrite1996]

Suits and Secret Moments part 5

TRIGGER WARNING- HEARTACHE, MENTIONS OF CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS, BREAK UPS, INSECURTIEIES, MENTIONS OF ILLNESSES, MENTIONS OF ABANDONMENT

again, thanks to @wakanda-inspired, @chaneajoyyy and @syreanne for helping me, and letting me bounce idea off of them!

Also  I’ve never written a  story like this but I am trying new things, so thanks for all who read it. Feedback is welcome, just imbox me  constructive criticism!

     T’Challa

All that glitters is not gold. It’s a saying he’s heard a million times in the past, but one that he didn’t fully understand until the events of the last month transpired.

Because he loves Nakia. He truly does.

They’ve been dating for… a month and a half? Two months? He’s not really sure.

Anyway, he loves this woman. She is smart and funny and kind and sultry and beautiful. Basically, she’s his ideal type. He won’t lie and say that he didn't’ see the same qualities in you, but he saw them in Nakia first. He used to be in love with her and she used to be in love with him.

Check that.

Used to.

Past tense.

Not anymore.

Because he is not the same person that he was before college and neither is she. The woman that he’s currently holding in his laps and pressing kisses to the beck of is not the same woman who broke hi heart when he was seventeen years old. She’s lived and experienced things and traveled and she has a different idea of what love is now. T’Challa found his comfort in other women, she found ehrs in other places.

This is where they differ- she prefers new places to appease her wanderlust.

He prefers new people to ease his mind and aches.

Not better or worse, just different.

. She’s no longer content with hand holding and quick kisses.

She wants commitment and trust and things that T’Challa never thought he could give to any other woman after they broke up.

‘’What’s wrong,’’ Nakias pulls back, shifting so she’s facing him, ‘’You seem distracted.’’

   The glow from the fireplace bashes her dark features in warm light, and T‘Challa feels his stomach drop all over again.

   Are these those butterflies gian?

   Or something else?

   ‘’Nothing, everything is fine.’’

   He doesn't give her time to question him further, instead bringing her full lips back to his own and delighting in the small moan that escapes her mouth at the contact.

   They both grew up and he knows that . They have to let go of what they remember about each other form the past and embrace who they both are in the present. For Nakia, he will. He will change and bend, push and pull, give and take. He’ll become the man she wants, the man he couldn’t be for you. And he won’t tell you that burns something inside of him, just like it did for you.

   Where yours was jealousy, his was an emotion he couldn’t quite figure out.

   ‘’You don’t know what you have until you let it go’’.

   T’Challa has heard this phrase a million times.

   But the upcoming events will let him the true meaning of the words, spearing nothing in making him learn a life lesson.

‘’Girl, how?’’

       ‘’I slept with him, Deena. That’s how.’’

       Your best friend since college glares at you, brown eyes focusing on you as she kisses her teeth in irritation, ‘’You slept with your boss. I know I’ve asked this before, but: How? Why? When?’’

       ‘’We snuck around, because he’s hot and I am too, and a lot. In that order.’’

       ‘’Now you got a whole bun in the oven,’’ ehs looks at your stomach, where the baby you just found out about yesterday is growing.

   ‘’If you came to say that you told me so, please leave,’’ your voice cracks as you look away, the lines in the wallpaper of her apartment suddenly becoming more interesting.

   ‘’Hey. I wouldn't do that to you,’’ Deena reminds you, ‘’I just… how are you feeling?’’

   ‘’Tired. Nervous. Dumb,’’ you roll your eyes, ‘’I actually thought he cared about me.’’    

   And maybe he truthfully did, at a point. But you’re not Nakia, and you could never be Nakia.

   That sends another wave of nausea through you, and you try your best to blink back the tears.

   ‘’If he had just told me,’’ your voice cracks, revealing true sorrow, ‘’That he was moving on, I would’ve been fine. I’m more hurt that he lied to me.’’

   He cared about you, as in he didn’t want to see you hurt. Or, like, s you thought. But he still never had feelings for you. Not if he was going to do this to you.

   You messed around and caught up with him, and he hurt you. Just like Deena said he would, just like you denied so many times before.

   ‘’So…,’’ Deena clears her throat, tossing her curls over her shoulder, ‘’What are you going to to do?’’

   ‘’Go to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow,’’ you shrug, monotone voice matching the way that you currently feel.

   You have a doctor’s appointment at noon tomorrow, to either confirm or deny the answer that the test gave to you.

   ‘’No, I mean…,’’ she gestures with her hands, trying to find the right words, as if she can pull them out of thin air, ‘’What about the baby?’’

   Your mind is reeling. There may actually be a real baby growing inside of you. You don’t even know how far along you may be, and that complicates things even more. Because is the baby T’Challa’s? Is it this new guy’s?

   And how will you tell whoever it is?

   ‘’Hey,’’ Deena waves her hand in front of your face, the flash of cinnamon colored skin bring you back to the real world, ‘’You okay?’’

   You shrug, ‘’I don’t know what I’m going t do, Deena. But, let’s just wait and see what the doctor says. For all I know, that could’ve just been a false positive.’’

   It turns out to be positive. You sit on that for three weeks, feeling that if you don’t speak it out loud, it will somehow all turn out to be a dream, something that i can wake up from.

   But this maybe is as real as your stomach that will soon be growing. And based on how far along you are, you know exactly who the dad of the is.

You have a pretty good idea, but can’t confirm or deny anything until later appointments.

   You’ve been avoiding him for three weeks now, and he’s fed up.

   So when T’Challa stops by your office, tapping on the glass door and addressing you by your surname, you feel a fresh wave of nausea crashing through your stomach and another fine layer of sweat forming on your skin, ‘’Can I speak with you for a moment.’’

   ‘’Of course,’’ you speak, swallowing thickly and feeling like sand dust is in your mouth, ‘’What can I help you with?’’

   T’Challa closes the door behind him, and you feel little fires popping up all over your skin as e strolls closer, grey suit fitting him just perfectly.

   You can’t read the flood of emotions filling his eyes- anger, sadness, and… is that desire?

   Or are you reading too far into this?

   ‘’I have noticed that you haven’t really… looked at me lately,’’ he says slowly, choosing his words carefully, ‘’Not that I blame you. But… I believe we need to talk.’’

   ‘’So go ahead and talk,’’ you drop the professional act, leaning back in your black chair and folding your arms over your chest.

   ‘’Tell me what I can to fix it,’’ he replies, stuffing his hand in his pockets and rocking backwards on his heels.

   He’s nervous.

   ‘’There’s really nothing you can do,’’ you reply simply, ‘’The damage is done, T’Challa.’’

   Because what’s the point in sugar coating this?

   ‘’I know. But… we could still be friends, right?’’

   You’re not sure if you’re more offended by that suggestion, or the fact that he is one hundred percent serious when he asks you about it.

   ‘’We have never been friends, T’Challa,’’ you state cooly, ‘’Even when we were fooling around, we weren’t friends. I can’t ever will be your friend now. I don't trust you.’’

   ‘’Because I got into a serious relationship with woman that isn’t you,’’ he quirked an eyebrow.

   ‘’Because you're a liar and I new it. Because all you do is mess around and i thought I was different. But it’s fine. It’s cool,’’you stand, grabbing your coat,’’Now, I’m going for my lunch break. Is there anything else that you need, Me. Udaku, or may I take my lunch break?’’

   He presses his lips into a firm line before releasing, letting his plump lips that i used to spend hour just tasting show, ‘’No. I think we’re done here.’

   Done with the conversation.

   And done with each other.

   That doble meaning is heavily implied in his deep voice, and the tension in the room is nearly tangible. It couldn't even be cut with a knife it is so thick. So you bundle your coat up, pullin on your hat and scarf before grabbing your bag and exiting your office, leaving T’Challa standing there with a perplexing mixture of emotions swirling up inside of him

   ‘’Hey,’’ you look over to see who disrupted your thoughts as you make your way outside the cold, New York WInd still warmer than your feelings towards T’Challa.

   And lo and behold, who is standing there? The man you’ve been avoiding to the past three weeks. The one you’ve been afraid to tell about the pregnancy, the one who has begged you to commit.

   Here’s something you know: his past was once like T’Challa. Different girl every night. No real relationships. Casual flings and one night stands where his only interactions, nothing romantic on the horizon for this bachelor.

   But he had change of heart after graduating college. He ended up having a child, a beautiful little boy, with the woman who he fell in love with.

   Said woman ditched him.

   Thus, he got a taste of his own medicine, and decide she didn’t like the feeling every much. While you’re usually wary about the way people change, he seems to really have. It’s why you gave him a chance. It’s why you strongly considered committing him.

   Well, until a certain pregnancy test proved what you kind of knew all along.

   ‘’Him,’’ you speak out, turning to face him completely, ‘’What… what are you doing here?’’

   ‘’I came to visit someone, but I’m glad I get to see you. You’ve been avoiding me. I just… if I did some stupid crap that hurt you or something, I wanna know. I waa fix it.’’

   ‘’You can’t,’’ you shake your head, ‘’I just… I’ve been dealing with sme stuff. Didn't wanna bring you into it.’’

   ‘’Hey,’’ he says softly, a stark contrast form his rough demeanor, ‘’I ain’t gonna just bow it. We haven’t known each other for long, but I’ve got real feelings for you. Tell me what’s going on. Plese. I can help you with it.’’

   Maybe it’s the fact that you've been keeping such a huge secret between Deena, your doctor and yourself for nearly a month now.

   Maybe it’s that he’s a ray of sunshine on this cold, blustery fall day.

   Maybe it’s that you’re tired of holding back and want to be honest with him, the way that he is.

   ‘’I’m pregnant,’’ you say, blinking up at the sky as levels continue to fall down around you, the right color a stark contrast from the tone of this conversation, ‘’And I’m not sure if the dad is you or that guy I was seeing before you.’’

   He knows you were seeing someone. He doesn’t need to know that you had a very… vibrant and active love affair with the freaking CEO of the company you work for.

   ‘’I see,’’ he nods.

   That’s it.

   No further elaboration.

   ‘’Well,’’ you begin to turn, ‘’I’ve only got fifteen minutes left on my lunch break. So, if you’ll excuse me.’’

   ‘’I mean,’’ he takes your hand, something that you can tell is still foreign to him on the way he does it,

   Where T’Challa was familiar with intimacy and affection but tried to act like he wasn’t, this man is used to the opposite. He’s getting used to affectionate glances and warm touches from a lover, removing traces of flings and hookups from his mind because he feels that’s the best way for him to do so.

   ‘’If it is my baby… I’m goanna step up. It take care of Darion, you know. I’d… I take care of this baby. And you, too. If we ever get there.’’

   He’s a good man. He really is. And while you still have to wait a while to figure out who the baby belongs to…

   Why shouldn’t you give yourself a chance to move on? TO be with someone that tells you the truth, even when it’s hard?

   ‘’We got a lot to talk about, don’t we,’’ he laughs to try to lighten up the mood.

   And it works.

   Just a bit.

   But it does.

   ‘’Yeah. Erik Stevens, we definitely have a lot to talk about.’’

So… yeah. Switched Erik and T’Challa’s personalities a bit.

Sorry! It was an idea and this may not be good but I had to run with it and try something new.

DISCLAIMER-I OWN NO MARVEL CHARACTERS OR THEIR FICTIONAL WORLDS.

@ashanti-notthesinger​ @destinio1​ @afraiddreamingandloving​ @starsshines-blog​ @airis-paris14​ @syreanne​ @chaneajoyyy​ @90sinspiredgirl​ @shemiahsmelanin @zillmonger @skysynclair19 @bidibidibombaclaat @marvelpotterlove

[eldritchsurveys]

874.

5k Survey II

51. Make up a definition for the following silly words… Fruitgoogle: Not really into these kinds of games. Ambytime: Asscactus: 52. What was the last thing you made with your own hands? >> I think the last craft I did was knitting. I didn’t make anything complete, though. 53. What was your favorite toy as a child? >> A Macintosh Performa. 54. How many TV’s are in your house? >> One. 55. What is your favorite thing to do outside? >> Sit in a hammock chair with a beverage and do crosswords or read.

56. How do you feel when you see a rainbow? >> I don’t feel anything. But I did see an extremely bright cinema-quality rainbow a few weeks ago and I have to admit that was something else.

