#however. doing this would require doing some more stuff to the internal structure like adding more of the sheet cotton wadding

[vaas]

i really really like this video. probably one of the best videos on making your own dress form that ive seen i think its a really good combination of the ease of use of a duct tape form And the professionalism of digitising and perfecting the pattern. i also really like the way its paced shes so clear and detailed without ever becoming like slow or boring or pedantic. really perfect intermediate project.

i would do 2 things differently: add a pocket in the centre back to slide the pvc spine into for extra stability and do some kind of lock to make the height adjustable. but then again you could also omit the stand entirely and just put it on a table or a stool or summat. or use a coat rack/lamp with the electronics taken out ive seen people do both those things in other vids. i wish this creator (her name is demi. shes really sweet) made more longform videos like this i think shes really really good at them.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Why The Seven Warlords Are Perfect Examples Of One Piece's World-Building

  So, in my opinion, successful worldbuilding requires two crucial things:

  1) Enough details that the world feels fleshed out.

  2) That the details are introduced and arranged in a way that feels natural.

  If you lack one, the other suffers. Too little of the first, and the world will seem dull and lifeless. If you stumble at the second,  the reader might as well look at a series' encyclopedia instead. Luckily, One Piece has both of these aspects in spades, with each new island the Straw Hats discover or character they meet or detail they learn usually feeling like a proper extension of what has come earlier. Even when they launch into the sky to rescue an island in the clouds or find themselves attacked by a horde of zombies or wander through a town made entirely of dessert foods, it never seems out of place or like it's stretching the series' internal logic — such is the strength of the series' world-building. 

  However, if one thing represents the consistent power of the series' world-building as a whole, I think it's the Warlords of the Sea. Based on the real-life privateers who would use their approval by a country's navy to plunder certain targets, they're notorious pirates who, in exchange for some of their money and a government favor from time to time, are allowed to roam the world un-targeted by the Marines. It's a pretty cool concept, one that creator Eiichiro Oda introduces through Mihawk, the world's greatest swordsman.

    Mihawk is first seen cutting through Don Krieg's already wrecked ship, having terrorized the blustering pirate previously in the Grand Line. He is then more than willing to cut down (but not kill) Zoro after the young man challenges him to a duel. This combination establishes a grey area for One Piece, as so far, Luffy has only taken on guys like Morgan, Buggy, and Kuro — men that lean more toward abject cruelty when they're allowed (though we'll see Buggy change a little as the series goes on). It shows that the morality of pirates is a wide spectrum, so the fact that later, when it's revealed that Luffy doesn't see himself as a true hero, it doesn't come out of nowhere. 

  It also establishes the Grand Line as not just a place where Luffy will be forced to overcome bigger obstacles on the way to his dream, but a location of pure chaos for most. Mihawk is both a new character and an omen of terrifying things to come. 

  Soon after, we get our first reference to Jimbei (sadly, we'd have to wait over a decade to see our lovable fish uncle for the first time) and learn there are seven of these warlords. Not only does this number let us know that the Warlords have a fair bit of organization (or at least an attempt at organization by the government) but it also creates anticipation for meeting them and, in some cases, beating them. In many series, the protagonist faces boss battle after boss battle, with new villains seemingly coming out of nowhere after the last one goes down. But by establishing a group and a concrete amount here, Oda begins adding structure to what would normally seem like a revolving door system of bad guys. When Luffy faces Crocodile (and later Moria and Kuma and Doflamingo) he isn't punching an escalating, random assortment of foes. He's taking on a system pre-set by Oda in the beginning.

    Crocodile's role in the series goes a long way in not only giving us an idea of how huge some of these challenges will be for Luffy going forward on his adventure but also revealing crucial details about the political landscape of the Grand Line. Through Crocodile's plot, we learn that many of these kingdoms are ruled by a monarchy, but are often ripe for revolution, as the relationship between the royalty and their citizens is unsteady at best.

  This is not only a reflection of what the Great Pirate Era has done to regular people (many live in fear of pirates and hunger for comfort from the ruling party) but also of the wider relationship with the world government. We haven't even met the higher-ranking Marines or the Elders yet, and yet we know the job they're doing taking care of the Grand Line probably isn't very good if the influence of outside corruption constantly threatens to lead to all-out war in a kingdom. 

  When Blackbeard attempts to gain membership in the Warlords, is rejected, and then finally admitted upon his capture of Ace, it further reveals an unsteady systemic power balance. So hungry for reputation is the World Government that they grant Blackbeard status without much thought given to it. He's allowed to join the club simply because he nabbed Whitebeard's 2nd Division Commander. And when the Straw Hats get to Thriller Bark (and are first told of things that will pay off muuuuch later like Wano and Kaido), this pride is taken a step further when Moria refuses Kuma's help in dealing with Luffy. 

    This kind of worldwide instability and constant thirst for power helps us better engage with stuff like Crocodile's quest to find the ancient weapon Pluton or the fact that, over the years, Doflamingo has seemingly been involved with every criminal activity ever, or the way that Boa Hancock stayed a member of the group even though she obviously seems like she's on Team Luffy for a chunk of the Marineford War. Additional bits like that don't matter in the slightest if it doesn't fit with the world-building themes of the series so far, but in One Piece they all become reasonable parts of the total package.

    Good world-building is so much more than being able to tell readers which way the toilets flush or how a certain character like their meat cooked (though both of those are nice additions). It's taking the over-arching structure of a story and making it so cohesive that no matter what detail you decide to spackle in there, it fits and sticks. Everything works with everything else because the reader understands the system you're playing with. Through the Warlords, Oda didn't just introduce a multitude of characters and locations and new pieces of lore to obsess over but helped to reinforce and strengthen wider themes already in place. That's good writing. 

  Who is your favorite Warlord? Let me know in the comments!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

      By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[lev1than]

10 Famous Inventions that were the particular culmination regarding other people’s work

An unclean (yet open) secret regarding innovation is most wonderful breakthroughs seldom happen due to a single only genius.

Whereas history is rife with stories with famous inventors, who are generally national game characters, in almost every event they were just the first reduce weight improve a preexisting system to your final level where the item achieved muscle appeal.

Imagine how research discoveries with hundreds of years in the past inspired the works for subsequent ages of professionals.

Or what sort of iPod changed personal song thanks to the actual combination of advancement in the despropósito fields about digital favorite songs compression, hard drive miniaturization, affordable ARM microprocessors and other sorts of technological innovations.

1. Galileo and the telescope

Even while Galileo is normally credited having devised the main telescopes, there was actually a good Dutch individual called Hans Lippershay who had been making addition devices making use of the ever bettering qualities of glassmaking at the moment.

Allegedly, Galileo heard about all these and chosen to build his personal, even generating some changes in the process. Having been also the first person to work with these brand-new optics being a scientific musical instrument, which is where his true value was initially added.

2. James Watt and the steam engine

While I was in secondary school, my scientific research teacher thought it was funny individuals “What was the name of the man who seems to invent the particular steam website? ” Very funny, because “Watt” was the reply, so the problem was a fashionable statement.

Merely steam applications predated Watt’s design just by almost 58 years. Brit Thomas Savery patented the very first steam serps design for 1698, to take out water from coal fosse. Subsequently, Jones Newcomen superior the design to function at atmospheric pressure, of which became the normal design for concerning 50 years.

Watt’s real advancement was building the program with an independent condenser, which made the full process now more efficient.

3. Eli Whitney and the cotton gin

During periods of captivity in the USA, Georgia predominantly expanded cotton that had quicker fibers. The didn’t are very effective with the products at the time which usually tried to take away seeds on the fibers (roller gins), plus required a great deal of manual job. So the point out of Ga sponsored a good engineering force to come up with an improved design.

Whitney improved within the roller gins by updating the sturdy rollers by using wire your teeth.

While this drastically improved manufacturing ability with regard to cotton, this also had typically the sad complication of increasing the requirement for slaves to a fella the career fields.

You may also interesting in invention ideas

4. Elisha Otis and the elevator

Equipment capable of working out with people straight into tall architectural structures has endured since the early Egyptians. And since the industrial wave and the regarding cities triggered taller homes being designed, people started to be tired of being forced to climb various flights associated with stairs. And so elevators had been invented, applying either steam or power engines which often pulled uplifts with ropes.

However, rules have a tendency to bust. And even having an elevator just one or two stories excessive, if the rope broke so you plummeted while using carriage it will result in no less than severe personal injury, if not the loss of life.

Otis truly invented the safety break, which will stop often the elevator through crashing when it was initialized by quick falling every time a rope got destroyed. This took off a major potential for death coming from buildings tall than several stories and even spurred around the building in the first skyscrapers.

5. Thomas Edison and the light bulb

It's perhaps the most popular invention in recent history, and its sign actually sums up the concept of a notion.

And yet, Youngsters Edison didn’t invent the sunshine bulb. Not necessarily the wine glass bulb, or perhaps the glowing filament inside it. They merely better the previous styles to the point that they can become otc practical, in 1880.

The initial electric light product, called a great Arc-Lamp, was made by Humphry Davy with regards to 78 decades before in which but did not last long together with was too bright. Throughout 1850, Ernest Swan has seen that carbonized paper was much better stuff for a filament and put to use them to help make light bulbs. But he could not get the design to be more effective or durable.

After furthermore experimentation, both equally Swan and Edison uncovered subsequently more beneficial materials, and ultimately their a pair of companies amalgamated to market most of their new improved upon design jointly, though most of the people only recall Edison.

6. Guglielmo Marconi and the Radio

In the 1890s, both Marconi and Nikola Tesla have been fighting to formulate the radio. Tesla actually got more of the beginning patents to the technology. Still, the initial treasure of electromagnetic radiation was actually made seven years earlier by German researcher Heinrich Hertz, who was capable to both broadcast and acquire radio swells in his research laboratory.

However, the guy couldn’t imagine any sensible applications regarding his knowledge.

It was after Marconi who has been able to acquire all these technological innovations and switch them perfectly into commercial merchandise.

7. Henry Ford and the car

Honda released the exact Model Testosterone levels in 1908, and it is the first auto to gain block market elegance and good results at a time any time many people nonetheless traveled through the horse.

Nonetheless, the car while powered simply by an internal combustion engine was really created by Karl Benz within 1885, and many other engineers, therefore, improved about the design for greater efficiency, coziness performance.

Precisely what Ford reached was improve production technique of the machine. Her assembly line advanced production productivity significantly, slashing the cost of every single unit for a price point in which people could possibly actually have the funds for it.

8. The Wright Brothers and the airplane

Teens have been hoping to see flight intended for eons. Via Leonardo Kc Vinci’s sketches of hovering machines to story regarding Icarus, many people desired to clear themselves on the shackles involving gravity.

And then the Wright Brothers were not really the only people of their time to try and establish a machine competent at powered airline flight.

George Cayley was the first person to move via designs regarding flapping similar to birds towards a “fixed wing” design. Yet another engineer referred to as Otto Lilienthal then implemented a lot of those models to create genuine gliders through fixed wings and examining them, putting together a lot of files which the Wright Brothers would likely subsequently usage.

Additionally, the very Wright Siblings were able to implement another the latest invention within the time: the internal combustion algorithm from vehicles. They were all-around at just the right age when this kind of became offered.

Their real innovation was a student in their patterns which authorized their planes to actually always be steered as well as controlled. And also rest is usually history.

Also, check out: invention help

9. Philo Farnsworth and the TV

An excellent sort of an invention that had been only probable thanks to quite a few other pioneering technological advances across market sectors.

Farnsworth had the ability to take the trends of the cathode ray tubing (by Ferdinand Braun) and also combine them with an approach to scan graphics using electrons which the person apparently started out thinking of inside high school.

This design likewise outperformed other competing TV SET technology at that moment: mechanical TELEVISION SET.

10. Bill Gates and the Graphical User Interface

Beginning computer systems were being primarily command-line driven, this means you had to know every one of the inputs for you to type right keyboard in order to the machine that which you wanted it all to do.

A lot of people credit Roshan Windows utilizing introducing the globe to the Gui (GUI), which you could use a rabbit to just click on-screen materials to tell it again what to do, making the whole course of action much more simple.

However, much of the progress throughout GUI growth happened very much earlier. Some sort of pioneer was basically Douglas Engelbart, who exhibited an Operating System which has a mouse pointer in 1968. This plan was subsequently taken up by simply Xerox, exactly who released their valuable Alto pcs which were the 1st with a duck and GUI.

As figures go, Apple’s Steve Work opportunities saw an Alto when visiting Xerox’s PARC study center along with inspired him or her to make sure the main Apple Macintosh personal computer would have some GUI, the initial mass-market GUI computers. This unique then flat the way to the even more business-focussed Intel Windows Main system, which got the idea absolutely mainstream.

[1-mini-1]

My 2 Cents on Translating

I was skimming through my computer and found this blog post that I never posted. I think I was hesitant because I saw varying opinions on the subject in the fandom, but idk, these are just my thoughts from my experience as a fan translator for the vocaloid/utaite fandom and what I have learned. I'm not sure if any of my thoughts are unpopular opinions or not, but I'm also not sure how much discussion there has been concerning fan translators. Also, this is really long, so if you want to skim or ignore it be my guest lol.

I guess the first thing I'll talk about is how I think writing a translation is just as much of an artform as writing original lyrics are. I know that translations aren't from scratch like an original story is, but with Japanese especially, there's sooooooo much leniency in how things can be translated into English. Here's an example of how different translations can be. This is a quote from Natsume Soseki's "Kokoro" and three published translations of it:

私は冷やかな頭で新しい事を口にするよりも、熱した舌で平凡な説を述べる方が生きていると信じています。血の力で体が動くからです。言葉が空気に波動を伝えるばかりでなく、もっと強い物にもっと強く働き掛ける事ができるからです。

"I believe that a common reply, stated with passion on one's tongue, is more impactful than novel words from a cool head. The flow of blood powers the body. Words are more than waves disturbing the air, they induce great action in greater things." - From the Soseki Project site

"I believe that commonplace ideas passionately expressed are more effective in real life than the original inventions of a detached intellect. Because it is the heat of the blood that impresses us, for in addition to the words which reverberate in the air, the emotion by its intensity pierces to the soul." - Ineko Kondo

"I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only; they are capable of moving greater things." - Edwin McClellan

Anyways, you get the idea lol. As you can see from these translations, the grammar structures are completely different; sometimes words are added, sometimes words are left out, and sometimes there are grammar patterns used in Japanese that just don't work in English. All these decisions are up to the translator. I've read some translations of things where whole relevant plot details were cut out just because the translator got annoyed (I'm looking at your translation of the Tale of Genji, Seidensticker).

I should probably talk about how I translate stuff. When I first started translating, I thought my lyrics were more liberal, but as I poked around and looked at other translators, I found that mine stuck more closely to the original format of the song (such as, I would keep the same phrases on the same line in the stanza, use the same format for punctuation, etc.). Song translation is different from manga or books because sentences can be broken up over a whole stanza, so translators can play a lot with how they want to arrange phrases for lyrics. I kept mine very close to the original song because I liked being able to easily identify the Japanese line with the English. I'm not sure if that's a translating "sin" but eh, that's how I liked translating my stuff. Maybe in the future I'll try something different

However, just because I saw many different translations for songs, I wouldn't go out of my way to say that any of them were wrong or bad, per say. Translating songs is a huge pain because there's no punctuation which makes it hard to keep track of everything. I've had times where I've been able to translate a 10 page story faster than I could translate a single song, just because having context and punctuation makes everything sooooo much easier. However, even if a translation is wrong, I don't think that makes it meaningless. I'm personally of the opinion that having some sort of translation is better than nothing, but that's something you need to decide for yourself. When I was first learning Japanese and couldn't fully understand the songs I listened to, if there was even just one line that I understood, I would embrace it and really love whatever meaning I grasped from it. Even if a song is translated correctly, there are lines that will impact people differently, and even an awkward or incorrect translation can resonate with the reader. Similarly, there are many times when I translate that I look at a line and think "aaahhhhh I want to change the meaning a bit because I can make it sound cooler and give it more impact than a direct translation would".

