#been two years since i posted and maybe this isnt the platform i need but w/e trying it out

[mercurialvixen]

So I've spent the last near decade after my mom died just trying to cease to exist. My only friend is my dog and she is elderly and on her way out. I'm not particularly okay. Trying a momentum thing where I had the revelation, 'what if I just don't lay down and die'. Maybe this will help, maybe not.

[yeoldontknow]

❧ check in tag

tagged by the sweetest angel @propinqxity to do this little tag. this is such a cute list of questions, and some of these i dont think ive been asked before. thank you so much for the tag and the tumblr crush mention lovely. you truly are a bright spot on this website and i mean that sincerely <333

going under a cut because im certain i will ramble ~

1. Why did you choose this url?

its sort of like a pun between yall dont know and the fact that, hopefully, sincerely, chanyeol does not in fact know that i run this blog lmao i changed to this after a long time of being bread-jinie and i wanted to rebrand. i will, however, do my best to never change URLs again because the masterlist switch over was a complete hassle

2. Any sideblogs? If you have them, name them and why you have them

i have a fic recs blog called @yeoldontknowiread. as to why i have it, i know it hasnt been updated in ages since ive been kind of on hiatus, but i think reading and sharing work on this platform is immensely important. i actually read quite a lot of fanfiction, and i try my best to share the things i read. im very very behind on recs at the moment cause i try my best to write something substantial for every recommendation i make. as a writer, i know exactly the kinds of thoughts and feedback on fics that make my heart soar so i try to put in the same energy to my recs. community is only fostered when there is reciprocation

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

hmmm since april 2017. i actually had my 4 year anniversary this year and i did have plans for things but i got roped into real life things and couldnt celebrate the way i truly wanted to :(

4. Do you have a queue tag?

no but sometimes i think i should. i view tags as a library on top of my knee jerk response to things. most of my tags are just my initial thoughts or feelings at any given moment, so those take precedence over a specific queue tag

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

when i was getting into exo, i was reading fanfiction like crazy. i used to write fanfic quite a lot in other fandoms, but at that time i hadnt written anything in about 2.5 years. exo was the first re-introduction to that feeling of excitement and inspiration. after about 3 weeks of straight reading, i decided i wanted to write again. i wrote the prologue to hero in about two hours and tried logging into AO3 to post it. sadly i forgot all of my log in information because it had been years, and was getting frustrated. i really wanted to put it somewhere out of fear that id lose interest if i didnt do something with it, and everything id read had been on tumblr. so i made a tumblr just to put hero lmao i didnt have any mutuals. it was a blog with straight 0. i hadnt even created an account to interact with writers before that moment, i really thought id be a silent reader forever. but exo woke me back up and for that i am eternally grateful.

6. Why did you choose your icon?

the yours music video is...so stunning? like the colour theory throughout the whole thing is truly so inspiring and gorgeous. and this shot of chanyeol looking at the painting took my breath away, truly. tulips and the color of peach, like do you know how evocative that is? ugh

7. Why did you choose your header

my header was made by @jamaisjoons for my birthday this year because shes literally the most talented person when it comes to graphics. and this was so kind of her to do, i cried a lot

8. What's your post with the most notes?

uhm....either the body through time or truth i cant remember which but i checked recently and its one of those

9. How many mutuals do you have?

honestly at this point im not even sure. i know ive lost a bunch while i was on hiatus because i was basically a dead blog, and some people do dash cleanses. and im certain others have left, too, for their own reasons. still, i have a good core of friends though who are active and that is enough for me

10. How many followers do you have?

more than i probably deserve

11. How many people do you follow?

399

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

uhm i guess? there was a time when nng was not updated and every wednesday id post the days go by music video in sadness and grief but im not a big shitposter. if i make a text post its usually a life update or me crying about chanyeol, theres no inbetween lmao

13. How often do you use Tumblr every day?

tbh i havent used tumblr that often, not since march i think. i used to use it many times a day, checking in on friends and stuff, but once i started focusing on my phd applications i was only here sporadically. i didnt make an announcement either, just let my blog run on queue so i wasnt totally gone. i think i was checking in twice a week or maybe once every two weeks to refill my queue and check mentions etc. but now that my interviews are done im trying to get back on here daily to reconnect

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

ive had my share of disagreements with people and any details about those situations shall remain as they are meant to: private

15. How do you feel about "you need to reblog this" posts?

in what context? like, you need to reblog this or your wish wont come true? or like, please reblog this to spread the word/spread awareness, etc? in the case for the former, i scroll right by. in the case of the latter, if im around and see someone raising a go fund me or some major event is occurring and i find a post with good sources or charities i will reblog. mostly though, the full extent my activism isnt really on this blog. its my escape from reality. my activism is usually placed on other platforms.

16. Do you like tag games?

i doooo!!! theyre so fun i love learning about my friends

17. do you like ask games?

i love those too! theyre so cute and usually a nice way to have interaction immediacy with people in the community

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

no one. can we please abandon this notion of fame on tumblr? arent we all here to write about some dick and some smut and some fluff and then hang out together and log off? lmao tumblr isnt reality and followers/fame is so arbitrary on this platform, no one has any control over any of it

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

i am in love with so many people here. let me name a few:

@yehet-me-up @kyungseokie @jenmyeons @j-pping @jamaisjoons @inkedtae @kookdiaries @yoonia @dulcetvk @kithtaehyung @imdifferentshadesofpurple @ditzymax @sugaurora @sahmbtsficrecs @junghelioseok @yeojaa @augustbutwinter @joonscore @btssavedmylifeblr @cutechim @sunshinekims @kimtaehyunq @ouvuo @delhyun @exo-stentialism @sooibian @softyoongiionly @jinseunie @zibermuda @bratkook @1kook @luffles424 @xjoonchildx

and so many other people and mutuals that i am certainly forgetting. love is such an expansive feeling, and it encompasses platonic ardor and creative desire. i admire every single person listed for so many different reasons, and cherish and treasure them or what they provide to the community. love is such an important and broad experience. truly, i hope they feel adored every single day x