57. Have you ever dreamt a dream that came true? >> Nah. None of my dreams operate by the rules of consensus reality well enough for them to happen here. 58. Have you ever been to a psychic/tarot reader? >> No. I can read my own cards, thanks. 59. What is your idea of paradise? >> I don’t have a concept for this. 60. Do you believe in god and if so what is he/she/it like? >> I’m sure the god being implied by this question exists for someone (a lot of someones, I’d gather). I’ve just never met him, and I’m not entirely sure we’d get along, if the various things that humans have said about him are at all true. 61. Do you believe in Hell? >> See, that’s one of the concepts that I just can’t jive with. The idea that some god wants all of humanity to believe that 1) their consciousness is somehow persistent for eternity and 2) he’s going to leave them in a fiery pit (imagery may vary) for that eternity if they don’t do what he says? That pisses me off. And if that god somehow doesn’t want people to believe that, then he’d better use that divine influence and do something about all these false prophets, huh. :| 62. What one thing have you done that most people haven’t? >> I don’t know what defines “most people”, but I guess I could gather that most people haven’t changed their legal name three times. (I like telling people that because for some reason, people do treat name-changing as like... this very Dramatic and Serious thing, when really, it’s mostly just annoying paperwork, one court appearance, and then more paperwork. But no one bats as much of an eyelash as you’re afraid they will. It’s fine. Go ahead and try it. You might like it.) 63. What is the kindest thing you have ever done? >> Who the fuck knows. 64. Are you a patient person? >> I have the capacity to be patient. Whether that capacity is always realised or not depends on a lot of factors. 65. What holiday should exist but doesn’t? >> Way too many holidays exist as it is. 66. What holiday shouldn’t exist but does? >> I think those random presidential “holidays” in the beginning of the year can go. They’re just flimsy excuses to have days off. 67. What’s the best joke you ever heard? >> *shrug* 68. Where is the most fun place you have EVER been? >> *shrug* 69. Is your hair natural or dyed? >> My hair is not dyed. 70. Do you have any deep dark secrets or are you pretty much up front? >> I don’t have any deep, dark secrets, but I’m also variable about how much I share about myself and where/when. 71. What is under your bed right now? >> Nothing. 72. If you were in the Land of Oz would you want to live there or go home? >> I’d want to go home. I don’t find the Land of Oz all that interesting, and plus, my life is here. 73. If you drive do you frequently speed? >> I don’t drive. 74. What is the world’s best song to dance to? >> There are a lot of songs that are good to dance to. I hate superlative questions and I have a feeling there’s going to be a metric ton of them in this survey. 75. What song was on the last time you danced with someone? >> --- 76. Do you prefer Disney or Warner Brothers? >> I don’t have a preference between media conglomerates. 77. What is the first animal you would run to see if you went to the zoo? >> I just take the logical route through the park. 78. Would you consider yourself to be romantic? >> No. Romantic with a capital R sometimes, but not... romantic. 79. If the earth stopped rotating would we all fly off? >> Heh. 80. What is the one thing that you love to do so much that you would make sacrifices to be able to do it? >> I’m not sure. 81. If you (and everyone) had to lose one right or freedom, but you could pick which one everyone had to lose, what would you pick? >> Oh, fuck no, what the fuck? 82. If you had to choose would you live on the equator or at the North Pole? >> Probably closer to the equator. I have no interest in any of the lands near the North Pole (except maybe a passing one, enough for a visit but not enough to emigrate), but I have a lot of interest in places that are near the middle of the planet. 83. Would you rather give up listening to music or watching television? >> Fuck off. 84. What do you think makes someone a hero? >> I don’t have a personal definition for “hero”. Literally the only time I use this word is when I’m talking about a video game protagonist -- the “Hero of Ferelden”, for example. Otherwise, it means nothing to me. 85. What cartoon would you like to be a character in? >> --- 86. Name one thing that turns your stomach: >> Thinking about the dishwasher food trap. 87. What was the last thing you paid for? >> Uh... groceries, I think. 88. Are you a coupon clipper? >> Not especially, but if presented with some I’ll use them. 89. Get anything good in the mail recently? >> Yeah, my order from an Etsy seller finally came recently. It came from Sweden and the delay was intense. 90. Which would you rather take as a gym class…dancing, sailing, karate, or bowling? >> Dancing. 91. In Star Trek people ‘beam’ back and forth between different places. What this means is they stand in a little tube and their molecules are deconstructed and sent to another tube somewhere else where they are reassembled. Only problem is when the molecules are deconstructed the person is dead. When they are put back together it is only a clone that has all the dead person’s memories. So… Is the person who gets beamed the same person on both ends? >> Socially, yes. Physically, probably not. But does it really matter, in the end? It’s the same thing with us when we aren’t being teleported places -- our cells are always dying and being replaced. We’re all just ships of Theseus at the end of the day, pretending to be constant and enduring. (It is a fun thought experiment, though.) 92. What insects are you afraid of? >> The kind that sting, mainly. Also, cockroaches in all their variety, unless they’re outdoors or in a tank. (The outdoors rule goes out the window when the roach hits a certain size, though... but at least I can avoid it better in an open space.) 93. If you could print any phrase on a T-shirt, what would it say? >> I did that once, at one of those mall kiosks. The shirt said “where is John Galt?” I have no idea what I’d put on a shirt now, though. 94. What’s the most eccentric thing you have ever worn? >> I dunno, a wizard robe or something. 95. If you could pick one food that you could eat all you wanted but it would have no effect on how much you weigh, what food would it be? >> I don’t really care about this. 96. What are your parents interested in? >> --- 97. Have you ever caught an insect and kept it as a pet? >> No. Have you ever caught and tamed a wild animal? >> No. 98. What is more helpful to you, wishes or plans? >> Plans, obviously. 99. When do you feel your life energy the strongest? >> I don’t know what this means. 100. You are spending the night alone in the woods and may bring only 3 items with you. What do you bring? >> Is there any logical way to answer this question except with the obvious “things needed to survive a night in the woods” objects...

[hannahswanviscom]

A facebook account of infertility

https://www.herfamily.ie/pregnancy/couples-heartbreaking-infertility-story-made-us-cry-243738

“Do you have a minute? I’ve got kind of a long story.

Leah and I have been trying to get pregnant for over 3 years. I’m not sure when, exactly, we stopped the birth control. Like all our plans, we didn’t start with a plan, but instead decided that if we got pregnant, that would be great.

And then we didn’t get pregnant.

I mean, look, when you’re in your twenties, it feels like you can’t look at someone else without getting pregnant. We’ve all heard about someone who got pregnant through 2 condoms, spermicidal lubricant, and an IUD. Right? But we didn’t get pregnant. No big deal.

We’re in our 30s. Things are probably a little bit dusty, and a little bit rusty. So, three years ago, we started using apps and calendars to track this and that. Ovulation test sticks. Old wives’ tales of positions and timing. We got some late periods. And some periods that never came!

But we didn’t get pregnant.”

So, off to the doctor we went. His and hers appointments for collections of blood and semen and measuring parts and such. Medical science being what it is, we got the answer to all our problems: ‘You’re fine, and there shouldn’t be a problem.’

Do doctors ever tell anybody, ‘This is what is wrong, and this is how to fix it,’ and then give them pills, and they’re fine? This is not my experience.

We didn’t get pregnant.

So then came the hormones for Leah. Along with those hormones came the realization that little-to-none of this would be covered by insurance, and that the coverage rate would go down as we went deeper into the process. See, insurance companies look at getting pregnant a lot like getting sick. Why, they can’t imagine, would you try to get sick? Well, f**k you, insurance companies. That’s why.

But we didn’t get pregnant.

So maybe we’re bad at timing, or something, or god knows. Usually that’s fine, but we are in our late 30s, and clocks are ticking. The doctor told us that certain hormone levels were low, lower than they should have been, and that meant our egg supply was dwindling.”

Let me tell you something. There is nothing you can tell a woman that will make her feel more young, beautiful and vibrant than, ‘You have a dwindling egg supply, and it is time to pick up the pace.’  You should try it. Maybe at a bar.

And that was when we began IUI, intrauterine insemination. IUI is – colloquially – the turkey baster method. When they told us about it, I tried to really hear what the doctor was saying, but all I could hear echoing around the room, off of the oyster-y pearlescent floors and the alien-vagina wallpaper, was ‘dwindling.’

For Leah, we eventually figured out, this meant a regimen of hormone boosters to facilitate egg production. Are you aware of what happens to people when their hormones go out of the norm? They are not happy. Unless they are happy, in which case, they are very happy. There is no mild. There is no average day. Her job was to feel like her brain and soul were on fire.

My job was to try and not say anything dumb, because she also needed to be calm. I tried to avoid triggering phrases like ‘Hey,’ or ‘Good morning,’ or ‘I love you,’ but I kept f**king up, and opening my mouth, or allowing Leah to see TV programs, or commercials, to read books, and interact with the world in any way.”

“The best was when someone would ask her when we were going to have kids. That was just the best.

Then, after one or two ultrasounds to make sure eggs were there, and in their right places on their little follicles, I would give my needle-phobic wife a shot in her thigh to set ovulation in process. She says she’s not so much afraid of needles as she is afraid of being stuck by me with a needle, but same difference, right?

Over time, I developed a method where she would look away, close her eyes and cry, while crushing all the bones in my left hand, and I would count to three, and inject her with my right. I wouldn’t inject her on three. I tried to pick a random time. She usually didn’t even feel it.

After all that romance, you would think that abstaining from sex for a few days would be hard, but you would be wrong. You might also think we should be having massive amounts of sex, but it turns out that you have to let your seminal stash build up for a few days before collection.”

“Over the last couple years, I became pretty professional about my sperm deposits. My first one was a few paragraphs up, for testing. Man, is it ever weird. You can do it at home if you want, but then you are under a clock to get your sample to the lab on time. I don’t need that kind of stress.

I don’t talk about it much, but I like to think I’m pretty good at taking care of business in the art of sperm production, but I had never entered a room designed specifically for masturbation, while people waited outside, hoping my masturbation went okay. Perhaps that is what Eddie Murphy’s life was like in Coming to America, but I was less familiar with it.

The room was like a combination of a hotel room and an office. It had a big picture of The Ohio State University football stadium, filled with fans, on the wall over a small vinyl sofa. There was a neatly folded sheet, fresh and crisp, hanging on the far armrest. A clock radio on the side table, tuned to local political talk radio, sputtering away beneath a low-lit lamp, was paired with a little wooden cube that had one tiny drawer, specifically made for storing your collection cup.

Under the table were four or five magazines that I didn’t really want to touch. Usually two Playboys, a Penthouse, and a Swimsuit Issue. Across from the couch was a TV/DVD combo with a DVD preloaded. I didn’t want to touch the remote either, really. It sat on a wicker chest.

Wicker struck me as the worst possible material for a room designed for male masturbation. Everybody’s aiming for the cup, I know, but I also know there have been enough accidents in that office that it required a laminated sign about what to do in case of an accident.”

“The first step, in case of an accident, is to not try to hide it by scraping your mess into the cup. Big no-no. This makes your sample corrupt, which may mean that your partner could end up being impregnated by carpet fibers if I understand correctly, but it is also unsanitary.

The second step is to tell the front desk staff that you had an accident, which seems horrific. The people who work at the lab are people who, by my calculations, deal with upwards of 80 men per day who have just masturbated, or are about to, and their sperm. Sure. They are professional.

But, still, everyone is a little bit tittery, a little bit anxious. We all know that this is all very silly, and that I just touched my penis, and you are someone’s grandmother, and that even though you have a pin in the shape of a little sperm fella to help break the tension, we all – if we really had the choice – would probably prefer to burst into flames than discuss any part of this, let alone the fact that someone missed. Whoops!

The DVD would change over time, but still be of the same variety. Usually some kind of early 90s Eurotrash boat fantasies, or oily faux-lesbian scissorhands scenes, starring fingernails that made me very nervous. I would check every time I went in, and it was always awful. Everybody’s got their thing, I guess. My thing is that I am thankful for the Internet.

Oh. And you are supposed to go in dry if you can help it. Lubrication, as it turns out, can mess with the quality of the semen, which seems like a pretty big jerk move on the part of lubrication.

But, yeah, I’ve got my routine down.

When your sample has been washed and spun, or whatever it is they do with it, they put it in a paper bag that you carry over to the doctor’s office for the procedure. We long-timers can always tell the new couples. Their discomfort and optimism is cute. They smile and look around on their walk, hoping no one notices the bag they have pinched in their fingertips.

Me, I carry my paper bag like a sack lunch. The same turkey sandwich I’ve had every day for years. With hope, yes, but the skepticism of routine. The IUI itself is pretty quick, and from what I understand, painless, if not the normal amount of demeaning of going to an OB/GYN. You get one more ultrasound to make sure everything is in place, and then they pour the gravy all over the giblets.

Sorry. I know. I’m hung up on turkey metaphors.

And then we wait.”

“You’re warned against taking pregnancy tests because they measure hormone levels, and after taking all sorts of weird shit all month, you can trigger a false positive. So you wait. And there will be spotting. Is it spotting, or is her period starting? You don’t know. So you wait. And you wait. And you wait.

And sometimes her period comes, and you start over. Step one. And sometimes it doesn’t come. But the second line doesn’t appear, or the plus, or the whatever these tests do. So you wait. And it’s negative, but you hope, and you see your friends getting pregnant, and you get a little sad. But you get mad at yourself because you want to feel happy for other people, and that’s not fair to them. And then the 17-year-old across the street gets pregnant, and you get a little sadder. And your cousins get pregnant, and you get a little sadder.

And you see people scream at their kids, and beat them in Kroger, and you just want to die because you would give anything to have a child throwing a tantrum in the cereal aisle.

You don’t want to hate people. You don’t. I think babies are beautiful. I think kids are awesome, but you can’t help the jealousy. The envy. The resentment. It really creeps up on you. And you search for positive things. And you talk on end about your capital-O Options.”

“And then you see people on the internet post screeds about how dare anyone assume that they would want to have kids because not having kids is the best – which is fine, have at it or don’t have at it, I really don’t care – but we want to be procreating, and we want what you could have, but are choosing not to use.

And we want to tell you, but people don’t talk about it. Because you don’t want to talk about it.

Because you spend all day thinking about it, managing it. Trying not to cry. Trying to not turn into HI and Ed from Raising Arizona, stealing babies in the night.

And the doctors start talking about Next Steps, and the Next Steps are very expensive, so you try it one more time. And then, while you’re in Kansas on a road trip with a friend, your wife does the IUI with a frozen deposit you left behind.

And you get pregnant.”

“You go in for a blood test, two weeks later, and they tell you that you’re pregnant. And you cry. Big fat tears of relief. And then you freak out because, to be honest, you talked yourself out of real hope months and months ago, but now you have to get ready for a baby.

Some weeks later, you go in for an ultrasound, and there it is. I mean, yeah, it’s a tadpole with a giant head. There’s its brain, and there’s its heart fluttering away, and it’s so real.

And you relax.”

“We’re in our late thirties, which means that the chances are higher than average that a pregnancy won’t be viable, or there will be a chromosomal abnormality, or something along those lines. We spent a lot of time tiptoeing around that idea, but we talked about it. And about not getting too excited. You know, the higher you let your hopes up, the further they have to fall. But they told us to relax. Everything looked great and we were on track, so when we went in for one final scan before being released to our obstetrician a couple weeks later, we were all smiles and jokes.

‘I’m so sorry. I can’t find the heartbeat.’ …

And then you’re not pregnant.”

“I’ve felt time stop before. Car accidents, falling off a fence, a mountain bike jump gone wrong. I have not felt the vertigo of infinity like when we were told our baby was dead. I’m logical. I understand science and biology. I know it was a fetus, not a baby. But it was my baby. In my head, in my heart, I could already imagine being old as it grew into an adult and had its own children, and – woosh – it was all gone.

As I write this, the due date is a little over a week away, like a car accident on the road ahead that you’re trying not to look at, that you have to drive by. The world isn’t going to stop. We all get up and go to work. Because it happens. People lose babies all the time.

Miscarriage.

But no one talks about it. No one gets on Facebook and tells their friends. It’s specifically why you wait to tell anyone.

But then you have no one to tell. When a family member dies, you can share your grief. With a miscarriage, you would have to tell people that someone who will never be born, who they had never heard of and will never meet, but who meant the world to you, is gone. And you don’t have the strength to get into it. You tell your parents, maybe a close friend, maybe your boss. I was so stunned when it happened that I texted my boss that I wouldn’t be back that day, but that I’d be back the next, which really cracks me up now. I didn’t even get how I was about to be affected.

Leah was scheduled for a D&C, dilation and curettage, under general anesthesia at Christ Hospital right away, so she wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of slowly passing the fetal tissue over the course of a week. It wasn’t until they took her back that I let myself break down. Alone with my worst thoughts and the sour coffee of the waiting room for several hours. God, I have no idea how long. One more forever.

The people at the hospital were excellent. We got a lot of information about support groups that we never went to, but we should have. We just wanted to hide. I’m thankful for our families and our friends, who came to sit with us. Who brought Lea the things she needed, and let me get out of the house to walk around the neighborhood. I must have looked like a zombie.”

“It’s very difficult to think about, even now. I don’t think I’m doing a good job of describing it. I don’t want to dwell on it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t think it was until around the New Year that I went a day without crying about it.

But, you know, you pass the car accident and it’s in the rear view, getting further away, and sometimes you don’t even see it anymore. Maybe you’ve told yourself enough times that “at least we know we can get pregnant” and “this just means that something was wrong and it’s a good thing.” Maybe you even believe it.

Just to let you know how strong Leah is, she still made the Dean’s List that semester, and she was carrying 18 credit hours. I dropped out of college for the dumbest reasons in my time – once because I got mugged – but she persevered. Like Britney, bitch.