The next thing I noticed is that I kind of feel like people value native Japanese speakers (who have English as their second language, non-native English speaker) over native English speakers more (Japanese second language, non-native Japanese speaker)? Tbh, that feels like a double standard to me. Like idk, I'm fine translating Japanese into English, but I don't think I would be able to translate English into Japanese. In fact, most professional translating jobs have you translate into your native language, so I thought it was strange when I noticed that it seemed like native Japanese speakers had more favored translations. Or another one I noticed is that if someone knew more languages, their translation would also be considered better because of the assumption that taking multiple language courses is the same as being gifted with languages. Anyways, my point is that both English native speakers and Japanese native speakers both put a lot of time into learning their languages so I don't think one side should be valued less than the other. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Native English speakers may have a harder time understanding the initial Japanese, but shape it into English better, while native Japanese speakers understand the Japanese, but have a harder time putting it into English how a native speaker would understand.

No matter what the translator's native language is though, I've learned that having skills in a foreign language isn't the only requirement to be a good translator; you also need to have proper understanding of grammar and a large vocabulary in your native language. Also, proper reading of the translation requires the same amount of understanding for English grammar and vocabulary. I realized this after I took a lot of comparative literature classes and realized how much of a potato I am lol. I think it makes sense though, as a lot of the lyrics from utaite and vocaloid songs are usually extremely well thought out poetry. Multiple songwriters I've translated for have mentioned that as they tried to write better lyrics, they eventually had to immerse themselves in studying literature and their native language much more than the average person would. I often think that since literature and translating doesn't abide by scientific law that the humanities are actually more difficult to grasp than STEM subjects (and trust me, I've studied far on both sides of the spectrum).

The last thing I'll touch on is that… just appreciate your fan translators and don't give them a hard time please. Like nobody gets paid to do this stuff and usually they do it because they really like something, so just let people learn and try their best. Yes, they won't be perfect translations, but once again, fan translators aren't paid. They're translating out of the goodness of their heart. After all, translators don't need to translate a song to understand it, so in the end they don't really lose anything if they stop translating. As international fans, I feel like there are three options that we have to choose from eventually: 1. Rely on fan translations, even with their mistakes 2. Don't use translations and just enjoy the music or 3. Learn Japanese. I think all options are great, but they are personal decisions and shouldn't be used to knock other people down and make them feel bad. If there's a mistake in a translation, it is not intentional and the translator literally has no idea unless someone tells them (as translations are a combined reflection of both Japanese AND English ability). All I know is that Vocaloid was popularized from amateur musicians just doing what they wanted for fun, and so I think a really cool thing that the international fandom has that Japan doesn't is that we have awesome fan translators that are also amateurs and are doing translations for fun.

[morshtalon]

Dragon Quest II

Well, it's been a while since I wrote a review on something. I've played a number of games in the meantime, but none of them really gave me anything I felt was worth talking about or that hasn't been talked about before, so I just keep them in the backburner of my mind for possible future reference.

However, I feel like current circumstances make for a good time to dig up one of the games I wanted to share my thoughts on for a long time, and that I had beaten before even writing the first review I've ever "published". That game is Dragon Quest II.

Part of the reason why I held off on it for so long is that I don't think my review of the first game is all that great, and another part is that, again, I don't feel like I've bunched up enough good stuff to say, even though I really wanted to talk about it ever since I played it.

But hey, by far and wide my post popular post is technically related to Dragon Quest II, so why not cut to the chase and do it, right?

Anyway, to say that the first game took off in popularity is an understatement, it being the seminal harbinger of an entire genre of gaming that would soon take the world by storm. You would think that means this would be the time-old tale of "runaway success game making company executives pressure developers into slaving away at a sequel with suffocating deadlines". However, planning for DQII apparently began before DQI was released. 1986 was a different time, I guess. A time when the industry was fledgling enough that it wasn't that much more than a group of dudes banding together to bring an idea to life, and then - not a moment of hesitation after that idea comes to fruition - immediately start brainstorming ways in which they can build on it to give birth to new, more complex explorations of the concepts they had just tackled.

I believe this is why it's good to go back and play these games in their original versions, in chronological release order. Nowadays, it's virtually impossible to innovate. Back then, almost every big-time franchise was always finding ways to breathe fresh air into the structure of their games. Though Dragon Quest isn't the most innovative when compared to the likes of Final Fantasy, they were still making great strides into the codification of the type of game they had pioneered. With that knowledge in mind, one can really appreciate the evolution by going back and exploring these things as they grew with the times. And hey, Final Fantasy still wasn't around by the time DQII came out, so once again, they had to rely on ideas from western RPGs they liked.

In my opinion, II is the first jRPG that actually feels good to play, if you can put yourself into the mindset of an 80's gamer. The designers felt the 1v1 battles of the first title were boring - a sentiment which I share - and put in different groups of enemies as well as extra party members for you to find. One thing that some of these old RPGs that only let you target a group of enemies does is drawing only one enemy sprite on-screen to represent the entire group. Surprisingly, this game does not do that, even though it predates all the ones that do. It draws every enemy on-screen, which doesn't seem like much nowadays, but it's very appreciated nonetheless. Sure, it came at the cost of battle backgrounds (all fights in this game are set against pure blackness), but they did the right thing. The party itself follows what would become a typical archetype of 3-person groups: One character who is a jack-of-all-stats, balanced between physical prowess and magic, one who is focused on physical combat (in this game, this character actually has no magic capabilities whatsoever), and one who is a pure mage. Perhaps surprisingly, because these structures hadn't become tropes yet, the main character is the physical one, and he's also pretty much the most reliable party member by a reasonable margin, even though all he can do is attack normally. Balance issues aside (we'll talk about that later), I honestly sort of dig this arrangement. It's a little bit of a breath of fresh air to see the main character in an RPG rely completely on his weapons, and in the future, in any DQ title that has a reasonable degree of character customization, I always try to make the protagonist a physical powerhouse, to match the one from this game. It hardly ever works, but hey, it just goes for show that I enjoyed it while playing. Given that the other party members join you as you progress through the game at specific points, that also means the complexity of magic spells is added to your arsenal slowly, getting you used to it without feeling overwhelming. Sure, the game is simple enough that it wouldn't be overwhelming regardless of how they had set up the pacing, but I never felt like any of the times I struggled were because of insufficient knowledge of the game mechanics. So, the battles are fun enough, and they feel just right in terms of complexity vs. focus. The strategies to win are simple - really, the whole game is very simple - but it does its job well, and it allowed the developers to have near-perfect control of the game's difficulty curve. As a result, it is also - almost up to the end of the game - pretty nice, even if the whole thing is on the challenging end of things. At the end, it gets... A little special. We'll get to that later.

Let's take a step back and look at the gameplay outside battles. First of all, the story is... sparse, to say the least. Not as much as the one in the first game, and supplemented in the international version by a frankly kick-ass introduction that gives the experience a certain tone and atmosphere I appreciate a lot, but still, it's 1987. jRPGs were... not so much about the story back then, if you can believe that. In fact, they were more like an extension of a point-and-click adventure game. DQII is, essentially, a big fetch quest. In a different story, one that has enough plot points that you can sense a type of underlying narrative progression, I would not enjoy having the game interrupted by a blatant collectathon. However, the fetch quest aspect is basically the soul of this entire game. The extremely loose story paves the way for an experience that boils down to pure exploration and combat, with light elements of puzzle-solving woven in, using the fetch quest premise simply as a background to leave the developers with fertile soil to plant their little tricks and enigmas without worrying too much about how it would all connect rationally. And here, we witness an aspect of old games that could only spring about as a byproduct of limited graphics, ill-defined representations of the setting's reality, and a healthy disregard for common sense, things that were the style at the time. The puzzles, and sometimes just the exploration, violate logic quite heavily. Traversing through a monster-infested castle to get to a point that is technically outside the castle, but you can't just walk around it because most of the outside grass tiles are exit tiles that warp you back to the world map? Sure, why not? Having dedicated "teleport-room" maps that only serve the explicit purpose of housing a teleporter to another part of the world, except for one which also houses a chest with an essential item if you walk along the right border of the map, but not the identical-looking left one? Mario 2 hid a goal post inside a secret too, so yeah! Throw that in! Stairs down in a brick islet surrounded by water which brings you to a room that's... Also at water level? We hardly have enough tiles to go around, let alone a set to represent underwater or underground rooms, so whatever! Nobody cares! And, honestly, I truly don't care, either. If a game is up to, let's say, willfully forgo a bit of logic in order to formulate a creative puzzle to play around with your expectations, then all the more power to it. I honestly feel like puzzles nowadays are too sectioned-off, contained within a single room in a single dungeon, ready for the player to walk in, solve it, move on to the next point in the flowchart and never think about it twice. When puzzles are woven in so closely with the world, requiring the player to think outside the box at all times, as they're out there exploring, it makes the whole game feel like it's working together to make a point, and helps reduce that feeling one gets when playing RPGs where there are very separate elements of gameplay that... Don't really connect to each other very well. Sure, you're blatantly aware you're playing a videogame at all times, and it's not super great for immersion, but this was a time when there just... wasn't enough memory for immersion. It was a constraint that naturally gave way to challenges that capitalized on its own limitations, and therefore, created a type of immersion of its own, where the player is completely sucked into their own thoughts, holding a notebook with a rough sketch of the world map in their hand (yeah, I might have done that), taking notes and thinking where in the world could that last crest possibly be?! I think DQII hit that sweet spot of looseness vs. clarity in the narrative that helped these wild, nonsensical elements flourish. I really don't know how other people react to this sort of thing, but I don't care. I had a good time with it, and soon after this game, everything RPG started to become more focused on story. That's definitely not a bad thing, but I felt a kind of clear, developer-to-player kind of communication from these small bits of wrongness that made me more aware of the time, effort and creativity put into it by the people who were making it. I realized that, were I in the shoes of the dude who was making all this crazy stuff, I'd be stoked to see my friends trying to solve them. I'm not trying to be sentimental, that's how I honestly felt while playing that part with the teleporter and the chest. In any case, I appreciated it.

Then you get to the road to Rhone.

Though, apparently, the game was not pressured into deadlines by higher-ups, I did read something about one of the guys in the team offhandedly setting a deadline that turned out to be just that little bit too tight, requiring it to be delayed from November 1986 to January 1987. This, along with the fact that, at the time, the second title in a franchise had the habit of being designed for people who were hardcore fans of the first game in that series, might go a little ways into explaining why everything starting from the road to Rhone is absolutely fucking brutal. Every element of the game that, previously, was a tad questionable, leaving that little itch of worry in the back of your head, returns here with the express intent to make your life miserable. I have a high tolerance for difficulty, one that is even higher for RPGs where, for the most part, there are always ways to slightly circumvent it and make your life easier. The simplicity of design in DQII means that this is not the case here, and from this point on you're expected to not only have the skill and familiarity you've accrued while playing, but also a very healthy amount of luck to go with you, otherwise you will die. And rest assured, you WILL die. In fact, due to the specific way in which the player's mortality rate skyrockets in Rhone, it's almost not even a matter of the game being "hard" in the traditional sense, because it doesn't exactly require you to be strong enough or smart enough anymore, it just requires you to be patient enough to slowly trudge through the mountain of corpses of your former attempts until you figure out how to minimize your risks to the lowest degree they possibly can be minimized, then hitting that sweet spot of luck and control that finally allows you to reach the end of the game. This particular way of handling things means that, after you hit about level 30 with the main character, further leveling will only render you negligibly less likely to die, and the effects are not strong enough from level to level to even be clearly noticed. But what exactly makes it so hard? The answer is primarily RNG. When you reach the end, you will begin to notice just how much RNG there is through the whole game. Starting off, the turn order is entirely random. There is an agility stat, but I never found any evidence of it actually factoring into who goes first in battle (instead, it's a carryover from DQI that calculates your base defense). If there are more than three enemies, you're at a disadvantage, but even if there aren't, a stray run of bad luck - which is guaranteed to happen given the density of random encounters - means you're gonna have to scramble with enemy attacks, and they are perfectly capable of leaving you in such a state that it would take a miracle to put yourself back in shape, if they don't just wipe you out instantly. Now, remember, two of your three characters have magic. However, at this point in the game, enemies have a large amount of magic resistance to all kinds of different spells, and magic resistance in this game means that there is a chance the spell simply won't work. If it does, it deals full damage. If it doesn't, it deals none at all. I don't know about you, but I almost never take my chances with low-accuracy, gimmicky stuff in other games. This one renders all spells like that given enough time. If you decide to rely on physical strength, the main character is the only one who will bring you any significant results. The pure mage at this point in the game is far more efficient at support casting than direct damage, and the balanced character is - memetically, at this point - incompetent at both, and also sucks as a physical fighter, so once again, you're boned on that front. All of a sudden, running away becomes an alluring strategy. However, once again, there is an ever-prevalent random factor to it, so the pressure is on in all fronts. The game becomes a challenge of carefully planning out how to simply survive each encounter. Do you take the chance and run? If you fail, you'll be wailed on by the full force of the enemy party, and will likely be too weak to attempt mounting a resistance. Do you take the bait and unleash the full force of your attacks? What if they all target different enemies in the group? You won't deal enough damage to kill one of them, so you'll suffer heavy retaliation and waste precious MP that could be spent on healing spells. Did you win or escape successfully? You've only lost about 20% of your health, but some encounters can relieve you of the remaining 80% before you can even act, so do you spend MP healing or do you trudge on because you already don't have that many to go around? If you make the wrong decision at any of these break points - and rest assured, there won't be a shortage of them - you'll either die or get so close to death it will be almost irrelevant to keep going. And then, it's back to the last save point. Rinse and repeat many times until you clear the road and get to Rhone proper, for one final save point and one last, grueling stretch of game before the final boss. Here, the game introduces enemies that have, no joke, a move that kills your entire party and has 100% accuracy. Typing it out, it sounds like hyperbole, like i'm salty that I died so much and am exaggerating the things the game does in order to trick myself into believing that it was super impossible times infinity, but no, it's true. To be fair, there isn't a high chance the enemy will perform this move, but when they do, there's absolutely nothing you can do to save yourself. Just reset the game when the screen turns red. Other than that, the rest of the lovely cast of enemies rounding up the final waves are more than capable of just killing you the regular way, so keep your wits about you like you did back in the cave and grind yourself up until the stat bonuses start getting negligible, because now, you need to face five bosses in a row. Right, okay, technically you can go back and heal yourself right before the last one, but I didn't know that, so if you're an idiot like me, try to get ahold of a Wizard Ring, as well. It's the only way to heal MP, and can be used multiple times until - you guessed it - it randomly decides to break. After that, you just have to contend with two bosses that use a move that heals all their HP when it gets low, so you also have to roughly keep track of their state in your mind so you can unleash a full round of attack before they can get in that heal. Unless your spell doesn't hit them, of course. Or they happen to go first. Or you just barely miss the threshold of HP that will actually kill them. Oh, and be careful! One of the other bosses also knows the instant death move. He won't use it often, but 30 or so attempts in, you're likely to see it once or twice.

