#and it’s clear it’s ratcliffe which means they will be staying

[killa-trav]

one normal day from this club is all i ask for i beg

[atarahderek]

Wolfwalkers Review

I confess, I have not taken the time to watch the first two movies of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore trilogy (a fact I hope to rectify sooner rather than later). But I did take the time to watch Wolfwalkers...and I fell in love. The animation, the unique style, the music, the story...it was all beautiful. So I thought I’d give my thoughts on it, trying to keep them as spoiler free as I can.

Wolfwalkers had a limited theatrical release and was later released on Apple TV’s streaming service--which does offer a one week free trial if you want to check out their content. It is not the first Cartoon Saloon animation I’ve seen (I watched Breadwinner a few years ago), but it is easily the most beautiful. Being of Irish descent myself, I’m always happy to see good stories set in the lands of my ancestors. Especially stories that make liberal use of Celtic style music. If you have a Celtic heritage you’d like to explore, Wolfwalkers is an excellent celebration of that heritage and worth watching for that alone.

The story

The plot is fairly simplistic: A girl moves to a new town and has a hard time adjusting, meets a friend who stands out just as much as she does, discovers that friend faces a terrible threat, and tries to do whatever she can to help her friend. In this story, Robyn Goodfellowe and her father Bill have moved from northern England to Kilkenny, Ireland (insert South Park joke here). Bill is a hunter, tasked by Lord Oliver Cromwell, who insists on being referred to as Lord Protector and nothing less, with eradicating the wolves who live in the nearby forest so that the woodcutters can clear the forest for farmland. Well, the wolves in the forest have something to say about that. While trying to prove to her father that she can still be a good hunter despite Cromwell’s wishes that she stay in town and work in the scullery, Robyn comes across a girl named Mebh, who reveals herself to be a wolfwalker; a type of werewolf, for lack of a better term, that takes a wolf form whenever her human body sleeps. After a misunderstanding, Mebh accidentally bites Robyn, causing Robyn to become a wolfwalker herself. But her new form makes her an ally to Mebh, who is waiting for her missing mother to return so they can take their wolf pack and find a new forest untouched by Cromwell. Robyn struggles to keep her new secret form from her father and Cromwell, but when Cromwell threatens the wolves and Mebh directly, Robyn can no longer remain silent.

Cartoon Saloon’s history of giving their stories bittersweet endings makes this plot a little less predictable than it would be if it came from any other studio--and a lot less predictable than if it came from Disney (I love Disney, but sometimes they play things too safe or too true to their own favorite tropes). But the ending is quite satisfactory. It did suffer the plot mandated friendship failure in the third act, but to be fair, Robyn’s heart was in the right place, even if her actions weren’t. This film proves that a story doesn’t have to have a bunch of plot twists or be especially complex to be good. There is an elegance in simplicity.

The characters

Robyn is spunky, independent, snarky and skilled in marksmanship. She understandably does not like the new “cage” she’s found herself in under Cromwell’s strict rules. In England, her father let her go hunting with him and gave her a lot more freedom. In Ireland, he is firmly under Cromwell’s thumb. And as Cromwell is not afraid to punish children as if they were adults, Bill fears Robyn will be taken away from him and jailed or put in the stocks. Robyn has started to hear the phrase, “It’s for your own good,” far more often than anything else from her father, and she can’t stand it--right up until she uses the same phrase toward Mebh to protect her from Cromwell. When she becomes a wolfwalker, she suffers anxiety, wanting to hide her wolf form, but also craving freedom more than ever. Robyn is the type of idealist who always imagines herself easily taking a stand against something she believes to be wrong, but when it comes right down to doing just that, she balks at first. But in the end, she is able to stand strong anyway. Even as a child, Robyn shows strong leadership skills and has a mind for strategy--when she’s calm and focused, that is. When she’s out of her element and panicking, she gets herself into quite a few predicaments. Her strengths and flaws make her a well rounded character and prevent her, a young, falcon-owning huntress in 1650 Ireland, from sliding into Mary Sue territory.

Mebh is your standard wild child. She’s fiercely independent, loves to tease, and tends to make bombastic threats toward people who might offend her. She’s at least a few years younger than Robyn, and it shows. Robyn is 12-13 years old, while Mebh seems to be about nine at the most. Mebh takes promises seriously, expects them to be upheld, and is easily hurt when they are broken. Despite having little in common with Robyn, she bonds easily with her within hours of meeting her, teaching her all that she needs to know about being a wolfwalker. She’s a handful for anyone, a fact that baffles Cromwell, who apparently has very little personal experience with children. Kids Mebh’s age are often portrayed as seeming older or younger than they are, but Mebh is portrayed as a very convincing nine-year-old. She’s properly immature, but also old enough to take care of herself while her mother is away. Though she does have over two dozen furry babysitters to take care of her.

Bill Goodfellowe represents the rare Sean Bean role where his character doesn’t die. He’s a widower who is just trying to establish a good life for himself and Robyn. When he gets called to Ireland, he finds himself having to tie down his free spirited daughter, and it’s plain to see he hates doing it. He wants to protect her from the wolves around Kilkenny, but he also wants to protect her from Cromwell’s retribution against anyone who violates his dictatorial laws. Eventually, he has to stand up to Cromwell to protect Robyn, finally realizing that complying with tyranny will not allow him to protect his daughter; it will only put his daughter in more danger.

There’s not much to say about Mebh’s mother Moll. Her whereabouts are unknown until halfway through the second act, and even in the third act she doesn’t play much of a role. She’s a tough but tender matriarch who acts as something of a living MacGuffin. She's also the plot’s punching bag.

The side characters are mostly delightful. Merlin is your standard animal sidekick, but he’s also a very useful means of communicating, being a bird that can talk to Wolfwalkers. A bully named Paidrig turns out to be a useful tool for Robyn, keeping him from being completely repulsive (but only just barely; I’d rank him just below Eustace Clarence Scrubb in the first half of VDT). And Sean Og is criminally underappreciated. Seriously, we need some more love for Sean Og here.

And as for Oliver Cromwell, I have quite a bit to say about him. I’m going to save that for its own post, since it will involve spoilers. Since he is a historical domain character (unlike the others), the approach taken with him was different from what it was for the other antagonistic characters--and for a lot of villains in general. He’s almost Judge Claude Frollo in John Ratcliffe’s body.

The soundtrack

With an abundance of gorgeous Celtic music and a beautifully fitting rendition of “Running with the Wolves” by Aurora, I have only one complaint about the soundtrack: I CANNOT FIND IT FOR SALE ANYWHERE!!!

In summary

It’s beautiful, it’s so very Irish, it’s a quality story about magic wolves (those are rare), and I sincerely believe it is more than a contender for best animated feature this year. Honestly, I liked it better than Soul. Well done, Cartoon Saloon. Well done. Now, to all of you reading this, go support Wolfwalkers!

[bountyofbeads]

Trump Won’t Let No. 2 Spy Chief Take Over When Coats Leaves https://nyti.ms/2yzEEkW

White House is planning to block Sue Gordon from becoming the acting intelligence chief. @charlie_savage and myself. https://t.co/xu3cez94F3

Trump Drops Plans to Nominate John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence

By Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Annie Karni | Published Aug. 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 2, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday abruptly dropped his plan to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, as the nation’s top intelligence official, following bipartisan questions about his qualifications and pushback over whether he had exaggerated his resume.

Mr. Ratcliffe, an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump, has come under intense scrutiny since the president declared Sunday on Twitter that the lawmaker was his pick to succeed Dan Coats, who is stepping down as director of national intelligence on August 15. The selection generated scant enthusiasm among senators of both parties who would have been tasked with deciding whether to confirm him.

Mr. Trump’s announcement that Mr. Ratcliffe would not be his nominee after all, also made on Twitter, spoke bitterly of the attention Mr. Ratcliffe’s claims about his experience as a federal prosecutor quickly received from the news media.

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump

Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people....

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

....John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country. I will be announcing my nomination for DNI shortly.

16.1K

2:06 PM - Aug 2, 2019

The announcement was another reversal for the president and underscored recurring dysfunction in the White House vetting process that has plagued the administration since its transition. Mr. Ratcliffe joined a long list of Trump appointees who have had to pull their names after the president announced his plans to put them in powerful posts, without a full picture of potentially disqualifying details.

The backtrack leaves Mr. Trump without any obvious candidate to fill one of the country’s most important national-security jobs, heightening scrutiny on what will happen with Sue Gordon, the nation’s No. 2 intelligence official. Mr. Trump has already decided not to allow her to rise to the role of acting director of national intelligence when Mr. Coats steps down, according to people familiar with his plans.

The decision to circumvent Ms. Gordon, who has served as the principal deputy director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will probably upset Republicans and Democrats in the Senate who had expressed doubts about Mr. Ratcliffe.

Mr. Trump did not allow Ms. Gordon to personally deliver a recent intelligence briefing after she arrived at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence, Amanda J. Schoch, said Ms. Gordon was not blocked from attending any recent briefing, but she declined to comment about what happened inside the Oval Office.

Trump Won’t Let No. 2 Spy Chief Take Over When Coats Leaves

By Julian E. Barnes and Charlie Savage | Published Aug. 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 2, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — The White House is planning to block Sue Gordon, the nation’s No. 2 intelligence official, from rising to the role of acting director of national intelligence when Dan Coats  steps down this month, according to people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans.

The decision to circumvent Ms. Gordon, who has served as the principal deputy director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will probably upset Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. They have expressed doubts about Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, who is President Trump’s choice to be the next Senate-confirmed leader of the agency.

Mr. Trump did not allow Ms. Gordon to personally deliver a recent intelligence briefing after she arrived at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence, Amanda J. Schoch, said Ms. Gordon was not blocked from attending any recent briefing, but she declined to comment about what happened inside the Oval Office.

Opposition in the White House to letting her serve as acting director has raised the question of whether she will be ousted as part of a leadership shuffle at the intelligence director’s office that will be more to Mr. Trump’s liking.

A federal statute says that if the position of director of national intelligence becomes vacant, the deputy director — currently Ms. Gordon — shall serve as acting director.

But there appears to be a loophole: The law gives the White House much more flexibility in choosing who to appoint as the acting deputy if the No. 2 position is vacant, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who specializes in national-security legal issues.

Ms. Gordon will retire if told by the White House that Mr. Trump wants someone else in the deputy’s role who could then rise to fill the vacancy created when Mr. Coats departs, according to officials.

Mr. Ratcliffe, an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump, has thin national security experience relevant to overseeing the work of the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies. The scrutiny that he is now receiving also brought to light that he exaggerated his résumé when running for office.

Ms. Gordon, who has served more than 30 years in intelligence posts at the C.I.A. and other agencies, has not been officially informed by the White House that Mr. Trump intends to name someone else to oversee the intelligence agency until the Senate confirms a new director of national intelligence, officials said.

But the White House requested this week that the office provide a list of senior officials who worked for the agency, according to a senior administration official — a move that was interpreted as another sign that it is looking beyond her for people who could be temporarily installed in the top position.

When Mr. Trump posted tweets Sunday announcing that Mr. Coats would step down on Aug. 15 and that he intended to nominate Mr. Ratcliffe, the president hinted that Ms. Gordon might not automatically become the acting director in the interim, saying an acting director would be named soon.

Those tweets prompted concern on Capitol Hill that Mr. Trump would circumvent Ms. Gordon. The next day, Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressly referred to the fact that he looked forward to working with Ms. Gordon, calling her “a trusted partner.”

On Friday, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, who is the committee’s vice chairman, said that the law was “quite clear” that the acting role goes to the deputy when the director of national intelligence leaves and that Ms. Gordon had the Senate’s confidence. “It’s outrageous if the president is hoping to pass over this extremely qualified and experienced individual, the highest-ranking woman in O.D.N.I., in order to install a political loyalist as acting director,” he said.

Ms. Gordon’s experience is not necessarily a point in her favor for the White House, where Mr. Trump and his allies view the permanent bureaucracy of national security professionals with suspicion as a so-called deep state that may be out to get him.

Mr. Trump and House Republicans have made clear that they believe a broad reorganization of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is needed. Administration officials and House Republicans also have said they would like someone at the agency who will work well with Attorney General William P. Barr, who has ordered a review of the intelligence agencies’ support for the F.B.I. as the bureau sought to understand Moscow’s covert efforts to tilt the 2016 election, including any links to the Trump campaign.

There appears little chance that the Senate, which is currently gone for its summer recess, will swiftly confirm Mr. Ratcliffe, in light of the bipartisan skepticism about his qualifications and questions about the honesty of his résumé.

The White House has bypassed the legally prescribed usual order of succession to appoint acting officials at several agencies, including the  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Departments of Justice andHomeland Security. It has obtained the approval of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to not follow succession statutes by instead invoking the complex Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Under the Vacancies Reform Act, a president may pick someone other than a No. 2 official to serve as acting head of an agency so long as that appointee is either a sufficiently senior official at the same agency or is currently serving in a Senate-confirmed position in the broader executive branch.

Mr. Chesney noted that certain language in the 2004 law that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is written more restrictively and in a way that he said strongly indicates Congress did not intend for the Vacancies Reform Act to be available for filling the position of director.

However, he also flagged a complexity — one that resonates with the White House’s request for a list of senior officials at the office. According to the person familiar with internal thinking, the White House specifically wanted a list of “cadre” officials, meaning employees who work directly for the director’s office rather than employees of other agencies who are merely on a temporary assignment.

An alternative, less obvious interpretation of the law, Mr. Chesney said, could be that a president may use the Vacancies Reform Act to install some senior agency official other than the No. 2 as acting director, so long as that appointee worked directly for the office and was not a detailee.

He said that while this maneuver would require what he portrayed as a dubious interpretation of the law, it could create a way for what he viewed as a “happy result” — letting Ms. Gordon remain in place. The broader danger, he said, is that if the White House moves to bring in outsiders in both the No. 1 and No. 2 positions, there would be no one atop the intelligence community who had “the benefit of a career person who knows how to run the place.”

For now, Ms. Gordon continues to perform the duties of deputy director, an official said. On Friday, she was speaking at a security conference in Salt Lake City.

[ruffoverthinksthings]

There's something I have to ask you that has some of its roots far before Descendants, but seriously....wtf is up with Frollo?! I'm interested in his character because of his deep complexities for a Disney Villian (never mind the Hugo novel), but why cant he get a grip on raising children and building a healthy family? Even as a product of the medieval era , that can't be an excuse for his dysfunctional relationships with others(progressive people like Esmeralda and Phoebus existed back then 1/2

Mymain question to you is ,what do you think it is about him that cantsee the pain he causes to claudine/ not esme and the entire HONDcast? What ever happened to him in his childhood ( nature vsnurture), that makes him nearly impossible to reach past his veil ofdarkness. Even in his attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of hisLord, with Claudine, is he forever delusional? Can he change in thisuniverse and what would it take? 2/2

There’sthree key concepts that explain why Frollo still can’t redeemhimself, see the pain, the suffering, the wrongdoing he’s causingin the name of God and his ideas of what is “Good.” These are:

CognitiveDissonance

TheMyth of Redemptive Violence by Walter Wink, and

SexualSuppression in the Catholic Church, and the ideas of ReligiousLeaders being beyond the common man

Allof these are actually easily explainable using the lyrics ofHellfire:

BeataMariaYou know I am a righteous manOf my virtue I amjustly proud

BeataMariaYou know I'm so much purer thanThe common, vulgar,weak, licentious crowd

Thentell me, MariaWhy I see her dancing thereWhy hersmold'ring eyes still scorch my soulI feel her, I seeherThe sun caught in her raven hairIs blazing in me outof all control

Here,we see what Frollo thinks of himself: a saint among sinners, a man ofstrong faith in a land of unbelievers, someone who does Good whereasthe rest fall into Temptation and Sin.