We started back at the fertility process too soon, in a dumb burst of optimism and courage, and the desire to move forward. The hormone treatments were too much for Leah. And the lack of success was too much for the both of us. So we stopped. Our doctor told me, privately, that we need to take care of ourselves, but that, if we want to have a baby, we either need to move forward now, or start discussing Next Steps.

Remember: Dwindling.”

“We tried a couple more times, one of which felt good – we thought we had it – and were told that if this one doesn’t take, that we would need to increase hormone treatments substantially and begin planning for options outside of IUI. In Vitro, surrogacy, or something else.

The doctor also told us, during one IUI, that while Donald Trump scares him, his wife loves Trump because of the Mexican wall thing. They are both immigrants. His problem with the wall was that it would be impossible to pay for it. I don’t know. Doctors tell you some crazy shit while they’re inseminating your wife.

Through this process, and through both of our lives, neither of us have ever had a home pregnancy test come out positive. Even when we were pregnant before, it was the doctor who did a test. This last one, Leah couldn’t bear to look at it herself, so I looked at it while she was in the shower, and told her no, that it was negative.

While she stood there, crying, I googled ‘pregnancy test faint line.’ As it turns out, even the faintest f**king line in the whole f**king world means you’re pregnant. So we’re pregnant.

We’re pregnant.”

“Not that we believed it at first, but we are. Three scans later, I’ve even heard the heartbeat, like a hummingbird, and it’s beautiful.

As I write this, tomorrow is our first obstetrician appointment, and we’re so nervous. So, so nervous. I wouldn’t dare to post this until we’re in the clear enough, and ready to tell people. Almost no one knows right now. We’re worried to jinx it, us, we, who don’t believe in jinxes. Mostly, we’re afraid of going back through the pain. To have to retract it, publicly, is too much to think about.

I know plenty of people have gone through more than us. We are comparatively very lucky. Some people have never gotten pregnant. Some people could not go as far as us. Some people have taken many Next Steps beyond where we were. Some have been successful, but many haven’t. I hesitate to share this because I don’t want anyone to read this and feel what we felt, watching others’ dreams come true. Some people have found out, or have guessed, and have been very kind to share their own stories with us, and it has helped tremendously to not feel alone. Many thanks to all of them. I hope that maybe this helps someone else feel less alone.

And I hope that everything goes well, and I can inundate you with pictures, starting in November. …

Everything went well. Arms and legs and moving around. We’re very excited, but I’ll be holding my breath for 26ish weeks. And it’s a girl. Not that gender matters! But we’re going to have a little girl! And I am stoked. We are stoked.

We are pregnant.”

[thequagmirenotebooks]

The Beleaguered Bank - Chapter Two

The expression “to be unable to get a word in edgewise” is a very useful one, and one of the few expressions that can still be understood if you take it literally. Unlike the expression “to let the cat out of the bag,” which means to let a secret slip but sounds as though you have just finished smuggling a cat through a particularly lax security checkpoint, “to be unable to get a word in edgewise” means that someone else is talking so much that you cannot find any space to interrupt them. Because words are, at most, two-dimensional, being written on paper or typed in ink, turning them edgewise would result in a very, very thin object, and a person would need to be talking a great deal for there to be no space in the conversation for the edge of a word.

As Mr. Hume led the Baudelaires upstairs, explaining what their lives would be like during their stay at the bank, none of the children could get a word in edgewise.

“I would like to give you three a relaxing place to live, but I may need your help around the bank every so often. As you can observe, we are shorthanded around here. When I first received a message that we were on the verge of losing our charter again, I didn’t believe it, of course, but the evidence has since become clear to me, and I’m sure to you children. I have been working here the longest, so I will not be laid off until our charter expires completely, but being the only remaining employee of the Twelfth First Bank of the City, it has been difficult to keep the entire bank running. When you are not helping me run the bank, though, you may do whatever you wish. I believe the bank is the safest place for you, because I can only keep an eye on you while you are inside, but if you really must go out into the city, let me know about it first so I can accompany you after banking hours. I don’t like leaving the bank very often, you see. I live in one of the rooms above the bank. You children are very lucky, by the way, because there will be several rooms available for you to choose from, so you may stay wherever you like best.”

The Baudelaires exchanged skeptical looks. They did not think of themselves as very lucky, or even remotely lucky, and the availability of rooms for them to choose from was not sufficient to change their terrible, terrible luck. If, on the other hand, Mr. Hume had told them they were very lucky because Count Olaf had been captured and put in prison forever, then they would be more inclined to believe him.

“And by the way, Mr. Poe has described your troubles with previous guardians to me. I must say, I would have a very hard time believing any of it if I hadn’t been following your story in The Daily Punctilio. But let me assure you, there is no need to worry about that dreadful man or his accomplices infiltrating this bank in disguise. Because I am the only employee of this bank, nobody but you three children and I has any reason to be inside at any point. Unless any intruders present me with evidence as to their identity, I will be forced to continue believing they are Count Olaf and his accomplices.”

“Mr. Hume,” Violet interjected, finally finding space to get a few words in edgewise, “what if Count Olaf shows up in disguise and gives you false evidence about his identity? Plenty of evidence can be faked or stolen.”

Mr. Hume turned around and smiled at the children. His very round face, with its very round cheeks, got even rounder when he smiled. “Well of course, you children know him better than I do, so I will certainly take your word as evidence, too.”

That answer, far more than the opportunity to choose from a variety of rooms, made the Baudelaires feel as though they might be rather lucky after all.

As Mr. Hume showed the children the tellers’ rooms above the bank, leading them up and down the little flights of stairs that led to each room, it became clear that, while they could choose any rooms they pleased, the choice hardly mattered - they were all exactly identical. Each room was located above one of the turrets in the points of the crown, and they all had one round, jewel-colored window, two skinny beds, two old desks, and four yellow stone walls. Even Mr. Hume’s room looked exactly the same, with the notable exception of the large pile of books.

At this point, it is necessary to discuss the concept of hyperbole. When an author, a poet, a journalist, a comedian, or an unusually precocious and cranky child uses hyperbole, they exaggerate the situation to the point where their description is humorous and no longer accurate. For example, if you dropped your ice cream cone and said, “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to anybody in the history of the entire world,” this would be hyperbole, because even if dropping your ice cream cone is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, other people have experienced devastating fires and salads made entirely of cilantro, both of which are much worse things. If, on the other hand, you were kidnapped by your enemies and presented with a cilantro salad and you said, “This is a little bit bad,” you would be under-exaggerating, a word which here means “the complete opposite of hyperbole.” When I write that Mr. Hume’s room contained a large pile of books, the words “large pile” represent an under-exaggeration, and you may find it helpful, when you come to these words, to put this book down and never pick it up again, so as to avoid the misery contained in the following chapters. However, if you persist in reading, you may also find it helpful to replace the words “large pile” with the words “towering mountain,” so as to correct this under-exaggeration.

In order to contain the large pile of books in his room, Mr. Hume had pushed both of the old desks together. Even so, the large pile was so heavy that the legs of the desks bent slightly under its weight. The large pile was stacked all the way to the ceiling, and even if the Baudelaires stood on tiptoe, they couldn’t see the titles of the books at the top. As they stood in awe of the large pile, several books on the edge of it slipped off and cascaded to the floor, where they joined a smaller, but still very large, pile of books.

“Ah, yes, my library,” Mr. Hume said, waving his hand at the large pile of books. “Or, well, I call it a library, although I have no shelving units or organizational system to speak of, and you children ought not to believe this is a proper library when there is evidence to the contrary right in front of you. Still, it is a lot of books on philosophy and epistemology, and you are welcome to read any of them at any time, provided I do not need your help in the bank while you are reading them.”

Not wanting to wait any longer to ask about the definition of an unfamiliar word, Klaus found space to get a word in edgewise. “Epistemology? What is that? I know anything with ‘ology’ at the end means ‘the study of,’ but-”

“Knowledge!” Mr. Hume crowed, apparently tired of letting Klaus get words in edgewise. “Which, I’m told, is power, although I don’t believe it myself. A great many people without any knowledge at all hold too much power these days, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Farfu,” Sunny said, and her siblings agreed with her. She meant to say, “Mr. Hume is right - Count Olaf has never read a book in his life, but he always seems to have power over us.”

As if he had not even heard Sunny, Mr. Hume continued talking. “I believe that concludes our tour, children, given that I have run out of rooms to show you. While my role as your guardian is only temporary, I hope you will enjoy your stay here. If nothing else, I believe you will be perfectly safe in my care. Now, it is getting late. Why don’t you take a few books and go choose your rooms? You can begin helping me in the bank tomorrow morning. Good night, Baudelaires.”

Mr. Hume shook their hands again - first Violet, then Klaus, then Sunny - as though they were meeting for the first time. Then, once Violet and Klaus had each chosen a book from the large pile, he shooed them out of his room and down the short flight of stairs back into the round hallway of the bank.

“We can hardly get a word in edgewise when he talks,” Klaus said once he was sure he and his siblings were out of earshot, a phrase which here means “far enough away from Mr. Hume’s room that they could talk about him without him overhearing them.” Generally, it is very impolite to talk about someone when you are out of earshot, but if you and your siblings were recently orphaned and are making sure your new guardian is suitable, impoliteness is easy to overlook.

“I know,” Violet said. “But at least he’s skeptical of everything if he doesn’t have evidence. Maybe he’ll see right through Count Olaf’s disguise if he shows up to try and steal our fortune.”

“Maybe Count Olaf won’t show up at all,” Klaus said.

“Aporia,” Sunny grumbled, and Violet and Klaus knew she meant something like “yeah, right, and maybe I don’t have teeth.”

“Sunny’s right,” Klaus said. “Count Olaf always shows up.”

“We can’t worry about that right now,” Violet said. She was not exactly telling the truth. The Baudelaires found it very easy to worry about Count Olaf at any time, because it seemed as though he could show up at any time. However, as the eldest of the three Baudelaires, Violet felt a duty to take care of her siblings, and she didn’t want them to worry about Count Olaf prematurely, a word which here means “before he showed up in a bizarre disguise to try to steal their fortune.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Klaus said. “We should go choose a room so we can do some reading before bed. I’m excited to learn about the study of knowledge.”

Although there were enough rooms for each Baudelaire to have their own, the children knew without saying it aloud that they would all prefer not to be alone.

“Roho?” Sunny asked.

Violet smiled. “I liked the room with the red window best, too.”

The children made their way around the hallway of the bank, searching for the stairs leading up to the room with the red window. When they finally found the appropriate stairs, Klaus made sure to note that they were across from a slot labeled Horticulturists’ Fees and a door labeled Safe Deposit Safe, so they would have an easier time finding their room again.

Before the fire that had claimed both the Baudelaire mansion and the Baudelaire parents, the children often passed their evenings reading together. Sometimes they would be in the library, although other times they would all sit together in the kitchen or Violet’s bedroom. Klaus and Violet would take turns reading to Sunny, or the three of them would discuss a difficult passage from a book, or they would spend the entire evening in companionable silence, reading and biting whatever they pleased. Some nights, their parents would join them, bringing their own books, and the entire Baudelaire family would enjoy a very pleasant evening enjoying the company of both books and each other.

Although the room with the red window was just like all the other rooms above the Twelfth First Bank of the City, when the Baudelaires climbed into bed and opened the books they had borrowed from Mr. Hume, it felt a little bit more like theirs. Violet and Klaus read quietly, and Sunny chewed contemplatively on the wooden headboard of the bed, which was pleasantly firm beneath her four sharp teeth, until the last evening light had faded and they had to turn on a lamp.

“Violet? Sunny?” Klaus said. “Did you know that King James VI of Scotland wrote about a character named Epistemon to discuss theories of knowledge?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Violet said. “That’s very interesting.”

“I thought so too.” Klaus paused. “Violet? Sunny? Mr. Hume said he believes we’ll be perfectly safe in his care. Do you think that’s true?”

Sunny stopped biting the headboard. “Nusa,” she said, which meant something like “I’m not sure, but he hardly believes anything, so there may be a good chance that he’s right.”

“Sunny’s right,” Violet said. “Mr. Hume doesn’t believe anything without evidence. If he believes he can keep us safe, he must be right. Even if he is only a temporary guardian, I’m sure we’ll be safe here.”

When she said this, Violet was again not exactly telling the truth. She wanted to keep her siblings from worrying prematurely, so she said “I’m sure we’ll be safe here.” However, if her siblings could have translated her words like they often did Sunny’s, what they would have heard was “Mr. Hume believes we’ll be perfectly safe here. But judging by our past guardians, he doesn’t have any evidence.”

[jamiededes]

“Poetry is at its basic level language at play. I try not to dictate the rules of that play.” gary lundy

gary’s style is an engaging cross between the spontaneity of artistic improvisation and a steady flow of interior monologue. His often fragmented word-play, draws us inescapably into his haunted world. His is singular voice that pulls us up by the heartstrings as he scrutinizes his life, his loves, and the ragged edges of longing. He is exquisitely open in his explorations of grief and vulnerability, facing the discordant notes head on. I think what impressed me most about gary’s writing is a virtuosity completely and refreshingly unpretentious and honest.  Recommended.

when voices detach themselves is the first of two chapbooks by gary lundy published by Is a Rose Press, which focuses on “poetry, experimental writing, hybrid, and more.”  when voices detach themselves was published in 2013 and the second, heartbreak elopes into a kind of forgiving was published in 2016. These are among several of gary’s published collections. The others are detailed in his bio, which closes this post.

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*****

when voices detach themselves, when I imagine I am listenting to their speakers sudden impact of invisibility, of having lost the way, even through insistence attempts to sidestep a bouncing young noise. can it be. that through thought i confirm my being. yet does it too proceed the thought. can it not outlast loss.

in another location two people unwinder their bodies from the previous nights encounter, move to opposites sides of the room.

INTERVIEW

JAMIE: I’m sure you’ve had many questions from your students, readers, and interviewers over the years. Is there any question about poetry in general and/or your poetry specifically that  you wish someone would ask and what would be your answer to that question?

GARY: In my experience people don’t tend to ask questions about poetry. Certainly many want to tell me what poetry can and can’t be. From the admonition that this or that word is overused and should be avoided, to “we have a moral obligation to protect the world from bad poetry.” This last one came after I refused to talk about those poets who didn’t inspire or compel, etc. From a well known poet who we had gathered to meet and greet, if you will.

I love poetry, even those pieces or books that don’t generate for me interest. I love language and words equally. Poetry is at its basic level language at play. I try not to dictate the rules of that play.

JAMIE: Your style is certainly engaging and rather singular, improvisational and fragmented like the voices about which you write in when voices detach themselves. Did it arrive one day in a flash or is it something that evolved and is perhaps still evolving? 

GARY: Thank you. For this particular book I returned to poems I’d written a few years earlier and then left behind. When I reintroduced myself to them i realized that in their fragmented way they fit together. So I listened and then the book was reallized.