Then, the final boss can randomly spawn with a number of hit points between 75% and 100% of his assigned value (every enemy does that), and you're gonna deal an average of about 15% damage per turn to it. Sounds easy at first, but he will take you out in either one or two moves, and...

...Here's the motherload...

...He has a 1 in 16 chance of casting the full heal move at any point in the battle. And he WILL do that the first 2 or 3 times you get to him, sucking you dry of resources and smashing your face all the way back to the save point to try the 5 bosses again, so it's back to grinding attempts until you have another mostly hopeless shot at him.

But when you get him, man...

When you do it...

*sigh*

Anyway, this was a long, rambling, focus-shifting tangent just to correctly capture the degree of luck and randomness that constitutes the final stretch of Dragon Quest II. How does it impact the rest of the game? Well, I still appreciate it for what it did right, and there's a small, strange part of me that actually thinks the insane difficulty perfectly fits the stakes that the game set up, but it is, nevertheless, very hard. And once again, it's the kind of hard that is virtually impossible to circumvent. For any average, non-god-tier player, there is no alternate way of tackling the simple-looking, but highly controlled challenges in this game that trivializes it. You can't change your party, you can't buy extra spells, you can't really use stat-up items to change stat configurations in any significant way. You just have to keep trying and hope it works, and for the first few dozen times, it won't, so you'll just have to deal with it.

Still, it shows, even up to the end, that the DQ team has a certain grasp of consistency in design that will slowly grow and adapt as the series embraces new complexities through the years. DQII stands as somewhat of a black sheep in the series (as the second titles of old franchises often do), but I think it has its place, and it's surely a wild ride. Also, if you can get yourself into the mindset of late 80's design, I can assure you it won't ever be boring. Maddening, sure, but not boring. It's more fun in the midgame, in my opinion, as for someone who is very used to RPGs, it can be exceesingly simplistic at the start and too hopelessly uncontrollable at the end, but I feel it deserves a score of 7 out of 10. It's pure gameplay, and, for what it's worth, you WILL get an intense experience. Just be ready to shake, a lot. And pad your walls.

[wits-writing]

Avengers: Endgame (Movie Review SPOILERS)

Avengers: Endgame, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo with a screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, has a clearly delineated story structures, basically splitting its story among three different genres to bring in so much of the scope that’s been built up in 21 previous movies. Even accounting for its three-hour runtime, how much payoff and experimenting with the character dynamics from throughout the MCU’s history has been fit into this one astonishes. Each segment has ways of managing tone and dealing with the finality at play that warrant discussing how they work on individual levels. I’m going to try something different by doing exactly that with this review, followed by highlighting my favorite performances in the movie. This will mean spoilers, but the stuff I want to discuss requires that and I won’t give away the biggest moments Endgame has up its sleeve.

Final Warning: If you don’t want to be spoiled on anything about Avengers: Endgame, turn back now but know this is a satisfying finale for everything the MCU has built.

[Full Review and SPOILERS Under the Cut]

Act 1 (Prologue/Post-Snap World):

The prologue of the movie effectively tells the audience what the movie will not be about. When Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) arrives at Avengers HQ after saving Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) from being stranded in space, Endgame goes through the motions of the most obvious follow-up to Infinity War. The heroes regroup with their new powerful ally to kick Thanos’s ass properly this time around with the intent to get the Infinity Stones and undo the Snap. Things get complicated with a revelation when they go to find Thanos on the idyllic planet he’s retired on after achieving his twisted idea of “balance.” The Mad Titan used his second act with the Infinity Stones to self-destruct them, so the Snap can’t be undone. After Thor kills Thanos in a swift act of rage, the Avengers are left with no solid idea of what their next move will be.

That’s when the next major reveal of Endgame’s premise occurs, it’s set five years in the future from where the prologue left off. The time-skip effectively jumps us into a new status quo the characters have settled into and how some have dealt with the Post-Snap world better than others. Some of the Avengers had more invested in the mission than others and either desperately seek a new one or completely close themselves off due to lack of purpose. Others have managed to find renewed purpose through rebuilding their personal lives, finding a sense of balance and moving on, even if guilt over being unable to stop Thanos has stuck with them.

This act represents the movie at its most somber and considerate. Even the humor that does manage to creep into this part of the movie is more subdued or the product of characters lashing out in frustration. We get the most time inside the heads of the characters in the opening stretch and we’re given a sense of what they still have to lose in the aftermath of their greatest failure. However, things shift gears into the second act, when the heroes get the chance to start making things right.

Act 2 (Time Heist):

Endgame starts reintroducing the type of fun that’s more expected from the Avengers movies by way of reintroducing the audience to Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man. He emerges from the Quantum Realm after the mid-credits cliffhanger from Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the five years only felt like five hours to him. After catching up on what he missed and reuniting with his loved ones, he decides to go to Avengers HQ with his revelations about the Realm and how they could use it to bring back everyone dusted in the Snap by tracking down the Infinity Stones throughout time. Which ends up meaning the Avengers taking a tour through the events of past MCU movies.

The buildup to the actual trips through time transition from the more dower tone of the opening by turning the middle of the movie into a heist. Like any decent entry in that genre, it begins by bringing the team together. This is where the last couple of heroes that haven’t made appearances in the movie yet make their return and they’re the ones in more amusing positions post-time-skip. Some of the team use this as a chance to pick themselves back up as having a new mission breathes new life into them. Others still have some heavy lifting to do in that area that has to wait until they’re already on the MacGuffin quest. They determine which times are best for picking up the Stones as efficiently as possible with the limited resources at their disposal.

Once the time travel begins, how much an audience member gets out of it will inevitably be tied to how much they have invested in the MCU as a series and the entries being revisited in particular. I can’t be impartial about how well this would work for the casual fan of these movies, since I’ve watched most of them multiple times over the years. It’s about as blatant as fan service can get and represents the movie at its lightest tone overall. Even if specific events aren’t being revisited, there are nods, winks and cameos from past characters aplenty to go around as Endgame pays tribute to every storyteller that’s added something to this universe. My personal favorite bits come from how the movie uses this time to answer retroactive questions of “what was X-character doing during Y-event”, especially during the part that revolves around the Battle of New York from The Avengers.

It’s not all jokes and continuity nods, since going through ones own past presents plenty of opportunity for self-reflection. Characters get the chance to see how far they’ve come, reexamine their regrets and bring relationships with other characters full-circle. The exact mechanics of what can and can’t be done in the past are loose but usually in service to the character arcs being brought to fruition. Since it wouldn’t be a heist or a time travel story without something going wrong along the way, this is also where the buildup for the final act of the movie occurs.

Act 3 (Final Battle/Epilogue):

If the second act was examining the MCU’s past compared to how far they’ve come, the final act is about showing off the full spectacle of what’s been built from that past. It’s a sight to behold as stories get payed off and called back, all while the scale grows to a level that makes the battles from even the biggest superhero movies of the last twenty years look miniscule by comparison. The cathartic execution of this battle is awe-inspiring and goes beyond anything else I can remember seeing in my life. All of it leads into the movie’s epilogue as the characters are left to consider what they’ve sacrificed to win the day. The final stretch of this movie emphasizes a sense of finality on par with the multiple epilogues from Return of the King. Even as the MCU inevitably continues after this, there’s a sense that the story that began with Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps has concluded.

The Characters:

Since Endgame’s mainly a conclusion for what began with Phase 1 of the MCU, the original six Avengers get the bulk of this movies character work. Keeping things focused to a core group of characters makes this movie ultimately feel more satisfying for them than Infinity War, where they were mostly a reactive force to Thanos’s machinations.

Tony’s presented as the one with the most to lose before they go on their time travel mission, since he’s put the most work into rebuilding his life after the Snap. When he’s first presented with the time travel plan, he dismisses it as a pipedream of a Hail Mary pass. His own desire to make things right eventually wins out and he’s the one to put the finishing touches on the devices that make their mission possible. He’s paired up with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) for the mission as it takes them on a tour of the intersections in their personal histories. Theirs is probably the strongest of the segments that makeup the second act of Endgame and serves as a worthwhile reconciliation for the two after their falling out in Captain America: Civil War.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been stuck dealing with witnessing everything he ever defined himself by crumble with the weight of his failure to stop Thanos as his breaking point. He’s given up on any version of Thor he thought himself to be in the past, not the arrogant prince we first met him as nor the hero he became. He’s retreated from himself and that makes him the most reluctant to go along with the plan to fix everything. His depression is played partly for laughs and given signifiers of letting himself go like overeating and alcoholism. It’s likely a divisive decision to do this with Thor, but I enjoy the way it pays off. He also continues his great dynamic with Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) from Infinity War, which plants Rocket in the rare position of being the mature one in the situation.

Natasha (Scarlet Johannsen) spent the past five years actively throwing herself into mitigating the chaos caused in the wake of the Snap. She’ll take any problem as an excuse to keep herself busy rather than dwell on how her efforts to do the right thing as an Avenger added up to a zero-sum when it counted most. In the time between those dilemmas, she’s busy tracking down Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). He lost his entire family in the Snap and it broke him. He’s gone on an international killing spree of any major criminals spared from being dusted. The two reunite for the sake of the mission and are both prepared to give up anything to make up for the sins of their respective pasts.

Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) is probably the character there’s the least to say about. The position he’s in after the time-skip is amusing. He’s managed to make peace with his Hulk-side and now permanently hulked-out with a more affable demeanor overall that suits Ruffalo’s performance perfectly. It’s a fun decision, showing one of the characters taking the perspective granted by experiencing a cosmic tragedy to work through his personal issues but it leaves him with little to do but exposit about the plot mechanics of time travel. There are some great bits where he struggles to imitate the past-Hulk’s rage to stay incognito on their time travel mission that make this decision the most worth it.

Aside from the original Avengers, the character given the most material to work with is Nebula. The character and Gillan’s performance have been a consistently underrated aspect of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but the spotlight she’s given here makes her best showcase yet. The time travel segment ends up showing how far the character has come since her first appearance. It’d be difficult to discuss much more without going into further spoilers than I have already, but she’s definitely Endgame’s secret weapon for why it works as well as it does.

Conclusion:

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say at this point. Avengers: Endgame makes an effective celebration of everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has built up. If you’ve read this far past my spoiler warnings already, you’ve either already seen it and made up your own mind or wanted more details about what the experience of this finale is like. This is a curtain call on eleven years of evolution for superhero movies as a genre and I’m happy I got to see it happen. Part of me will never believe they actually pulled it off, but they did and these characters have earned a permanent place in film history for it.

If you like what you’ve read here, please like/reblog or share elsewhere online, follow me on Twitter (@WC_WIT), and consider throwing some support my way at either Ko-Fi.com or Patreon.com at the extension “/witswriting”

[armstrong48-blog]