Likemajority of the leaders of the Catholic Church, and especiallybecause it’s in the Medieval Era, he is seen as someone who isinherently above his fellow man, better, purer, more virtuous, whichis why he deserves to hold his position, and use all the power andinfluence that affords him.

Butthen, Esmeralda comes along, he is tempted by her beauty, and herealizes that he is not as invulnerable and incorruptible as hethought he was.

Unfortunatelyfor all of us, he refuses to take responsibility for it.

It'snot my faultI'm not to blameIt is the gypsy girlThewitch who sent this flameIt's not my faultIf in God'splanHe made the devil so muchStronger than a man

Here,he refuses to believe that there’s any fault in him, that he isstill prone to temptation despite his beliefs; rather, he engages inwhat is called “Scapegoating,” putting all the blame inEsmeralda, going so far as to irrationally cast her as some wickedenchantress with powers that he doesn’t stand a chance ofresisting, than just a woman he is fully capable of getting over.

However,that involves him admitting that he was wrong about his belief thathe is incorruptible and “holier than thou,” and he wants toprotect that idea, more than he actually wants to be it, simplybecause it’s less distressing for him.

Thisis called Cognitive Dissonance, the stress someone experiencesfrom having a belief or more than directly oppose their actions andbehaviours.

Otherexamples of Cognitive Dissonance are:

Someonewho believes themselves a healthy person despite having a pack-a-daycigarette habit;

Someonewho buys a product or a service and it doesn’t turn out nearly asgood as they thought it would, so they make all manner of excuses andjustifications to make it better (in their minds); and

Someonewho stays in a relationship that has long past its expiration date,because they don’t believe themselves to be someone who gets it“wrong” with something as important as romantic relationships.

Peoplesuffering from cognitive dissonance often find ways to “spin”things and defend their original beliefs, rather than reevaluate whatthey thought was true and their identity. Rationality, logic, orconsistency ceases to matter to them; sparing themselves from thedistress that they were wrong or are acting against their beliefstakes priority above everything else.

Withthe above examples:

Thesmoker convinces themselves that cigarette smoking isn’t reallythat bad for their health (it’s actually worse);

Thatthe price, the manufacturer, or some other quality of the product orservice automatically makes it better despite the reality of it, likewith the exploding Samsung phones incident, and people refusing toreturn them in spite of the danger to themselves and everyone else;and

Thatthey can still salvage the relationship, that all the problems andissues are not nearly as bad as they are, and that they simply haveto try harder.

WithFrollo, he chooses the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

Inits essence, it’s “Good Vs Evil,” “The Final Clash,” theBook of Revelations where the forces of the Righteous do battle withthe Wicked, purging all that is unholy and ushering in a new, betterworld, or bringing all those deserving into heaven.

It’sinteresting because you see this constantly with all of Disney’sfilms with a classic “Villain” antagonist: there’s PrincePhilip slaying Maleficent; Tiana and Naveen outsmarting Dr. Facillierand letting his Friends from the Other Side do their thing; andTarzan doing battle with Clayton.

Theymay or may not have a direct hand in bringing about theirdoom—Clayton accidentally hung himself because of his refusal toaccept Tarzan’s help, for example—but it’s always VERY clear tothe audience that A) the protagonists are “good” people, B) theantagonists are “evil” people, and C) there is no redeeming the“villains,” there’s only killing, jailing, or trapping them inan enchanted lamp, because they will never turn to good.

Asstated above, Frollo believes himself to be a righteous man, theepitome of goodness, the Holy Servant of God, and people that don’tfit into his worldview are declared “Wicked” and must beslain. He has killed numerous gypsies, has been responsiblefor the death and/or suffering of numerous innocent civilians, andalmost drowned Quasimodo in a well, if it weren’t for the ArchDeacon warning him of his hypocrisy.

Inhis views, there is no salvation, no forgiveness of the sinner, noramending for your wicked ways—there is only judgment, and yoursentence is death.

Protectme, MariaDon't let the siren cast her spellDon't let herfire sear my flesh and boneDestroy EsmeraldaAnd let hertaste the fires of Hell!Or else let her be mine and mine alone

Here,Frollo shows just how extreme and devoid of nuance his sense ofmorality is—either you live, or you die. He also shows more of hisCognitive Dissonance and Redemptive Violence once more, where hepleads that—against the customs and the traditions of the church,and the scandal that would erupt— Esmeralda be “given” to him.

Thisis especially poignant as the Catholic Church has a massive,well-known history of suppressing sexuality and policing the sexualbehaviour of their followers and especially their ordained leaders,usually to disastrous results.

Insteadof giving them a chance to it in healthy ways, or to treat havingsexual urges as a natural thing, the Catholic church paints it asweakness, a flaw in you, a sign that you have failed and that you areshameful, awful, and a sinner for having them in the first place.

“Shaming”someone is the BEST way to get someone to do the thing you’reshaming them for—as you cut their self-esteem, and make thembelieve that they are weak and deficit in some manner, the morelikely they will be to do the vice or the crime because they want tofeel better, and the more likely they will accept that they truly AREbeyond saving, that there’s no hope for salvation, so fuck it,let’s do the thing.

Itgets even worse in the ending of Hellfire:

HellfireDarkfireNow gypsy, it's your turnChoose me orYourpyreBe mine or you will burnGod have mercy on herGodhave mercy on meBut she will be mineOr she will burn!

Here,Frollo shows the depths of his hypocrisy and the amazing mentalacrobatics he’s performing, saying “God have mercy” whilstpromising the opposite of mercy: death, or enslavement.

Here,Frollo shows that he’s no longer following the doctrines, the laws,or the traditions of the church, what God decreed or Jesus relayed tohis followers.

Here,Frollo shows that all he truly follows is what he believes to beRight—what is Right for him.

Iassumed that this behaviour follows him onto the Isle, where he has avery warped sense of religious morality that is really just hisselfish desires, being justified in his eyes by tacking the name ofGod onto it, much like Richard “Rick” Ratcliffe.

Whycan’t he get a grip on a loving marriage, relating in healthymanners to people, and building a loving family life for Claudine?

Because,like the rest of the Villains, he wasn’t marrying and having kidsfor unselfish reasons, he was using his ex-wife Salome to satisfy hissexual needs, is still using Claudine as a means to fulfillhis broken dreams and ambitions, and is unconsciously using them bothto serve himself first and foremost.

Thesexuality that was Frollo’s downfall has not disappeared—it’sstill there, and I’d argue it’s actually stronger consideringthe constant state of stress and despair in the Isle that forcespeople to resort to their basest instincts, and engage in whateverwill give them some measure of relief.

However,instead of going the healthy route of acknowledging that he isflawed, and that he should return to attempting celibacy in spite oftemptation, Frollo merely twists his lustful desires into somethingthat would be acceptable in his beliefs, and that of hiscongregation.

Howdoes he achieve this? Marriage, with all the intercourse for thepurpose of reproduction, and reproduction only.

I’dimagine that, after becoming the only Catholicreligious leader alive or not yet renouncing his faith, and thedeplorable state of everything and the VKsbeing raised, he sees himselfas some kind of New Adam,meant to be the progenitor of anew race of “Good, Christian People” who would eventually becomethe inheritors of this wretched hell, take it away from the hands ofthe Demon Queen that rules it (Maleficent), and rebirth it as aparadise.

Beforeyou ask, yes, he could be the CELIBATE steward of this new world,taking care of his non-ordained congregation’s children, but thatwouldn’t let him satisfy his sexual needs, and is thus not anoption in his mind.

Andbefore you ask why he doesn’t get flack about this, all of thepeople on the Isle are criminals, and if you weren’t living in thedeplorable conditions they were BGU, you learn to loosen yourstandards right quick here.

That,and they can be manipulated easily and lead to believe that undercertain circumstances, marriage and sexual intercourse with Judgesare possible—a lot of these people can’t read, and have noconcept of critical thinking.

Whyis he like this with Claudine, raising her up to be an ideal ratherthan a person?

Becausehe know he’s old, he knows he’s weak, and he’s essentiallytrapped in his church and a small area around it in Temple Way—he’sunable to bring the fight to the Islanders (not including hiscongregation, because they’re obviously theexception), be it ideologically or especially physically, so he hasto raise an army to do it for him.

Claudineis not just his daughter to him, or his Flock—she is a Messiahfigure to them, the “child that will lead them” as the actualJesus Christ was, the true successor to Frollo’s church when heinevitably passes away.

Sowhenever she starts to deviate from his ideals (i.e. growing up to beher own person, independent of her father’s desires), he doesn’tsee it as cruel and manipulative to mess with her emotions likethis—he sees himself as a sculptor making sure that this livingclay does not end up malformed, that she is completely, absolutelyperfect in every waypossible.

I’dalso be remiss not to mention that poor nutrition, dementia, and oldage have taken a serious tollon him.

Ishis being a product of the Medieval Era an excuse for hisdysfunctional socialinteractions?

Itis, actually!

Phoebusand Esmeralda are shown to be progressives in the movie, but theproblem is, they’re still the exception,not the rule; the world ofFrance in 1482 is nowhere NEAR the level of multiculturalism anddiversity we see today.

Mostpeople of that erawill never even leave the towns they live in, let alone be able tohave the means to travel vast continents and entire oceans to meetpeople unlike themselves—and as European Spice Expeditions haveshown, the interaction is more likely to be lethalto the natives than friendly, let alone romantic.

There’salso the fact that if a foreigner lives in France, it’s usuallyfrom a slave trade of some sort or as part of a roving band of apersecuted minority, like Esmeralda and the rest of the Romanipeople.

Thetimes they live in are very xenophobic, with very black and whitemorality—there are only sinners and the faithful, and again, withFrollo, there is no room for outsiders like Esmeralda and the Romanipeople, whom he believes only deserve death.

Andagain, there’s also the fact that Frollo is a Judge, and alongsidehis religion and his authority, believes himself to be inherentlyabove and better than people, and that he cannot do anything wrongbecause he is of that high position, as only a “Good” person canhold that office.

Tohave a wicked, sinful man capable of cruelty and madness would beparadoxical, and would absolutely never happen! (/sarcasm)

Thisis why he can’t see the pain and the suffering he inflicts onothers with his actions—he simply believes himself to be BEYOND andincapable of doingevil.

Withthe question of nature and nurture, I won’t headcanon aboutFrollo’s childhood, since the Nurture has the lion’s share ofblame here.

He’svery old, he’s obviously a very senior member of the church, andhas a lot of respect—he has spent almost all of his life beingtreated as higher and better than his fellow man, he has massivepower other people, and the beliefs of his church (and consequently,himself) is that he is a reliable, infallible authority for what is“Good” and what is “Evil.”

Andas the saying goes, power corrupts.

Mostpeople behave in fear of some higher authority, be they the police,their parents, or that of your superior at work. Unfortunately forall of us, Frollo only really fears two people: the Arch-Deacon, andGod.

Thewords of the “commoners” matter not to him. Maleficent has longknown that these people are beyond reason or are not worth it, sodoesn’t exercise her authority. And even within hiscongregation—more of a cult, at this point, really—dissent isimmediately silenced, murmurs that “Father Frollo” might not beas virtuous and holy as they think he is shushed like a motherreprimanding her child during Sunday mass.

Toend this rather long, lengthy tirade, can he ever break free of thedelusion, and can he truly change his ways?

Realistically,no, and no.

Unlikeactual dogs, you can’t teach Frollo new tricks, especially onesthat contradict his worldview, and he’s already shown time andagain that he won’t accept any objective evidence that he’swrong—every action of his is justified to him, and that subjectivedecision is what makes it “Right.”

Itdoesn’t help that, as I’ve said in other headcanons and mentionedabove, the people of the Isle of the Lost tend to be the ones whohave lost all hope, and are desperately clinging onto whatever it isthey can for comfort.

Ifyou bring him to Auradon, and have him meet up with the (much sanerand reasonable, but not entirely) congregations of Auradon, it’dlikely end in shouting and claims of heresy and going against God.

Havingyour everything pulled out from under you and getting throwninto the great big unknown is terrifying and painful.

Andfor many people, they’d rather be wrong and not realize it, thansuffer that—thus, Cognitive dissonance, and belief in RedemptiveViolence, with both exacerbated by the Catholic Church’s stance on“deviant” sexual behaviour.

[zerachielamora]

Pocahontas x John Rolfe

Having grown up loving the first Pocahontas as a kid, I didn’t think the sequel ruined a thing. There’s a recurring point that others have brought up before me: it was nice to have a realistic arc for a Disney heroine. The first love you have isn’t always the one you’re meant to be with, and you can find love again. Even if it seems perfect, even if you spark, it doesn’t always mean things will work out, and sometimes it’s nobodies fault.

Since Pocahontas is based on real people and real life events (albeit loosely), I feel it has the pass to be more realistic and less like a fairy tale in that aspect. But there’s more to the Pocahontas x Rolfe love story than that, and it’s not just about the historical accuracy. I re-watched the first movie today, and it made me realize a number of things. Note, from here on out the points I’m going to make are based on the Disney incarnations, not their real life counterparts. I’m fully aware that history is far different.

Also please be aware I’m not trying to insult those who hardcore ship Smith and Pocahontas, but instead give some insight as to why Rolfe appeals to some of us so much more.

Now to begin: The love Smith and Pocahontas shared was very much built on the extreme circumstances they found themselves in. It was the first time they encountered something new, and being the free spirits of their respective people, were naturally drawn to one another. The seriousness of their situations put their relationship on a grandeur scale.

Though I will say, John Smith relentlessly pursues Pocahontas in the beginning of their relationship in a way that is a bit uncomfortable (running after her as she tries to leave, stopping her from leaving in her boat after an argument, searching for her in the corn field just to see her again).

Nonetheless she enjoys spending time with him. Their love wasn’t a waste of time; it was their love that helped pave the way for peace between Pocahontas’s tribe and the settlers. It helped them discover things about themselves, how they saw the world, and what they wanted. Their interactions helped shape who they became.

Pocahontas’s dream and the compass points her to John Smith. It was her destiny to help Smith so that war would not break out. This was what her dream was telling her. Not ‘this is the man you’re going to marry’, but ‘follow your heart, the outcome will lead to peace.’

At the end of the first film she says, “I'll always be with you.” This does not have to mean they’ll always be lovers, but they will always carry the other with them. There is always something to learn, something to take with you. A similar quote is shared between Nakoma and Pocahontas in the sequel, showing this line is not meant to be romantic.