My writing practice is pretty consistent in that I usually write every day. But I don’t begin with a sense of where the writing is going to go. That is, I have little interest in dictating where the words lead. Rather, I’ll jot something down, a fragment or phrase and then what’s on the page begins to dictate direction.

Naturally, when I first began to explore writing poetry I followed those dictates of teachers and peers. I worked to write the poem expected, the poem of rules. I also wrote specifically out of or from my life experiences. It was a good practice to be sure.

However, eventually I began to understand that such writing, for me of course, was more a group writing than writing as it came to me. My life did not seem to fit easily into the formulas I’d been encouraged to use. Perhaps because I hadn’t really begun to recognize my queer identity, but my world was not constructed within easy narrative or linear structure. Rather, it was filled with false starts, disconcerting interruptions, and a sense of loss and failure. I began to listen to that rather than any central sense of self. Naturally this is an ongoing and delightful adventure in discovering where the writing wants to go. 

JAMIE: You write about the discordant notes in life, the fears, the jolts that come out of nowhere, the losses, and the distancing that seems to happen between lovers and friends, and the way expectations and outcomes don’t necessarily jive … all the aches and pains of life, the vulnerabilities. Is there healing for you in the writing, in the naming? Is your hope – expectation – that there might be some healing for the reader?

GARY: This is an intriguing question. When I write I have little expectation past the writing as it unfolds. Certainly, when I return to what has been written, especially after a few months or years, I suppose there is some kind of healing; although, I’d prefer insight. A few years ago I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to be with a lover and friends. It was a good experience; however, it was also not so good. After I returned to Montana I reread my first full length collection, heartbreak elopes into a kind of forgiving. I was preparing to give a reading and hadn’t really thought very much about the poems. However, as i read through the pieces, all written before my move, there were warnings throughout. I could see that however it came, evidently I knew I shouldn’t make the move. The poems were written a couple years earlier. Curious to be sure. While I try to pay attention to such meanings in my poetry, unfortunately, for the most part I miss them consistently.

I have no expectation for my reader, nor of even having a reader. I am convinced that if there is a reader they will find their own sense of what’s going on in the poem as they listen to the poem. While writing certainly and clearly assumes a reader, I don’t. I write for the pleasure of writing, and, perhaps, to keep me in some way grounded.

JAMIE: I suspect you’ve been writing since high school and college and I know you have quite a body of published work.  What’s up next? 

GARY: Well, to get some few pieces published in magazines and journals; perhaps land another book or two. But foremost is simply to continue writing, and reading, to continue learning about those facets of my compound and complex sense of self and world.

POEMS

as i have to do i bring this to a more personal level. certainly in my writing part of the task has been to find a form that not only expresses what i have lived. but the stories of what i can live. feel certain that every marginalized person has this task. or remains subordinate and enslaved. yet as i struggle with the how of actualizing this. or getting to the story not in unremarkable and familiar narrative. i realize how troubling and difficult it is.

i apologize for loading you down with images. just excited to get closer to present. and maybe a future.

****

as out of remarkable past a slight look aside peripheral desire another over written story lies indeed it may only be overdue bills envelopes stacked against the south wall last years dishes long the growing mold

****

you came to me later after other women had taught me their possibility and mine while men kept warning their usual mantra it is a mans world but it isn’t after all and a reality exists outside even their peripheral gaze even outside their understanding a desire full of exception and expectation for a different kind of language a different kind of life where ego shrinks to the size of a pea and life become quite suddenly more about more than usual

gary’s poetry is shared here with permission

© gary lundy

RELATED:

reading the signs can be terrifying, gary lundy, Cutbank, The Literary Journal of the University of Montana

gary lundy has published five chapbooks, the two most recent, and still in print, when voices detach themselves (Is A Rose Press, 2013), and at | with (Locofo Chaps, 2017), and has two book length collections, heartbreak elopes into a kind of forgiving (Is A Rose Press, 2016); and each room echoes absence (Foothills Publishing, 2018). He has published his writing throughout the US as well as in Canada, Czeck Republic, and Israel. Most recently his poems have appeared in Fence, Meta/Phor(e)/Play, Cutbank: Weekly Flash Prose & Prose Poetry, Setu: Western Voices Special Edition, and Alexandria Quarterly.

gary was raised in Denver, Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth Century American Poetry from Binghamton University. He taught English at SUNY-Oswego, St. Paul’s College, and for twenty years at the University of Montana Western. gary, now retired, is queer and lives in Missoula, Montana.

ABOUT 

Jamie Dedes. I’m a Lebanese-American freelance writer, poet, content editor, blogger and the mother of a world-class actor and mother-in-law of a stellar writer/photographer. No grandchildren, but my grandkitty, Dahlia, rocks big time. I am hopelessly in love with nature and all her creatures. In another lifetime, I was a columnist, a publicist, and an associate editor to a regional employment publication. I’ve had to reinvent myself to accommodate scarred lungs, pulmonary hypertension, right-sided heart failure, connective tissue disease, and a rare managed but incurable blood cancer. The gift in this is time for my primary love: literature. I study/read/write from a comfy bed where I’ve carved out a busy life writing feature articles, short stories, and poetry and managing The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights.  Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications * The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019 * From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems), July 2019 * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review, July 2019 * Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

  “when voices detach themselves,” by gary lundy; review, interview, poems "Poetry is at its basic level language at play. I try not to dictate the rules of that play." gary lundy…

[infolibrary]

7 Brain Traps That Allow the Media to Manipulate Our Opinions

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7 Brain Traps That Allow the Media to Manipulate Our Opinions

Do you believe that television and other media regularly lie to us and manipulate our opinions? Maybe. But there is even worse news: our brain works together with them. It is so difficult for the brain to sort through the immense amount of information coming at it every day, that it is ready to just put up with the many misconceptions. And, as strange as it sounds, smart and well-educated people make even more cognitive mistakes that those who are less intelligent.

Bright Side found out which psychological effects the media uses in order to convince us of something or to influence our decisions. You will learn how to tell the truth from lies.

Sleeper effect

The effect: A persuasive message that is accompanied by a discounting cue seems more accurate over time.

Imagine that you hear a piece of information that seems true to you. For example, the production of a famous confectionery brand contains the chemicals that are dangerous to human health. But soon after this, you hear some information that makes you doubt that it was true. For example, someone tells you that the source of information was not reliable or that the news was fabricated by a competitor. As a reasonable person, you will most likely think that the original information was fake and you will try to forget it. But some time later, (the so-called sleeper time) you will go back to thinking that it was true. And you will never buy products from this brand again.

The sleeper effect appears only when these conditions are followed:

The information seems persuasive.

There is a following piece of information that makes you doubt the original.

There is enough time between the moment you receive the information and the moment you have to make a decision.

Framing effect

The effect: By changing the phrase, you can change its perception.

The way an idea is worded affects the way we perceive it. By highlighting the necessary part, you can make a person a hero or a villain. Compare: “3 out of 10 people remained hostages because of how terribly slow the police crew was” and “thanks to how well-thought-out their plan was, the police crew freed 7 out of 10 hostages.”

The thing is, we judge certain events of things not on their own, but based on their context. Usually this context (frame) determines the decision we will end up making.

And people are more likely to avoid losses than to try to win something. Also, with age, this effect becomes more powerful: elderly people pay more attention to the negative aspects of everything and are more likely to avoid their losses than to try and see the real advantages of an offer.

Here are some more examples of this effect:

People are more likely to react to the word “overpayment” than the word “discount.” 93% of people check in for a flight earlier when they know they have to pay more for checking in later. And only 67% check in earlier when there is a discount for early check-in. But the amount of money was the same.

You are more likely to buy 80%-lean beef that the same piece of meat that says it contains 20% fat.

In our everyday lives we also create our own reality, choosing words in order to describe a thing or an event. If you have an old wardrobe that you inherited from your grandmother, you can be a happy owner of a family relic or an owner of a piece of old junk. Mistakes at work can be a useful experience or trouble.

Semmelweis reflex

The effect: I see only what I want to see.

Of the many facts there are out there, our brain only chooses the ones that comply with our expectations and ideas. At the same time, it refuses to accept new knowledge and new facts that contradict our stereotypes (Semmelweis reflex).

This is why we prefer to watch the same TV and YouTube channels and go to the same websites. And this is also why we believe news programs so easily — because they comply with our opinion and they are easy to digest. If you are sure that GMO is dangerous, you will easily believe even the most unprofessional article on this topic and ignore the articles with the opposite opinion from serious journals.

The same happens to our attitude toward public people: haters usually only pay attention to their flaws and mistakes, and fans will ignore even the most obvious mistakes.

Identifiable victim effect

President Bush holds Jessica McClure.

The effect: “The death of one person is a tragedy and a million deaths is statistics.”

Across the world, thousands of people go missing and die of famine, but we rarely hear about this in the media. And the story of one person who was raped becomes the most-discussed topic for many months all over social media and the press.

This happens because a message about one specific person sounds more persuasive than statistical data, it creates a feeling like you know this person and it makes you feel an emotional response. This not only affects the audience, but also the government structures. Specific people receive help more often than groups of people.

The story of baby Jessica, who fell into a well in 1987, was shown live. After 58 hours of work on the part of the rescue team, the little girl was saved. As a result, the amount of donated money was about $800,000. At the same time, every year, 830,000 children die from accidental injuries and many of these deaths could have been prevented. But there is never enough money for prevention.

Anchoring

The effect: We take the picture of an event, cut out a piece of it, and show the fragment as the whole event.

This is a method where only one side of an object or an event if discussed and the other sides are either accidentally or intentionally ignored. This prevents you from understanding what actually happened and what decision you should make.

For example, the media is discussing the advantages of a new chemical fertilizer that allows us to get several times more harvest. But they never mention the ingredients of the fertilizer and how the fruit and vegetables grown with it will affect the human body.

Third-person effect

The effect: Everyone falls victim to propaganda, but not me.

We are prone to underestimating the power and influence of social media on ourselves and overestimate it when it comes to other people. This way, we separate ourselves from people who can be influenced and increase our own self-esteem. This effect is very evident when a person receives a piece of negative information (violence on tv, porn, reading some racist or sexist articles).

The third-person effect is directly linked to the theory of attribution. We are more likely to justify our own actions by the situation and when others do something wrong, it’s because they are bad people. (About ourselves: “I yelled at my child not because I’m irritable and angry, but because he made me angry when he spilled juice on the table.” About others, “She’s a bad mother because she can’t put a hat on her child’s head the right way.”)

Parasocial interaction

The effect: We feel very close to our favorite characters from talk shows.

When we watch TV programs, movies, or cartoons, we start to interact with the characters as if we are in a regular human relationship with them. Obviously, in such a close “relationship,” we can’t avoid inheriting some of their behavioral aspects and fall prey to their influence. This effect is very powerful when it comes to children and teenagers who are forming their own identity and trying to imitate their favorite video game, movie, and cartoon characters.

There’s something that’s known as the “Angelina Jolie” effect: just 15 days after the actress talked about having done a mastectomy, the number of women who had the test for the BRCA genes, which are responsible for the development of breast cancer, grew by 64%. And in 1987, when Princess Diana took her glove off and shook hands with an HIV-patient, thousands of people in Great Britain and the US stopped believing that this virus could be transmitted by touch. And before that, the scary articles in the media made 50% of Americans think that complete isolation of these patients was a good idea.

Princess Diana holding the child of an HIV patient at the London Lighthouse, 1996

It’s hard to tell reality from lies

Most news programs start with the anchor saying “Good evening” and then they explain why it’s not really a good evening. And if you watch TV programs often enough, the frame of everyday negativity doesn’t allow you to estimate the pros and cons of ordinary situations rationally. Spend more time on your hobbies and communicate with your friends — this will help you to avoid a negative mindset.

Try to be more critical of the news on social media: it’s there that fake news is spread 6 times faster than true information. This is mostly true for politics-related news. And fake news is much more “durable” because it continues to circulate long after it’s been proven false.

Here are some more ways to protect yourself from lies and make the right decision:

Try to find more trustworthy information. When you look at a problem from different angles, it is easier to make the right decision.

If you speak a foreign language well enough, try to think about the situation in it. This will allow you to keep a clear mind and not be influenced by emotions.

Don’t come to any conclusions about how things are by just using one example.

Take a break from information: when your brain is overloaded, it can’t think clearly.

Look at the statistical number correctly: If a commercial says that 85% of plastic surgeries are successful, it means there is a 15% chance of having a negative surgical outcome.

Use special resources to verify facts, for example, truthorfiction.com or hoax-slayer.com.

Bonus: Flying penguins

On April 1, BBC edited a funny video where they claimed to have found a new species of King Penguins that didn’t just fly, but could also migrate to hot tropic islands. 6 million views and 21,000 likes only prove the fact that fake information is spread at lightning speed.

Do you have your own methods that help you tell the difference between the truth and a lie? Which piece of news on social media or in newspapers looked completely fake or like nonsense to you?

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[philipfloyd]

SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business?

When it comes to digital marketing, especially if you’re just starting out, there’s always the question about SEO vs. PPC. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? And, more importantly, which one is better for you?

  The general consensus is that PPC costs money and it brings immediate results, while SEO is free, but takes time. So it’s a simple trade, time for money. Well, the truth is that it’s more to that than you might expect. I’ll clarify everything below.

    SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

SEO Pros

SEO Cons

When Should You Choose SEO?

PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

PPC Pros

PPC Cons

When Should You Choose PPC?

SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

Mixing SEO with PPC

  Since we’re cognitiveSEO and we have SEO oriented tools, you might think we’ll try to push SEO as being better than PPC. However, this article won’t show advantages and disadvantages so that you may choose one over another, but to help you better understand which are the strong and weak points of each promotion method.

  In the end, you’re better off using a mix of both. I’ll tell you exactly why, so keep reading.

  SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

  Search Engine Optimization is growing more and more popular, especially with startups. Everyone wants to have an optimized website that ranks well because, in their minds, it’s free. However, if you’ve been in business for a while, you very well know that time = money. This isn’t just a phrase. It’s true.

  Although SEO might be considered a cheaper way of promoting your website and products, that can actually be far from the case, depending on the niche you’re in and the toughness of your competition. SEO involves content, which is not cheap to create (at least not at a high level).

  For example, creating a high quality article on cognitiveSEO can take up to one week (if not more if you count in proofreading and editing). Remember, time = money. But, while ads are an easier way of promotion, we earn a lot more trust by ranking and generating traffic organically, since we’re an SEO oriented company.

  Let’s discuss the pros and cons of SEO, to better understand what you’re dealing with when you get started.

  SEO Pros

  SEO covers the biggest part of search marketing. SEO work is like planting the seeds of a forest. You plant them now but you see the results very far into the future. Although you can speed up the process, that requires a lot more work than just installing WordPress and writing quality content.

  It’s free if you do it yourself: As long as you’re prepared to continuously improve your knowledge and spend a lot of time writing your own content, then you can rank high without any investment (except for hosting and a theme).