Wrestling: No Longer a Mystery

There's a feeling that in the event the truth does eventually emerge, it may upend everything we know. Becoming learning-focused means putting the procedure ahead of the item. Sometimes, you've got to do things that aren't that fun to achieve your objectives. Well, you have to drill repeatedly if you would like moves to develop into second nature. You've got a particular possibility to play such a video game all by yourself and also have a considerable quantity of fun in this approach. It's about disciplinebeing disciplined enough to plow through the procedure and make it take place. What You Need to Do About Wrestling Before You Miss Your Chance You don't need to be worried about it because this completely damage is not going to bring it any result. Your dog is not going to understand that they're managing a little child who doesn't wish to hurt him. Simple, there's no magic pill to earn the concussion go away. Periodization is frequently associated with weight training but can be utilized to train other athletic attributes also. Such exercises are for when you're attempting to shed weight so as to be in a specific competitive wrestling category. If you must cut weight that you should begin a couple weeks or a month in advance if necessary. Choosing Wrestling There are lots of shady dealers out there. Their chemistry for a team is legendary. The matches are predetermined but of course that's the whole intention of the company. It doesn't matter the apathy both of these candidates are satisfied with. It was also a very simple way to be certain that he'd dominate over his former Shield brothers, aligning with the men and women in charge, to receive the best matches and the opponents with the highest-profiles. The individual was turned over to the right authorities. The Unusual Secret of Wrestling The full point of this exercise is to have a rise from the crowd and it is irrelevant whether it's cheers or boos. His solution was supposed to create his own form of the barbaric duo in Demolition. The reason this is sensible to know about is mainly because you might find that yourself bored playing the identical game and having options would be wise so that you're able to alter the kind of game you're playing. The thought is simple, you beat the defenders till they are not able to get up and attack you. I simply don't like that he constantly receives a shot. Major man smooth like a large baby penguin. In addition, I hope not one of the regulars end it. Sasha pulls Becky from the ring. Valkyrie Spears Grace on the ground. Wrestling - the Conspiracy Writing a book isn't easy, but neither is wrestling. We'll also be running a complete live blog of the function which is going to be available here. We did not receive the story we were promised. All these wrestling stars have various trademarks most especially the way that they dress and how they smack their opponents. Owens is only short of a million at the right time of writing. Whether you like him or not you need to admit he is extremely gifted and definitely looks the component of a top superstar. Wrestling is among the only sports that everyone on the planet can understand. Every one of these sports are going to have its exclusive demands. In earlier times athletes weren't too concerned about a concussion. A Startling Fact about Wrestling Uncovered Whatever might be the experience, jot down all of the information down. Ideally, in case you have chosen the proper exercises, participants ought to be able to experience a complete cycle 3 times. Another thing to think about is that bad parents don't always raise bad children. Inside this section you must jot down all of the critical abilities, specifically linked to leadership activities, communication skills, teaching, together with initiative skills etc.. The program is composed of a string of exercises each performed at various stations in the gym. Always believe in yourself and you can also reach your objectives. We're not there to just enforce the rules. Make certain you inspect thoroughly and properly maintain to guarantee safety. If you take a close look at practice in Russia, every practice at each club throughout the country has a particular structure to it, while the US is all around the place. The Foolproof Wrestling Strategy When you speak about wrestling most individuals think about World Wrestling Entertainment also referred to as WWE. Therefore, attempting to use periodization for wrestling may appear impractical. Women wrestlers who tune out all of the horny boy stuff which goes about. Wrestling is so closely associated with life, he explained. Brock Lesnar is easily among the most protected Superstars in WWE history and he's got a WWE huge contract which likewise will come with limited dates. When it has to do with wrestling, it's often in comparison to the UFC and NCAA wrestling. A whole lot of wrestlers have a tendency to jump around to and from other promotions but The Undertaker proved to be a massive portion of WWE for his whole run there, 27 decades. WWE serves not just to promote fights, yet to entertain by storytelling. WWE however isn't the only wrestling promotion on the landscape. The Argument About Wrestling In some cases, the defender is equipped to flatten the attacker to the mat like a pancake, thus the name. You are going to be more able to dodge or slip from a tight hold. If you keep in 1 spot, you're putting yourself into a place to be taken down by your opponent or pushed from the mat. A previous alternative is to construct a structure to hold out the costume in the correct form. If you prefer, you even can trample it to the ground. In 1848, Exbroyat produced a big rule that forbade holds beneath the waist. Sacrifice often goes together with dedication. Wrestling to a degree of greatness requires commitments from all possible pieces of your entire body and mind. Unfortunately, it's not stored within the body. Choosing Good Wrestling You need to have a fair command over the neighborhood language at least languages. Inside my opinion, you should attempt to keep periodization simple. Not lots of expressions, usually. It leveled me up indirectly in various ways too. You've got a particular possibility to play such a video game all by yourself and also have a considerable quantity of fun in this approach. This will permit you to bring another facet of the sport in your arsenal of abilities and techniques. The Foolproof Wrestling Strategy Folk wrestling styles aren't recognized as international trends of wrestling by UWW. If your kid is younger or his school does not own a wrestling group, you can discover a regional independent wrestling club. Outlast the competition with the proper wrestling headgear. On the flip side, more than 1 macrocycle might be used over the course of a wrestling season as you could have more than one significant competition which you want to peak for. There's a whole lot of wrestling fan denial. This won't be the case with AEW on a roster that already boasts a number of the best wrestlers on earth and Cody. Every WWE Superstar ought to be given time to come up with their character and prove they are capable, regardless of what the circumstance. The Divas can not merely kick but in the ring, but a lot of them can even manage different wrestlers and even run companies regarding the area of wrestling. WWE however isn't the only wrestling promotion on the landscape. The Ultimate Wrestling Trick Post called that a minimal point. You may think about where in NYC you wish to go to narrow things down. Provided that the story lives on TV, it's entertaining alone. Meanwhile Terri Gold gets all of the air. Be certain to speak to his coach for anything else you will want to understand. WWE's inability to develop transcendent icons is a step over the real issue they are too stubborn to handle. Moreover, autograph events are often held in order to permit fans to fulfill their favorite wrestling superstars up-close and personal. Not necessary, but you need to be related to sports. In earlier times athletes weren't too concerned about a concussion. Life, Death, and Wrestling If you want it, you might have a try! Sandow marks a terrific pop. If you wind up with the incorrect dimensions, just inform us and we'll help you exchange it for the best size. If you have feet, we've got a full array of wrestling shoes in all styles, colours and sizes for you to select from. This is just a slice of cloth that's wrapped around like underwear. To receive added information on john cena cardboard cutout please Visit Website. Remember, wrestling shoes are notoriously tricky to discover the ideal fit. However, while his brothers continue to be around, we're never likely to love Roman Reigns. Valkyrie Spears Grace on the ground. What You Must Know About Wrestling He wore face paint, he'd spit mist into the opinion of his opponent. He's also a fresher face who's on the up. When the wrestler has developed a good square stance, he or she is able to work on a staggered stance, also referred to as an offensive stance. A previous alternative is to construct a structure to hold out the costume in the correct form. Good stance plays an essential part in enabling a wrestler to stay stable on the mat. Some might envision themselves standing on the cap of the podium in 1st location. Grip training should only be carried out at the conclusion of a workout. The Death Mask's present moveset is largely designed with quick, snap maneuvers that could surprise opponents from unexpected angles and offer impact without using an exhaustive quantity of strength. Unfortunately, it's not stored within the body. Why Almost Everything You've Learned About Wrestling Is Wrong You'd have to eat plenty of red meat to coincide with a single serving of powdered creatine, but it is surely present. Athletes ought to be given only sufficient time between sets to get properly set for the exercise they're going to execute. Proteins help to construct muscle. If you need to earn weight, plan ahead, and attempt to get rid of body fat, not muscle. You may have to work on technique initially and boost your volume and intensity as time passes. So it is crucial to receive a steady dose of protein each and every day. The Key to Successful Wrestling Even in the event the early phases of a career, it comes down to the company which is kept. Their chemistry for a team is legendary. It may sound easy, but by spending a little quantity of the match posing you will greatly enhance the caliber of the photos taken of you. But these are all necessary so as to thrill the spectators. 1 important element is to be certain your child regularly mixes with different children. Not exactly my 1st alternative, but it's better than other choices. A Startling Fact about Wrestling Uncovered It is possible to learn that information online and discover what is there. Ideally, in case you have chosen the proper exercises, participants ought to be able to experience a complete cycle 3 times. If you're uncertain about whether it's the case that you or your little one should wrestle, this guide delivers a number of reasons which should help you create your final choice. In the last few years, mixed martial arts have come to be ever more popular for kids and adults of all ages. However, because the years went on I started to comprehend what teaching Middle School children is about. This sport was once thought to be crucial training for most Greek soldiers. We're not there to just enforce the rules. Make certain you inspect thoroughly and properly maintain to guarantee safety. We are constantly looking for volunteers to assist with the other districts. The Tried and True Method for Wrestling in Step by Step Detail Meal replacement drinks are a lot better since you don't need to consider what foods to eat along with them. Athletes ought to be given only sufficient time between sets to get properly set for the exercise they're going to execute. As it takes more time to digest complex carbohydrates, you feel fuller longer and don't will need to eat as much. A kid should never be required to ask what things to eat to shed weight. Such exercises are for when you're attempting to shed weight so as to be in a specific competitive wrestling category. If you're really cutting lots of weight this season, you might not be in a position to obtain strength because the body requires a surplus of calories from food to be able to feed the muscle. Life After Wrestling To retire a legend and act as though you're still an excellent guy to the fans is much more. It needs to be the proper moment, it needs to be the best product and it must be the proper distributor. It sold lots of magazines. Meanwhile Terri Gold gets all of the air. Be certain to speak to his coach for anything else you will want to understand. Whether you like him or not you need to admit he is extremely gifted and definitely looks the component of a top superstar. If there's a school that the business endorses, athletes may benefit from attending the suggested wrestling school in order to enhance their odds of stardom. Not necessary, but you need to be related to sports. Some athletes find it can help to meditate or listen to hypnosis recordings to have them focused and prepared to wrestle. The Wrestling Game So long as you receive a reaction, its working. The only way we are presented with a challenge is when our child gives evidence in the shape of problems she's involved in. Well some of us will try to inform you. I really like that folks love things. The people that are in charge are simply not interested in letting them tell great stories. Wrestling - the Conspiracy In some cases, the defender is equipped to flatten the attacker to the mat like a pancake, thus the name. You are going to be more able to dodge or slip from a tight hold. It is an excellent means to score 5 points when you're losing or to have an essential pin. To put it simply, it's intimidating. The conventional square stance, often known as the defensive stance, is generally the sturdier, but it's also harder to move from quickly. You have to be in control to receive a pin. And what the Death Mask is a person who won't care about stepping toes so as to receive his due. The Death Mask's present moveset is largely designed with quick, snap maneuvers that could surprise opponents from unexpected angles and offer impact without using an exhaustive quantity of strength. Wrestling headgear is mostly utilized to reduce cauliflower ear brought on by repeat ear trauma. Facts, Fiction and Wrestling They get the itch they visit a different business and keep working. Your dog is only going to take note that this modest human is making him feel uncomfortable. The reason this is sensible to know about is mainly because you might find that yourself bored playing the identical game and having options would be wise so that you're able to alter the kind of game you're playing. Bubba finally receives a tag and downloads. I simply don't like that he constantly receives a shot. I don't understand how to demonstrate the respect I feel this man deserves, because certainly once you start to see a legend begin to deteriorate it's challenging to keep in mind the man he was. In addition, I hope not one of the regulars end it. Sasha pulls Becky from the ring. Then consider your wrestling shoes. Vital Pieces of Wrestling When that occurs, the wrestler wins the match. Again, victory is all but inevitable. There are a few great wrestlers at those weights, Cleary explained. Braun angry Big Dog not wish to have match. While Lesnar will be searching for revenge, there are a number of other clashes in the night to seek. A whole lot of wrestlers have a tendency to jump around to and from other promotions but The Undertaker proved to be a massive portion of WWE for his whole run there, 27 decades. The Divas can not merely kick but in the ring, but a lot of them can even manage different wrestlers and even run companies regarding the area of wrestling. Lets look at a number of the WWE roster. Where to Find Wrestling Have men and women in your community speak for your benefit. It is possible to also do a search for people in your region. Taking your child from the school environment to teach her at home is a substantial step, and one which shouldn't be taken without full consideration of the implications. I'm celebrating those who do. For the 69th consecutive calendar year, we hope you take pleasure in the action! When it has to do with chiropractic businesses, going to the one you like and enjoy heading to is crucial. What's more, you can want to get a less intense practice the evening prior to a significant competition so you're recovered and fresh to wrestle hard the following day. Deciding on what's most effective for you. We are constantly looking for volunteers to assist with the other districts. Ok, I Think I Understand Wrestling, Now Tell Me About Wrestling! As an investor, you wish to purchase stocks with the maximum probability of succeeding. Absolutely, price of admission is totally well worth it. It was a means to hedge his bets, the quickest way to get to the top. It doesn't matter the apathy both of these candidates are satisfied with. 1 important element is to be certain your child regularly mixes with different children. The individual was turned over to the right authorities.

[digitalmarketinginvisakhapatnam]

Web Design Development

Web design development is a term that describes the process of creating a website.

It involves two major skill sets: web design and web development.

Web design determines the look and feel of a website, while web development determines how it functions. Web design refers to how the website looks and feels on the outside. Web development refers to the functionality of the website on how it works

A web designer is a graphic artist who designs the layout, usability and visual appearance of a website. A web developer is someone who builds and maintains the core structure of a website. A successful web designer must possess an array of creative, graphic and technical skills.

To keep Web design development simple, let’s separate website creation into two categories: what the user sees, and what the user doesn’t see.

What the user sees takes place in a browser and involves design and front-end development. Design defines a website’s colours, layout, font, and images—all the stuff that goes into a website’s branding and usability—and requires tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Sketch.Using coding languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript to implement that design is called front-end development. These languages make it possible for users to interact with buttons, images, text, contact forms, and navigation menus. And they’re integral to responsive and adaptive design.Some designers code and some front-end developers design. Some designers don’t touch a piece of code. And some front-end developers stick to coding and nothing else.

What the user doesn’t see takes place on a server and involves back-end development. A website needs a back end to store and organise all the data that comes through the front end. So if a user buys something or fills out a form, they’re entering information into an application on the front end of the website. And that information is stored in a database that lives on a server.A website works the way you want it to because the front and back ends of a website are always communicating. A back-end developer is like the conductor. They make sure applications, databases, and servers work together harmoniously using languages like Ruby, PHP, .Net, and Python along with frameworks like Ruby on Rails and CodeIgniter

Leadraft Marketing  - We Digitise your Brand that helps scale up your business.

Digital Marketing is a platform through which your brand and your brand services are reached out to the public online.

Digital marketing - Empowering the Business world

Digital marketing practices allow the business to boost its sales exponentially by marketing it more visible and accessible to more consumers who are already looking for the product and services in your niche.

Digital marketing has various advantages and a quicker outreach.

●          Global Reach

Traditional marketing is restricted by geography and creating an international marketing campaign can be hard, expensive, as well as labour-intensive. However, digital marketing happens on the Internet, which means that the reach you can achieve with it is immense. Even a very small local business owner has the ability to reach an international audience with an online store. This would never be possible with traditional marketing or would cost a whole lot of money to do so.  This online accessibility has opened many growth opportunities for businesses to explore. The combination of global reach and visibility is a great opportunity for any business.

●         Local Reach

While global reach is a significant advantage of digital marketing, it also improves local visibility, which is especially important if your business relies on nearby customers. Local SEO and locally targeted ads can be beneficial for companies trying to bring more customers to their doors. Think of the reach you can get to a whole neighbourhood with digital marketing versus the reach it would take you to print out flyers and distribute them around.

●         Lower Cost

Whether you want to promote your business locally or internationally, digital marketing provides you with cost-effective solutions. It allows even the smallest companies to compete with larger companies using highly targeted strategies. Most of these strategies won’t even cost anything at all to start with (such as SEO, social media, and content marketing). However, not every form of digital marketing is suitable for every business and some may even have more costs than others. A business can find appropriate solutions based on its marketing goals

●         Easy to Learn

While there are many aspects of digital marketing that you need to learn, it is fairly easy to get started with. It gets more complex from the nature of the goals and the scale of the campaigns. However, it is all a matter of finding the right strategy that works for your business.

●         Effective Targeting

Even if you don’t have a clear idea of your target audience, digital marketing enables you to extract data to see which audiences will work best for you and optimise your campaign around them. There are many different options of targeting such as through keywords for search engine optimization (SEO)  or through demographic information on social media. This enormous amount of targeting elements at your disposal makes sure that every campaign reaches the right audience. It also helps you to analyse the changing behaviours of customers and modify campaigns for those changes. This ability to understand customers’ changing needs quickly is a sure way of success for any company.

●         Increased Engagement

One of the most important advantages of digital marketing is increased engagement. Digital marketing is designed to be highly engaging by default. Users can share a blog post, like a photo, save a video, or engage with your website via a paid ad click. The best part is that all of these actions can be measured. This enables you to create even more engaging posts to increase brand awareness or boost sales. The more you engage online, the more loyal customers you can get. Businesses that use engaging formats effectively in their online strategies have an ease.

●         Analytics and Optimization

Another important advantage of digital marketing is web analytics which measures the result of digital marketing campaigns in real-time. This helps to optimise future campaigns and fix any possible mistakes quickly. Analysing your digital marketing campaigns also enables you to have the ability to pinpoint every source of traffic and take total control of your sales funnels.ier time converting cold traffic to loyal customers.

Brand Awareness -

Brand awareness is the level of recognition and association by a potential customer towards your products and services.

Brand awareness is important to pop up the product instantly in an individual's mind.

We learn about your product, understand it and carve a technique to increase the visibility of your product/space that uniquely works for you through digital marketing.

Acceptance Marketing-

Acceptance marketing is a technique to put your brand into the public mind without advertising. Social media is a vital tool where acceptance marketing plays a relatively huge role in digital marketing.

Don’t worry even if your store has no digital presence yet.- We will make it for you.

Digital marketing helps people know the location of your store effortlessly across the globe.

We work on building your brand through different strategies that work uniquely for you whether your store has digital presence or not.

We work on creating a brand value for your product/space so that your brand distinctiveness is preserved which creates a mark in people’s minds.

Leadraft Marketing- We Grow with You.

We are a team of young & dedicated enthusiasts passionately working in the field of digital marketing.

How do we make your merchandise/Service speak louder through digital marketing.

Leadraft marketing team learns about the merchandise or service, understands it and creates a unique technique that is suitable for your product to make its way out on the regional or national level as per your criteria.

If you are an established mark we create a recipe to multiply your outreach to a wider purchaser through Digital marketing strategies.

We also work on Lead generation which captures interest in the product or service which increases the sales pipeline.

We boost your product visibility through -

●         Website building

●         Google Ads

●         Facebook ads

●         Social Media Posts

●         SEO Blogs

●         Digital Marketing - An expeditious path to Global Outreach. Thank you, We are looking forward to working with you.

[salmonspeakerblog]

Fractions in Minhast

I don't know exactly when I created the Minhast number system, but I found in my old, now defunct Wikia site a revision of Polysynthetic Minhast Ver 1.1 dated June 25, 2009 where it first appeared in the interwebz. The cardinals, ordinals, and verbal forms from 1-60 are there. Ever since then I've expanded the numbers up to 1000. However, fractions have not existed since that time until two days ago.