As Smith is prepped to be taken back to London, he asks Pocahontas to join him, and even though she is sad to see him go, realizes her place is with her people. Smith is an adventurous explorer who wants to see new worlds and chart new territories. A long term relationship between them wouldn’t be feasible, given he wishes to roam the world and she has chosen to stay. It doesn’t make what they had any less real, but sometimes paths diverge, and while they walked the same path once, their desires and choices lead them elsewhere. Hence why it would be difficult for Smith and Pocahontas to have been together in the end. She needed someone who was willing to settle down and be with her and her people.

So why ship Pocahontas with John Rolfe, then? Besides the historical component?

To start with, the two of them meet and spend more time with one another throughout the entire movie. Rolfe may not understand how Pocahontas has such influence with her people (his weakness being sexism as opposed to Smith’s racism in the first film). Yet he still treats her with honor and dignity as she is a guest of the king.

Smith implies his culture and way of doing things is better than Pocahontas and her people, and yet Rolfe never insists this is the case. He does show her how to fit into the upper echelons of English society, but only because it is her only chance to meet with the king, to ask him for peace with her people instead of war. She fully agrees to do whatever it takes to make this work. Everything she does is for her people, and Rolfe is more than willing to help her accomplish that. Never once does he imply his culture is the better way of doing things. In fact, he’s outraged that Ratcliffe insists on the ball so she may prove herself to be “civilized”. He never intended to change her. Smith wanted to help the settlers make the land and area like London so Pocahontas and her people would make the “most” of it. Rolfe wanted to help in the cause of peace between the two different worlds, just as Pocahontas did. When he showed her English customs, dress, and dancing, he was helping her to bring a peaceful resolution to the king, as well as introduce her to his way of life without implying that his way was superior.

With John Smith, it was a new, forbidden fruit that Pocahontas saw and was attracted to, which then developed into a relationship as they found something they cared for in the other. You could say their relationship began more impulsively. With Rolfe, Pocahontas has already loved and lost, and therefore embarks on the mission with the only intent being a peaceful resolution for her tribe. This means the romance that blooms between her and Rolfe is less epic, but also more natural and I dare say realistic. Instead of being curious about the other and being drawn to something foreign and new, the two of them find compatibility by time spent together, respectfully.

Furthermore, Rolfe acts as a true gentleman, and never oversteps bounds with her. Smith in the first movie actively pursued Pocahontas a few times when they barely knew each other, even in one instance where he refuses to let her leave. Yet in the sequel, she hears the conflict between the two men she loves and runs off into the woods. Smith’s instinct is of course to follow her, but Rolfe insists it’s best to let her have time to think and be alone. In this way you see that Rolfe better respects Pocahontas’s boundaries.

Throughout the second film, Pocahontas is trying to find herself. She asks “where am I going from here?” After the entire incident with John Smith, she is left questioning herself and what she is supposed to do or where to go. The journey with Rolfe makes her realize that she cannot keep holding onto the past. Running to the woods after realizing Smith is alive makes her reflect, and this is the point where she knows she cannot let the past define her anymore. What she and Smith had was beautiful, but it has since faded given time, distance, and news of his apparent death.

Even after everything is resolved, Rolfe still respects Pocahontas’s boundaries by not expressing his feelings to her, especially in front of Smith. He knows it would be wrong to impose on a previous relationship, yet as it becomes clear, Smith and Pocahontas have grown since their time together. While what they had was wonderful, it did not last. This is not to say they no longer care for each other, as they clearly do, and I believe Pocahontas will carry Smith with her always, as she does her best friend and her homeland.

“Some love stories aren't epic novels. Some are short stories, but that doesn't make them any less filled with love.”

Rolfe chooses to sacrifice his new job and where he’s from for the sake of his love for her. This is what he leaves behind in venturing to the New World. He was willing to settle down, a spirit as free as Smith could never do the same for her, even back then.

The gentle ending of Pocahontas II as Rolfe whispers “Let’s go home.” into the wind resonated with me far more than the overly dramatic finale of the first movie.

[itsdisneymydudes]

Pocahontas’ Hair is Unreal

Honestly, I’ve never seen Pocahontas. I know “Colors of the Wind” is from it, but that’s about all I know about it. White men come to the New World and do some stuff (some historically inaccurate stuff, I might add), and yea. So that’s why I’m gonna live-blog it! Leggo!

Alright, starting off with a glorious song about English imperialism. Coolio.

Macho John Smith with his blonde hair and blue eyes. Aaaaaand they just called Native Americans “Indians.” This movie is gonna go swell.

I couldn’t make it out exactly, but I think the song says “for glory, God, and gold” which falls exactly in line with European colonialism.

I hope the storm breaks the boat.

K is this The Little Mermaid or Pocahontas cuz a lot of action so far has been in the ocean...

Aaaaand now the Native Americans are being called “blood-thirsty savages.” You’re the worst, Disney

Lol, Disney has the Native Americans speaking English. Hilarious.

Ok, so we all understand that Pocahontas was actually around 11 years old when she first met John Smith, right? Yup, Disney just sexualized an eleven year old.

Ah the obligatory animal sidekicks. Did that hummingbird just eat a raspberry whole? That’s just wrong on so many levels.

I’m no physicist, but I’m pretty sure a dive from that height would break Pocahontas’ hands and arms (and most likely kill her, too).

Oh, that raccoon is for sure dead, too.

Jeez, another princess movie with a focus on marriage? Why am I not surprised...

Oh my gosh, a beaver would never build a dam right in the middle of a river. That makes absolutely no sense. How would it even start something like that; the river would just sweep the sticks away.

DID SHE JUST CANOE OFF A WATERFALL?!? WTF POCAHONTAS WHY DO YOU KEEP GOING DOWN WATERFALLS???

Anthropomorphic trees? Alright, Disney; I see you.

Does Governor Ratcliffe actually know what kind of soil you need for a gold deposit to be under it? It’s usually black soil and not the muddy swamp terrain that he’s staring at.

Ratcliffe’s voice sounds weird. Like I know he’s the villain and all, but just the rhythm/emphasis of his sentences sounds off.

Why is John Smith wearing the armor of a conquistador? Isn’t he English?

These are terrible sailors! Why would you ever bring in your massive ship so close to shore? Are they trying to run it aground?

Lololol you ain’t the only one getting a better look, John ;)

While the presentation is a little strange, this description of white settlers from the perspective of the Native Americans is 100% accurate. Everything said is actually what the settlers will do. Ravenous wolves and all.

Damn, Percy. You bougie af.

Damn, Raccoon. You cheeky af.

Wut. Ratcliffe has like two dudes building the fort. That’s gonna take a while, bud.

K, Ratcliffe realizes that the Spanish took the gold from the Incas and Aztecs, right? Like the Spaniards didn’t dig it up themselves...

I don’t think using explosives like that is the most efficient way to take down trees or open a mine.

Damn! John Smith’s first thought when he sees Pocahontas is to shoot her??? And these two are supposed to fall in love???

Yea boi you best put that gun down. Show some respect, punk.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he says. Girl, this dude was about to shoot you less than a minute ago.

Just a reminder: Pocahontas was 11 when she met John Smith. John Smith was 27.

HOW CAN SHE SUDDENLY UNDERSTAND AND SPEAK ENGLISH?!?!??!?!

Truest line of the movie and of all history: “These white men are dangerous.”

Strange names? Boi, y’all settlers literally just named your landing site the most vanilla name ever. How complex is the name “Jamestown.”

John is actually creepy af...

Aaaaaand here comes the “White Man’s Burden” speech from Smith...

Ooooooo Pocahontas is about to drop some sick bars, yo.

Is that...is that Pride Rock?

Why do they show an eagle on John Smith’s chest? He’s English and in no way helped the colonies reach independence.

Oh I do hope the colonists have a communist revolution against bougie Ratcliffe. That would be quite fun.

I really hope Pocahontas’ father doesn’t die. I like the sound of his voice.

Um...how can EVERYONE suddenly understand English?

Lolololol tree puns. The owls get it.

So at what point is Pocahontas going to contract smallpox from John Smith?

I would just like to point out that 80% of this movie did not even happen. Like not in the true accounts of first contact or even Smith’s dramatized accounts.

Aw...poor Kocoum :( and screw you, Thomas. Thought you were supposed to be a lousy shot.

Kocoum just died, and Pocahontas is still fixated on whether she’ll be able to see Smith or not? Jeez, have a heart, girl. Come on.

Those guards outside John Smith’s prison cell must be really deaf. Like the dude is belting out a song, and no one has batted an eye yet.

Also, when did John Smith’s shirt get so loose and revealing...?

Didn’t Thomas run off before John Smith was captured by the warriors? Plot hole...

Oh my god Ratcliffe is Trump. Holy shit.

So is the arrow in the compass still considered to be spinning if Pocahontas is spinning the outside container? Does that technically count?

What if the village was south of where Pocahontas was? Would she just accept that the arrow wasn’t pointing towards John Smith then? Quite the dues ex machina eh?

Why is Ratcliffe wearing an all-black suit of armor during the day... He is actually going to be cooked alive in that thing.

“I love him, father.” Ariel? Is that you?

This is some Cuban Missile Crisis about-to-go-to-war level of intensity right here...

“If there is to be more killing, it will not start with me.” Oh, it’s pretty clear who started the killing in history (*cough cough* the white man *cough cough*)

Oh snap! Ratcliffe shot John! Whoa whoa whoa did not see that one coming. Oh damn, right in the kidney too!

Yea! The communist revolt is happening! Viva la revolucion!

Hate being the bearer of bad news, but 17th Century medicine was not all that great... John Smith is almost certainly going to die from his wound.

Is Percy the dog really staying? Yea, he isn’t gonna last very long either.

“Come with me,” John says. What he means is, “Come with me and convert to the Anglican Church and change your name to a white name and change your dress to European clothes and forget your culture and tour around England like a circus display and eventually contract foreign pathogens to which you will have no immunity, ultimately leading to your death at an extremely young age.” Yup, great idea, John.

Lol did the village and John’s crew just stand back and watch Pocahontas and John make out? Awkwaaaaaaaard.

So how long until war breaks out again between the tribe and the settlers? I give it about a week or two.

Wow, as cheesy as the ending was, THAT SCORE THO. SUCH POWER. SUCH BEAUTY. DAMN.

One last question: how in the world does Pocahontas keep her hair so luscious???

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Journey: A Namiku Story Part 8

https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/18977464/chapters/45060730