  Gradual learning curve: This can also be seen as a disadvantage, in the way that it can take a long time to learn it. However, what I’m trying to point out here is that you don’t have to master it fast to see results. You can start by doing some simple keyword research and writing your content. Mix that with image optimization and a good server and you’re set. Most Content Management Systems today have a lot of SEO plugins, be it for content or technical issues.

  Good ROI: If you take the free path and do everything yourself, SEO has the potential to bring very good results, especially in the local business field, where competition can be less harsh. Even when paying for your services, considering you get to rank on a high search volume keyword, you can get up to 15x the amount of clicks you would get if using paid search. Top organic results can bring over 25% of the organic searches for a keyword. On the other side, paid ads only get about 2-3%. Here’s a screenshot from Sparktoro where Rand Fishkin analyzes the Organic vs. Paid CTR in US.

    This discrepancy could be caused by many factors, such as people’s preference for organic results over paid ads (they view them as more trustworthy) and frequent use of ad blocking softwares.

  Long term results: If you do your homework and you’re consistent for about 6 months to one year, the results you get can last for years. It’s a good idea to update and improve content from time to time though, especially if something better shows up in the SERPS. However, if you keep sharing your content and get a backlink here and there, chances are you’ll keep your ranks, if not improve them over time.

  Good for brand awareness: People often search for information on the web. Even when they want to purchase something, they first look for reviews and guides. If you want to take advantage of that, you need to write informational content that meets their expectations, in order to rank. Over time, this can lead to people remembering your brand. On average, first time clients often need to be brought on your website up to 7 times (if not more) before they trust you enough to make a purchase.

  More control over content: When doing SEO, you can rank for virtually anything. You don’t have restrictions on what content you have to display. Also, titles and descriptions can be longer, which leads to better CTRs. You can do virtually anything. However, send clients to a bad page using ads and you’ll be kicked out in no time.

  SEO Cons

  It takes time to see results: For some, 6 months to 1 year might sound really good, but for others it might sound like an eternity. You need results and you need them fast. Now. If that’s the case, then your focus should be on paid search. However, it’s a good idea to put the basis of SEO as soon as you start. Remember, it takes time to see results, so the sooner you start, the faster you’ll see them. If you postpone SEO, when you do decide to start, you’ll just hear the same 6 months story again.

  Hard to master: If you really want to call yourself an SEO expert, you’ll need to learn a lot more than just basic keyword research and link building. HTML and CSS skills might be required, at least at a basic level and JS and PHP come in handy as well. Those don’t include all the other technical things you need to master like sitemaps, indexing, URLs, redirects, multiple language issues and many others. With links getting harder and harder to obtain without a lot of $$$, your content creation and persuasion skills also need to improve significantly. There’s just so much more you have to master with SEO that it can actually be overwhelming. There are even categories, such as Technical SEO and Content SEO. Mastering these both can be very challenging. If you think of PPC like playing an instrument, then SEO is sort of like conducting an entire orchestra.

    Hard to scale: If you’re a one man gang, getting things to the next level isn’t very easy. It’s true that you don’t necessarily have to post more to get more traffic, but it’s also true that if you do post more, you do get more traffic. You can only do so many things in 24h. Scaling that requires help, which involves money. If you’re building an authority website and need hundreds of articles per week, editors and a content marketing team then the results will pay off. However, if you’re trying to compete with Dyson to sell your unknown vacuum cleaner, you’re better off with paid search.

  High uncertainty: Google works with algorithms. This means that at any time, for any reason, your site might drop from its rankings, or worse, even be removed from the index. Usually this happens if you get involved with BlackHat SEO techniques. If you stick to Google’s Guidelines, you should generally be fine. Still, there are so many reasons for which your website’s organic traffic could drop that it would take another article to list them. We actually have one, mostly limited to 2018 SEO updates.

  Less buyer oriented: People search a lot on the web, but most of the time they search for information. Even when they search for things to buy. That’s why it’s a good idea to also build an e-mail list, to be able to bring clients back on your website. Harder to do now, especially in Europe, with the new EU GDPR law.

  Hard to A/B test: Although you have full control over your content, A/B testing in an organic searches environment isn’t easy. Google isn’t very fond of duplicate content and you can’t simply ask Google to show another page for one week either. Well, you actually can using canonical tags. However, the canonical tag wasn’t designed for that and it’s very risky to use it that way. You might think that you could simply change the same page and then switch it back. However, any change to a page can result either in an increase or a decrease in rankings. Generally, when people rank high they avoid making any changes to their pages.

  SEO Advantages Disadvantages It can be ‘free’ It takes time to see results Gradual learning curve Hard to master Good ROI Hard to scale Long term results High uncertainty Good for brand awareness Less buyer oriented More control over content Hard to A/B test

  When Should You Choose SEO?

  Unless you purposely don’t want to be on search engines, SEO is, simply put, for everyone. You should start it as soon as possible, because it takes time for it to work. To be more precise, the SEO planning process should start before even building the website, if you take structure and platform into account.

  The later you start with SEO, the later you will see the results. It’s a good idea to start optimizing as soon as possible.

  PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

  On the other side, we have PPC (Pay Per Click) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Some SEOs blame it for being less efficient and costing way more than SEO. However, those claims can be false due to bias. The truth is PPC can be a great method of promoting your website, especially if you’re an eCommerce store or selling a product.

  PPC Pros

  Generally, people think of PPC as regular advertising, but it’s much more than that. Having the opportunity to show an ad only when someone searches for a specific keyword and, even more, pay for it only when they click, is priceless. There are a ton of good things about PPC. Hadn’t it been so successful, people wouldn’t pay for it.

  You can see results instantly: The greatest thing about Pay Per Click is that you can see results right away. That is, of course, as long as your landing page is decent. You need a call to action, so make sure your phone number and contact forms are visible. You will usually pay more depending on the competition. However, there are other factors that are taken into consideration, such as the quality of your titles and content. Either way, ranking in the top 3 with SEO in a day is virtually impossible to achieve.

    Easier to master: I’m not saying that you can become an expert overnight but, on the long run, PPC is easier than SEO. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy. You still have to learn a lot of things and you also learn those things by burning money usually. However, once you’ve set up a proper campaign and optimized if for a couple of months, you’re kind of set. You also get professional support from official Google employees that help you set campaigns, a luxury that you don’t have in the SEO field. Luckily, there’s guys like us, here at cognitiveSEO. Obviously, there are also advanced tweaks that you can do to your campaigns, things you won’t learn very easily. But there’s a higher chance of finding someone that will create you a decent Pay Per Click campaign than finding someone who will build and execute a good SEO strategy.

  You can scale up quickly: Scaling up in Google Adwords is pretty easy. Just pay more money. There are two ways of paying more money. The first is to target more keywords. The second is simply adjusting your daily budget to over 9.000 and become overpower. Then, your competition will be very frustrated:

    No uncertainty: You don’t have to fear any updates from Google. In the PPC world, the updates are upfront and not secret. You also spend between 5-10 minutes to set up an ad and another 5-10 to find out if it has been approved or not. You’ll also know exactly what’s allowed and what isn’t. Remember, you also get support from Google itself.

  Buyer oriented: Most of the clicks you will get from PPC are buyer oriented. It’s not necessarily that people click Google ads more when they want to buy something (although it’s possible), but because you’ll only be targeting commercial keywords when you place your ads. We all know that search traffic has higher conversion rates. Same goes for paid search advertising. It has higher conversions than social media and Facebook advertising. Google only shows ads if it thinks it’s relevant to the potential customers. So, the user intent dictates whether an ad should show or not. If the keyword is a buyer keyword, there’s a higher chance of an ad displaying.

  Easy to A/B test: A/B testing with PPC is really easy. All you have to do is set up two ads and let them run. Whichever gets the most CTR wins. It’s simple. You have to keep doing this to improve your results. A 1% increase in CTR can be a game changer in some situations.

  PPC Cons

  Like with anything, there must also be downsides. PPC has a few, but depending on who you are and what you do, some might not even seem to be disadvantages. If you have a high profit margin, for example, you can afford to pay ads. However, if you only make 1$ per sale but you have to pay $0.98 to get it, it might not be such a great deal, especially after taxes.

  You pay for every click: Well… there’s not much to say here. It’s pay to play. For every click that you get you have to pay. So, as long as you profit from it, the more you spend the more your earn. The math is pretty simple. You need to think in Click Through Rates. Let’s say that you earn $10 per sale. In this case, depending on your demands, you could be spending anything from $0.01 to $9.99 for a sale. However, the money will only bring you traffic. It doesn’t guarantee sales. You need high conversion rates. If you bring in 100 people and your conversion rate is 1%, then you have to make sure those 100 visitors cost less than what you earn for one sale. Otherwise you will be throwing money out the window.

  It’s not that it’s bad to pay for every click. It’s just that with SEO you don’t have to

  Steep learning curve: When you first go into the Google Adwords platform, things might be overwhelming. There are a lot of new things to digest: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, budgets, bids, CTR, CPC and many other. If you have no idea what you’re doing, you can burn a lot of money. A recent client of mine set up the campaign on his own and wasted around 75% of his budget because he didn’t set any negative keywords.

    However, after having a basic understanding of them, you can easily set up campaigns that run for a profit. There are also official courses from Google which you can attend and even get certified into.

  Lower ROI: We’ve talked about how, with SEO, results are a little bit slow but last longer? Well, it’s the exact opposite with PPC. The ROI on PPC is calculated short term, by subtracting how much you spend on the paid search advertisements from how much you earn by selling a product. When you stop paying, you stop displaying so the ROI won’t grow the same way it does with SEO, long term.

  Growth is tied to budget: Although it’s easy to scale, PPC is tied to budget. That means if you want to sell more, you also have to pay more. This doesn’t sound so bad, but considering that growth often involves other expenses such as better servers, personnel or even warehouses, you’ll always be short on money.

  Not great for brand awareness: When you pay for clicks, you usually want to sell. Fast. Once the user purchases once, it’s anyway easier to retarget them. Even if they ultimately buy from you, chances are they came from someone else’s informational website, either through Adsense or some sort of affiliate link (websites they trust).

  Less control over content: If you want your ad to display, you’ll have to respect some rules. Not only with the titles and descriptions, but also with the content. There are certain niches in which you can’t even display ads at all and some words are banned.

  PPC Advantages Disadvantages Very fast results You pay for every click Easier to master Steep learning curve Easy to scale Lower ROI, more short term No uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Easy to A/B test Less control over content

  When Should You Choose PPC?

  Well, you can definitely use PPC all the time. The best time to use it, if you have a little bit of budget, is when you’re starting out. The boost can help you keep the business going while you also growing your organic traffic.

  However, even when you’re already established, you can’t rank for all the keywords. For those on which you don’t rank, you can pay. You can also use it on keywords you already rank for to increase your CTR. If you have position 1, why not have position 1 and 2?

  Greatest thing about this is that you can actually rank for other brands, like your competitors, for example. Here’s some competitors of ours doing this with our keyword tool:

    Best time to use PPC is when you’re starting out, but you can always use it for keywords you don’t rank for or to maximize CTR.

  SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

  Green = Advantages Red = Disadvantages SEO PPC Can be ‘free’ Very fast results Gradual learning curve Easier to master Good ROI Easy to scale Long term results No uncertainty Good for brand awareness Buyer oriented More control over content Easy to A/B test It takes time to see results You pay for every click Hard to master Steep learning curve Hard to scale Lower ROI High uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Less buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Hard to A/B test Less control over content

  Mixing PPC with SEO

  Most of the time, people start with PPC because it brings immediate results. They miss out on SEO because they don’t start doing it as soon as possible. If you postpone it, it will only take longer to rank. You can start with it by doing the basic things. For example, having a blog is one of them. Implementing a content marketing strategy for your site is a great way of growing your brand and authority.

  People often neglect SEO. I have one client that spends over $2.000 on PPC, whereas the budget for SEO is only about $100. It actually was 0 before I convinced them to start with something basic. Had they spent 25% of his PPC budget on SEO these past 10 years, they would have had a huge authority website with hundreds if not thousands of useful articles. However, they only have service pages and a badly implemented multi language module which I can’t seem to fix without a programmer.

  On the other side, small businesses and SEO enthusiasts might also miss out a lot themselves by never taking advantage of PPC. There could be a huge opportunity in selling your products through PPC.

  On the long run, it’s true that SEO is much more powerful than PPC. You can rank high with one article for hundreds if not thousands of keywords and the CTRs tend to be a lot higher. But on the short term, PPC is a really good way of gaining some initial traffic and sales and the best way of keeping your positions consistent. The longer a campaign runs, the better CTRs and CPC it scores, as it gets to be really well optimized.

  Conclusion:

  As you see, both SEO and PPC are good methods to market your products. Now, if you’re starting out with SEO, there’s plenty of content on our blog from which you can learn it. However, we’re lacking a bit on the PPC and SEM side. Maybe we’ll publish more soon. But the idea is that if you mix them, you’ll get the best results.

  What’s your experience? Have you tried both PPC and SEO? Which one brought the best results? Let us know in the comments section.

The post SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business?

When it comes to digital marketing, especially if you’re just starting out, there’s always the question about SEO vs. PPC. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? And, more importantly, which one is better for you?

  The general consensus is that PPC costs money and it brings immediate results, while SEO is free, but takes time. So it’s a simple trade, time for money. Well, the truth is that it’s more to that than you might expect. I’ll clarify everything below.

    SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

SEO Pros

SEO Cons

When Should You Choose SEO?

PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

PPC Pros

PPC Cons

When Should You Choose PPC?

SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

Mixing SEO with PPC

  Since we’re cognitiveSEO and we have SEO oriented tools, you might think we’ll try to push SEO as being better than PPC. However, this article won’t show advantages and disadvantages so that you may choose one over another, but to help you better understand which are the strong and weak points of each promotion method.

  In the end, you’re better off using a mix of both. I’ll tell you exactly why, so keep reading.

  SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

  Search Engine Optimization is growing more and more popular, especially with startups. Everyone wants to have an optimized website that ranks well because, in their minds, it’s free. However, if you’ve been in business for a while, you very well know that time = money. This isn’t just a phrase. It’s true.

  Although SEO might be considered a cheaper way of promoting your website and products, that can actually be far from the case, depending on the niche you’re in and the toughness of your competition. SEO involves content, which is not cheap to create (at least not at a high level).

  For example, creating a high quality article on cognitiveSEO can take up to one week (if not more if you count in proofreading and editing). Remember, time = money. But, while ads are an easier way of promotion, we earn a lot more trust by ranking and generating traffic organically, since we’re an SEO oriented company.

  Let’s discuss the pros and cons of SEO, to better understand what you’re dealing with when you get started.

  SEO Pros

  SEO covers the biggest part of search marketing. SEO work is like planting the seeds of a forest. You plant them now but you see the results very far into the future. Although you can speed up the process, that requires a lot more work than just installing WordPress and writing quality content.

  It’s free if you do it yourself: As long as you’re prepared to continuously improve your knowledge and spend a lot of time writing your own content, then you can rank high without any investment (except for hosting and a theme).