I've been searching the web for examples on how polysynthetic languages form fractions but came back empty-handed. So in trying to figure out how Minhast would handle it, I first looked at the "high-level specifications", a general abstraction of what parameters and constraints have been imposed on the language design process. If "high-level specifications" seems like software development jargon, you would be absolutely correct.

Anyways, one high-level constraint was that the language is "verb-heavy", meaning that verbs carry the majority of morphology and syntactic burden in forming clauses. In contrast, nouns and other parts of speech have minimal morphology and play a lesser role in the syntax, other than serving as arguments for the verb. Using this constraint as a guide, I worked my way backwards.

I knew then that verbs would play a role in forming fractions. Whereas in English we would say "one-twelfth", where the "-th" serves as a suffix for deriving both cardinals and fractions, I ended up using the verb "ikšimakman", which means "They (masculine and/or feminine) stepped forward." But who or what stepped forward, and where did he/she/it/they step forward from? I eventually decided I would use the word "yešpa" (portion) as some sort of dummy noun, and it would be the source of whomever/whatever it was that stepped forward. This indicated that I should use the Ablative form "yešpa", which would mean adding the clitic "-yār" to this dummy noun. Ok, so now we have the source. As this was the source, I reasoned the source, being 12 entities, was the denominator. So what should be the subject, i.e. the numerator?

The answer was to not refer to an overt noun like "yešpa", but to conjugate the present tense verb using the third person common plural "-km-", which is used for both feminine and masculine nouns, but excludes neuter animate and neuter inanimate plurals. This would give me another dummy argument that was not overtly expressed. Remember, Minhast likes its verbs more than its nouns! That's why it'll pro-drop wherever it can and rely on the verb's agreement markers, in this case, "-km-" which refers to the subject/numerator.

So, the word for 12 is "sen". The word for 1 is "šūmi". Combining these numbers with all the grammar stuff I've so far described, we get ""Sen min yešpayār šūmi ikšimakman", from "sen min yešpa=yār šūmi ikšima-km-an", which literally means "From three portions, one [of the whatchamacallits] stepped forward." (The "min" is a connector and is required for joining modifiers to their nouns, in this case, numbers).

Thus, a clause is used to represent fractions. This is what is decided should be in Classical Minhast, and by extension, the conservative northern dialects, aka Upper Minhast. And since the backbone of Modern Standard Minhast's grammar is based on Upper Minhast, it too uses this clausal structure.

Problem is that this is way too wordy for me. Then it occurred to me that the Gull Speakers, who have historically been involved in international trade and commerce, wouldn't have the patience to use this sort of system when dealing with money and commodities. They were impatient with the labour-intensive block-style script of the Minhast abugida, so they simplified it and made it cursive so it would be easier and quicker to write. If they made a clumsy writing system more efficient, surely they would do the same with the way that fractions were handled.

And so they did. The "min yešpayār" part was mercilessly truncated to "ešpār", and was reanalyzed as a derivational suffix, and so it was joined to the preceding number, in this case "sen", yielding "senešpār". The verb "ikšimakman" also got truncated to "kman" and was suffixed to the preceding number, in this case, "šūmi", yielding "šūmikman". So when you reassemble the whole Gull Speaker package, you get "Senešpār šūmikman". The result is you have a new verb, represented by "šūmikman" here (it fulfills all the structural requirements that make a word a verb), and its subject, the number 12, which has been reformatted by its new derivational suffix so it becomes "senešpār". The derivation has now become a noun that can serve as the subject for the verb "šūmikman". The other Speakers realized the ingenuity of the Gull Speakers' streamlined innovation, and all of the Lower Minhast dialects adopted it, along with the City Speakers, and even a few Dog Speaker prefectures that bordered Gull Speaker Country adopted the new system.

After all this, finally, someone in the FB CL group, a native speaker of Western Abenaki, an Algonquin language, explained to me yesterday how fractions were formed. The Western Abenaki has several ways of expressing fractions, one of which used a structure that had a few similarities with the Classical/Modern Standard, in that it was (a) a clausal structure, and (b) the denominator precedes the numerator, unlike English and other IE languages. It was cool to see that my new fractional system got ANADEWED by another polysynthetic language. Now that I've seen it done in an Algonquin language, I'd still like to see how Iroquoian and other polysynthetic languages do it.

For now, I'm satisfied with the results. Still, I'm not ready to set this in stone yet, and if I see another system I like, I may use that as inspiration for creating a different system. But for now, Minhast will have both the Modern Standard and the Gull Speaker systems that I've devised.

[myhealthbeautyconcerns]

Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility

Amusive Digital’s Lily Ray discusses the prevalent trends among core update losers. As well as the strategies she does help her clients improve their E-A-T.

The rivalry for site traffic, users’ attention, and trust are always increasing, and individuals. Now have more options than ever before for finding the information or items they need. That’s why, as a measure of content relevancy and quality, search engines like Google emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Demonstrating a high level of E-A-T not only increases your chances of ranking higher for relevant queries. But it also protects your site from losing visibility after a core upgrade and informs people that your material, and by extension. Your brand is a trustworthy source of information.

Lily Ray, the senior director, SEO & head of organic research at Amsive Digital, discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E- A-T, as well as ways to bolster it for search engines and users alike, during her session at SMX Advanced titled “Demystifying major algorithm updates in 2021: Where is search headed?”

Practices that can hurt your E-A-T

“One of the overall themes I’ve noticed in my research is the increasing prominence of E-A-T, particularly for Your Money or Your Life [YMYL] websites,” Ray explained. “On the other hand, we have essentially eliminated fake news, pseudoscience, clickbait [and] sites that violate scientific and medical consensus, as Google makes apparent in many of its documents.”

While you may not be writing materials that contradict science. Low E-A-T content can be found across all industries. A handful of the characteristics of such content are listed below.

Omitting attribution and evidence.

Would you trust financial or medical advice from someone who claims to be an expert? But won’t back it up with evidence or reveal their name and credentials? Publishing articles without naming an author or including a byline with their credentials is the internet version of that.

Sites that omit this information, particularly in YMYL categories like finance, civics, news, and health, are “just making a lot of bold claims without necessarily saying where they got that information from,” Ray said, adding that “there’s no proof or evidence of the claims that they’re making on the site.”And in other situations, the content or counsel they’re delivering throughout the content is downright hazardous. Which is something Google is firmly against.”

Thin content, duplicate content, and doorway pages.

“Another issue my team and I observed while doing this type of research and working with our clients is that a lot of sites that have been impacted by core upgrades over the last several years tend to have a lot of thin, duplicate, or doorway pages,” Ray explained.

Users are likely to have a poor experience on these pages. These strategies may be used by businesses to save time by reusing a page template or to alter ranking signals. These landing pages, for whatever reason, fail to offer the material that people clicked through from the search results. Eroding your brand’s credibility and visibility for search.

Generalist content. 

While creating a range of material on many topics may help you appeal to a wider audience. It’s probable that you’re not expressing a high level of experience or authority in any of them.

“Another thing I’ve seen is that these generalist sites that are jack-of-all-trades but master of none. A lot of these types of sites are on the decline,” Ray said. We can notice a reduction in visibility for DIY sites. Which are generally low-stakes themes, in the data above. For businesses looking to improve their E-A-T. If you’re posting YMYL content. It’s ideal to create content that relates to your topic area.

Unmoderated UGC. 

User-generated content (UGC) can be beneficial to your SEO. But it can also harm your E-A-T and ranks if left unchecked.

“One thing we’ve observed on a lot of the badly impacted sites is that they don’t have a good hold on their comments, or on user-generated content throughout the site,” Ray explained. “In some cases, we’ve seen people provide a lot of really sensitive information [in their comments], or perhaps they’re giving really awful medical advice. “So if you’re focusing on E-A-T and people come in and leave personal information or stuff that defies medical consensus or things like that. It can really work against you,” she continued.

Undisclosed affiliate links. 

Affiliate links help certain businesses make cash that supports their content, and they can keep doing so without jeopardizing their E-A-T by declaring the nature of these relationships.

If your affiliate links appear to be internal links to other material, as is often the case with YMYL content, search engines and people may take issue. “If you don’t make it plain that these are affiliate links throughout the material, and if you use instructional. Your Money or Your Life pages really urge the customer to buy things. “With the product reviews upgrade, and even with the core update in June of 2021. It looks to be the case that Google is really ramping up the importance of strong E-A-T and good usability on affiliate sites and product review sites,” Ray added.

Ways to convey more expertise, authority, and trustworthiness

There are several ways to show search engines and viewers that your material is well researched, accurate, and that your brand can be trusted. In addition to avoiding the tactics outlined above.

Update, remove, redirect or consolidate your content. 

Marketers might get so caught up in developing fresh content that they forget that quantity isn’t always better than quality.

Ray described the job her teams do for their clients as “updating, removing, redirecting, or consolidating underperforming content when necessary.”By incorporating these tasks into your workflow. You can limit the danger of duplicate content, remove old information from your site, and save time by giving existing evergreen content a new lease on life.

Improve your site architecture.

Ray told Search Engine Land that “the way a website is architected via its internal linking structure and breadcrumbs can actually aid to convey E-A-T. Use a logical parent/child relationship within your categories, subcategories, articles, and goods to help customers and search engines understand you have a depth of expertise on a certain topic,” says the author.

This method, she added, can also be useful for separating information that isn’t SEO-friendly or could harm your site’s overall quality. Such as user-generated content, adult content, or required website content that should be indexed.

Manage your brand’s reputation.

Your E-A-T may be harmed as a result of a bad brand reputation. The reputation of websites and creators is expressly addressed in Section 2.6 of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Which instructs evaluators that “Many websites are eager to tell people how fantastic they are.”Some webmasters have studied the rating standards and have written reviews on numerous review sites. However, you must also search for outside, independent reputation information about the website when ranking Page Quality. Trust reliable external sources when the website claims one thing and reputable external sources say something different.”

Although Google’s search quality raters have no direct influence over the algorithms or rankings. Their feedback is taken into account when the company plans future algorithm updates, and addressing your reputation will increase the likelihood that users will trust your site and its content.

Find ways to increase transparency and trust.

More and more sites are demonstrating their knowledge as E-A-T becomes more of a requirement to rank highly in specific verticals. Because of the increased competition. Ray believes that “the more you can do to show your users why you should be trusted. The more signals you can put to the page, the better your site will perform.”

Diet Doctor clearly shows who the author is, who the piece of content was evaluated by, and when the article was last updated in the example Ray presented (seen above). The site also employs pop-up citations after each claim-containing text.

Expertise isn’t built overnight and neither is E-A-T

Whether you’re trying to recover from a core change or just futureproof your content. Keep in mind that the benefits of your optimizations may take some time to see. “Anyone hoping for shortcuts to this process will be disappointed to learn that there are none. Because this is extremely difficult work,” says the author.“Search engines might take a long time to process these changes,” Ray explained. So you might not see the consequences of your work until the next core update, or even the core update after that.”

However, the rewards of increasing your organic visibility and building more trust with consumers may be well worth the effort. The strategies you put in place to improve your E-A-T can also be utilized to improve your visibility in other areas. “It’s not just Google search; they’re focusing on E-A-T in so many various areas of Google,” Ray explained. “So the same techniques you’re doing to rank in organic search. Think about that for YouTube, think about that for your photos, and so on.”

  The post Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility appeared first on Soft Trending.

from Soft Trending https://ift.tt/2TchAXd via IFTTT

[softtrending02]

Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility

Amusive Digital’s Lily Ray discusses the prevalent trends among core update losers. As well as the strategies she does help her clients improve their E-A-T.

The rivalry for site traffic, users’ attention, and trust are always increasing, and individuals. Now have more options than ever before for finding the information or items they need. That’s why, as a measure of content relevancy and quality, search engines like Google emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Demonstrating a high level of E-A-T not only increases your chances of ranking higher for relevant queries. But it also protects your site from losing visibility after a core upgrade and informs people that your material, and by extension. Your brand is a trustworthy source of information.

Lily Ray, the senior director, SEO & head of organic research at Amsive Digital, discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E- A-T, as well as ways to bolster it for search engines and users alike, during her session at SMX Advanced titled “Demystifying major algorithm updates in 2021: Where is search headed?”

Practices that can hurt your E-A-T

“One of the overall themes I’ve noticed in my research is the increasing prominence of E-A-T, particularly for Your Money or Your Life [YMYL] websites,” Ray explained. “On the other hand, we have essentially eliminated fake news, pseudoscience, clickbait [and] sites that violate scientific and medical consensus, as Google makes apparent in many of its documents.”

While you may not be writing materials that contradict science. Low E-A-T content can be found across all industries. A handful of the characteristics of such content are listed below.

Omitting attribution and evidence.

Would you trust financial or medical advice from someone who claims to be an expert? But won’t back it up with evidence or reveal their name and credentials? Publishing articles without naming an author or including a byline with their credentials is the internet version of that.

Sites that omit this information, particularly in YMYL categories like finance, civics, news, and health, are “just making a lot of bold claims without necessarily saying where they got that information from,” Ray said, adding that “there’s no proof or evidence of the claims that they’re making on the site.”And in other situations, the content or counsel they’re delivering throughout the content is downright hazardous. Which is something Google is firmly against.”

Thin content, duplicate content, and doorway pages.

“Another issue my team and I observed while doing this type of research and working with our clients is that a lot of sites that have been impacted by core upgrades over the last several years tend to have a lot of thin, duplicate, or doorway pages,” Ray explained.

Users are likely to have a poor experience on these pages. These strategies may be used by businesses to save time by reusing a page template or to alter ranking signals. These landing pages, for whatever reason, fail to offer the material that people clicked through from the search results. Eroding your brand’s credibility and visibility for search.

Generalist content. 

While creating a range of material on many topics may help you appeal to a wider audience. It’s probable that you’re not expressing a high level of experience or authority in any of them.

“Another thing I’ve seen is that these generalist sites that are jack-of-all-trades but master of none. A lot of these types of sites are on the decline,” Ray said. We can notice a reduction in visibility for DIY sites. Which are generally low-stakes themes, in the data above. For businesses looking to improve their E-A-T. If you’re posting YMYL content. It’s ideal to create content that relates to your topic area.

Unmoderated UGC. 

User-generated content (UGC) can be beneficial to your SEO. But it can also harm your E-A-T and ranks if left unchecked.

“One thing we’ve observed on a lot of the badly impacted sites is that they don’t have a good hold on their comments, or on user-generated content throughout the site,” Ray explained. “In some cases, we’ve seen people provide a lot of really sensitive information [in their comments], or perhaps they’re giving really awful medical advice. “So if you’re focusing on E-A-T and people come in and leave personal information or stuff that defies medical consensus or things like that. It can really work against you,” she continued.

Undisclosed affiliate links. 

Affiliate links help certain businesses make cash that supports their content, and they can keep doing so without jeopardizing their E-A-T by declaring the nature of these relationships.

If your affiliate links appear to be internal links to other material, as is often the case with YMYL content, search engines and people may take issue. “If you don’t make it plain that these are affiliate links throughout the material, and if you use instructional. Your Money or Your Life pages really urge the customer to buy things. “With the product reviews upgrade, and even with the core update in June of 2021. It looks to be the case that Google is really ramping up the importance of strong E-A-T and good usability on affiliate sites and product review sites,” Ray added.

Ways to convey more expertise, authority, and trustworthiness

There are several ways to show search engines and viewers that your material is well researched, accurate, and that your brand can be trusted. In addition to avoiding the tactics outlined above.