Painting a Picture Naminé’s PoV Naminé noticed that the first thing Riku did when the gunshot went off, was to run towards her and catch her in his arms—as he desperately looked her over—and Naminé was taken aback by it. After all, from what that voice had just told her—and even from things she’d witnessed herself—Naminé had begun to think that Riku didn’t care about her much at all. But here he was, very clearly proving that notion wrong as he held her and shivered with the fear he’d felt for her life, and still seemed to. Even Sora was concerned about Naminé… and didn’t seem to be paying attention to the blond man telling the redheaded one to let him take the fall for him, as he was taken away by the natives of this land, but Naminé was. As always, Naminé paid attention to everything. “Naminé, are you okay?” Sora asked, as he extended a hand in her way… and it wasn’t unlike when he’d held her hand on his memory of the Island all those years ago. “I-I’m fine,” Naminé admitted as she reluctantly shook Riku off of her, since they had more important things they needed to worry about right now. “But shouldn’t we be stopping the dear people I was just with? …They’re going to kill that man, I know it, and he didn’t do anything wrong. If nothing else… maybe I can calm down the distressing woman.” It was the same woman that Naminé had seen before—with the long hair and big brown eyes—who had said she was trying to help her people. It was clear that she was distressed at Kocoum’s death, even though she clearly didn’t blame her lover for it. And Naminé understood this, as she was sad about Kocoum, too. Riku shook his head at Naminé’s question, as he pulled her and Sora behind a tree so the growing crowd wouldn’t see them. “I don’t think they’re in the mood to listen right now, Naminé. And while Sora and I could probably stop them from taking John Smith with our Keyblades, we’d probably have to kill most of them to do so. Let’s just tail them and figure out where they take John, and figure the rest out later.” And so they did. And thankfully, the rain stopped as they did so… because it had been getting so bad, that Naminé had thought about asking Riku if she could borrow his jacket, she was getting so cold, but she also didn’t dare. She didn’t know quite what to make of him, after all. … “…Does anyone else feel like this is what we heard about Agnarr and Iduna in Arendelle?” Naminé asked her friends as they were trying to see if they could get in to see John Smith after Pocahontas—and yes, Naminé had figured out she was the Chief’s daughter—was done talking to him. But she also wasn’t sure how they were going to do this… because John Smith would clearly want to see Riku or Sora since he knew them, unlike her, but Chief Powhatan thought that Riku was an enemy… so perhaps Sora was their best bet. “You’re- you’re right!” Sora said with an amazed lilt to his voice, first with an astonished look on his face but then a wink Naminé’s way when he seemed to decide that of course she’d figure that out. “Naminé… I think if you tell everyone here that, you have a better chance of getting through to them than Riku or I do. Think you can do that for John Smith?” “I- I can try,” Naminé muttered, feeling some of her old self-consciousness coming through again and wishing it would go away, as she put a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll go to Chief Powhatan and talk to him… I do think he likes me. But it’ll have to be fast. With this amount of darkness everywhere, you know a giant Heartless showing up here soon isn’t out of the question.” And later, Naminé would wish she hadn’t said that. For perhaps she had brought that exact situation to life with her words. But right now, Naminé could tell that Riku and Sora were both reluctant to let her go. But suddenly feeling much better, she walked past them with a sweet smile on her face. … As Naminé walked through the Chief’s tent—after knocking, of course—she couldn’t help feeling that it looked the color of blood in this lighting, and now it was her time to shiver. But she pushed that thought back, and tried to gracefully walk into the place as she was ushered in. “Naminé!” the Chief exclaimed the moment he saw her. “I’m glad to see you’re alright. I thought those savages had- well, I’m glad that wasn’t the case.”  Sweat gathered on the man’s brow, and Naminé wondered if more wrinkles had appeared there in just a few hours, but Naminé supposed it made sense for him to be stressed… seeing as how his daughter was involved in all of this. “Sir… there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, when it comes to this dire situation, if I may. “ Chief Powhatan blinked owlishly at Naminé after she’d spoken. But he indicated with two hand motions that she should have a seat and continue on. And Naminé did both. “I- I don’t know how much you care about young people who are in love. In some ways, it might seem silly to you now… especially in those who won’t conform to doing things the ‘right way’. “I could tell you how Riku and my love has been challenged, even though we’re so much better together, just because I couldn’t… feel my heart at first, so to speak.” And here Chief Powhatan smiled sympathetically at Naminé’s way, as if he had any idea what she was talking about… but then again, maybe he did. “But moreover, I’ll tell you about… friends from another place: Iduna and Agnarr. “Agnarr was royalty like you and Pocahontas are, but Iduna was just from an enchanted forest… that somewhat reminds me of this place, perhaps. Anyway, the place that Agnarr was from secretly feared the forest. So, his grandfather ‘gifted’ the Northuldra—those of the enchanted forest—a dam, that he told them would benefit their land. However, it was a ruse to lure all the Northuldra out, so the people of Arendelle—their rival—could kill them all. “But… the prince of Arendelle was innocent, and one of the Northuldra children saw that and saved his life, when otherwise he would have died with most of the rest of his people. He, Agnarr, that is, became king. And since through her actions, Agnarr had fallen in love with her, he married her and Iduna became queen… “But the enchanted forest still resented all of the bloodshed, even though it had gifted Agnarr and Iduna’s daughter with powers that made her a bridge between the two places, and when they went out to find answers for their daughter… it was really the Forest that killed them. Please don’t let your Pocahontas and this John Smith be the same way at all.” To be honest, Naminé had worried that the Chief would scoff at her comment, or say he’d never even allow his daughter to get that far with the condemned man, but instead he walked over to her and patted her head… and even complimented her. “You have a good heart, Naminé. Despite what you might have been told in the past. And while my daughter and- and that man are not children, I will try to show mercy if this ‘John’s’ people will show some themselves. I don’t want this kind of bloodshed for my daughter, either. No.” And in thinking that that was probably the best answer she was going to get—and not knowing what else she could do now—Naminé left after bowing and saying “thank you”, and went back outside to find Riku and Sora… who just happened to be running her way. “Naminé, that took forever!” Sora shouted, as he waved Naminé down. “Pocahontas has disappeared… and this Ratcliff guy is insane! He won’t stand down no matter how hard we try to show him not to bring guns to a knife fight. Just because he wants gold, war’s coming at dawn. And…” “And it looks like you weren’t wrong about a giant Heartless getting summoned,” Riku finished, as he indicated a massive purple dragon that was standing next to a man who was wearing armor about the same color. Ratcliff, Naminé guessed. “Come on!” Naminé bellowed as she was the first to begin running towards the beast for some reason. “Let’s go slay it, so everyone else has a fighting chance.” In some ways, this Heartless was much like the Invisibles that Naminé had heard horror stories about and seen in Sora's memories—or worse, like the Orcuses that Roxas and Xion had had to face—and she sighed, in thinking that of course this would happen at the most inopportune time… in the worst world they'd been in. Naminé could only pray that this Heartless wouldn't take the form of Sora or Riku, to make them accidentally fight each other instead, or however that had worked for Roxas and Xion. "Do you two want me to try and break its heart the way that I did the Riku Replica’s before?” Naminé asked, even while she tried not to flashback to the greatest mistake of her life but to rather let it go. “I mean, Heartless actually have hearts. But since I can only mess with the hearts and memories of Sora and his friends… maybe if Sora tried to befriend it-" "Not happening, Naminé!" Sora swiftly shot down her plea, as he tried to climb up the large scales that this giant Heartless had on its neck and then shoot Thunder on the one just behind him. Riku, meanwhile, was dark rolling all around the Heartless—which kept him safe and even hit the monster some. And seeing that her idea about breaking the Heartless’ heart wouldn’t come to pass, Naminé decided to take a page out of Kairi’s book and learn how to fight some. And as Naminé picked up another stick, she prepared to do just that. …But Sora must have made some connection with the monster, for something suddenly became clear in Naminé’s mind and she tried to tell Riku and Sora it as soon as it did. “Stay away from the thing’s tongue! It causes status ailments, you two!” And it was almost as though it had understood that Naminé had given away its secret, because almost instantly it began alligator rolling with Sora beneath him. “Sora!” both Naminé and Riku shouted at the same time. And Riku began using Dark Aura—something that Naminé had thought he had banned himself from using anymore until this moment—to try and free Sora, and Naminé used her stick to try and stab at any vulnerable place on the Heartless that she could find… which wasn’t a lot. And before either of them could stop the Heartless from thrashing about, it ended up piercing on of its own tusks through Sora's heart. And through Kairi's memories that Naminé could still see, she remembered what it had looked like when Sora had stabbed himself with the Keyblade of People's Hearts in order to save Kairi. She also recalled what it had been like when Sora had essentially torn his heart apart to save them all during the Keyblade War. And this alone was almost enough to make Naminé try and do something more. But when the Heartless started literally pulling Riku into the darkness—something that she thought he had conquered with her help!—Naminé lost it. With a guttural cry that she couldn't even believe had come from her, Naminé tried to pull on the light—which she could reach, as she’d always had more light to her than any other Nobody—and reached piano-like strings of them and pulled them down down down onto the vulnerable parts of the Heartless, and even with some spots of darkness in there that almost made her pass out, but she didn’t. And then the Heartless vanished. "What... just happened?" Sora was the first of them to ask, since he'd always been the most vocal of the group. "Naminé... I don’t mean to insult you. But to me, it looked like the Heartless was disappearing even before you attacked it… Did it leave, and maybe even let you find your strength in battling it, because it… cares about you?” And at that, Riku gave Sora a look and shoved his arm. But then he dropped the façade that he was really upset with Sora, and healed him… But then he did still have to rib Sora some. “Gee, Sora, of course that's what happened! Because Heartless definitely have mental faculties like that!" "Oww!" Sora complained, as he rubbed his arm in mock offense. And while Naminé was somewhat annoyed that he was making light of the situation, she also thought that maybe it was the best thing in this situation… Sora was giving them what he always did: hope. But still… "We've spent too much time here," Naminé reminded her friends more gently than she thought she could, as she started running off in the direction she thought she needed to. "Our friends could have started slaughtering each other, while we fought the most ridiculously strong Heartless ever. But it might not be too late. Let’s go!" …And it didn't take too long for Naminé to see what she had said, had—unfortunately—been right: on a hill nearby, she could make out fire and a throng of people… and she thought she could hear screaming. For some reason, it reminded her of when Riku Replica and Sora had been fighting over her to the death, until she had hurt the Riku Replica to stop it... and yes, it still made her taste bile in her mouth. "Oh, no! I think the Chief is going to kill John Smith!" Sora cried—as Naminé nearly tripped over her shoelaces in trying to see for herself and stop it in time, if that was what was happening. But just as Naminé was about to be like a lot of her friends, and throw herself atop the man to save him, Pocahontas beat her to the punch. "Stand down, daughter!" Chief Powhatan demanded. And it was like a dagger in Naminé's heart to hear it, since she had hoped their conversation would stop this outcome. Maybe she’d just been a fool to believe that. But Pocahontas argued her point well—a point that Ansem the Wise had had to learn in the end. And how glad Naminé was, that he had. "I won't! I love him, father. Look around you! See where the path of hatred has gotten us. I know my path. What will yours be?!" Chief Powhatan spoke then, as Naminé watched with bated breath, about how Pocahontas was wise beyond her years… and had come to this place with love and understanding, which Naminé of course agreed with, and she wanted to be appreciating the moment. But she couldn't. Not when Ratcliff had summoned such a powerful Heartless just a moment ago, and still might be able to… or to do something much worse, she saw. "Look out!" Naminé begged, as she fell to her knees—as she’d been told to do if anyone ever tried to kidnap her again—so that she’d hopefully be noticed and people would react in time. "Ratcliff is going to shoot Chief Pow-" But it was too late. The shot had already gone off, and Sora had reacted instinctively to protect Naminé, as he pulled her into his arms. And Riku had summoned his Keyblade to fight, but it was clear he hadn't known what Naminé was indicating... so he hadn't been in time, either. John Smith had been, though, and he took the bullet intended for the Chief. And his wound was so grave, that Naminé didn't know how he hadn't died in that instant... but he hadn't. It must have been the love he bore Pocahontas, that made him want to live. And it hadn't been the promise that Riku loved her, that made Naminé come back? Thankfully, the warring sides didn't take this as a hint that they needed to continue what they'd started here. Instead, the blame was laid where it belonged: with Ratcliff, as he was bound and gagged. And Naminé even found herself helping with that unconsciously, as Sora and Riku tried to use healing magic to make all of John's pain away but to no avail. And then it became too much for Naminé. "Ugh! Riku, Sora I feel we weren't even supposed to be in this world at all, but here we were: to witness this mess. It's too much... let's- let's go somewhere else. Please." But even while Naminé was beyond upset, she couldn't leave things as they were, either. So she said some heartfelt goodbyes with her friends, and she thought Riku in particular was doing the same. And—even though she didn't have any healing magic, per se—Naminé tampered with some of their memories so this experience would be less traumatic when they looked back on it someday. And then, perhaps selfishly—because maybe she had been selfish to try and make this trip all about herself, when Riku had been the one to want to world hop. Not her—she gave all the kids paints to play with, so they could create a better picture if they wanted to. And then she got on Sora’s gummi ship with the boys (Riku said the King would pick up theirs and take it back to Disney Castle), with Riku and Sora giving her concerned looks all the while. But once there… she nearly instantaneously felt a little bit better, as she saw someone coming out in the ship's "living room" and smirking now. "Y'all didn't forget little old me, did you?" "Kairi!" Author’s Note: I apologize for how long this update took. A lot of it was that I hand wrote a lot of this chapter, and couldn’t bring myself to type it up until today. Which is dumb, I know. And also because I have a million other stories I’m working on. I’m never abandoning this fic, but updates may take some time for that reason. I’m sorry.

[rickjsposts]

Markets gaping up on Wedn morning big, Corona Virus, Ratcliffe, SuperTuesday, updated political odds. My thoughts for a Wedn morning

New Post has been published on https://www.rickjshandicappingpicks.com/markets-gaping-up-on-wedn-morning-big-corona-virus-ratcliffe-supertuesday-updated-political-odds-my-thoughts-for-a-wedn-morning/

Markets gaping up on Wedn morning big, Corona Virus, Ratcliffe, SuperTuesday, updated political odds. My thoughts for a Wedn morning

The roller coaster ride continues. The stock market after a monster day on Monday up 5%, then falling 2.5% on Tuesday is now gaping up 2.5% today.

TLT is -.16% @CL +1.72% GLD +.69% Vix.x -12%

This is a strong pre-market but not as strong as it appears based upon the indexes. Vix could be a larger drop and so could TLT. But nonetheless still positive.

It is looking more and more to me like a V-shaped recovery. The Fed lowered rates by 1/2 a point. Betting late than never. My guess is there are more cuts coming. And most likely more asset purchases on the open market.

Supply chains are at risk and it requires legislation to allow less regulation for a business to fill them.

I expect the Senate to balk, as the House has slow-rolled Corona Virus funding. Everything is political now, so rather than getting bent out of shape every day, accept it.

No one knows how all this is going to wash out. What we do know is there are going to be disruptions. Most of which will be fueled by ignorance.

Some will be fueled by the intentional spreading of fear. Nothing ever gets solved with fear. That is why the media is pumping up fear 24/7. Then you have the Congresswoman from Colorado announcing if she gets the Coronavirus she will be at every Trump Rally.

Now, I do now care what your political leaning is. But, if you approve of this, get some psychiatric help fast. This person should have been removed from the State House by the end of the day.

What are her plans? To try to murder every Trump supporter? That borders on 70 million Americans now. She is no different than ISIS at this point and should be treated that way.

Super Tuesday is now past and its clear that the Dems are headed toward a brokered convention. That means after the first ballot, it will be anyone’s guess. That is how I see it.

Neither Obama or Clinton has jumped on board with Biden. So I expect they have something in the works. There has been speculation Clinton might get the nomination or Michelle Obama.

Rest assured, they are not going to pin their hopes on Biden if they can help it. The original task was to get rid of Sanders. Now, they will work on getting Biden.

I have some wagers going right now, I bet against Sanders and that is looking very good right now. I also bet against Session, and that is looking good. I hedged a small amount on Bloomberg and Clinton.

Let’s take a look at the political odds this morning:

The Dem nomination odds are stacking up as follows:

Sanders 7/93 -21 Pts Bloomberg 1/99 -11 Pts Biden 78/22 +49 Pts Buttigieg OUT Warren 1/99 -4 Clinton 1/99 +4 Pts Klobuchar OUT Steyer OUT

I have several wagers going. I wagered against Sanders( That is looking excellent now( and placed a wager on Bloomberg and Clinton. I skipped Biden. This is the most likely wagering to end up with a positive EV. It all hinges on the DNC screwing Sanders. To me, I view that as a certainty.

The Presidential winner odds are:

Trump 54/46 +1 Pt Sanders 6/94 -21 Pt Bloomberg 1/99 -5 Pts Biden 39/41 +19 Pts Buttigieg OUT Warren 1/99 -2 Pts

Trump is staying a bit over 50 % while Biden is the front-runner for the Dems.

Control of the Presidency:

57/43 Republicans (A new high)

Control of the House after 2020

60/40 in favor of the Dems. This has come down from 5 to 2. The value is pretty much gone on this wager, yet, I plan on wagering against the “dirty 30” across the board. They will all be incumbents, so most likely the odds will be even money to getting plus odds. I cannot see ending up behind when the smoke clears. At the worst half will lose. And at the best close to a clean sweep.

This is the best value of all heading into 2020.

Control of the Senate after 2020

73/27 in favor of the Republicans. This seems about right. I do not like either side of this wager.

Another wager I will be looking at is whether Graham wins the SC primary. As it stands now there is no line and not likely to be one.

Collins has no primary opponent and Maine is a tough state to handicap. So there is no wager there.

I would like to see a line come out on whether Romney finishes his term. Utah is on the warpath, and I could foresee something happening on that one. But until a line comes out it makes for interesting speculation.

Another line I like is taking the Republicans to win the Alabama Senate seat. You have to lay 11 to 1 but I put the line at 100 to 1. That is a pretty good overlay.

An interesting line change is Ratcliffe is now 4 to 1 to be confirmed by the Senate. It was a brilliant maneuver by Trump to put Grenell in as acting director. He could serve up to 220 days without Senate approval.

Now Burr has agreed to Ratcliffe. What is interesting is Grenell has given up his ambassadorship to Germany. Which to me means he will stay in with Ratcliffe in some capacity. What you are seeing is a shift where Trump is having some control over the Senate.

I am not sure they get 54 votes in the Senate. There are still enough weak Republicans in the Senate to kill the Ratcliffe nomination. Collins, Murkowski, Romney to name a few.

That about covers it:) I am open to questions via email or skype.

You can follow the political odds at predictit.org

RickJ

RickJ’s Handicapping Picks

rickjshandicappingpicks.com/investing

Skype: riccja

[jimdroberts]

Britain, Brexit, and Zugzwang

There’s a saying in chess that describes a position whereby the player whose turn it is

Zugzwang should be Batman’s nemesis.

can’t make a move that won’t lose him the game, such a position is called, zugzwang. In British politics similar situations are called Brexit.

How did we get here?

Google images with a search for, “Brexit Timeline.” It results in an array of graphical representations and psychedelic colours of confusion illustrating just how the UK will  negotiate their way through the eight levels of hell. Each timeline is different and every timeline is about as accurate as a bumblebee with a machine gun, leaving me to deduce that nobody has the faintest idea what is going on.

Just look at the timelines, it’s madness I tell you!

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The Brexit Timeline – How Did We Get Here?

2010, Conservatives win a general election without a clear majority. The Conservatives form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

2015, In an attempt to win an outright majority, David Cameron pledges a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), despite the fact that he was pro-Europe. The Conservatives win an outright majority.