  Gradual learning curve: This can also be seen as a disadvantage, in the way that it can take a long time to learn it. However, what I’m trying to point out here is that you don’t have to master it fast to see results. You can start by doing some simple keyword research and writing your content. Mix that with image optimization and a good server and you’re set. Most Content Management Systems today have a lot of SEO plugins, be it for content or technical issues.

  Good ROI: If you take the free path and do everything yourself, SEO has the potential to bring very good results, especially in the local business field, where competition can be less harsh. Even when paying for your services, considering you get to rank on a high search volume keyword, you can get up to 15x the amount of clicks you would get if using paid search. Top organic results can bring over 25% of the organic searches for a keyword. On the other side, paid ads only get about 2-3%. Here’s a screenshot from Sparktoro where Rand Fishkin analyzes the Organic vs. Paid CTR in US.

    This discrepancy could be caused by many factors, such as people’s preference for organic results over paid ads (they view them as more trustworthy) and frequent use of ad blocking softwares.

  Long term results: If you do your homework and you’re consistent for about 6 months to one year, the results you get can last for years. It’s a good idea to update and improve content from time to time though, especially if something better shows up in the SERPS. However, if you keep sharing your content and get a backlink here and there, chances are you’ll keep your ranks, if not improve them over time.

  Good for brand awareness: People often search for information on the web. Even when they want to purchase something, they first look for reviews and guides. If you want to take advantage of that, you need to write informational content that meets their expectations, in order to rank. Over time, this can lead to people remembering your brand. On average, first time clients often need to be brought on your website up to 7 times (if not more) before they trust you enough to make a purchase.

  More control over content: When doing SEO, you can rank for virtually anything. You don’t have restrictions on what content you have to display. Also, titles and descriptions can be longer, which leads to better CTRs. You can do virtually anything. However, send clients to a bad page using ads and you’ll be kicked out in no time.

  SEO Cons

  It takes time to see results: For some, 6 months to 1 year might sound really good, but for others it might sound like an eternity. You need results and you need them fast. Now. If that’s the case, then your focus should be on paid search. However, it’s a good idea to put the basis of SEO as soon as you start. Remember, it takes time to see results, so the sooner you start, the faster you’ll see them. If you postpone SEO, when you do decide to start, you’ll just hear the same 6 months story again.

  Hard to master: If you really want to call yourself an SEO expert, you’ll need to learn a lot more than just basic keyword research and link building. HTML and CSS skills might be required, at least at a basic level and JS and PHP come in handy as well. Those don’t include all the other technical things you need to master like sitemaps, indexing, URLs, redirects, multiple language issues and many others. With links getting harder and harder to obtain without a lot of $$$, your content creation and persuasion skills also need to improve significantly. There’s just so much more you have to master with SEO that it can actually be overwhelming. There are even categories, such as Technical SEO and Content SEO. Mastering these both can be very challenging. If you think of PPC like playing an instrument, then SEO is sort of like conducting an entire orchestra.

    Hard to scale: If you’re a one man gang, getting things to the next level isn’t very easy. It’s true that you don’t necessarily have to post more to get more traffic, but it’s also true that if you do post more, you do get more traffic. You can only do so many things in 24h. Scaling that requires help, which involves money. If you’re building an authority website and need hundreds of articles per week, editors and a content marketing team then the results will pay off. However, if you’re trying to compete with Dyson to sell your unknown vacuum cleaner, you’re better off with paid search.

  High uncertainty: Google works with algorithms. This means that at any time, for any reason, your site might drop from its rankings, or worse, even be removed from the index. Usually this happens if you get involved with BlackHat SEO techniques. If you stick to Google’s Guidelines, you should generally be fine. Still, there are so many reasons for which your website’s organic traffic could drop that it would take another article to list them. We actually have one, mostly limited to 2018 SEO updates.

  Less buyer oriented: People search a lot on the web, but most of the time they search for information. Even when they search for things to buy. That’s why it’s a good idea to also build an e-mail list, to be able to bring clients back on your website. Harder to do now, especially in Europe, with the new EU GDPR law.

  Hard to A/B test: Although you have full control over your content, A/B testing in an organic searches environment isn’t easy. Google isn’t very fond of duplicate content and you can’t simply ask Google to show another page for one week either. Well, you actually can using canonical tags. However, the canonical tag wasn’t designed for that and it’s very risky to use it that way. You might think that you could simply change the same page and then switch it back. However, any change to a page can result either in an increase or a decrease in rankings. Generally, when people rank high they avoid making any changes to their pages.

  SEO Advantages Disadvantages It can be ‘free’ It takes time to see results Gradual learning curve Hard to master Good ROI Hard to scale Long term results High uncertainty Good for brand awareness Less buyer oriented More control over content Hard to A/B test

  When Should You Choose SEO?

  Unless you purposely don’t want to be on search engines, SEO is, simply put, for everyone. You should start it as soon as possible, because it takes time for it to work. To be more precise, the SEO planning process should start before even building the website, if you take structure and platform into account.

  The later you start with SEO, the later you will see the results. It’s a good idea to start optimizing as soon as possible.

  PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

  On the other side, we have PPC (Pay Per Click) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Some SEOs blame it for being less efficient and costing way more than SEO. However, those claims can be false due to bias. The truth is PPC can be a great method of promoting your website, especially if you’re an eCommerce store or selling a product.

  PPC Pros

  Generally, people think of PPC as regular advertising, but it’s much more than that. Having the opportunity to show an ad only when someone searches for a specific keyword and, even more, pay for it only when they click, is priceless. There are a ton of good things about PPC. Hadn’t it been so successful, people wouldn’t pay for it.

  You can see results instantly: The greatest thing about Pay Per Click is that you can see results right away. That is, of course, as long as your landing page is decent. You need a call to action, so make sure your phone number and contact forms are visible. You will usually pay more depending on the competition. However, there are other factors that are taken into consideration, such as the quality of your titles and content. Either way, ranking in the top 3 with SEO in a day is virtually impossible to achieve.

    Easier to master: I’m not saying that you can become an expert overnight but, on the long run, PPC is easier than SEO. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy. You still have to learn a lot of things and you also learn those things by burning money usually. However, once you’ve set up a proper campaign and optimized if for a couple of months, you’re kind of set. You also get professional support from official Google employees that help you set campaigns, a luxury that you don’t have in the SEO field. Luckily, there’s guys like us, here at cognitiveSEO. Obviously, there are also advanced tweaks that you can do to your campaigns, things you won’t learn very easily. But there’s a higher chance of finding someone that will create you a decent Pay Per Click campaign than finding someone who will build and execute a good SEO strategy.

  You can scale up quickly: Scaling up in Google Adwords is pretty easy. Just pay more money. There are two ways of paying more money. The first is to target more keywords. The second is simply adjusting your daily budget to over 9.000 and become overpower. Then, your competition will be very frustrated:

    No uncertainty: You don’t have to fear any updates from Google. In the PPC world, the updates are upfront and not secret. You also spend between 5-10 minutes to set up an ad and another 5-10 to find out if it has been approved or not. You’ll also know exactly what’s allowed and what isn’t. Remember, you also get support from Google itself.

  Buyer oriented: Most of the clicks you will get from PPC are buyer oriented. It’s not necessarily that people click Google ads more when they want to buy something (although it’s possible), but because you’ll only be targeting commercial keywords when you place your ads. We all know that search traffic has higher conversion rates. Same goes for paid search advertising. It has higher conversions than social media and Facebook advertising. Google only shows ads if it thinks it’s relevant to the potential customers. So, the user intent dictates whether an ad should show or not. If the keyword is a buyer keyword, there’s a higher chance of an ad displaying.

  Easy to A/B test: A/B testing with PPC is really easy. All you have to do is set up two ads and let them run. Whichever gets the most CTR wins. It’s simple. You have to keep doing this to improve your results. A 1% increase in CTR can be a game changer in some situations.

  PPC Cons

  Like with anything, there must also be downsides. PPC has a few, but depending on who you are and what you do, some might not even seem to be disadvantages. If you have a high profit margin, for example, you can afford to pay ads. However, if you only make 1$ per sale but you have to pay $0.98 to get it, it might not be such a great deal, especially after taxes.

  You pay for every click: Well… there’s not much to say here. It’s pay to play. For every click that you get you have to pay. So, as long as you profit from it, the more you spend the more your earn. The math is pretty simple. You need to think in Click Through Rates. Let’s say that you earn $10 per sale. In this case, depending on your demands, you could be spending anything from $0.01 to $9.99 for a sale. However, the money will only bring you traffic. It doesn’t guarantee sales. You need high conversion rates. If you bring in 100 people and your conversion rate is 1%, then you have to make sure those 100 visitors cost less than what you earn for one sale. Otherwise you will be throwing money out the window.

  It’s not that it’s bad to pay for every click. It’s just that with SEO you don’t have to

  Steep learning curve: When you first go into the Google Adwords platform, things might be overwhelming. There are a lot of new things to digest: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, budgets, bids, CTR, CPC and many other. If you have no idea what you’re doing, you can burn a lot of money. A recent client of mine set up the campaign on his own and wasted around 75% of his budget because he didn’t set any negative keywords.

    However, after having a basic understanding of them, you can easily set up campaigns that run for a profit. There are also official courses from Google which you can attend and even get certified into.

  Lower ROI: We’ve talked about how, with SEO, results are a little bit slow but last longer? Well, it’s the exact opposite with PPC. The ROI on PPC is calculated short term, by subtracting how much you spend on the paid search advertisements from how much you earn by selling a product. When you stop paying, you stop displaying so the ROI won’t grow the same way it does with SEO, long term.

  Growth is tied to budget: Although it’s easy to scale, PPC is tied to budget. That means if you want to sell more, you also have to pay more. This doesn’t sound so bad, but considering that growth often involves other expenses such as better servers, personnel or even warehouses, you’ll always be short on money.

  Not great for brand awareness: When you pay for clicks, you usually want to sell. Fast. Once the user purchases once, it’s anyway easier to retarget them. Even if they ultimately buy from you, chances are they came from someone else’s informational website, either through Adsense or some sort of affiliate link (websites they trust).

  Less control over content: If you want your ad to display, you’ll have to respect some rules. Not only with the titles and descriptions, but also with the content. There are certain niches in which you can’t even display ads at all and some words are banned.

  PPC Advantages Disadvantages Very fast results You pay for every click Easier to master Steep learning curve Easy to scale Lower ROI, more short term No uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Easy to A/B test Less control over content

  When Should You Choose PPC?

  Well, you can definitely use PPC all the time. The best time to use it, if you have a little bit of budget, is when you’re starting out. The boost can help you keep the business going while you also growing your organic traffic.

  However, even when you’re already established, you can’t rank for all the keywords. For those on which you don’t rank, you can pay. You can also use it on keywords you already rank for to increase your CTR. If you have position 1, why not have position 1 and 2?

  Greatest thing about this is that you can actually rank for other brands, like your competitors, for example. Here’s some competitors of ours doing this with our keyword tool:

    Best time to use PPC is when you’re starting out, but you can always use it for keywords you don’t rank for or to maximize CTR.

  SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

  Green = Advantages Red = Disadvantages SEO PPC Can be ‘free’ Very fast results Gradual learning curve Easier to master Good ROI Easy to scale Long term results No uncertainty Good for brand awareness Buyer oriented More control over content Easy to A/B test It takes time to see results You pay for every click Hard to master Steep learning curve Hard to scale Lower ROI High uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Less buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Hard to A/B test Less control over content

  Mixing PPC with SEO

  Most of the time, people start with PPC because it brings immediate results. They miss out on SEO because they don’t start doing it as soon as possible. If you postpone it, it will only take longer to rank. You can start with it by doing the basic things. For example, having a blog is one of them. Implementing a content marketing strategy for your site is a great way of growing your brand and authority.

  People often neglect SEO. I have one client that spends over $2.000 on PPC, whereas the budget for SEO is only about $100. It actually was 0 before I convinced them to start with something basic. Had they spent 25% of his PPC budget on SEO these past 10 years, they would have had a huge authority website with hundreds if not thousands of useful articles. However, they only have service pages and a badly implemented multi language module which I can’t seem to fix without a programmer.

  On the other side, small businesses and SEO enthusiasts might also miss out a lot themselves by never taking advantage of PPC. There could be a huge opportunity in selling your products through PPC.

  On the long run, it’s true that SEO is much more powerful than PPC. You can rank high with one article for hundreds if not thousands of keywords and the CTRs tend to be a lot higher. But on the short term, PPC is a really good way of gaining some initial traffic and sales and the best way of keeping your positions consistent. The longer a campaign runs, the better CTRs and CPC it scores, as it gets to be really well optimized.

  Conclusion:

  As you see, both SEO and PPC are good methods to market your products. Now, if you’re starting out with SEO, there’s plenty of content on our blog from which you can learn it. However, we’re lacking a bit on the PPC and SEM side. Maybe we’ll publish more soon. But the idea is that if you mix them, you’ll get the best results.

  What’s your experience? Have you tried both PPC and SEO? Which one brought the best results? Let us know in the comments section.

The post SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/19704/seo-vs-ppc/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[wjwilliams29]

SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business?

When it comes to digital marketing, especially if you’re just starting out, there’s always the question about SEO vs. PPC. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? And, more importantly, which one is better for you?

  The general consensus is that PPC costs money and it brings immediate results, while SEO is free, but takes time. So it’s a simple trade, time for money. Well, the truth is that it’s more to that than you might expect. I’ll clarify everything below.

    SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

SEO Pros

SEO Cons

When Should You Choose SEO?

PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

PPC Pros

PPC Cons

When Should You Choose PPC?

SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

Mixing SEO with PPC

  Since we’re cognitiveSEO and we have SEO oriented tools, you might think we’ll try to push SEO as being better than PPC. However, this article won’t show advantages and disadvantages so that you may choose one over another, but to help you better understand which are the strong and weak points of each promotion method.

  In the end, you’re better off using a mix of both. I’ll tell you exactly why, so keep reading.

  SEO Advantages & Disadvantages

  Search Engine Optimization is growing more and more popular, especially with startups. Everyone wants to have an optimized website that ranks well because, in their minds, it’s free. However, if you’ve been in business for a while, you very well know that time = money. This isn’t just a phrase. It’s true.

  Although SEO might be considered a cheaper way of promoting your website and products, that can actually be far from the case, depending on the niche you’re in and the toughness of your competition. SEO involves content, which is not cheap to create (at least not at a high level).

  For example, creating a high quality article on cognitiveSEO can take up to one week (if not more if you count in proofreading and editing). Remember, time = money. But, while ads are an easier way of promotion, we earn a lot more trust by ranking and generating traffic organically, since we’re an SEO oriented company.

  Let’s discuss the pros and cons of SEO, to better understand what you’re dealing with when you get started.

  SEO Pros

  SEO covers the biggest part of search marketing. SEO work is like planting the seeds of a forest. You plant them now but you see the results very far into the future. Although you can speed up the process, that requires a lot more work than just installing WordPress and writing quality content.