Update, remove, redirect or consolidate your content. 

Marketers might get so caught up in developing fresh content that they forget that quantity isn’t always better than quality.

Ray described the job her teams do for their clients as “updating, removing, redirecting, or consolidating underperforming content when necessary.”By incorporating these tasks into your workflow. You can limit the danger of duplicate content, remove old information from your site, and save time by giving existing evergreen content a new lease on life.

Improve your site architecture.

Ray told Search Engine Land that “the way a website is architected via its internal linking structure and breadcrumbs can actually aid to convey E-A-T. Use a logical parent/child relationship within your categories, subcategories, articles, and goods to help customers and search engines understand you have a depth of expertise on a certain topic,” says the author.

This method, she added, can also be useful for separating information that isn’t SEO-friendly or could harm your site’s overall quality. Such as user-generated content, adult content, or required website content that should be indexed.

Manage your brand’s reputation.

Your E-A-T may be harmed as a result of a bad brand reputation. The reputation of websites and creators is expressly addressed in Section 2.6 of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Which instructs evaluators that “Many websites are eager to tell people how fantastic they are.”Some webmasters have studied the rating standards and have written reviews on numerous review sites. However, you must also search for outside, independent reputation information about the website when ranking Page Quality. Trust reliable external sources when the website claims one thing and reputable external sources say something different.”

Although Google’s search quality raters have no direct influence over the algorithms or rankings. Their feedback is taken into account when the company plans future algorithm updates, and addressing your reputation will increase the likelihood that users will trust your site and its content.

Find ways to increase transparency and trust.

More and more sites are demonstrating their knowledge as E-A-T becomes more of a requirement to rank highly in specific verticals. Because of the increased competition. Ray believes that “the more you can do to show your users why you should be trusted. The more signals you can put to the page, the better your site will perform.”

Diet Doctor clearly shows who the author is, who the piece of content was evaluated by, and when the article was last updated in the example Ray presented (seen above). The site also employs pop-up citations after each claim-containing text.

Expertise isn’t built overnight and neither is E-A-T

Whether you’re trying to recover from a core change or just futureproof your content. Keep in mind that the benefits of your optimizations may take some time to see. “Anyone hoping for shortcuts to this process will be disappointed to learn that there are none. Because this is extremely difficult work,” says the author.“Search engines might take a long time to process these changes,” Ray explained. So you might not see the consequences of your work until the next core update, or even the core update after that.”

However, the rewards of increasing your organic visibility and building more trust with consumers may be well worth the effort. The strategies you put in place to improve your E-A-T can also be utilized to improve your visibility in other areas. “It’s not just Google search; they’re focusing on E-A-T in so many various areas of Google,” Ray explained. “So the same techniques you’re doing to rank in organic search. Think about that for YouTube, think about that for your photos, and so on.”

  The post Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility appeared first on Soft Trending.

from Soft Trending https://ift.tt/2TchAXd via softtrending

[softtrending04]

Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility

Amusive Digital’s Lily Ray discusses the prevalent trends among core update losers. As well as the strategies she does help her clients improve their E-A-T.

The rivalry for site traffic, users’ attention, and trust are always increasing, and individuals. Now have more options than ever before for finding the information or items they need. That’s why, as a measure of content relevancy and quality, search engines like Google emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Demonstrating a high level of E-A-T not only increases your chances of ranking higher for relevant queries. But it also protects your site from losing visibility after a core upgrade and informs people that your material, and by extension. Your brand is a trustworthy source of information.

Lily Ray, the senior director, SEO & head of organic research at Amsive Digital, discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E- A-T, as well as ways to bolster it for search engines and users alike, during her session at SMX Advanced titled “Demystifying major algorithm updates in 2021: Where is search headed?”

Practices that can hurt your E-A-T

“One of the overall themes I’ve noticed in my research is the increasing prominence of E-A-T, particularly for Your Money or Your Life [YMYL] websites,” Ray explained. “On the other hand, we have essentially eliminated fake news, pseudoscience, clickbait [and] sites that violate scientific and medical consensus, as Google makes apparent in many of its documents.”

While you may not be writing materials that contradict science. Low E-A-T content can be found across all industries. A handful of the characteristics of such content are listed below.

Omitting attribution and evidence.

Would you trust financial or medical advice from someone who claims to be an expert? But won’t back it up with evidence or reveal their name and credentials? Publishing articles without naming an author or including a byline with their credentials is the internet version of that.

Sites that omit this information, particularly in YMYL categories like finance, civics, news, and health, are “just making a lot of bold claims without necessarily saying where they got that information from,” Ray said, adding that “there’s no proof or evidence of the claims that they’re making on the site.”And in other situations, the content or counsel they’re delivering throughout the content is downright hazardous. Which is something Google is firmly against.”

Thin content, duplicate content, and doorway pages.

“Another issue my team and I observed while doing this type of research and working with our clients is that a lot of sites that have been impacted by core upgrades over the last several years tend to have a lot of thin, duplicate, or doorway pages,” Ray explained.

Users are likely to have a poor experience on these pages. These strategies may be used by businesses to save time by reusing a page template or to alter ranking signals. These landing pages, for whatever reason, fail to offer the material that people clicked through from the search results. Eroding your brand’s credibility and visibility for search.

Generalist content. 

While creating a range of material on many topics may help you appeal to a wider audience. It’s probable that you’re not expressing a high level of experience or authority in any of them.

“Another thing I’ve seen is that these generalist sites that are jack-of-all-trades but master of none. A lot of these types of sites are on the decline,” Ray said. We can notice a reduction in visibility for DIY sites. Which are generally low-stakes themes, in the data above. For businesses looking to improve their E-A-T. If you’re posting YMYL content. It’s ideal to create content that relates to your topic area.

Unmoderated UGC. 

User-generated content (UGC) can be beneficial to your SEO. But it can also harm your E-A-T and ranks if left unchecked.

“One thing we’ve observed on a lot of the badly impacted sites is that they don’t have a good hold on their comments, or on user-generated content throughout the site,” Ray explained. “In some cases, we’ve seen people provide a lot of really sensitive information [in their comments], or perhaps they’re giving really awful medical advice. “So if you’re focusing on E-A-T and people come in and leave personal information or stuff that defies medical consensus or things like that. It can really work against you,” she continued.

Undisclosed affiliate links. 

Affiliate links help certain businesses make cash that supports their content, and they can keep doing so without jeopardizing their E-A-T by declaring the nature of these relationships.

If your affiliate links appear to be internal links to other material, as is often the case with YMYL content, search engines and people may take issue. “If you don’t make it plain that these are affiliate links throughout the material, and if you use instructional. Your Money or Your Life pages really urge the customer to buy things. “With the product reviews upgrade, and even with the core update in June of 2021. It looks to be the case that Google is really ramping up the importance of strong E-A-T and good usability on affiliate sites and product review sites,” Ray added.

Ways to convey more expertise, authority, and trustworthiness

There are several ways to show search engines and viewers that your material is well researched, accurate, and that your brand can be trusted. In addition to avoiding the tactics outlined above.

Update, remove, redirect or consolidate your content. 

Marketers might get so caught up in developing fresh content that they forget that quantity isn’t always better than quality.

Ray described the job her teams do for their clients as “updating, removing, redirecting, or consolidating underperforming content when necessary.”By incorporating these tasks into your workflow. You can limit the danger of duplicate content, remove old information from your site, and save time by giving existing evergreen content a new lease on life.

Improve your site architecture.

Ray told Search Engine Land that “the way a website is architected via its internal linking structure and breadcrumbs can actually aid to convey E-A-T. Use a logical parent/child relationship within your categories, subcategories, articles, and goods to help customers and search engines understand you have a depth of expertise on a certain topic,” says the author.

This method, she added, can also be useful for separating information that isn’t SEO-friendly or could harm your site’s overall quality. Such as user-generated content, adult content, or required website content that should be indexed.

Manage your brand’s reputation.

Your E-A-T may be harmed as a result of a bad brand reputation. The reputation of websites and creators is expressly addressed in Section 2.6 of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Which instructs evaluators that “Many websites are eager to tell people how fantastic they are.”Some webmasters have studied the rating standards and have written reviews on numerous review sites. However, you must also search for outside, independent reputation information about the website when ranking Page Quality. Trust reliable external sources when the website claims one thing and reputable external sources say something different.”

Although Google’s search quality raters have no direct influence over the algorithms or rankings. Their feedback is taken into account when the company plans future algorithm updates, and addressing your reputation will increase the likelihood that users will trust your site and its content.

Find ways to increase transparency and trust.

More and more sites are demonstrating their knowledge as E-A-T becomes more of a requirement to rank highly in specific verticals. Because of the increased competition. Ray believes that “the more you can do to show your users why you should be trusted. The more signals you can put to the page, the better your site will perform.”

Diet Doctor clearly shows who the author is, who the piece of content was evaluated by, and when the article was last updated in the example Ray presented (seen above). The site also employs pop-up citations after each claim-containing text.

Expertise isn’t built overnight and neither is E-A-T

Whether you’re trying to recover from a core change or just futureproof your content. Keep in mind that the benefits of your optimizations may take some time to see. “Anyone hoping for shortcuts to this process will be disappointed to learn that there are none. Because this is extremely difficult work,” says the author.“Search engines might take a long time to process these changes,” Ray explained. So you might not see the consequences of your work until the next core update, or even the core update after that.”

However, the rewards of increasing your organic visibility and building more trust with consumers may be well worth the effort. The strategies you put in place to improve your E-A-T can also be utilized to improve your visibility in other areas. “It’s not just Google search; they’re focusing on E-A-T in so many various areas of Google,” Ray explained. “So the same techniques you’re doing to rank in organic search. Think about that for YouTube, think about that for your photos, and so on.”

  The post Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility appeared first on Soft Trending.

from Soft Trending https://ift.tt/2TchAXd via softtrending

[softtrending01]

Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility

Amusive Digital’s Lily Ray discusses the prevalent trends among core update losers. As well as the strategies she does help her clients improve their E-A-T.

The rivalry for site traffic, users’ attention, and trust are always increasing, and individuals. Now have more options than ever before for finding the information or items they need. That’s why, as a measure of content relevancy and quality, search engines like Google emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Demonstrating a high level of E-A-T not only increases your chances of ranking higher for relevant queries. But it also protects your site from losing visibility after a core upgrade and informs people that your material, and by extension. Your brand is a trustworthy source of information.

Lily Ray, the senior director, SEO & head of organic research at Amsive Digital, discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E- A-T, as well as ways to bolster it for search engines and users alike, during her session at SMX Advanced titled “Demystifying major algorithm updates in 2021: Where is search headed?”

Practices that can hurt your E-A-T

“One of the overall themes I’ve noticed in my research is the increasing prominence of E-A-T, particularly for Your Money or Your Life [YMYL] websites,” Ray explained. “On the other hand, we have essentially eliminated fake news, pseudoscience, clickbait [and] sites that violate scientific and medical consensus, as Google makes apparent in many of its documents.”

While you may not be writing materials that contradict science. Low E-A-T content can be found across all industries. A handful of the characteristics of such content are listed below.

Omitting attribution and evidence.

Would you trust financial or medical advice from someone who claims to be an expert? But won’t back it up with evidence or reveal their name and credentials? Publishing articles without naming an author or including a byline with their credentials is the internet version of that.

Sites that omit this information, particularly in YMYL categories like finance, civics, news, and health, are “just making a lot of bold claims without necessarily saying where they got that information from,” Ray said, adding that “there’s no proof or evidence of the claims that they’re making on the site.”And in other situations, the content or counsel they’re delivering throughout the content is downright hazardous. Which is something Google is firmly against.”

Thin content, duplicate content, and doorway pages.

“Another issue my team and I observed while doing this type of research and working with our clients is that a lot of sites that have been impacted by core upgrades over the last several years tend to have a lot of thin, duplicate, or doorway pages,” Ray explained.

Users are likely to have a poor experience on these pages. These strategies may be used by businesses to save time by reusing a page template or to alter ranking signals. These landing pages, for whatever reason, fail to offer the material that people clicked through from the search results. Eroding your brand’s credibility and visibility for search.

Generalist content. 

While creating a range of material on many topics may help you appeal to a wider audience. It’s probable that you’re not expressing a high level of experience or authority in any of them.

“Another thing I’ve seen is that these generalist sites that are jack-of-all-trades but master of none. A lot of these types of sites are on the decline,” Ray said. We can notice a reduction in visibility for DIY sites. Which are generally low-stakes themes, in the data above. For businesses looking to improve their E-A-T. If you’re posting YMYL content. It’s ideal to create content that relates to your topic area.

Unmoderated UGC. 

User-generated content (UGC) can be beneficial to your SEO. But it can also harm your E-A-T and ranks if left unchecked.

“One thing we’ve observed on a lot of the badly impacted sites is that they don’t have a good hold on their comments, or on user-generated content throughout the site,” Ray explained. “In some cases, we’ve seen people provide a lot of really sensitive information [in their comments], or perhaps they’re giving really awful medical advice. “So if you’re focusing on E-A-T and people come in and leave personal information or stuff that defies medical consensus or things like that. It can really work against you,” she continued.

Undisclosed affiliate links. 

Affiliate links help certain businesses make cash that supports their content, and they can keep doing so without jeopardizing their E-A-T by declaring the nature of these relationships.

If your affiliate links appear to be internal links to other material, as is often the case with YMYL content, search engines and people may take issue. “If you don’t make it plain that these are affiliate links throughout the material, and if you use instructional. Your Money or Your Life pages really urge the customer to buy things. “With the product reviews upgrade, and even with the core update in June of 2021. It looks to be the case that Google is really ramping up the importance of strong E-A-T and good usability on affiliate sites and product review sites,” Ray added.

Ways to convey more expertise, authority, and trustworthiness

There are several ways to show search engines and viewers that your material is well researched, accurate, and that your brand can be trusted. In addition to avoiding the tactics outlined above.

Update, remove, redirect or consolidate your content. 

Marketers might get so caught up in developing fresh content that they forget that quantity isn’t always better than quality.

Ray described the job her teams do for their clients as “updating, removing, redirecting, or consolidating underperforming content when necessary.”By incorporating these tasks into your workflow. You can limit the danger of duplicate content, remove old information from your site, and save time by giving existing evergreen content a new lease on life.

Improve your site architecture.

Ray told Search Engine Land that “the way a website is architected via its internal linking structure and breadcrumbs can actually aid to convey E-A-T. Use a logical parent/child relationship within your categories, subcategories, articles, and goods to help customers and search engines understand you have a depth of expertise on a certain topic,” says the author.

This method, she added, can also be useful for separating information that isn’t SEO-friendly or could harm your site’s overall quality. Such as user-generated content, adult content, or required website content that should be indexed.

Manage your brand’s reputation.

Your E-A-T may be harmed as a result of a bad brand reputation. The reputation of websites and creators is expressly addressed in Section 2.6 of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Which instructs evaluators that “Many websites are eager to tell people how fantastic they are.”Some webmasters have studied the rating standards and have written reviews on numerous review sites. However, you must also search for outside, independent reputation information about the website when ranking Page Quality. Trust reliable external sources when the website claims one thing and reputable external sources say something different.”

Although Google’s search quality raters have no direct influence over the algorithms or rankings. Their feedback is taken into account when the company plans future algorithm updates, and addressing your reputation will increase the likelihood that users will trust your site and its content.