June 2016, Britain holds a referendum to decide whether it’s to remain a part of the (EU). Despite all media predictions, a majority of 51.9% of people vote to leave the EU. Within 24 hours David Cameron resigns as prime minister and like a leader of a banana republic, goes into exile on the French Riviera, where he settles down to write his memoir, also known as his excuse, the memoir fails to mention performing any sexual acts on the severed heads of pigs.

  “David Cameron announced he is stepping down in the wake of a vote, which should make me happy, but it doesn’t. It’s like catching an ice cream cone out of the air, because a child has been hit by a car. I’ll eat it! But it’s tainted somehow.” – John Oliver

June 2017, riding Following the departure of David Cameron, Theresa May mistakes a wave of national euphoria for what is actually a burgeoning sense of scorn, ridicule and contempt towards her. Failing to recognise this

Ever wondered what a person looks like having just been given £1 billion?

she calls a general election, not an easy thing to do given  the Fixed Term Parliament Act requiring five years between elections. Conservatives win the election, but take control of a hung parliament. To have a majority they form a coalition government with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a sort of stone-age sect of religous  zealots whom Theresa May gives £1 billion. Some called it a bribe, while others wanted to know where the magic money tree’s hidden. Despite the £1 billion pay off, the DUP consistently fail to support the prime minister on most Brexit votes. Still, whats £1 billion to a government preaching austerity?

March 2019, the Conservative Party tire of Theresa’s inability to make progress on brexit.

July 2019, members of the Conservative Party elect Boris Johnson as their leader and next prime minister.

Despite promising  the nation that, he’d rather die in a ditch than fail to leave the EU on

Brexit’s been one disappointment after another.

October 31st, 2019, Boris Johnson delivers on neither  Brexit, nor corpse in a ditch materialise. I wasn’t fussy, I’d have settled for a drain, trench, even a gutter. But no, the fat, flatulent, shaggy haired mop head lives on, and after what must have taken minutes of thought, decided to throw the decision back to the public in the form of a general election. Appealing to the same electorate, who in recent times has shown a proclivity to vote for the most chaotic scenario possible. I ask myself, why’s that trend going to stop? Leadership isn’t delegating the problem to everyone else, that’s scapegoating.

Boris hopes the ball lands on, erection.

Following the roulette disappointment, Boris disposes of his blond wig and thinks really hard about holding his erection.what to o next. fear of overheating his brain, Boris takes of his blond wig and decides whether or not to call an election.

Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right

So, come December 12th, who do you vote for. American cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead famously said:

If you went to a restaurant, and the only choice you had was between a turd sandwiches or Jellied moose tongue, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to go looking for somewhere else to eat. Elections in the UK are like this, they offer no choice that you can enthusiastically endorse, just a choice of the lesser evil.

Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people.  A system that is apathetic, in fact, to the needs of the people it was designed to serve. …’

Russell Brand – Guardian

It’s at this stage that people can get angry with the abstaining from voting argument, they remind you of how lucky we are to have a democracy. They’re quick to inform us that voting is the only time the poor have as much say as the wealthy. And if they’ve still failed to convince they’re likely to trundle out, the very old and very tired, it’s a civic duty; which it’s not. Jury service is the only the only civic responsibility in the U.K. No, democracy isn’t being asked to choose between two groups of equally incompetent people who will inevitably balls things up, just in slightly different ways.

Perhaps journalist, Heydon Prowse most accurately explains the trend in the results of recent elections and referenda in the west”

…vote, revolt, “turn voting into a protest too”

Heydon Prowse

We live in a system where only one of two political choices ends up running the country, but people now understand that neither does anything to make their lives any better. The underprivileged will remain underprivileged, the under paid won’t become better off, in fact relatively wages have stagnated for twenty years, and the uneducated, and unemployed will continue to seek solace by watching reality television.

In reality there’s only two choices:

Don’t vote, because none of the candidates are capable of doing the job; or

Go all in with Margaret Mead and choose the lesser of two evils in the hope that the one you pick might be capable screwing things up marginally less than the other choice.

The exhilaration what western democracies promise us.

So Who is the lesser of Two Evils?

It’s an interesting question, it comes down to choosing between an egotistical, nefarious, dishonest, man who can’t keep track of how many children he might have fathered, and a man who looks like he’s just crawled out from beneath your compost heap at the

Jeremy Corbyn whispers Karl Marx, and promises his turnips that the means of production will be shared between all the vegetables.

bottom of your garden, and then preaches anachronistic left wing dogma to your vegetable patch. For years I’ve given Corbyn the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he can’t possibly prescribe to the tenets of Marxism the media claim he does, but he’s never clarified just how far his socialist beliefs go. Might he turn into an English Pol Pot, force everyone to work in allotments as he engineers his agrarian utopia? It sounds stupid, but then again, nearly everything that’s come out of Westminster for the past five years has been stupid. But the peculiarities of the Labour party don’t stop with Corbyn, in fact it’s only the beginning. Corbyn’s shadow home secretary is Diane Abbott, a woman so spectacularly incompetent that she takes a calculator to bed so she can count the sheep. To appreciate how dimwitted Diane Abbot is, the video below shows the most spectacularly embarrassing interview by a senior politician that I’ve ever witnessed:

  So with Boris Johnson’s only opponent, resembling a cross between Lenin and Worzel Gummidge, and seemingly focused on winning the allotment vote of the UK, and with his sidekick displaying the mental faculties of sub-optimal kindergarten student, you would think that all Boris needs to do to win this election is stay alive until the morning of December 13th. If only it were that simple.

  Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

Yes, that really is his name, dePfeffel. If it’s not right to judge a book by its cover, then it must be an even greater superficial objectification to judge a person by their name, but what the hell is a de Pfeffel? Sounds like a catastrophe in a patisserie in which the pretzel dough and the waffle  batter got mixed together and spawned the Antichrist of pastries, a de Pfeffel. No, it’s actually something far more sinister. The von Pfeffel family, after narrowly missing out on starring in, The Sound of Music, is a German, Bavarian, family of considerable  historical wealth and influence. Finding out any more about them is difficult, but doubtlessly you have a neurotic, conspiracy theorist friend who’ll soon get you up to speed.

If only Boris’ problems stopped at de Pfeffel.  He’s a renowned Islamaphobe, homophobe, adulterer, racist, and outright liar. In fact, he is quintessentially the British Donald Trump. The more ridiculous he behaves, the more support he gets. Johnson appeals to a disenfranchised electorate, as he appears to them to be a break from the norm. Let’s look at some of the most infamous dePfeffel moments.

In August 2018, Boris remarked that Muslim women who wear burkas resemble letter boxes. Note, that at the time he was Britain’s Foreign Secretary, a role requiring awareness of cultural nuances. Look I’m all for a joke, but… What kind of mind could consider that an appropriate thing to say?

Whilst in his position of Foreign Secretary, Boris intervened in the delicate situation of British-Iranian woman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was being held captive on charges of espionage. Boris stated that she wasn’t a spy, but  teaching journalism, something which she also wasn’t doing. During Boris’ time as Foreign Secretary, the conditions of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe worsened, with her no longer being allowed to make telephone calls to her husband, and there now being great concern for her mental well-being.

In his column for the Daily Telegraph in 2002, Johnson described people from African Commonwealth countries in the following way, “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” later he added to this mentioning, African people as having “watermelon smiles.” As I said, I like a joke, but racial slurs, well they’re just not funny.

Homophobia, in the past Johnson referred to gay marriage as being akin to humans marrying dogs. And infamously referred to gay men as tank-topped bumboys.

Boris Johnson is a survivor, he’ll say whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole, irregardless of what he says being true or not. You can’t get a more blatant example of his lies than the time he wrote one on the side of a bus. He was right in saying that the UK pays the EU 350 million pounds a week, but it takes into no account how much money the EU sends the UK per week, and how much money the UK saves with free trade with the EU.

.

Vote for Me – Righting the Wrongs

It’s a face of honesty, trust, sound judgment and leadership.

My manifesto is somewhat limited but at its core is righting wrongs through revenge. Essentially I would achieve this by displaying David Cameron’s head on a spike after it had been inserted into his own bottom. Whilst I freely admit that this does little to resolve the Brexit issue, I do believe it would give the country a much needed boost to morale.

The End Is Not Nigh

As an expat who’s lived outside the UK for almost twenty years, personally, I don’t care who wins the election and goes on to form a Rabelaisian government of idiots; I learnt the word Rabelaisian recently and I’m rather fond of it. I just hope that there’s something positive in this for everyone, which of course is impossible.  I still firmly believe what I thought the morning after the referendum; that Britain will never leave the EU. If the powers that be wanted to leave, then Britain would have left by now. Whomever wins this election is unlikely to win a majority, leaving the UK with a fragile coalition goverment once again. One thing I’m certain of, we can’t keep standing in the middle of the road, because when you do that you get hit by traffic from both directions, or worse, you could fall off your horse and cart.

In conclusion, this election will conclude nothing.

Explaining Brexit in five seconds, be like…

                                            Come December: Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right Here I am, stuck in a polling booth Without a clue what to do. Britain, Brexit, and Zugzwang There's a saying in chess that describes a position whereby the player whose turn it is…

[waqasblog2]

10 SEO tips to get your website to the top of Google search

Back when we first published an SEO tips guide on how to top Google search, the world of organic and paid search was a vastly different place.

Sure it was only three years ago (almost to the day), but my how the landscape has changed.

In 2013, to get to the top of Google it was merely a manner of doing some killer keyword research, ensuring your site had a good and clear structure and making sure you had a ton of high authority backlinks coming your way.

And although these are all still very relevant SEO tips today, we also now have to contend with these brand new factors too…

Disclaimer: there are hundreds of things you need to do to improve search visibility, this is a list concentrating on the more recent developments.

10 SEO tips to get to the top of Google

1) Optimise for RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s machine-learning AI system, which has been revealed by Google to one of the top three ranking signals in its vast array of contributing factors.

Google uses RankBrain to handle ambiguous or unique questions that have never been asked before. Brand new queries make up to 15% of all searches a day – and as Google processes 3bn searches daily – this means that 450m searches a day are entirely unique.

Machine learning is clearly necessary to cope with this huge demand, and for search marketers it may be difficult to truly optimise for.

However according to our recent post on how to optimise content for RankBrain, you can do so in a number of ways, the most important being… Create content that answers unique queries that are particularly relevant to your audience personas.

This will take time, research and a little trial & error, but with enough references and supporting information in your clearly formatted, long-form content, you may start to see more visibility for relevant queries.

2) Optimise for ‘near me’ search queries

According to Google, ’micro-moments’ are the “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends.”

This basically points to mobile as being the key driver for local search, and how essentially you should be optimising for exactly that.

As Chris Lake mentions in his post on optimising for micro-moments, mobile searchers are a) very active and b) not brand loyal, so there’s a huge opportunity, especially as many businesses are lagging behind due to poor mobile user experiences.

The advice here is to be all about anticipation, relevance and ease of use…

3) Optimise your local presence

Following on from the last point, it’s no good optimising for ‘near me’ search queries if you’re not actually ‘there’. So you need to sort out your local SEO.

You can do this by optimising your Google My Business page. Among many others things, you’ll need to make sure you have the following features…

A long and unique description of your business.

Choose the right categories.

Key information on opening times.

Lots of imagery.

Regular updates.

A local phone number and business address.

And one of the other major local SEO factors is making sure you have lots of visible customer reviews, which as Graham Charlton states are “vital for local businesses, whether or not they sell online, thanks to their sheer prominence in local search results.”

4) Optimise for natural language and voice search

In Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends report, it states that Google Voice Search queries have risen 35x since 2008.

Why this explosion in voice search? Voice input is 4x faster than typing, you will therefore have access to faster results. There are obvious accessibility issues. People have difficulty typing on certain devices. People also like to avoid confusing menus. Ultimately no matter how mobile-optimised a site is, or how big our phones are getting, searching on a mobile is still damn fiddly.

Google has worked hard to improve its search engine so it can better understand superlatives, ordered items, points in time and complex combinations.

The key to optimising for voice search therefore is to provide content for more direct questions. Those that are spoken in a far more natural language than the one we normally use when typing into a search engine, where keywords are dominant.

5) Answer a question

Following on from optimising for natural language is being able to directly answer questions with your content.

Google scrapes third party websites in order to present searchers with a clear on-SERP answer to their more ‘knowledge-based queries’ (when is Kanye West’s birthday? etc). Although Wikipedia used to be the dominant site in these answer boxes, this is becoming less so as Google recognises that more quality expert content is coming from other publishers.

So find out what questions your site can answer and create content that does exactly that. It will help if you’re as succinct as possible, you phrase the question in the headline and you answer the question as soon in the article as possible.

6) Pay for it

Some things are still very much a truism now as they were in 2013… You can just ignore all of these tips just by paying your way to the top with PPC ads.

Although you will still need quality ad copy, relevant landing pages and high customer rated products (especially if your entering into the Product Listing Ads space), but yes, you can still throw money at the problem.

However, here we’ll tell you why your ads don’t necessarily need to come first in the new look SERPs anymore.

7) Get in Top Stories, implement AMP

Getting your site into Google News has always been a sure fire way to drive short-term traffic to your content.

It’s not great for evergreen appeal, but if you can be hot off the presses with good quality news stories than it can also be great for other sites linking to you as a source.

Top Stories is the mobile equivalent of the desktop In the News section, and right now this section is filling up with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP is Google’s open-source program that allows webmasters the ability to create super-quick, stripped-down, instantly loading versions of web-pages for mobile users.

AMP isn’t a ranking signal yet, but if you’re appearing in Top Stories than having AMP pages will help improve user experience. Here’s a tutorial on how to implement AMP successfully.

Also note that AMP results will be appearing throughout the mobile SERP by the end of the year.

8) Be mobile optimised

You should have this nailed by now. Although three years ago many of you didn’t, and back then it wasn’t a ranking signal. It is now though!

But to help you out, we’ve published this massive and comprehensive guide to testing the mobile usability of your site. You’re welcome.

9) Speed up your website

As I mentioned earlier, AMP is certainly helping to speed up the mobile web. Although it is controversial in nature, and isn’t necessarily the best solution to improving the speed of websites in general as it just feels like a ‘quick fix’.

You do still need to prioritise the speed of your actual site, not just grafting on Google-owned patches. Site speed is a ranking factor, but there are many ways you can improve performance.

First, check your site speed using this tool and then you can access a report breaking-down where you can improve.

You can also make a huge difference in reducing page load by following these image optimisation SEO tips for site speed.

10) Optimise your Twitter presence

Although this may be the final tip in this list, it’s obviously not the last thing you can optimise to get to the top of Google. However one major change to the SERP in the last few years has been the introduction of tweets.

Last year, thanks to a deal between Twitter and Google, tweets are now indexed on SERPs. So if you search for a brand, publisher or personality, you will now see a live timeline of their latest tweets.

So make sure you tweet regularly, have a fairly substantial following and for goodness sake don’t say anything you’ll regret because it will probably remain cached for a couple of hours.

Christopher Ratcliff is the editor of Methods Unsound and former editor of SEW

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

This content was originally published here.

[gyrlversion]

Billionaire Chris Dawson switches his The Range store fortune to wife

Entrepreneur Chris Dawson has made no secret of his admiration for Sir Philip Green.