  It’s free if you do it yourself: As long as you’re prepared to continuously improve your knowledge and spend a lot of time writing your own content, then you can rank high without any investment (except for hosting and a theme).

  Gradual learning curve: This can also be seen as a disadvantage, in the way that it can take a long time to learn it. However, what I’m trying to point out here is that you don’t have to master it fast to see results. You can start by doing some simple keyword research and writing your content. Mix that with image optimization and a good server and you’re set. Most Content Management Systems today have a lot of SEO plugins, be it for content or technical issues.

  Good ROI: If you take the free path and do everything yourself, SEO has the potential to bring very good results, especially in the local business field, where competition can be less harsh. Even when paying for your services, considering you get to rank on a high search volume keyword, you can get up to 15x the amount of clicks you would get if using paid search. Top organic results can bring over 25% of the organic searches for a keyword. On the other side, paid ads only get about 2-3%. Here’s a screenshot from Sparktoro where Rand Fishkin analyzes the Organic vs. Paid CTR in US.

    This discrepancy could be caused by many factors, such as people’s preference for organic results over paid ads (they view them as more trustworthy) and frequent use of ad blocking softwares.

  Long term results: If you do your homework and you’re consistent for about 6 months to one year, the results you get can last for years. It’s a good idea to update and improve content from time to time though, especially if something better shows up in the SERPS. However, if you keep sharing your content and get a backlink here and there, chances are you’ll keep your ranks, if not improve them over time.

  Good for brand awareness: People often search for information on the web. Even when they want to purchase something, they first look for reviews and guides. If you want to take advantage of that, you need to write informational content that meets their expectations, in order to rank. Over time, this can lead to people remembering your brand. On average, first time clients often need to be brought on your website up to 7 times (if not more) before they trust you enough to make a purchase.

  More control over content: When doing SEO, you can rank for virtually anything. You don’t have restrictions on what content you have to display. Also, titles and descriptions can be longer, which leads to better CTRs. You can do virtually anything. However, send clients to a bad page using ads and you’ll be kicked out in no time.

  SEO Cons

  It takes time to see results: For some, 6 months to 1 year might sound really good, but for others it might sound like an eternity. You need results and you need them fast. Now. If that’s the case, then your focus should be on paid search. However, it’s a good idea to put the basis of SEO as soon as you start. Remember, it takes time to see results, so the sooner you start, the faster you’ll see them. If you postpone SEO, when you do decide to start, you’ll just hear the same 6 months story again.

  Hard to master: If you really want to call yourself an SEO expert, you’ll need to learn a lot more than just basic keyword research and link building. HTML and CSS skills might be required, at least at a basic level and JS and PHP come in handy as well. Those don’t include all the other technical things you need to master like sitemaps, indexing, URLs, redirects, multiple language issues and many others. With links getting harder and harder to obtain without a lot of $$$, your content creation and persuasion skills also need to improve significantly. There’s just so much more you have to master with SEO that it can actually be overwhelming. There are even categories, such as Technical SEO and Content SEO. Mastering these both can be very challenging. If you think of PPC like playing an instrument, then SEO is sort of like conducting an entire orchestra.

    Hard to scale: If you’re a one man gang, getting things to the next level isn’t very easy. It’s true that you don’t necessarily have to post more to get more traffic, but it’s also true that if you do post more, you do get more traffic. You can only do so many things in 24h. Scaling that requires help, which involves money. If you’re building an authority website and need hundreds of articles per week, editors and a content marketing team then the results will pay off. However, if you’re trying to compete with Dyson to sell your unknown vacuum cleaner, you’re better off with paid search.

  High uncertainty: Google works with algorithms. This means that at any time, for any reason, your site might drop from its rankings, or worse, even be removed from the index. Usually this happens if you get involved with BlackHat SEO techniques. If you stick to Google’s Guidelines, you should generally be fine. Still, there are so many reasons for which your website’s organic traffic could drop that it would take another article to list them. We actually have one, mostly limited to 2018 SEO updates.

  Less buyer oriented: People search a lot on the web, but most of the time they search for information. Even when they search for things to buy. That’s why it’s a good idea to also build an e-mail list, to be able to bring clients back on your website. Harder to do now, especially in Europe, with the new EU GDPR law.

  Hard to A/B test: Although you have full control over your content, A/B testing in an organic searches environment isn’t easy. Google isn’t very fond of duplicate content and you can’t simply ask Google to show another page for one week either. Well, you actually can using canonical tags. However, the canonical tag wasn’t designed for that and it’s very risky to use it that way. You might think that you could simply change the same page and then switch it back. However, any change to a page can result either in an increase or a decrease in rankings. Generally, when people rank high they avoid making any changes to their pages.

  SEO Advantages Disadvantages It can be ‘free’ It takes time to see results Gradual learning curve Hard to master Good ROI Hard to scale Long term results High uncertainty Good for brand awareness Less buyer oriented More control over content Hard to A/B test

  When Should You Choose SEO?

  Unless you purposely don’t want to be on search engines, SEO is, simply put, for everyone. You should start it as soon as possible, because it takes time for it to work. To be more precise, the SEO planning process should start before even building the website, if you take structure and platform into account.

  The later you start with SEO, the later you will see the results. It’s a good idea to start optimizing as soon as possible.

  PPC Advantages & Disadvantages

  On the other side, we have PPC (Pay Per Click) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Some SEOs blame it for being less efficient and costing way more than SEO. However, those claims can be false due to bias. The truth is PPC can be a great method of promoting your website, especially if you’re an eCommerce store or selling a product.

  PPC Pros

  Generally, people think of PPC as regular advertising, but it’s much more than that. Having the opportunity to show an ad only when someone searches for a specific keyword and, even more, pay for it only when they click, is priceless. There are a ton of good things about PPC. Hadn’t it been so successful, people wouldn’t pay for it.

  You can see results instantly: The greatest thing about Pay Per Click is that you can see results right away. That is, of course, as long as your landing page is decent. You need a call to action, so make sure your phone number and contact forms are visible. You will usually pay more depending on the competition. However, there are other factors that are taken into consideration, such as the quality of your titles and content. Either way, ranking in the top 3 with SEO in a day is virtually impossible to achieve.

    Easier to master: I’m not saying that you can become an expert overnight but, on the long run, PPC is easier than SEO. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy. You still have to learn a lot of things and you also learn those things by burning money usually. However, once you’ve set up a proper campaign and optimized if for a couple of months, you’re kind of set. You also get professional support from official Google employees that help you set campaigns, a luxury that you don’t have in the SEO field. Luckily, there’s guys like us, here at cognitiveSEO. Obviously, there are also advanced tweaks that you can do to your campaigns, things you won’t learn very easily. But there’s a higher chance of finding someone that will create you a decent Pay Per Click campaign than finding someone who will build and execute a good SEO strategy.

  You can scale up quickly: Scaling up in Google Adwords is pretty easy. Just pay more money. There are two ways of paying more money. The first is to target more keywords. The second is simply adjusting your daily budget to over 9.000 and become overpower. Then, your competition will be very frustrated:

    No uncertainty: You don’t have to fear any updates from Google. In the PPC world, the updates are upfront and not secret. You also spend between 5-10 minutes to set up an ad and another 5-10 to find out if it has been approved or not. You’ll also know exactly what’s allowed and what isn’t. Remember, you also get support from Google itself.

  Buyer oriented: Most of the clicks you will get from PPC are buyer oriented. It’s not necessarily that people click Google ads more when they want to buy something (although it’s possible), but because you’ll only be targeting commercial keywords when you place your ads. We all know that search traffic has higher conversion rates. Same goes for paid search advertising. It has higher conversions than social media and Facebook advertising. Google only shows ads if it thinks it’s relevant to the potential customers. So, the user intent dictates whether an ad should show or not. If the keyword is a buyer keyword, there’s a higher chance of an ad displaying.

  Easy to A/B test: A/B testing with PPC is really easy. All you have to do is set up two ads and let them run. Whichever gets the most CTR wins. It’s simple. You have to keep doing this to improve your results. A 1% increase in CTR can be a game changer in some situations.

  PPC Cons

  Like with anything, there must also be downsides. PPC has a few, but depending on who you are and what you do, some might not even seem to be disadvantages. If you have a high profit margin, for example, you can afford to pay ads. However, if you only make 1$ per sale but you have to pay $0.98 to get it, it might not be such a great deal, especially after taxes.

  You pay for every click: Well… there’s not much to say here. It’s pay to play. For every click that you get you have to pay. So, as long as you profit from it, the more you spend the more your earn. The math is pretty simple. You need to think in Click Through Rates. Let’s say that you earn $10 per sale. In this case, depending on your demands, you could be spending anything from $0.01 to $9.99 for a sale. However, the money will only bring you traffic. It doesn’t guarantee sales. You need high conversion rates. If you bring in 100 people and your conversion rate is 1%, then you have to make sure those 100 visitors cost less than what you earn for one sale. Otherwise you will be throwing money out the window.

  It’s not that it’s bad to pay for every click. It’s just that with SEO you don’t have to

  Steep learning curve: When you first go into the Google Adwords platform, things might be overwhelming. There are a lot of new things to digest: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, budgets, bids, CTR, CPC and many other. If you have no idea what you’re doing, you can burn a lot of money. A recent client of mine set up the campaign on his own and wasted around 75% of his budget because he didn’t set any negative keywords.

    However, after having a basic understanding of them, you can easily set up campaigns that run for a profit. There are also official courses from Google which you can attend and even get certified into.

  Lower ROI: We’ve talked about how, with SEO, results are a little bit slow but last longer? Well, it’s the exact opposite with PPC. The ROI on PPC is calculated short term, by subtracting how much you spend on the paid search advertisements from how much you earn by selling a product. When you stop paying, you stop displaying so the ROI won’t grow the same way it does with SEO, long term.

  Growth is tied to budget: Although it’s easy to scale, PPC is tied to budget. That means if you want to sell more, you also have to pay more. This doesn’t sound so bad, but considering that growth often involves other expenses such as better servers, personnel or even warehouses, you’ll always be short on money.

  Not great for brand awareness: When you pay for clicks, you usually want to sell. Fast. Once the user purchases once, it’s anyway easier to retarget them. Even if they ultimately buy from you, chances are they came from someone else’s informational website, either through Adsense or some sort of affiliate link (websites they trust).

  Less control over content: If you want your ad to display, you’ll have to respect some rules. Not only with the titles and descriptions, but also with the content. There are certain niches in which you can’t even display ads at all and some words are banned.

  PPC Advantages Disadvantages Very fast results You pay for every click Easier to master Steep learning curve Easy to scale Lower ROI, more short term No uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Easy to A/B test Less control over content

  When Should You Choose PPC?

  Well, you can definitely use PPC all the time. The best time to use it, if you have a little bit of budget, is when you’re starting out. The boost can help you keep the business going while you also growing your organic traffic.

  However, even when you’re already established, you can’t rank for all the keywords. For those on which you don’t rank, you can pay. You can also use it on keywords you already rank for to increase your CTR. If you have position 1, why not have position 1 and 2?

  Greatest thing about this is that you can actually rank for other brands, like your competitors, for example. Here’s some competitors of ours doing this with our keyword tool:

    Best time to use PPC is when you’re starting out, but you can always use it for keywords you don’t rank for or to maximize CTR.

  SEO vs. PPC Recap (side by side comparison)

  Green = Advantages Red = Disadvantages SEO PPC Can be ‘free’ Very fast results Gradual learning curve Easier to master Good ROI Easy to scale Long term results No uncertainty Good for brand awareness Buyer oriented More control over content Easy to A/B test It takes time to see results You pay for every click Hard to master Steep learning curve Hard to scale Lower ROI High uncertainty Growth is tied to budget Less buyer oriented Not great for brand awareness Hard to A/B test Less control over content

  Mixing PPC with SEO

  Most of the time, people start with PPC because it brings immediate results. They miss out on SEO because they don’t start doing it as soon as possible. If you postpone it, it will only take longer to rank. You can start with it by doing the basic things. For example, having a blog is one of them. Implementing a content marketing strategy for your site is a great way of growing your brand and authority.

  People often neglect SEO. I have one client that spends over $2.000 on PPC, whereas the budget for SEO is only about $100. It actually was 0 before I convinced them to start with something basic. Had they spent 25% of his PPC budget on SEO these past 10 years, they would have had a huge authority website with hundreds if not thousands of useful articles. However, they only have service pages and a badly implemented multi language module which I can’t seem to fix without a programmer.

  On the other side, small businesses and SEO enthusiasts might also miss out a lot themselves by never taking advantage of PPC. There could be a huge opportunity in selling your products through PPC.

  On the long run, it’s true that SEO is much more powerful than PPC. You can rank high with one article for hundreds if not thousands of keywords and the CTRs tend to be a lot higher. But on the short term, PPC is a really good way of gaining some initial traffic and sales and the best way of keeping your positions consistent. The longer a campaign runs, the better CTRs and CPC it scores, as it gets to be really well optimized.

  Conclusion:

  As you see, both SEO and PPC are good methods to market your products. Now, if you’re starting out with SEO, there’s plenty of content on our blog from which you can learn it. However, we’re lacking a bit on the PPC and SEM side. Maybe we’ll publish more soon. But the idea is that if you mix them, you’ll get the best results.

  What’s your experience? Have you tried both PPC and SEO? Which one brought the best results? Let us know in the comments section.

The post SEO vs. PPC | Which One Is Better For You & Your Business? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

[dailycryptonews-blog]

Crypto News - Why Blockchain Values Your Privacy More Than Facebook

Why Blockchain Values Your Privacy More Than Facebook Wondering if it’s possible to protect your data? There is an answer. The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelegraph.com. Recent events surrounding Facebook and ... You May Likes reading: How Rich people Talk about Bitcoin Growth Smart Contract - The Key to the Next Two Great dApp Business Ideas

Why Blockchain Values Your Privacy More Than Facebook

Wondering if it’s possible to protect your data? There is an answer.

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelegraph.com.

Recent events surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have put on display the single biggest danger to your privacy, the government-enabled de facto monopolies on your information. These companies have long been at the forefront of collecting and monetizing information, a practice that was conveniently ignored by regulators until the scandal broke.  

Even so, it’s hard to label Cambridge Analytica’s practices as scandalous considering they had Facebook’s blessing until the tech giant found itself in the crosshairs of the court of public opinion. What stands out most in the reactions is how little tech giants care about users’ privacy. Indeed, Facebook is impressively clear about their ability to collect and sell user data in its privacy policies, showing a complete disregard for any semblance of privacy.

According to Facebook’s policies, the right to use their service means they own any activity or information shared on their platform. Those pictures you posted? They belong to Facebook.  The times you clicked “like” on a product or service? They probably sold that information to the highest bidding advertiser to target you for a product or service. No user data collected by these platforms is sacrosanct regarding user privacy. This is because selling data or sharing it with advertisers is the entire business. At best, privacy plays a tertiary role in company decision-making.  