Find ways to increase transparency and trust.

More and more sites are demonstrating their knowledge as E-A-T becomes more of a requirement to rank highly in specific verticals. Because of the increased competition. Ray believes that “the more you can do to show your users why you should be trusted. The more signals you can put to the page, the better your site will perform.”

Diet Doctor clearly shows who the author is, who the piece of content was evaluated by, and when the article was last updated in the example Ray presented (seen above). The site also employs pop-up citations after each claim-containing text.

Expertise isn’t built overnight and neither is E-A-T

Whether you’re trying to recover from a core change or just futureproof your content. Keep in mind that the benefits of your optimizations may take some time to see. “Anyone hoping for shortcuts to this process will be disappointed to learn that there are none. Because this is extremely difficult work,” says the author.“Search engines might take a long time to process these changes,” Ray explained. So you might not see the consequences of your work until the next core update, or even the core update after that.”

However, the rewards of increasing your organic visibility and building more trust with consumers may be well worth the effort. The strategies you put in place to improve your E-A-T can also be utilized to improve your visibility in other areas. “It’s not just Google search; they’re focusing on E-A-T in so many various areas of Google,” Ray explained. “So the same techniques you’re doing to rank in organic search. Think about that for YouTube, think about that for your photos, and so on.”

  The post Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to Use and Avoid in Order to Improve Search Visibility appeared first on Soft Trending.

from Soft Trending https://ift.tt/2TchAXd via softtrending

[techyblogger]

SEO for Startups in 2021 and beyond https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/mh4ed1/seo_for_startups_in_2021_and_beyond/

We actually wrote a guide on this very topic I think could be very useful for any start ups looking to invest in SEO.

Technical SEO covers the technical health of your site, site architecture, indexation, site speed, mobile friendliness, structured data markup, robot files and sitemaps, canonical tag reviews, and internal link structure.

That’s a lot.

Additionally, because sites change and grow over time, technical SEO is also an ongoing process and an integral part of upkeep.

When we run a technical check on a client’s site, we check hundreds of individual factors.

Unless you’ve got a dedicated SEO team, that may not always be feasible. So, for the sake of space and practicality, let’s just quickly cover the very most essential and basic best practices — things you should implement when you launch a site and should keep up on as you build out a library of content:

- Indexation

- Site architecture

- Site speed

- Titles and H1 tags

- Content quality (duplicate and thin content)

Indexation. Indexation has two parts: (1) making sure content that should be indexed is indexed and (2) making sure content you don’t want indexed is not indexed. You can request indexation with Google Search Console, and you can block indexation with either a noindex tag or through the robots.txt file. Here’s Google’s documentation on the Index Status Report found in Search Console, which looks something like this:

Site architecture. Site architecture refers to the structure of your site, which is determined by both your internal linking scheme and the structure of your folders (usually determined by your categories if you’re using WordPress). A clear and logical structure that promotes relevance can help boost overall rankings.

A few basic rules of thumb include:

- Minimize page depth (number of clicks a page is from the homepage)

- Group relevant content together

- Link from content to other relevant content within the same category

If you really want to dig into site architecture, this is one of the most definitive articles ever written on it (although it’s a bit outdated). To visualize your own site architecture, we recommend Screaming Frog, which generates stuff like this:

Site speed. Google rolled out a site speed update this year. While it really only directly affected the slowest sites on the internet, it’s still a good practice to make your site as fast as possible. Why? Because fast sites typically yield good user engagement metrics, which do affect how you rank. There are lots of things you can do to speed up your site, but the basics are:

- Deliver your site through a content delivery network (CDN)

- Set up and enable caching

- Aggregate and minify CSS, HTML and Javascript

- Reduce image sizes

- Reduce plugin bloat

- Splurge on good hosting

To check and optimize your site speed, you use tools like GT Metrix or Pingdom. Google also has one of their own. Reports usually look like this:

Titles and H1s. Optimizing title tags and H1 tags are — and have always been — the most important on-page ranking factors. Luckily, they’re fairly straightforward. All you have to do is plop your main keyword in there somewhere, make sure the length is good (so it shows up correctly in Google), and you’re good to go; however, as sites grow, it becomes easier and easier to lose track of even basic tactical SEO like this. Screaming Frog gives you lots of good insight into this stuff as well:

Content quality. In this context “content quality” doesn’t mean how subjectively “good” a piece of content is; we’re mostly just trying to avoid too much duplicate or “thin” content. In general, every piece of indexed content on a site should be unique, substantial and meaningful. There are lots of ways to really dig into content quality, but one of the easiest ways to do it is to use a free tool called Siteliner. Plug in your site, and you’ll get a simple report like this one:

So those are the basics. And they’re really not rocket science. We recommend getting at least one full and comprehensive technical audit toward the beginning of your business’s life; it’ll save you a lot of time and headache in the long run.

Now, onto the other two more subjective, more nebulous, and more wily pillars of SEO…

​The Engine: Content Strategy & Keyword Research for Startups

An SEO-driven content strategy has two basic parts:

- Traffic-generating content

- Linkable assets

Traffic-generating content is designed to rank well in Google and (surprise) attract traffic; linkable assets are marketing tools that help build links, which are still a core part of Google’s algorithm and are necessary for a site to rank on their platform.

You generally need both. The one exception would be if you already have a site with very high authority (i.e. lots of links from other sites already pointing to it), which sometimes happens with startups that generate lots of press. But most of the time, especially for newer startups, a steady stream of links is required to maximize other SEO efforts (more on link building below).

Traffic-generating content should comprise the bulk of the content on a site and typically targets lower-competition keywords (keywords that are easier to compete for in Google).

The trick to creating high-yield traffic-generating content is to find topics that have the best combination of traffic potential and low competition (when talking about keyword competitiveness, we in the industry typically refer to it as “keyword difficulty”).

So, in other words, you want a good traffic potential : difficulty ratio.

Let’s unpack each of those separately.

Traffic potential is a measure of the upper limit of the traffic we might expect if we rank well for most of the available keywords for a given topic.

We use this to supplement — and sometimes in place of — search volume (how many times a given keyword is searched per month) because often, traffic is much higher than the search volume of a specific keyword since successful content usually ranks for many hundreds of keywords.

To see traffic potential, we have to use a third party tool, and currently, the one and only tool that adequately does the job is Ahrefs.

Ahrefs is so good for this particular task because it allows us to see a decent (albeit not perfect) estimate of traffic for a given set of search results. Let me show you what I mean:

Here’s the Ahrefs data for the keyword “furniture design software.”

In the SERPs (search engine results page) we can see all the pages’ rankings along with Ahrefs’ estimate of each page’s monthly organic traffic.

These are the numbers we’re interested in when looking at traffic potential.

The most successful pages generate over 1,000 visits per month (quick note: Ahrefs tends to underestimate traffic, so the real traffic could likely be higher). Other ranking pages seem to attract several hundred visitors per month.

For one piece of content, this is fairly good, especially if you sell furniture design software. It’s also just one keyword in one topic. By and large, this is a higher traffic potential than the average for most content.

If we wrote a blog post on this article and it ranked in the top 10 results in Google, we might expect to attract somewhere between 500 and 2,000 visits per month.

Let’s plug this into a quick hypothetical scenario: if you’re publishing weekly, and about 3/4ths of your content (perhaps 40 posts per year) is traffic-generating content optimized to rank for topics similar this one, you might expect to increase your monthly traffic by 20,000-100,000 visits over the course of a year.

Compare that to a keyword like this one: “best cart abandonment software.”

Here, the SERPs look quite a bit different. There are a few pages with decent traffic, but quite a few pages here attract less than 100 visits per month.

It’s not nothing, but it’s also not ideal.

A second hypothetical scenario: If we added 40 pages optimized for topics that had traffic profiles like this one, over the course of a year, we might hit a few home runs, but it’s more likely we’d bat the average and add somewhere between 50-100 visits per month, or 2,000 – 4,000 monthly visits.

That’s a lot less than the numbers we were just talking about with our first keyword. In fact, it’s about 10x less.

We didn’t change much here. We published 40 traffic-generating articles in each of our hypothetical scenarios. The only real difference was that in the first, we tried to pick a topic with a health traffic potential.

In my view, traffic potential is possibly the most important part of a good SEO-driven content strategy. Understanding this metric alone — even if you’re just using the best estimates of a third party tool — can easily 10x your content ROI.

It’s not the only part though.

A good content strategy also requires you to understand keyword difficulty.

Keyword difficulty is the measure of how easy it would be to rank for a given keyword.

If a keyword is too difficult, you could end up spending time and money on content that will never rank, and if it never ranks, both your traffic and your ROI will be zero.

Keyword difficulty is measured in lots of different ways (e.g. content quality, domain authority of the sites in the SERPs), but the best way to measure it is by measuring the number and power of the backlinks pointing to the pages that already rank for the keyword.

Almost all keyword research tools on the market include some way to measure keyword difficulty. Because I’m a bit of a nerdball who wants the best possible SEO tools, I did an extensive analysis on which tool had the most accurate keyword difficulty scores (measured against my own expertise, so take it with a grain of salt).

In my opinion, Ahrefs (yep, the same tool; notice a trend?) has the most consistently accurate keyword difficulty scores, so it’s what we usually use when we’re trying to find that Goldilocks traffic potential : keyword difficulty ratio.

Let’s return to one of the keywords we were looking at just a moment ago: “furniture design software.”

This is Ahrefs’ KD score:

Ahrefs gives this keyword a KD score of 3.

That’s very low.

Ahrefs has a logarithmic keyword difficulty scale, which means as the numbers get higher each point represents more and more real-world difficulty.

At the lower end of the scale, though, each KD point represents roughly one backlink needed to realistically compete with the pages that already rank.

However, I’ve found that we can realistically compete for keywords with KD scores less than 5 with no link building directly to those pages whatsoever.

So, unless we’re building out a blog on a website that already has lots of authority, we like to target keywords with KD scores below 10 (and below 5 if we can find them) almost exclusively, making exceptions for keywords that are necessary for some other non-SEO reason.

Compare this keyword to our second keyword: “cart abandonment software.”

Here, the KD is 29.

In my experience, the only way we’d rank for a keyword with this kind of KD score is if we paired it with a targeted, sustained outreach campaign that could eventually build 20-30 links to our page.

In other words, we haven’t got a prayer of ranking unless we devote loads of additional resources.

When building out a content strategy, we want to vigorously hunt for keywords that have:

- A traffic potential of at least a few hundred monthly visitors, and

- A keyword difficulty of less than 10

Of course, it’s not that easy. There’s one more component.

The last and (arguably) most crucial part of a good content strategy is understanding and properly targeting search intent.

We touched on this a bit earlier: SEO allows us to target people at specific points in the buying cycle.

We do this by understanding search intent.

In other words, we need to ask and be able to answer, “What did the searcher want when they typed in [keyboard]?” — and we need to understand where that intent falls in the buying cycle.

Unfortunately, understanding search intent is sometimes more of an art than a science, but (at risk of oversimplifying), here’s a quick breakdown.

Keywords that represent non-buying intent (i.e. things being searched for by people who will never buy, and are thus keywords we want to avoid) include modifiers like:

- “free…”

- “DIY…”

- “…torrent…”

- “streaming…”

- “cheap…”

- “…discount”

…And anything else the signifies “I don’t like spending money.”

Keywords that indicate people who are potentially at front end of the buying cycle — people who might buy if we can sufficiently help them — commonly include problem-solution-type modifiers like:

- “how to…”

- “…tips”

- “faster…”

- “get rid of…”

- “ways to…”

- “…strategies”

- “…solutions”

- “…service”

And finally, the juiciest keywords, buying-intent keywords — the ones that almost always make the most money — usually include modifiers that indicate a user is looking at products and making comparisons:

- “…reviews’

- “best…”

- “…vs…”

- “top…”

So, we obviously want to avoid non-buying-intent keywords. And buying-intent keywords almost always produce the highest direct ROI. However, that does not mean we should only target buying-intent keywords. If we neglect other types of keywords — those problem-solution keywords in the middle — we’re needlessly taking on massive opportunity cost since they’re often the easiest to find.

Instead, we need a mix; we just have to be extra sure we understand what people are looking for and that we produce content that meets their needs in a way likely to convert them into a user or customer down the line.

The goal of a great SEO-driven content strategy is to combine these things and find keywords that:

- Have high traffic potential,

- Are easy to rank for, and

- Appropriately match the most valuable kinds of search intent for our market

Good content strategy and keyword research is not easy, especially for startups who are often establishing new web presences. But the dividends can be huge.

We just need the last piece of the puzzle…

The Gasoline: Tactical Outreach for Startups

Outreach is perhaps the most difficult part of SEO because it has by far the most variables.

It’s analogous to (and possibly even the same as) a sales process: you’re reaching out to real human beings and pitching them. These sorts of processes are by nature less data-driven and more about sweat equity and relationship building.

There are hundreds of outreach tactics out there. Some of them work; some of them don’t. Over the years, we’ve filtered out the ineffective stuff and have zeroed in on tactics that work consistently (for the most part) across niches. A few of our tried-and-true favorites include:

- Guest posting

- Links and resources pages

- Skyscraper

- Infographic promotion

It’d take a novel to write about all of them (or even to cover an handful of them in detail).

So, I’m just going to cover one that we like to use here: it’s called mention link building.

The basic steps behind mention link building are:

- Build the best possible guide on one of the biggest topics in your industry — something people are talking about daily

- Track those conversations and pitch your guide to people who have actively blogged about that topic in the last couple days

It’s a super powerful tactic and can get you really good links. Even more importantly, because you’re reaching out to people who have published articles on this topic in the last couple of days, the links you earn can be timely, which is relatively rare in most types of outreach.

Here’s how we do it.

First, we need to find topics for which blog posts are published on a daily basis. To do this, we use a third party tool called Ahrefs. Ahrefs has lots of functionalities, and we use it for a lot of stuff. Here, we’ll be using their Content Explorer tool, which tracks content, social signals and links. It also allows us to sort by date, which is crucial to these kinds of outreach campaigns.

In Ahrefs, we’d navigate to the content explorer. In the dropdown box, we want to make sure we have “In title” selected, which will give us much more relevant results (it’ll only search for articles with search terms in the title).

Now, we need to search for a few topics. We want to go big. These are not articles we want to rank for; we’re using them expressly to supplement our outreach campaigns. So generally, we can just start with the biggest topics in our industry, and more often than not, if you’ve got a startup, you know exactly what those are.

As a demo, let’s imagine we’re a fintech company selling billing and coding software to hospitals.

If we just type “billing and coding” into Ahrefs, we’ll get some results…

… over 1,000 results, in fact. Looks good right? Almost, but if we narrow this down to blog posts and articles published in the last 24 hours, we get bupkis.

The topic isn’t big enough.

We need something bigger. Even if it’s not explicitly related to our products, we need something huge that people are writing about everyday.

Let’s see what comes up if we type in “medicare.”

That’s a ton of posts, but are people writing about it on a daily basis? Will there be people to pitch everyday? Let’s see what’s been published in the last 24 hours.

Bingo.

Yes, this number (90 articles) is a lot smaller than the previous number, but if even half of those people turn out to be good prospects (and if this is the average conversational output for this topic), we could feasibly send out 40-50 good, timely emails every day.