And now the founder of The Range seems to have taken a leaf out of the Topshop tycoon’s book.

For Mr Dawson is said to have saved millions of pounds in tax by reportedly handing over ownership of his main business to his wife Sarah – who lives in Jersey.

Mr Dawson founded The Range in 1989. He now has around 160 stores in Britain and Ireland, with customers including the Duchess of Cambridge.

Chris Dawson, 67, has given ownership of the company behind discount store The Range to his wife, 56

The businessman is believed to have transferred shares in the firm’s parent company to Mrs Dawson after she moved to the Channel Islands tax haven in 2016.

This meant she did not have to pay the Treasury anything when Norton Group Holdings, which owns The Range, paid out a £39.5million dividend last year, according to The Times. It reported that this denied the UK as much as £15million in tax.

Mr Dawson has previously told how he ‘likes to read what businessmen I admire are up to, like Sir Philip Green’.

Sir Philip himself does not own any shares in his Arcadia retail empire, which owns Burton and Dorothy Perkins, as well as Topshop; his wife Tina owns them instead. The Greens set up new companies after they moved to Monaco – another tax haven.

The businessman had previously been known to visit up to 10 of his stores a day via private helicopter (pictured)

Mr Dawson, 67, a former market trader, likens himself to Only Fools and Horses character Del Boy and even drives a Rolls-Royce with the registration DE11 BOY.

He describes his company as ‘a poor man’s John Lewis’ – but that hasn’t stopped it attracting well-heeled customers.

The Duchess of Cambridge was seen doing last-minute Christmas shopping at the Kings Lynn branch near her and Prince William’s home in Norfolk in December.

Mr Dawson and his wife, 56, are worth almost £2billion, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.

As a boy, Dawson struggled academically and was so severely dyslexic that he left school without a single qualification, unable to read and write. He is now one of the most successful businessmen in the country 

The man at the top of the list – Jim Ratcliffe, founder of chemicals giant Ineos – drew widespread criticism when he announced his move to Monaco this year to save money in tax. He had been knighted less than a year earlier. Company filings for Norton Group Holdings show the Dawsons lived in England until May 2016, when Mrs Dawson moved to Jersey, The Times said.

At that time Mrs Dawson owned 40 per cent of the company and Mr Dawson owned 60 per cent. The Times said his shares were transferred to her in March 2017.

He follows the same idea that Philip Green had to given his wife Tina ownership of Arcadia to keep millions form the taxpayer

Wealthy mainland UK taxpayers who own shares pay a 38.1 per cent tax on any dividend – but because the shares are now owned on the Channel Islands this does not apply to any dividends.

This means the UK Treasury will have been deprived of £15million worth of tax from dividends of £39.5million that were paid in January 2018.

A spokesman for the Dawsons told The Times: ‘Their decisions and actions were not at all inspired by Sir Philip and Lady Green.’ They added: ‘Mr Dawson remains in the UK for tax purposes and all UK taxes are complied with.

‘Mr and Mrs Dawson and their companies comply with HMRC legislation. Mrs Dawson’s move to Jersey has no impact on the group’s tax status.’

The Range did not respond to requests for comment.

‘I still am a market trader, it’s just got more noughts on it’: Meet the real life Del Boy worth £1.75 billion who couldn’t read until he was 27

Like all good businessmen, Chris Dawson comes equipped with his own roll-off-the-tongue catchphrase.

The 64-year-old billionaire, who made his fortune through bargain homeware chain The Range, believes there are three ways to get rich. ‘To have a lot of money, you’ve got to either win it, steal it or inherit it,’ he claims.

And if that oft-used phrase sounds like something more likely to come from the Del Boy school of business spiel, that’s because he probably wants it to.

Chris Dawson, billionaire owner of The Range stores in front of two of his homes near to his hometown LYMOUTH

The self-made tycoon – now worth £1.75billion – identifies so strongly with the character that he has a DE11 BOY number plate on his £350,000 Rolls-Royce Wraith coupe.

Chris Dawson, who has made his billions through the bargain homeware chain The Range, models himself on the Only Fools and Horses character Del Boy – and has the number plate to prove it

He is now at the helm of nearly 110 chains nationwide and visits ten per day in his personalised helicopter

He also jokes that he taught Derek Trotter ‘all his best lines’, while there is even rumoured to be a photo of the cast of the long-running comedy in the reception of his HQ.

Speaking about the programme, he says: ‘I actually had that life. You think, b***** me, I’ve said that, done that.’

He also insists he has the same businessman swagger and eye for a deal that made the Only Fools and Horses character so loveable.

‘I still am a market trader. It’s just got more noughts on it,’ he said. ‘Even now, I’ll stop the Roller and pick up a battery from the side of the road. I still love it.’

Like Del Boy, Dawson makes no secret of his unabashed desire to be filthy rich (‘As each person comes in, I think, kerching, kerching, kerching!’). But, having now taken the 58th spot on the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, Dawson has proved there is more substance to his patter than that of his television counterpart.

His incredible story epitomises the rags to riches tale that seems to dominate the world of British business.

Dawson epitomises the rags to riches tale that seems to dominate the world of British business. He started life on the market stall in Plymouth (pictured) and used to sell upcycled furniture and scrap metal to punters

Despite his new-found wealth, Dawson has not shunned his roots, admitting that he regularly chooses to fly with budget airline Flybe

As a boy, Dawson struggled academically and was so severely dyslexic that he left school without a single qualification, unable to read and write. He is now one of the most successful businessmen in the country

His humble beginnings saw him and his two brothers raised on a council estate in Hooe, Plymouth, with their labourer father Thomas and his cleaner mother, Elsie.

Prospects were bleak – his younger brother still lives in the same house – and money was so sparse that he did not own his first pair of pants until he was 12.

Now, his billionaire lifestyle includes a sprawling 30-acre riverfront estate near Plymouth, which has his own motocross track converted from a golf course.

Despite his new-found wealth, Dawson has not shunned his roots, admitting that he regularly chooses to fly with budget airline Flybe

His numerous garages are home to a Ferrari, a Range Rover and a Porsche and, when he visits London, he stays in the penthouse at the Corinthia hotel, splashing out £14,000 for the two-floor room, complete with a private butler.

Despite his new-found wealth, Dawson appears reluctant to shun his roots, regularly choosing to fly with budget airline Flybe.

While many in his position might use a good business deal as an excuse to splurge on a luxury car or holiday, Dawson – who barely manages to take two weeks off per year -rewards himself with a greasy fry-up, complete with all the trimmings.

The father-of-two is also insistent that people should not credit his success to a desire to escape his destitute lifestyle.

‘People want to say, “Ah, he was poor, his father knocked him from here to there’ — he did a bit, as it happens,’ he told The Sunday Times.

‘But what if we were good at what we done? It’s called ability, I believe.’

Despite wanting to talk about his talent, Dawson admits that those who know him from school would be shocked to see him now.

As a boy, he struggled academically and was so severely dyslexic that he left school without a single qualification, unable to read and write.

‘Dyslexic is a polite way of putting it, I just didn’t have a bloody clue,’ he told the Telegraph.

It wasn’t until he was 27 that Dawson learned how to read. However, even at the age of 64, he still cannot write.

He struggles to understand the Sat Nav on his fleet of luxury cars and admits sometimes pretending to forget his glasses when checking into a hotel so he doesn’t have to fill out his form.

But, it is clear that Dawson’s business brain was switched on from a young age.

The budding entrepreneur started selling ice-creams at the age of seven, before taking on three paper rounds – two of which he subcontracted to friends.

He also earned money by doing early-morning wake-up calls for military officers in his garrison home town of Plymouth and began selling teas to builders on construction sites at the age of 14.

Last year, he told Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford on their Channel 5 show How The Other Half Lives that he doesn’t intend to sell the company or stop expanding

They filmed the interview at the Corinthia hotel, where he stays when he visits London. He pays for a £14,000 for a two-floor room (pictured) complete with a private butler

He later embarked on a career as a scrap metal dealer, ‘borrowing’ leftover scraps from his school technology class. When he was caught, a teacher apparently told him: ‘You’ll end up in prison or very rich.’

Dawson then began branching out in all sorts of trades. He was once asked to join the showbiz circuit as a warm-up act for Little and Large but, when he was told he would earn £500, he replied: ‘I can earn that in an hour.’

He then continued to feed his money-making drive by selling watches from a briefcase on a market stall, later selling everything he could get his hands on from the back of a lorry.

It was with those wheeler-dealing profits that he was able to open his first The Range superstore at Sugar Mill business park in Plymouth in 1989.

It wasn’t long before he had turned the company into a booming chain of retail park shops, which is dubbed as working man’s John Lewis and sells everything from lawn-mowers to scented candles.

There are now more than 100 chains across the UK, complete with a workforce of more than 9.000. Dawson also plans to open a store in Limerick and is mooting an expansion to Germany.

Dawson jokes that he taught Derek Trotter (pictured in Only Fools and Horses) ‘all his best lines’, while there is even rumoured to be a photo of the cast of the long-running comedy in the reception of his HQ

Despite the overwhelming expansion of his business, Dawson insists that he is involved in as many of the chains as possible. Using his private helicopter, he visits up to ten stores per day, ensuring he sees each individual shop six times per year.

Mr Dawson founded The Range in 1989. He now has around 160 stores in Britain and Ireland, with customers including the Duchess of Cambridge

He is a self-confessed workaholic, sleeping only six hours per day and admitting he does nothing to relax, except work. He reportedly does not have a work email and instead communicates with employees in a regular early-morning conference calls, ensuring he is physically and metaphorically everywhere in the business at all times.

‘I’m like Anneka bloody Rice,’ he says.

It was through his wheeling and dealing that he met his wife of 35 years, Sarah, when he sold her a knock-off watch and then chased her for top-up payments.

She works as a buyer for the company, alongside their daughter Lisa, who is in her 30s. Their son Christopher – also in his 30s – works on store refits.

Last year, he told Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford on their Channel 5 show How The Other Half Lives that he doesn’t intend to sell the company or stop expanding.

Asked if he would prefer to be relaxing on a beach or yacht somewhere exotic, he replied: ‘No to all of those. I don’t know how to relax is unless I have had a gin. I will have a go at being a trillionaire.’

  The post Billionaire Chris Dawson switches his The Range store fortune to wife appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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Watch Bone Mother, Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé’s gothic animation

Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvé were thinking of putting a guest bedroom in their basement — but Baba Yaga had other ideas. And what Baba wants, Baba gets.

Bowing to her formidable powers, they found themselves transforming their basement into an animation set, a miniature studio where the mythic Slavic matriarch assumed a starring role in Bone Mother, awesome stop-motion now available online.

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 Together Hayward and Trouvé have amassed years of experience in commercial and independent animation — making ads for Nike and other major brands, animating TV series and features like Little Prince, and running their own company See Creature — but Bone Mother presented a whole new set of challenges and opportunities.

They sat me down at the kitchen table of the Montreal home they share with their two kids and told me how it all went down — a tale of vampires and newborns, a thousand 3D-printed heads and an enduring shared passion for stop motion.

Co-directed by Hayward and Trouvé, Bone Mother was produced by Jelena Popovi�� and executive produced by Michael Fukushima for the NFB Animation Studio.

How did you guys get together?

Sylvie: We were both working at Cuppa Coffee Studios in Toronto, animating TV series. We’d see each other in passing, and then at one point I became his animation director and had to talk to him. No choice! We ended up getting together, something we tried to keep a secret for a year or so, which was kind of fun. Then Hothouse came along; a 3-month apprenticeship program for emerging Canadian filmmakers with the NFB’s English animation studio in Montreal. We realized that we loved filmmaking and Montréal so we decided to stay.

Dale: Moving was a whole process of re-adjustment. We’d just finished working in Toronto, where we’d been working on Celebrity Deathmatch, a MTV gorefest that got made on a crazy schedule. 16 episodes in three months. And at the same time I’d been doing tests for my hothouse film. So I was pretty pumped when I arrived at the NFB that first day, but I quickly realized that the Film Board runs at another pace.

Which edition of Hothouse was that?

Dale: It was 2007, so Hothouse 4. My film was Roy G Biv — totally abstract, working with paints. Sylvie did her own Hothouse film the following year.

Sylvie: Mine was called Orange, an abstract look at urban spaces. That film led me to working with the French animation studio, where I made another film called Reflection. My background is in photography; it was natural and exciting for me to combine animation with photography.

What was the appeal of Baba Yaga?

Dale: We’ve always liked anti-heroes and fantasy stories. I first heard Maura McHugh’s version of the Baba story on the horror podcast Pseudopod. Baba is usually portrayed as a dark character, an evil witch. But there are lessons to be learned from characters like that. She’s like that old uncle who terrifies you, but who you totally respect at the same time. It seems natural somehow that Vlad the Impaler has the audacity to walk through her door. It was fun to have a story with two villains. It gave us lots to play with.

Sylvie: For me it was the fact that she’s a woman in this world. So many mythic villains are men — Dracula, Frankenstein, and all those guys. And then there’s Baba Yaga. She’s not your typical witch. She commands respect. She meditates. I liked the idea of paying homage to powerful old ladies. Just because you’re getting old doesn’t mean you’re getting weak. And I like that she’s Dracula’s mother. We don’t think of Dracula having a mother.

Dale: Vampires are big in pop culture right now, and initially we thought it might be too commercial for the Film Board. This is not typical NFB animation. But we pitched it anyway and they went with it. Baba is the main character, but I think it’s nice bonus for audiences to learn that it’s also Dracula’s origin story.

How did end up you making the film in your basement?

Sylvie: That was our producer Jelena Popović’s idea. I was pregnant with Rémi at the time, and initially we thought we’d have the baby and then go back to the Film Board, with baby in tow, thinking, you know, that people love babies and it would be fine. But we already had a daughter and should’ve remembered that it’s not that easy. Then Jelena said, maybe you can do it at home. And the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. We thought we’d eventually go back to the Film Board, to get shots that needed more space, but once we set things up here, we realized that we could adapt and shoot pretty much everything here.

Dale: It was the only way to get it done. As tough as it was to go back and forth between filming and diapers, it allowed me to be with Rémi during his first months. He could be on set with us, and our daughter Zoé was able to get involved in the production. She liked bringing her friends over to show them the bone house and the skeletons. And we could be totally flexible with the schedule. I would set things up knowing that Sylvie would take over later, and vice versa.

Sylvie: I’m a morning person and Dale likes working at night, so he’d often work until midnight and then I’d start shooting at 5 am. It gave us a nice balance. When I had Zoé, I stayed home while Dale was out working, and I found that quite alienating. This time around it was different. And it’s nice to have an artistic project that gives you a break from baby life.

Did making it at home affect the look or feel of the film at all?

Sylvie: I don’t think so, but I laugh when I look at certain shots, knowing that I’m looking at a section of our basement ceiling or wall.

Dale: Yeah, I had to comp out the basement pot lights in some shots. But that’s what stop motion is all about, holding things up with post-it notes and duct tape, and making it all work. We used lots of simple materials – foam board, and blue, green and even pink screen that we found at the dollar store. It was essential to expanding the environment in postproduction, so you couldn’t tell it was shot in a small room.