Avoiding Legal Identity Theft

It is undoubtedly ironic that privacy fears are right in the spotlight at a time when identity theft prevention services are increasingly popular among the web’s ever-expanding population. Insofar as their services are concerned, the main problem facing Facebook and its contemporaries is identity and who owns it. Part of the information Facebook collects includes personally identifiable data. Moreover, the company gathers information about others in your network, a fact many users consider a perverse violation of their implicit trust in social platforms.

Luckily, these malicious acts don’t occur in a vacuum and have increased support for alternatives that separate identity from user data. Unlike Facebook, which binds any marketing data with users’ identities, Blockchain can compartmentalize information and separate data which affects your privacy (identity) from information which is useful for marketers (demographics, preferences, habits, etc.). Moreover, Facebook's data collection system isn't opt-in, and not even entirely opt-out, completely dis-empowering users. The decentralized technology (DLT) offers users full power over their data and the ability to directly benefit from sharing it, thanks to an integrated incentive model in the form of cryptocurrency, tokens, or other monetary rewards.  

Per sentiment analysis platform Senno CEO Elad Peled

“I believe users should have the opportunity to share their private data and be compensated for it. The data is physically stored in a decentralized storage space, protected by ECC asymmetric encryption, sharding techniques, and various anti-sybil attack methods. This guarantees that a Cambridge Analytica-like incident can’t happen on our network, while users can enjoy complete data ownership.”

How Privacy Can Be Prioritized

With a more empowering approach to data privacy on blockchain for users, individuals can determine how their information is secured, as well as how to monetize it via data exchanges. Whether it is sold to a marketing firm or shared with a company that is targeting users of a similar demographic, regaining sovereignty of data is now not only possible but much more probable considering the outrage currently targeting Facebook’s data collection practices. VALID Founder Daniel Gasteiger, speaking of his product, highlighted the different approach blockchain takes. He noted that

“By matching identity owners and data consumers directly, the costs currently charged by data aggregators such as social networks, search engine providers, and data brokers, will be omitted.”

While tech giants will continue to rationalize their data harvesting practices and privacy violations as supporting their ability to provide free or better services to users, the argument is disingenuous at best and intentionally false at the very worst.  Blockchain-based initiatives have already effectively nullified that response by prioritizing the safety, security, and privacy of their users’ information. Unlike Facebook and Google, which value user data above all else, blockchain services value their participants. It is the participants that give these initiatives value and deliver the momentum necessary to sustain the associated services, not their data.  

If each party to a transaction is properly incentivized, the trustless nature of blockchain-based services can help restore the power of the individual. Instead of a future that is beholden to gatekeepers and multinational corporations, blockchain is the key to unlocking a new era of self-sovereignty for its participants. Most platforms operating on DLT are committed to the elimination of costly middlemen that also profit from the sale and purchase of user data. Additionally, the dedication to encryption means that users have more power than ever over their own information and activities without fear of their privacy being infringed upon.  

Finally, accompanying greater privacy controls is users’ newfound ability to determine how and when this information is monetized, retaking sovereignty from the tech giants currently lording over this information. This is the point underlined by Matias Travizano, co-founder & CEO of Wibson, a blockchain solution that seeks to empower individuals to monetize their data, in his remark:

“We are seeing a few approaches to how the personal data ecosystem could develop. What we don't want is to trade one center of control for another. That's why [we use] the blockchain to support a decentralized data marketplace, where consumers control their personal information and transact directly with the data buyers. Now is the time for consumers to get proactive and embrace these alternatives. Consumers own their data. They should profit from it."

Taking the Giants to Task

One of the more glaringly hypocritical admissions by social media giant Facebook transpired during CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill, with the remark that “we see Facebook as a platform for all ideas.” That phrase should have been amended to include, “that we deem acceptable.”  The statement, and the acknowledgment that the company monitors and scans private Messenger conversations between users, knowingly blocking content that violates the company’s rules, means that Facebook retains all the control without having to be accountable to its users whatsoever.  

Without greater regulation or rules that suit all participants’ interests, more individuals are likely to flee social networks for more equitable platforms. Furthermore, the company’s disdain for cryptocurrencies, evidenced by its ban on advertisements for new blockchain-based services, highlights the real and growing threats facing these legacy systems as users shift their own priorities and recognize the limitations of the big advertising giants.

At its core, the emphasis of blockchain and by extension cryptocurrencies is unseating entrenched interests across value chains and industries, a deeply troubling phenomenon for a company like Facebook which is exactly that: an entrenched interest. By letting individuals and entities communicate directly without the involvement of middlemen, value extractors are automatically excluded from the equation, incentivizing fairer exchange between parties. As the fight for greater user privacy gains traction, social media platforms might lose out to blockchain-based services that prioritize users over profits, thus restoring the balance of power. With a view towards incentivizing users, blockchain commands all the tools necessary to permanently reshape the privacy dynamic.

Source #bitcoin #news #cryptonews #cryptocurrency #dailybitcoinnew #todaynews

[dwestfieldblog]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MY AMORAL COMPASS

Back from a couple of weeks from the island...I managed to avoid watching any TV news whatsoever, but of course ended up going through a daily paper to catch up up the unfolding nightmares...The easy stuff first...the greeting phrase 'Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen' is no longer acceptable to use as an address to passengers on the London Underground...because of 'belonging to yesterday' and might be construed somehow as offensive to those with sex changes and those who are undetermined as to their gender. It has been substituted with 'Good morning everyone'. Hmm. Surely after having thought long and hard (arf) about about penis removal, vaginal implants and oestrogen supplements and the male right to wear female clothes OR vice versa etc etc, one would be HAPPY to be called that which the individual truly felt themselves to be? Political correctness is a soul numbingly ridiculous conceit which will lead to total destruction of sanity and will only breed deeper mistrust and hatreds among dangerous idiots. And a sense of misplaced righteous pride among those who seek to fill their time with utterly empty causes.

If you are a bisexual woman, you are a female. If you are a masculine lesbian, you are a female, If youare a cross-dressing man, you are a male in touch with your feminine side. If you are a homosexual man who takes the more 'submissive' role, you are a gay male.Etc etc. If you are pre Op, you are the sex your heart tells you you are, male or female. If you are a human being who could take actual offence at being called a lady or a gentleman, you are a moron.Well, then again, who likes being pigeon-holed eh?Arf. Next....

Brexit will apparently cost 36 billion pounds, WELL worth it eh? We will just have to print more notes on plastic paper. Every penny helps...and at least G.B got 3.5 billion quid from selling arms to Saudi Arabia, so we will only be morally bankrupt. Britain on the hunt for more useful cheap deals includes Chlorine dioxide washed chickens from the always healthy USA. Dr Fox of our government blustered that Americans have been eating such for years and there is nothing wrong with them... Ermmmm...Hmmm...Eventually we will find that Fox ends up on the board of chicken exporters. No puns needed. It's all foul:-) (Fowl, geddit?) How much of the imported chicken is real anyway? Pumped with water and antibiotics...Mc Donalds continue to advertise that their burgers are 100percent cow. Yes...hooves, tails, entrails and eyeballs all. But at least they are being truthful eh? Let's hope the politicians in the pay of Monsanto are the first to discover their grandchildren are born with three arms. (Or more likely, they only eat the expensive foods not imported for the proletariat.)

Speaking of antibiotics... the English newspapers were full of the 'new' idea that now, perhaps, maybe, people should not finish their course of such pills when they feel better. In direct contradiction to the accepted usual doctor's warning to take the full box/es to make sure. The building of resistance is growing. Another story mentioned that the regular drinking of alcohol can stave off future diabetes...I am only just starting to think (yes I am this slow) that doctors haveno real feckin idea about some basics, even after centuries of experiments on human white mice.

Meanwhile...Wu Xialou the three foot Chinese robot now in use, which can create arrest warrants and approve indictments...'Case management robots'...love the way they almost look friendly. Not long before Robocop is a reality. And AI goes all Terminator on us.

'When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhereand leave the door open'.   T.P   

So, one more time for the world...thrill at the possibilities of existence...

www.halexandria.org/home.htm

Meanwhile again, 'various' countries continue to respond to threats they themselves created in order to justify their heinous actions. Hello to Turkey, North Korea, Russia, the USA and...well,most countries have been doing this for a while. History is full of messianic little men with complexes wanting to make their country great. Hello Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Blair, Putin and Trump. How tall is Erdogan? Or the next guy...The Pilsbury Dough Boy/Kim Wrong Un has been rejoicing over his North Korean penis missile now being able to reach 6,200 miles. Hello America. Duck Fart's rhetoric matches Chairman Cheese's bizarre rants for rant. Little dogs like to make noise. 'Fire and fury' indeed. Yap yap yap, have them put down. (Using only sarcasm and satire of course. Wouldn't want the NSA to think I meant such admirable leaders should be shot like rabid canines. No sir.)

Referring to the situation, a spokesman for the Chinese government was quoted as saying; 'The man with nothing to lose does not fear the man with something to lose'. AKA'The barefoot man does not fear the man with no shoes'.

Donald actually referred to global warming as being a hoax invented by China. No, not fake news. Safe in a world where every president is as paranoid as the people.

POTUS/DOOFUS...arf...I saw a documentary last week which reminded me that good old boy President Nixon (a very honest guy) used to speak of himself often in the third person, just like Duck Fart continues to do. Draw your own conclusions on the wall in blood graffiti. But now, after many workplace postings of those 'absolutely qualified' to do their jobs and who, a few weeks later were sacked for following the law, or believing in their own importance more than paying obeisance to the president, the White House is now full of generals...(an 'axis of adults' as it has been described)... So, things are looking up eh? Obviously the world is far safer in the hands of those directly connected to the military industrial complex who follow the orders of a mentally unbalanced gurning egomaniac. And as for his plan to work with Russia on a 'cyber security unit'...'Not the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it's pretty close', as a member of the Senate's armed services committee said. Yup.

Watch closely for his reactions to Russia's imminent massive wargames.... 100,000 soldiers to be in play on the Eastern side...Is this whereFinland, Estonia et al are invaded to protect the holders of Russian passports?

'There is nothing better than an external threat to keep everyone focused in the wrong direction'.

My last blog had wrong information, (aka; 'alternative facts') courtesy of Russian sources being quoted in the Western press, it seems that the Daesh death cult leader Baggy Daddy is still alive. Would have thought he was looking forward to fast track paradise but it appears that clinging to the desert like an infectious sand tick and having sex with kidnapped under aged girls is more preferable. Better luck next time says the unsmiling peace monger.

A true shame on Hindus in India for false accusations, leading to actual murder against Moslems for being rude in various ways to cows. Yes, yum yum cows. The killers have had no punishment whatsoever. Legal terms of imprisonment for killing a cow can be from 5 to 14 years (very reasonable eh?...whereas manslaughter can be 2 years. Nice to see a country who gave the world Yoga have such a balanced perspective.) The world expects this crap from other mainstream religions, not you.

Another TV reality show bites the big one...Eden. Paradise Lost...23 people (of course) agreed to be put into the Scottish highlands with the most basic tools, enough food for first 100 days. Of course they divided up fast into male/female Alphas/ Betas/Lord of the Flies factions and imploded fast into dire horribleness. If the future of our beautiful planet is to be decided/populated by those types who wantto be on television, we are absolutely fecked. Fecked is the mystery word tonight...it avoids me having to pretend to be polite and use asterisks, whilst retaining the clear meaning.  It has appeared due to me watching a great interview with Cillian Murphy.

Sherlock or Homeland,Boardwalk Empire, House of Cards, Peaky Blinders, Taboo,or Billions,better and better TV series, at last, great acting, direction and scripts, some real intelligence on television to balance the mass culture of dumbing down via the conspiracy of counter-evolution. But just maybe....

'Good and bad are fairy tales, we have evolved to attach an emotional significance to what is nothing more than the survival strategy of the pack animal'. We are conditioned to attach divinity to utility... good isn't really good, evil isn't really wrong...'The Holmes sister...

And now a long quote by a dead American genius, circa 1982.

‘’People are just not accustomed to excellence because, when you go to school you are not given the criteria by which to judge between quality this or quality that. All they do is teach you just enough to be some kind of a slug in a factory, to do your job so you can take home a pay check, and consume some other stuff that someone else makes.  The thing that separates Americans apart from the rest of the cultures in the world is we're so fukcing stupid. This country's been around for a couple hundred years and we think we're hot shit...we don't even realise that other countries have thousands of years of history and culture and they're proud of it, and when we deal on an international level with foreigners in policy...they must laugh up their sleeves at us because we are nothing. We are culturally nothing. We're only interested in the bottom line. And I think that a country that doesn't do something to sustain its culture, whatever it is, doesn't invest in it, doesn't keep it happening, isn't proud of it,maybe they just shouldn't exist, because its the culture and the beautiful things a society produces, those are the things which should survive for thousands of years, not the designer jeans.’’

Something almost normal, (for a change)...In the last blog I wrote that magpies sound like Edgard Varese...having spent a couple of weeks doing gardening in England, I will alter to that 'they sound exactly like a wire rake being scraped across concrete'. Check it out after you have spent an hour cutting down a ten foot hedge......

'the main object of the ego's desire to separate from the wave is to avoid death'

Walking around the streets and watching, sitting at home catching up on the newspapers...If Britain ever has to fight a war with soldiery again, we are surely doomed. There is a hollow which has been created in my country in the last few decades, an energy lost. Teach Bravery, Morality and determination at schools. The mass are hypnotised and malleable. Perhaps the freezing shower of Brexit will result in some type of revolution but we have undermined ourselves and are naked, wide open and powerless to be taken total advantage of...by both our former allies as well as our genuine enemies.

Getting closer to the future of serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine in newborns to determine their predilection to becoming criminals/ rebels/ sociopaths/ musicians etc.  By 2023 don't be surprised if your baby is taken away for longer than normal and injected with extra balanced goodness at the same time as being implanted. A brave new world, right around the corner...Mind you (arf) most of us could do with more serotonin, might just make us evolve into better human beings...Speaking of which/witch....

www.RAWILLUMINATION.NET

Have fun, you astral kids...23 skiddoo and all hail Discordia....

How am I? Thank you for asking...I now have a new health problem to go with the six others...at some point all of them will make themselves felt at the same time as a new depression and I will do the holy deed (not a joke or a cry for help, just calmly factual) but not just yet. 37 songs recorded so far in 12 five hour sessions...I have decided on one more session of recording to finish the two double cds, plus an extra cd of strange things and am doing the next book while there is 'time'. Apparently, I am a 'romanticist' and 'libertarian'. Loved the way the first epithet was used in a very negative way by a religious pragmatist.I am just optimistic enough to believe that human entropy can be avoided...the pessimist occasionally wonders if extinction is also a type of evolution. Dancers on a postcard to the unusual address...Deliver us from evil, for WE are the power and the glory.

'I remember when all this will be again'.

Lucid Dreaming in the Sky with ....Maybe a lover losing control, maybe the moonlight of alcohol. Maybe the temple of a mystic cabal, maybe the muse of a young femme fatale..

.Holy days over...time to go back to school...bunk off and self educate...it never did me no harm eh? See you after the autumnal equinox...Love. Love more.