Of course, we’d need to build a killer piece of content — something big or fresh or interesting or, ideally, all three — we’d have a solid number of people to pitch it to everyday.

What’s that content look like?

The frustratingly simple answer is: to earn links, content has to be really good. Of course, that’s vague, but it’s vague by nature. Content can be as “good” as your resources and imagination allow.

In general, though, “good” = (1) highly useful, (2) extremely timely, (3) totally original, or (4) exhaustive/comprehensive.

A few examples.

Check out this page built by Nerdwallet.

It doesn’t have many words (in fact, it has under 1,000 words). However, it has a a custom, well-designed retirement calculator. It’s both totally original and extremely useful.

How many links did it earn? Try 472.

Here’s another. It’s an article on creatine, of all things, published by Examine.com (don’t read it, or you’ll be MIA for several hours).

Just in case you missed that line at the bottom, it says “Our evidence-based analysis features 735 unique references to scientific papers.”

And it’s true. Here’s the very bottom of their citations.

This article is also (and this is a nice way of putting it) fairly long. It clocks in at over 46,000 words, and it was written, researched and edited by people who have master’s degrees and Ph.D.s in scientific fields.

In other words, it’s probably as exhaustive and comprehensive as a piece of content could possibly be.

How many links did it earn? As of the time of writing: 585.

Obviously, it’s not feasible for most of us to put together content like Nerdwallet or Examine.com. The good news is we don’t have to. This content is on the extreme end of “good.”

A typical article written for a solid, ongoing mention-driven outreach campaign might be 2,000 – 3,000 words. It would need to be exceptionally written, of course, and it would likely need some other special X factor: a fresh angle, an infographic, original data, compiled data, the advice of an expert… just… something.

After writing and publishing our amazing content, whatever it is, we can start tapping into the ongoing conversation we already know exists.

Returning to our hypothetical fintech startup, after we’ve written our piece on Medicare, we’d simply log into Ahrefs every day, look at articles published in the last 24 hour hours (these):

We’d go down the list, and if we saw an article that could benefit from including a link to our asset, we’d give them a shout.

The email might look like this:

Nothing fancy.

Short, sweet, simple, and communicates a very explicit proposition: we’ve got amazing content that your article could benefit from.

If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share the full article.

Best of luck!

submitted by /u/Thesocialsavage6661 [link] [comments] March 31, 2021 at 05:20PM

[rulystuff]

https://servicemeltdown.com/is-the-united-states-at-end-of-empire/

New Post has been published on https://servicemeltdown.com/is-the-united-states-at-end-of-empire/

IS THE UNITED STATES AT END OF EMPIRE?

America’s economic primacy is pretty much behind us. And, I don’t believe there is any chance of reversing a trend that began thirty plus years ago. The best-case scenario for the nation is to slow the rate of economic decline – never mind social and cultural decline, which are probably lodged in irreversible decay.  As Robert Kaplan says in his book,��The Revenge of Geography, we might prolong our position of strength by preparing the world for our own obsolescence and thus ensuring a graceful exit.  But even this outcome will require the strength of will that has yet to be demonstrated by leaders in business, education, and government.

Economic primacy might be measured along many fronts – income per capita, rate of growth, productivity, foreign exchange reserves, among others – but if one looks at Gross Domestic Product (GDP), perhaps the coarsest measure of a nation’s economic well-being, then the United States has lost its economic primacy to China when compared on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis.

The PPP approach levels the GDP calculation to each country’s relative price of goods. So, if a television set costs $500 in the United States while the same television costs $250 in China then, theoretically at least, we’re under counting China’s GDP by $250. Using the PPP rationale, China’s GDP was approximately $23.5 trillion in 2019 compared to that of the United States which came in at $21.4 trillion.

Some politicians, economists, lobbyists, and others, like to use a different measure of GDP to suit their own purposes. The nominal GDP, which looks at the total of goods and services produced at current exchange rates yields a substantially different calculation. The nominal GDP of the United States in 2019 came in at $21.4 trillion, a number which is identical to the nation’s GDP on a PPP basis. The reason for this is that the nominal GDP calculation is based on the dollar and so there is no currency conversion rate difference. By comparison, China’s nominal GDP came in at $14.3 trillion. If we only look at nominal GDP, it is clear we are being lulled into a false sense of economic security.

Diplomatically, China might also have an edge on the United States. In the 1980’s, the then leader of the People’s Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping, enunciated his famous maxim of tao guang yang hui. Interpreted variously, the maxim is meant as a foreign policy directive that regardless how muscular the nation might become economically, geopolitically, and militarily it is always best to keep a “low profile diplomatically.” No more beguiling example of Deng Xiaoping’s maxim is in evidence than in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Simply put, China plans to build one “road” from China to Europe and thus control all manner of transcontinental commerce. Already, China controls or has a presence in ports that handle about two-thirds of the world’s container traffic. In Greece, the port of Piraeus, a storied port dating to the Fifth Century B.C., is majority owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) which makes Greece a strategic entry point for China into the heart of Europe.

IF WE’RE NOT MAKING STUFF WHAT ARE WE TO DO?

Let’s face it, manufacturing was lost to our shores for all intents and purposes several years ago. In 2015, China displaced the United States as the top manufacturing nation in the world. In 2019, China’s value-added output – in essence, the difference between price and the cost to produce – in manufacturing amounted to $3.9 trillion compared to $2.4 trillion for the United States. That gap will doubtless continue to grow.

There are now roughly 15 million workers in the United States engaged in manufacturing down from approximately 18 million in the 1980’s – President Trump, to his credit, was determined to revitalize manufacturing, steel, and coal but despite gains in these areas total employment numbers will continue to slip on a trend line basis.  When one considers that China has approximately 112 million manufacturing workers, the competitive disadvantage for the United States becomes palpably clear.

In 2019 our nation’s goods deficit with China was approximately $345 billion. That gap is not likely to be made up in any of our lifetimes. So, that leaves Services as the new game in town. In 2019, Services accounted for roughly 69% of our nation’s GDP. And, as a nation, we better excel in that new cycle reality. It is true, the United States ran an annual balance of payments surplus in services with China of about $36 billion in 2019 – with U.S. exports amounting to about $56 billion and imports from China totaling $20 billion. But don’t let that fool you as a $20 billion gap will be easy for China to make up especially when one considers that China’s Services sector is growing at an average of 2% per year. And, unless we accelerate the rate of growth of exports – the rate of growth is about even for both imports and exports – we might soon be facing a deficit in this sector of the economy so crucial for the good health of the nation in the twenty-first century.

THE NATION FACES SOME VERY STIFF HEADWINDS

The United States economy has structural defects which will not go away simply by holding rallies and mouthing rhetorical flourishes in the halls of Congress. Decline might be inexorable but we should not stand by as mere spectators. The will and purpose to restore our economic vitality must be marshaled by every American. It must begin, first and foremost, by demanding of our leaders, our institutions, and ourselves to be unafraid to serve in keeping with American priorities. It is the remotest possibility that we can salvage the service economy and consequently our nation unless our standard of performance is nothing less than service excellence in everything we do.

We don’t have a lot going for ourselves: Labor productivity growth is stalled at near zero levels; the rate of household savings is paltry; regulation and taxation still suffocates businesses and individuals despite President Trump’s initiatives; unemployment – not the nominal rate but the U6 rate which measures the unemployed, those that are not looking for work, and those who have had to settle for part-time work –  is mired at levels of 7% (during the Obama years the U6 rate never got below 9.2%); the national debt is on the order of 80% of GDP; entitlement spending is approximately 70% of our budget dollars and is likely to increase with both a growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement and the population’s longer life expectancy; and fraud and corruption run rampant among other serious afflictions.

Perhaps the most troubling portent for the nation’s future is its inability to clamber out of a deep and black hole in education. Among the 37 industrialized nations which comprise the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, the United States ranks 31st in mathematics and roughly in the middle on science. Clearly, all of the monetary and fiscal policies in the world will hardly fix this crippling deficiency which has more to do with a cultural indifference to serious and rigorous education.

Prior to Mr. Trump’s coming to office, the federal government was hell-bent on redistributing wealth rather than getting out of the way so that risk capitalists could create wealth. Unfortunately, President Trump’s reforms designed to bring back a full-throated and free market approach to the nation’s financial issues died the moment President Biden came into office.

Meanwhile, in the corporate world, business leaders are fixated on how quarterly earnings affect their pay packages, and when push comes to shove, cutting corners and worse. How else can one explain the utter disregard American companies operating in China have for the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on its people. Abuses such as forced labor (unions are illegal in China), the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, bans on religious freedom and free expression, arbitrary arrests, and the repression of Hong Kong citizens seem not to bother the likes of executives at Caterpillar, General Motors, Ford, AMD, Micron Technologies, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nike, and many others which are doing a land-office business in China. Apple, most notably, has raised to an art form tax, regulatory, and labor dodges which allow it to stash hundreds of billions of dollars overseas while paying little or no income taxes in the United States. The company, apparently, is nonplussed by the fact that its armies of workers in China are employed for wages and benefits that would be in contravention of United States laws. How the CEO’s of these companies can live with themselves knowing full well that they are profiting from someone else’s misery is a testament to their greed and lust for power.

WHERE DOES THE CUSTOMER FIT IN?

From the way we treat our veterans, clients, patients, students, donors, and citizens – customers, all, to my way of thinking we have a lot of work to do before we can claim to excel in service. A survey by consulting giant Accenture in 2007 showed that 41% of respondents described service quality as fair, poor, or terrible – more recent surveys suggest service is worsening. Perform any human endeavor at that level of proficiency and you are an abject failure. In the services sector, however, that is par for the course. In the Far East, cultural determinants do not confuse service with servitude. As a rule, suppliers will go the extra mile to please a consumer. In the West, and particularly in the United States, the most that a service worker can muster when asked to perform a personalized service is to utter something like, “no problem.” That kind of indifferent attitude is ingrained and certain to keep our level of service quality from climbing out of the aforementioned levels of mediocrity.

In the meantime, off-shore locations feast on our indifference to service and do whatever it takes to secure and maintain a customer relationship. The oft-cited explanation for the comparative advantage of off-shore locations, namely, their low cost, is a facile response to a more complicated dynamic. It is true that off-shore locations enjoy all-in cost advantages vis-a-vis the United States. It is also true, that President Trump worked hard to enhance our competitiveness on the world stage by reducing the oppressive web of regulation; reducing our world-leading corporate tax rates; negotiating better trade deals; exiting globalist compacts financed on the backs of American taxpayers; offering a tax holiday for repatriated corporate profits, among other initiatives. Those initiatives, however, have either been rolled back or will soon be under President Biden’s Administration.

My experience is that, particularly in technical disciplines, services delivered by off-shore locations are superior to ours. An apprenticeship initiative, if it were aggressively expanded to include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations, might make us more competitive in this area. In the rarefied world of supercomputers so critical to pushing the frontiers of science and technology, for example, the United States is out-produced by China on the order of two-to-one. So, until and unless we grow a much larger crop of more competent technical workers we will continue to be outperformed by nations more determined, better educated, more dedicated, and hungrier than we are.

CAN THE UNITED STATES GUARANTEE THE PEACE?

If the nation has ceded its economic primacy, its military primacy is being severely tested. United States’ land-based forces are heavily committed to counterinsurgency operations to fend off non-state actors while conventional warfare strategic planning appears to be dead. In Europe, a likely conventional hotspot, NATO and U.S. forces are outgunned and outmanned by a factor of at least ten to one by Russian forces.

Our ocean defenses are in no better shape. The nation’s principal bulwark protecting our shores is in steep decline. The United States Navy is but a ghost of its former self. The nation now has fewer vessels than it had before World War I. Most notably, our aircraft carrier fleet which must number sixteen in order to patrol three separate ocean theaters now numbers ten or barely enough to protect two theaters. In the Mediterranean, the U.S. Sixth Fleet is a non-entity the result of which is to have created a vacuum that is now filled by the Russians, Syrians, and Iranians. In the South China Sea, where American Navy vessels seem unable to sail without colliding into tankers and containerships, the United States is being challenged by a territorially aggressive and technologically advanced Chinese Navy. Already, an armada of sophisticated dredging vessels is reclaiming land from the sea for the sole purpose of building military airfields and naval port facilities. More worrisome, Chinese fighter jets and bombers now violate Taiwan’s air space with impunity and regularity.

Former U.S. Undersecretary of the Navy, Seth Cropsey, in his chilling and sobering account, Mayday the Decline of American Naval Supremacy, reminds us that China was the naval hegemon in the fifteenth century. Under the leadership of Admiral Sheng He, Chinese sailors coursed the oceans from their territorial waters to the Strait of Hormuz. Chinese vessels of the time were of a length and tonnage that were not to be seen in the West until centuries later. China’s naval supremacy only came to an end when civil servants forced severe budget cutbacks on the kingdom. Does our own budget sequestration of 2013, with its mandate to, in effect, disarm the military, ring a bell? The results of each nation’s budget missteps are eerily similar. China, for its part, will probably not repeat its mistake.

In all likelihood, it will take the United States a generation, assuming proper funding and political will, to restore the U.S. Navy so that we can confidently state that the nation can project power and protect seaborne commerce beyond the horizon.

Just as troubling as the rickety state of the nation’s military naval forces is the state of the United States Merchant Marine. The Merchant Marine fleet hauls cargo during peacetime and is attached to the Defense Department during wartime to transport troops and supplies into war zones. The United States should hope it does not get into a major conflagration oceans away as it has experienced a dramatic attrition in its Merchant Marine fleet and manpower inventory. In 1960, the United States had nearly 3,000 vessels in the Merchant Marine fleet. Today, the nation has fewer than 175 vessels or less than one-half of 1% of the total vessel count worldwide. Worse, United States-flagged vessels carry a mere pittance of the total volume of goods and materials that transit through the nation’s ports. The consequence of what is obviously a weak flank in the nation’s defense posture is that in the event of a major outbreak of hostilities the United States would be reliant on foreign-flagged vessels to carry troops, armaments, and supplies with all of the attendant security risks.

One can argue that China’s bellicosity toward the United States is as asymmetrical as it is frontal and direct: China’s theft of roughly $225 billion, at the low end and as much as $600 billion at the high end, annually in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets from the United States; its monopoly of rare earth metals critical not just for consumer products but for Defense Department applications; its financing of over fifty Confucius Institutes on college campuses and schools designed to spread CCP propaganda; and its unleashing of the Wuhan virus which has cost the lives of more than five-hundred thousand innocent Americans is proof positive that China’s strategy is to envelop the United States on all fronts.

AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS

In sum, if as the great military historian B.H. Liddell Hart suggests, a nation’s Grand Strategy is a composite of its political, military, economic and diplomatic tools in its “arsenal” which can be brought to bear to advance a state’s national interest then the United States appears to be convulsing in its gradual decay. As I have argued in my essay, The United Kingdom Is Resurgent, the former world economic power, lost its supremacy because it failed to adapt to the winds of change which buffeted its shores long after the economy reached its apex in the early twentieth century.

It is also provocative to think that there might be a “natural” life cycle to nations as there is to human beings that is irreversible. Regardless of one’s view in embracing one or another theory that might explain the demise of nations, there is no reason to remain indolent in resisting such decline even if there is only the remotest possibility of such an outcome. Keep in mind that the demise of Rome was hardly cataclysmic but the result of a long succession of imprudent decisions made by the Empire’s leaders.