Was 3D printing part of the plan from the get-go?

Dale: Yes, it was part of our original pitch. We knew the NFB was looking for innovation, and we’d been working with André Michaud on Little Prince, which used 3D printed faces. Stop motion is typically limited with the range of facial expression, and this was an opportunity to take it up a level, to try to create more expressive characters.

Sylvie: That’s where the 1500 faces come in. We wanted a full range of emotions in the characters – angry and mad, angry and sorrowful, and so on. We weren’t using high-end printers but in the end that kind of worked in our favour. We discovered the stepping in Baba’s face looked like wrinkles, an effect that worked well for her character, so we emphasized this as much as we could.

Dale: At the same time we wanted to keep a textured handcrafted look — to be able to see the thumbprints so to speak — so each face, each set of eyes, was painted individually. That took months to do and we were lucky to have Eve Lamoureux and Claire Brognez help us out. They were a great team. We also spent quite a bit of time researching 3D printing filaments until we finally found a part wood/part plastic blend that matched our environment and took well to watercolour paint.

In such a dark gothic story lighting is key.

Dale: The challenge was to keep it dark and have it look natural, not have that “day for night” look. Most of the interiors were lit with tiny LED lights, hot glued to armature wire. We wired them to jacks – and controlled them with DMX channels. In the original story Baba’s house speaks, and the LED lights became that voice. When they come on, you know the house is talking.

Sylvie: Fire is a major element too, and it’s Vlad who brings that into the story with his lamp. His technology invades Baba’s natural space.

Was there a clear division of labour?

Sylvie: I come from a photography so I focus on what’s under camera. Dale is better on the computer. I know my way around After Effects, Photoshop and other programs, but I’m not a tech person at heart, and he’s also better at rigging stuff. I like doing the sets and painting, thinking of the visual composition. He did the storyboard and designs. We both constantly worked on the story and the editing.

Dale: Experience has taught us to establish who’s responsible for what. Whenever we don’t, we get into trouble. But it’s still evolving, I’d say. When we look at the film now, we forget who did what shot. We were both so involved. Even if it was my hand animating the puppet, it was often her idea. People ask us, who makes the decisions? Well we both do.

Sylvie: It’s all about which idea works better and that’s a question of maturity I think. When you first start off, you think, “I made this and nobody is going to tell me otherwise.” But that attitude isn’t productive. We just listen to each other and see what works.

How did the soundtrack come together?

Above: Sylvie and Dale with composer Rebecca Foon.

Sylvie: Sacha Ratcliffe was the sound designer and she immediately got what we wanted — the house and its voice, the animal sounds, the atmosphere, everything. Her design brought everything to another level. And the NFB team was great: Geoff Mitchell, who did the recording; Karla Baumgardner, on Foley; Jean Paul Vialard, who did the mix. They all really know what they’re doing.

Dale: We had cut the film to temp music from Inception and other Hans Zimmer pieces, big momentous music, so we had a good sense of the music cues. Rebecca Foon created wonderfully atmospheric music. Recording the voices of Baba and Vlad was amazing. With Baba, we knew we wanted the rough voice an older actress, a smoker, Renée-Madeleine Le Guerrier was perfect. As soon as I heard her laugh, I knew she was Baba. And Rafael Petardi, with his deep voice like butter, was completely convincing at the vain Vlad.

Any other collaborators you want to mention? 

Dale: André Michaud was a huge help with tech stuff, particularly all our 3D printing issues. We’d worked with him in Little Prince and he’s always open to trying prototypes but he knows when to say something wasn’t working.

Sylvie: Jelena Popović, our producer, really helped us get a handle on the story. She’s from Eastern Europe originally so she was familiar with the Baba legends. And Eve Lamoureux-Cyr and Claire Brognez painted all those faces, a job that took four months. Noncedo Khumalo handled the eyes and most of the Maya modelling.

Dale: Another key collaborator was Nick Fairhead, a old friend from Toronto. He’s a post-production guy who’s worked on lots of high-end features, and he really raised the production values.

Any influences? Art or artists who feed your imagination?

Dale: One influence on this particular film is the comic book artist Mike Mignola and his Hellboy character. He’s got an awesome style that took a while to become accepted in the mainstream. He’s now one of the industry’s most unique voices.

Sylvie: When it comes to animation, the people at Laika are totally inspiring. I love the work of Rachelle Lambden, one of the only women there. We worked together at Cuppa Coffee for a while. She’s a powerful character animator.

Dale: And we just finished working with Regina Pessoa in Portugal. It was really inspiring to see how she integrates work into her country life style, finding a balance between work and community. That’s something we try to apply to our own situation.

Sylvie: We both like live action too. I grew up watching horror movies with my mom – Amityville, The Thing, The Shining, all the Stephen King stuff.

What’s next?

Sylvie: Right now we’re shooting another stop motion film in our basement — a much simpler project directed by José Luis Saturno. And Dale is interested in delving into live action.

Dale: We both really enjoy live action, and I’d love to make a feature that integrates stop motion into live action somehow. Technology is evolving quickly, the lines are getting blurred, and that’s exciting.

Sylvie: Now that we’ve finished Bone Mother, we’re coming back to See Creature, pushing it in new ways. We’ve always enjoyed creating animated sequences for documentaries, and I also have a idea for a series of mini-shorts – focussing on little illuminating life moments. Likes lots of people, we’re looking for a balance and interested in working on projects that are meaningful to us.

Artwork from Bone Mother will be exhibited at Toronto’s Liberty Arts Gallery, opening November 1 and on display a month, and Dale and Sylvie are giving a masterclass on the making of Bone Mother on Nov 4 at the 2018 edition of the TAAFI Conference in Toronto.

For more making-of photos, check out the Bone Mother instagram account.

The post Watch Bone Mother, Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé’s gothic animation appeared first on NFB Blog.

Watch Bone Mother, Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé’s gothic animation posted first on http://film-streamingsweb.blogspot.com

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Who is Ben Stokes' wife Clare Ratcliffe? Glam WAG who is standing by cricketer's side over brawl case

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=36176 Who is Ben Stokes' wife Clare Ratcliffe? Glam WAG who is standing by cricketer's side over brawl case - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=36176 Ben Stokes has hit headlines over his brawl outside a nightclub in Bristol last September, for which he is currently standing trial. But while the England cricketer is already famous for his antics on and off the pitch, little is known for his self-confessed 'cricket widow' wife Clare Ratcliffe. The glamorous brunette WAG has been standing by her husband's side throughout his court case, accompanying him into court alongside his legal team, always dressed in an array of smart and professional separates. Who is Clare Ratcliffe? Clare holds Ben's hand as they appear at Bristol Crown Court, August 6 2018 (Image: REUTERS) Clare is a primary school teacher and mum of two who describes herself as "cricket widow and PA to Ben Stokes". She married the cricketer in October 2018 and has two children with him. Ben himself admitted that meeting Clare and having their kids forced him to grow up fast. "It has changed me being a dad because when you have a baby and you're only 22, that brings a lot of responsibility with it," he told the Daily Mail in 2013. "I still think I am a bit of a lad but there were just a few things in my life that needed a bit of attention and I've attended to them now." Read More Ben Stokes and Clare Ratcliffe's children Clare with Libby and Layton (Image: Instagram) Together, the married couple have two children - Layton, four, and two-year-old daughter Libby. Little Libby was diagnosed with coeliac disease, meaning she has an adverse reaction to gluten and so must steer clear of any food containing wheat, barley or rye - including bread, pasta, cakes and most cereals. Clare has been educating herself and her followers about Libby's condition as she said she found it hard to discover restaurants and hotels that catered to kids with coeliac. "Going to be documenting how we find eating out and staying in hotel’s with this little monster who suffers with #coeliacdisease ," she captioned a picture of her sleeping girl on Instagram. "I will be putting it all in my stories and saving it to my highlights so take a look." Libby has been diagnosed with coeliac disease (Image: Instagram) Ben has been teaching Layton how to play cricket (Image: Instagram) Layton also makes plenty of appearances on his mum's social media, where he's pictured grinning with his gappy smile and throwing poses with his baby sister. Ben has confessed he's already training his son up to follow in his footsteps and has started teaching him cricket. "If Layton loses his concentration I say, ‘Well, I'm not going to play with you then, if you're being like that," he told the Times. Ben's dad Ged told the same newspaper in 2016 that Ben's children have had a huge levelling effect on him. "Having a family of his own has been a massive turnaround," he said. "It's helped him take those final strides." Inside Ben and Clare's romantic wedding Ben and Clare married in October 2017 in the picturesque St Marys Church in East Brent, Somerset - the village where Clare grew up. She wore a beautiful white floor-length wedding dress with a sweetheart neckline and fishtail skirt, decorated with delicate silver trimming at the waist and straps. Among the celebrity guests at their nuptials were Ben's teammates Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler, Alex Hales and Paul Collingwood, while England captain Joe Root was there to lend his support. Some 200 of their closest friends and family were at the church service to see the happy couple tie the knot, with Libby and Layton acting as flower girl and page boy. Local were stunned to see some of England's most famous athletes flood their village, with one offering Alastair Cook the use of his driveway to park his Range Rover. Ben and Clare's relationship history Ben and Clare have been together for years (Image: Instagram) When he became a father at the age of 21, Ben suddenly had a lot of growing up to do. "Commitment was the hardest thing to get my head round," he told the Guardian in 2016. "Me and Clare have got a very good relationship where she knows that, as important as the kids and her are, my friends are very important to me as well. She knows whenever I'm away for a long period of time, I'm desperate to see them also." They had their first child when Ben was just 21 Ben also admitted he could drink more than 20 Jägerbombs on a single night out - although when asked if he still goes out drinking quite so regularly, he replied: "No chance, because I wake up with a three-day hangover now." Of his rise to fame and success, ex-England cricketer Stephen Harmison said: "Ben's an unbelievably talented boy, but what made him the cricketer he is was becoming a father. "When his son Layton was born, you could see a change in him. That was when he started fulfilling his potential. He realised there was somebody he needed to provide for and look after." Source link

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10 SEO tips to get your website to the top of Google search

Back when we first published an SEO tips guide on how to top Google search, the world of organic and paid search was a vastly different place.

Sure it was only three years ago (almost to the day), but my how the landscape has changed.

In 2013, to get to the top of Google it was merely a manner of doing some killer keyword research, ensuring your site had a good and clear structure and making sure you had a ton of high authority backlinks coming your way.

And although these are all still very relevant SEO tips today, we also now have to contend with these brand new factors too…

Disclaimer: there are hundreds of things you need to do to improve search visibility, this is a list concentrating on the more recent developments.

10 SEO tips to get to the top of Google

1) Optimise for RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s machine-learning AI system, which has been revealed by Google to one of the top three ranking signals in its vast array of contributing factors.

Google uses RankBrain to handle ambiguous or unique questions that have never been asked before. Brand new queries make up to 15% of all searches a day – and as Google processes 3bn searches daily – this means that 450m searches a day are entirely unique.

Machine learning is clearly necessary to cope with this huge demand, and for search marketers it may be difficult to truly optimise for.

However according to our recent post on how to optimise content for RankBrain, you can do so in a number of ways, the most important being… Create content that answers unique queries that are particularly relevant to your audience personas.

This will take time, research and a little trial & error, but with enough references and supporting information in your clearly formatted, long-form content, you may start to see more visibility for relevant queries.

2) Optimise for ‘near me’ search queries

According to Google, ’micro-moments’ are the “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends.”

This basically points to mobile as being the key driver for local search, and how essentially you should be optimising for exactly that.

As Chris Lake mentions in his post on optimising for micro-moments, mobile searchers are a) very active and b) not brand loyal, so there’s a huge opportunity, especially as many businesses are lagging behind due to poor mobile user experiences.

The advice here is to be all about anticipation, relevance and ease of use…

3) Optimise your local presence

Following on from the last point, it’s no good optimising for ‘near me’ search queries if you’re not actually ‘there’. So you need to sort out your local SEO.

You can do this by optimising your Google My Business page. Among many others things, you’ll need to make sure you have the following features…

A long and unique description of your business.

Choose the right categories.

Key information on opening times.

Lots of imagery.

Regular updates.

A local phone number and business address.

And one of the other major local SEO factors is making sure you have lots of visible customer reviews, which as Graham Charlton states are “vital for local businesses, whether or not they sell online, thanks to their sheer prominence in local search results.”

4) Optimise for natural language and voice search

In Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends report, it states that Google Voice Search queries have risen 35x since 2008.

Why this explosion in voice search? Voice input is 4x faster than typing, you will therefore have access to faster results. There are obvious accessibility issues. People have difficulty typing on certain devices. People also like to avoid confusing menus. Ultimately no matter how mobile-optimised a site is, or how big our phones are getting, searching on a mobile is still damn fiddly.

Google has worked hard to improve its search engine so it can better understand superlatives, ordered items, points in time and complex combinations.

The key to optimising for voice search therefore is to provide content for more direct questions. Those that are spoken in a far more natural language than the one we normally use when typing into a search engine, where keywords are dominant.

5) Answer a question

Following on from optimising for natural language is being able to directly answer questions with your content.

Google scrapes third party websites in order to present searchers with a clear on-SERP answer to their more ‘knowledge-based queries’ (when is Kanye West’s birthday? etc). Although Wikipedia used to be the dominant site in these answer boxes, this is becoming less so as Google recognises that more quality expert content is coming from other publishers.

So find out what questions your site can answer and create content that does exactly that. It will help if you’re as succinct as possible, you phrase the question in the headline and you answer the question as soon in the article as possible.

6) Pay for it

Some things are still very much a truism now as they were in 2013… You can just ignore all of these tips just by paying your way to the top with PPC ads.

Although you will still need quality ad copy, relevant landing pages and high customer rated products (especially if your entering into the Product Listing Ads space), but yes, you can still throw money at the problem.

However, here we’ll tell you why your ads don’t necessarily need to come first in the new look SERPs anymore.

7) Get in Top Stories, implement AMP

Getting your site into Google News has always been a sure fire way to drive short-term traffic to your content.

It’s not great for evergreen appeal, but if you can be hot off the presses with good quality news stories than it can also be great for other sites linking to you as a source.

Top Stories is the mobile equivalent of the desktop In the News section, and right now this section is filling up with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP is Google’s open-source program that allows webmasters the ability to create super-quick, stripped-down, instantly loading versions of web-pages for mobile users.

AMP isn’t a ranking signal yet, but if you’re appearing in Top Stories than having AMP pages will help improve user experience. Here’s a tutorial on how to implement AMP successfully.

Also note that AMP results will be appearing throughout the mobile SERP by the end of the year.

8) Be mobile optimised

You should have this nailed by now. Although three years ago many of you didn’t, and back then it wasn’t a ranking signal. It is now though!

But to help you out, we’ve published this massive and comprehensive guide to testing the mobile usability of your site. You’re welcome.

9) Speed up your website

As I mentioned earlier, AMP is certainly helping to speed up the mobile web. Although it is controversial in nature, and isn’t necessarily the best solution to improving the speed of websites in general as it just feels like a ‘quick fix’.

You do still need to prioritise the speed of your actual site, not just grafting on Google-owned patches. Site speed is a ranking factor, but there are many ways you can improve performance.

First, check your site speed using this tool and then you can access a report breaking-down where you can improve.

You can also make a huge difference in reducing page load by following these image optimisation SEO tips for site speed.

10) Optimise your Twitter presence

Although this may be the final tip in this list, it’s obviously not the last thing you can optimise to get to the top of Google. However one major change to the SERP in the last few years has been the introduction of tweets.

Last year, thanks to a deal between Twitter and Google, tweets are now indexed on SERPs. So if you search for a brand, publisher or personality, you will now see a live timeline of their latest tweets.

So make sure you tweet regularly, have a fairly substantial following and for goodness sake don’t say anything you’ll regret because it will probably remain cached for a couple of hours.

Christopher Ratcliff is the editor of Methods Unsound and former editor of SEW

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

Source

https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/08/17/10-tips-to-get-your-website-to-the-top-of-google-search/

[njawaidofficial]

19 Little Disney Details That Are Seriously Based Off Of Real Life

https://styleveryday.com/2018/04/07/19-little-disney-details-that-are-seriously-based-off-of-real-life/

19 Little Disney Details That Are Seriously Based Off Of Real Life

*uses a fire extinguisher to fly through space*

In Incan times, messing up the emperor’s groove could’ve very well landed you at the bottom of a cliff.

I’m sure you all remember in The Emperor’s New Groove when Kuzco has an epic dance scene rudely interrupted by a completely innocent man. The man is punished for throwing off the emperor’s groove by getting hurled off of a cliff, which is hardly an exaggeration. This was actually a common punishment in Incan times. Incan law wanted to make sure that a crime committed wouldn’t be replicated by any other member in society. Therefore, punishments were gruesome, such as stoning, hanging, or getting thrown off of a cliff.

Disney

A fire extinguisher can actually be used as propulsion.

One of the most memorable scenes in Wall-e is when the friendly robot used a fire extinguisher to dance in space with Eve. After Gravity used a fire extinguisher for Ryan Stone’s jump to Tiangong as well, National Geographic asked astronaut Roberta Clark if that was actually possible. “It’s the law of physics. For every action in one direction you have an equal and opposite reaction in the other direction,” she said.

Disney / Pixar

Lions do actually work on their roar.

Lion vocalizations serve three purposes: to tell other lions where they are, to defend their territory, and to show dominance. Lions evaluate the size and strength of other roars to determine whether or not to attack. That’s why it would’ve been important for Simba to work on his roar. He’d have to master it if he ever wanted to take over or protect a pride.

Disney

Pirates of the Caribbean used Blackbeard’s historically real and gruesome ammunition.

In The Curse of the Black Pearl, the confrontation between the Black Pearl and the Interceptor is somewhat accurate. In 2011, dive crews off of the coast of North Carolina brought up wreckage from the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s real-life ship. In it, they found bundled ammunition, fragments of glass, silver, and nails that the pirates would have loaded into their cannons to spray at the crew in an opposing ship. Deputy state archaeologist Dr. Mark Wilde-Ramsing said that the reason they used this improvised ammunition was to take out the crew of the ship, but leave the ship itself unharmed. The pirates would commandeer the ship and add it to its fleet, which means they wanted to do relatively little structural damage to it.

Disney

CloudSurfer / Via en.wikipedia.org

Marlin’s trip could be a reality for an actual clownfish.

In Finding Nemo, Nemo’s dad takes an epic trip across the ocean to find his missing son. In reality, baby clownfish sometimes trek hundreds of miles across the open ocean to reach other clownfish populations. Want to know something even cooler? Researchers think that the clownfish also ride ocean currents to help them make the journey. So Marlin riding the EAC has some grain of truth to it. No word yet as to whether or not they take on the jellies during their trip.

Disney / Pixar

These little biscuits in Brave are a traditional Scottish dessert.

Called tipperary biscuits, the food in Brave that Merida and her brothers kept trying to steal are a classic Scottish dessert. They’re made of several different spices, strawberry jam, and a maraschino cherry on top. P.S. They look just as good in real life as they do animated.

Disney

Phoebus and Esmeralda’s outfits were typical of those claiming sanctuary in medieval Europe.

In Medieval Europe, fugitives could “claim sanctuary” to avoid punishment by the law. This process involved staying within a church after committing a crime to avoid prosecution. From then on, you had a certain amount of time to leave the church, hop on a boat, and never come back. To signify that you were a criminal who claimed sanctuary, you were dressed in a simple tunic with no hat or shoes, much like Phoebus and Esmeralda’s outfits at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Disney

Your memories don’t look too far off from Riley’s memory bank.

I mean, you don’t have glass orbs or ornate shelves storing your memory, but your memories are a connection of neurons that are all triggered simultaneously with audio and visual cues. So, they function a lot like the glass balls in Inside Out.

Disney / Pixar

Wasabi’s plasma board would be capable of slicing that thin.

There’s a lot of technology in Big Hero 6 that seems more fiction than science. However, Wasabi’s laser plasma that he uses to slice paper thin apples isn’t far off. Scientists and doctors alike have just recently started using plasma-needles to make surgery bloodless. These plasma needles have just 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters of collateral damage. While we don’t have plasma apple cutters yet, plasma today has proved to cut thinly and precisely.

Disney

The magnetic levitation behind GoGo Tomago’s roller blades is being used in transportation today.

Also in Big Hero 6, GoGo Tomago’s roller blades use magnetic levitation to help her go fast and friction-free. This technology is currently being used in high-speed railways, where magnets with opposing poles repel each other and force the train to levitate above the rails, moving them frictionless at enormous speeds (375 mph). There is currently a maglev (magnetic levitation) train in Japan, and should the day come when one is built in the United States, it could get you from New York to Los Angeles in seven hours. Hopefully, one day your roller blades could do the same.

Disney

Hercules’ heroic labors were true-to-legend.

According to Greek mythology, Hera had it out for Hercules, not Hades, so Disney may not have gotten that part right. In the real legend, to gain immortality, Hercules had to complete 12 heroic labors. In the Disney version, you can see most of the beasts that Hercules conquers in “Zero the Hero” are taken straight from the labors he had to complete in the legend, such as the defeat of the Nemean Lion (which looks an awful lot like Scar), the Erymanthean Boar (pictured above), and the Stymphlaian Birds.

Disney

Elsa could’ve literally felt frozen.

Studies have found that those who experience social exclusion and loneliness can literally feel colder. Warm foods or hot baths can sometimes stand in for that feeling, but only to an extent. Because Elsa was in her room with little to no social contact, that could’ve been a scientific reason why she was cold, aside from the fictional reason of, you know, being an ice queen.

Disney

Insects do exploit the labor of ants.

In A Bug’s Life, Hopper and his crew of insects take advantage of the ants’ hard work gathering food. This isn’t too far off of real life. In the insect world, it isn’t grasshoppers, but butterfly larvae that take advantage of an ant’s work ethic. They emit the same smell as ants do to trick the ants into feeding and taking care of it. The larvae also make the same noises that a queen ant does, fooling the ants into treating it better and saving it first if harm should come to the colony. Butterflies are the real life Hoppers.

Disney

Percy was a real noble-dog.

Disney doesn’t get a lot right about Pocahontas, but one thing it does is the pug. Percy, Governor Ratcliff’s dog, is a lot like the dogs that British nobles carried around with them. According to Pedigree, during the Victorian era, “it was perceived as a link with the natural world, which itself was no longer seen as threatening. It also allowed a visible demonstration of man’s domination over nature.” Hmm…sounds like a lot like Governor Ratcliff.

Disney

Gusteau’s functions like a real kitchen.

French chefs and critics praised Ratatouille for it’s accurate depiction of a working kitchen, from the way they cook veggies to the way they chop them. “When Colette teaches the young cook how you cut onions, how you cook vegetables in a pan, how you season everything — that’s it, that’s how we do it!” celebrity chef Cyril Lignac said after watching the film. Pixar spent time monitoring the sounds and movements of French kitchens to research the film.

Disney / Pixar

Finally, Helen Parr is using real pilot lingo.

In The Incredibles when Elastigirl is flying the plane to track down Mr. Incredible at Syndrome’s lair, Holly Hunter learned the real aviation terms while talking over the radio. In the movie, she says “Island approach, India-Gulf-Niner-Niner checking in. VFR on top.” According to the FAA, air traffic controllers “may clear an aircraft to climb through clouds, smoke, haze, or other meteorological formations and then to maintain ‘VFR-on-top,'” or visual flight rules on top of clouds. She also says, among other jargon, “India-Golf-Niner-Niner is buddy-spiked,” meaning that friendly missiles have accidentally locked onto her target. Director Brad Bird said in the movie’s commentary that Holly Hunter thought it was important to learn the proper lingo.

Disney / Pixar

[itsnelkabelka]

Statement to Parliament: Foreign Secretary's statement on Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and update on the campaign against Daesh

Mr Speaker, with your permission, I will make a statement updating the House on the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.

But I should like to begin by informing the House that I called the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mr Zarif, this morning to discuss the case of Mrs Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe. I expressed my anxiety about her suffering and the ordeal of her family and I repeated my hope for a swift solution.

I also voiced my concern at the suggestion emanating from one branch of the Iranian judiciary that my remarks to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week had some bearing on Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe’s case.

The UK government has no doubt that she was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested last year – and that was the sole purpose of her visit.

My point was that I disagreed with the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime, not that I wanted to lend any credence to Iranian allegations that Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe had been engaged in such activity. I accept that my remarks could have been clearer in that respect and I’m glad to provide this clarification.

I’m sure the House will join me in paying tribute to the tireless campaigning of Mr Ratcliffe on behalf of his wife and we will not relent in our efforts to help all our consular cases in Iran.

Mr Zarif told me that any recent developments in the case had no link to my testimony last week and he would continue to seek a solution on humanitarian grounds. I will visit Iran in the coming weeks where I will discuss all our consular cases.

I turn now to the campaign against Daesh.

In the summer of 2014, Daesh swept down the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, occupying thousands of square miles of Iraqi territory, pillaging cities, massacring and enslaving minorities, and seeking to impose by pitiless violence a demented vision of an Islamist utopia.

Daesh had gathered strength in eastern Syria, using the opportunity created by that country’s civil war to seize oilfields and carve out a base from which to launch their assault on Iraq. Today, I can tell the House that Daesh have been rolled back on every battlefront.

Thanks to the courage and resolve of Iraq’s Security Forces, our partners in Syria, and the steadfast action of the 73 members of the Global Coalition, including this country,

Daesh have lost 90% of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria – including Raqqa, their erstwhile capital – and 6 million people have been freed from their rule.

When my Rt Hon Friend the former Defence Secretary last updated the House in July, the biggest city in northern Iraq, Mosul, had just been liberated.

Since then, Iraqi forces have broken Daesh’s grip on the towns of Tal Afar and Hawija and cleared the terrorists from all but a relatively small area near the Syrian border, demonstrating how the false and failed ‘caliphate’ is crumbling before our eyes.

The House will join me in paying tribute to the men and women of the British armed forces, who have been vital to every step of the advance.

Over 600 British soldiers are in Iraq where they have helped to train 50,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces and the RAF has delivered 1,352 air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and 263 in Syria – more than any other air force apart from the United States. I turn now to Syria where, on 20 October, the Global Coalition confirmed the fall of Raqqa after 3 years of brutal occupation.

The struggle was long and hard; I acknowledge the price that has been paid by the Coalition’s partner forces on the ground and, most especially, by the civilian population of Raqqa. Throughout the military operation, the Department for International Development has been working with partners in Raqqa Province to supply food, water, health care and shelter wherever possible.

On 22 October, my Rt Hon Friend the International Development Secretary announced another £10 million of UK aid, in order to clear the landmines sown by Daesh, restock hospitals and mobile surgical units with essential medicines, and provide clean water for 15,000 people.

The permanent defeat of Daesh in Syria – by which I mean removing the conditions that allowed them to seize large areas in the first place – will require a political settlement and that must include a transition away from the Asad regime that did so much to create the conditions for the rise of Daesh.

How such a settlement is reached is, of course, a matter for Syrians themselves and we will continue to support the work of the United Nations Special Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, and the Geneva process.

I am encouraged by how America and Russia have stayed in close contact over the future of Syria and we must continue to emphasise to the Kremlin that instead of blindly supporting a murderous regime – even after UN investigators have found its forces guilty of using sarin nerve gas, most recently at Khan Shaykoun in April – Russia should join the international community and support a negotiated settlement in Syria under the auspices of the UN.

Turning to Iraq, more than 2 million people have returned to their homes in areas liberated from Daesh, including 265,000 who have gone back to Mosul. Britain is providing over £200 million of practical life-saving assistance for Iraqi civilians.

We are helping to clear the explosives that were laid by Daesh, restore water supplies that the terrorists sabotaged, and give clean water to 200,000 people and health care to 115,000.

Now that Daesh is close to defeat in Iraq, the country’s leaders must resolve the political tensions that ��� in part – paved the way for its advance in 2014.

The Kurdistan Region held a unilateral referendum on independence on 25 September, a decision we did not support. Since then, Masoud Barzani has stepped down as President of the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi forces have reasserted federal control over disputed territory, including the city of Kirkuk.

We are working alongside our allies to reduce tensions in northern Iraq; rather than reopen old conflicts, the priority must be to restore the stability, prosperity and national unity that is the right of every Iraqi.

A general election will take place in Iraq next May, creating an opportunity for parties to set out their respective visions of a country that overcomes sectarianism and serves every citizen, including Kurds.

But national reconciliation will require justice, and justice demands that Daesh are held accountable for their atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. That is why I acted over a year ago – in concert with the Government of Iraq – to launch the global campaign to bring Daesh to justice.

In September, the Security Council unanimously adopted UN Resolution 2379, a British-drafted text – co-sponsored by 46 countries – that will establish a UN investigation to help gather and preserve the evidence of Daesh crimes in Iraq.

Every square mile of territory that Daesh have lost is 1 square mile less for them to exploit and tax and plunder, and the impending destruction of the so-called ‘caliphate’ will reduce their ability to fund terrorism abroad and attract new recruits.

Yet Daesh will still try to inspire attacks by spreading their hateful ideology in cyberspace even after they have lost every inch of their physical domain.

That’s why Britain leads the Global Coalition’s efforts to counter Daesh propaganda, through a Communications Cell based here in London, and Daesh’s total propaganda output has fallen by half since 2015.

But social media companies can and must do more, particularly to speed up the detection and removal of dangerous material and prevent it from being uploaded in the first place, hence my Rt Hon Friend the Prime Minister co-hosted an event at the UN General Assembly in September on how to stop terrorists from using the internet.

The government has always made clear that any British nationals who join Daesh have chosen to make themselves legitimate targets for the Coalition. We expect that most foreign fighters will die in the terrorist domain they opted to serve but some may surrender or try to come home, including to the UK.

As the government has previously said, anyone who returns to this country after taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated for reasons of national security. While foreign fighters face the consequences of their actions, the valour and sacrifice of the armed forces of many nations – including our own – has prevented a terrorist entity from taking root in the heart of the Middle East.

I commend this statement to the House.

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