[mostlikelyshutup]

thoughts while watching the first harry potter:

listen i started this list a little late im ngl but notable thoughts so far are me thinking of dumbledore as a gay idiot and still loving hagrid

do you think hes speaking in parseltongue in the zoo when hes speaking to the snake

forgot boats existed

these idiots do scream a lot dont they

i forgot how light hearted this universe really is in the first couple movies

yer a wizard harry, okay hagrid maybe slide him into it a little better

we get it tuney you have fucking trauma, doesnt mean you should abuse a child

hasnt everyone had their name down since they were born, hagrid? theres a list

i like that his umbrella is pink

are you paying for those damages hargid? stop taking the door off the hinges

though, if the dursleys are, keep breaking shit

speaking about dragons on the the fucking tube, its a miracle harry didnt get in trouble with the ministry sooner

what is hagrid's usual? does anyone know???

fucking Quirrell, cant wait for your epic love story with the dark lord

maybe we should tell the 12 year old how the fuck everyone knows his name, just maybe

they do a great job of getting the wonder down pat

how much money and licensing do you think it took for them to get all these owls on set

ahh yes, antisemitism the bank

how many vaults are in gringotts?? also if harry's vault is the potters vault, a literal like sacred 28 family, one of the original families, and its number 600 something, how many were there before the potters?? did the potters get a vault recently? or is this james and lily's vault?? how rich were james and lily if so??

look at ollivander, crazy tinker uncle, love him

this might be the socialist in me but why do people have to pay for wands if everyone needs one??

why is the dark lords twin wand just sitting around on the shelf, ollie me boy??

do you think thats Harry's true wand or do you think thats because of the horcux thing?? do you harry had to get another wand after he died?? did he? i dont remember the last movie

is ollie me boys actor wearing contacts or are his eyes just like that??

thats a very weird way of showing Halloween 81, very misleading

hagrid said ill predict voldys rise in the first movie so we can have some plot development

hagrid is late to everything isnt he? i can feel it in my bones

i swear ive seen these movies, and ive even read the first book, i just dont remember shit

youd think theyd have someone in the know stationed close to the entrance for the platform, for any muggleborns

ginnys actress really had no fucking lines in this movie did she, just had to stand there

oh wait she said good luck

amazing work ginny

ooh a warm filter

can muggles see the express? like just running from london to scotland

wicked!

you didnt have to show the woman the sad sandwich ron

i think the trolly replenishes magically, i think thats how thats how that works, i want to believe that

god i cant tell if i would love or hate hermione, shes pretentious but so was i at that age

god dont fucking point your wand right in someones face mione

how does mione know who harry is?? why does she care?

look at the tiny first years, might just go and pinch theyre cheeks

MINNIEEEE i love you minnie

looking stunning minnie, the green brings out the sternness in your brow

you go minnie, give your speech, thats my head of house

shut up draco, youre not bond

you pretentious fuckwit, your hair is brassy anyways

if this is a class of kids born in the middle of a war, how big are the usual class sizes wtf

THE FUCKING CLAP

fucking propaganda ron, you slytherin hater

what order are these names going in, did they just randomized the list

oooh we get quiet for the boy who lived, jesus let him keep living

the fact that for the rest of these people its just silent is so fucking funny to me, Harry's just fucking whispering to himself

get their attention minnie

me dads a muggle, mums a witch, bit of a shock for him when he found out

NICK, love to see you buddy

i have no emotional attachment to peeves but i feel i should mention him here

the stairs still piss me off, why the fuck would you make moving stair cases

who sets out gloves for the next day? am i the weird one who doesnt??

Minnie, you are the love of my life

shut up snape you dramatic bloodpurist incel

i know theyre setting him up to be mistaken as the villain but jesus christ hes still an asshole

your robes Neville, you forgot your robes

its weird how they have to learn all these latin charms yet only have to say up to get their brooms to work

why wont you go after him, hes obviously not exactly in control, Hooch

does Hooch only teach first years? she is quite literally the equivalent of a history teacher who coaches football

what the fuck is Quirells classroom

they dont make the house teams because no first years can try out, Ron

MINNIE PLAYED QUIDDITCH?!?!? WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS

why didnt you speak up earlier Mione wtf

bc the fire wont give you away, harry, better hide

FLUFFY, WHOS A GOOD BOY

they have much worse things locked up in the school, Ron

Oliver wood is a bloody liar because i still dont fuckign understand quidditch, also theres like 500 rules, wtf

thats a shitty explanation of how the game works, Oliver

BLOW IT UP SEAMUS

SHES TWO FEET BEHIND YOU RON YOU IDIOT

carrot cake? on halloween?

dont shrug as if you didnt literally bully her ron

thought youd oughta know, bit of an understatement Quirell

no duh the trolls left the dungeon ron

lying: the best start to any friendship

we're at a net zero points for gryffindor for the year at the moment

the amount of interaction these kids have with professors is so weird to me, is this what small class size do to kids?? its weird

not comforting Oliver

Okay i understand Oliver simps now, I get it okay

are there no backups or subs for quidditch? feels like there should be, like of all the games

set him on fire mione, i know hes not the villain of the movie but god he sucks

fancy flying from harry fucking potter

okay but also i feel like there are some things we should not trust hagrid with, like hes not that great at keeping secrets

why is harry excited about christmas if he thinks hes not getting presents? i knw there are other aspects but like thats the only reasont o get up early

i always remember this scene at night for some reason??

not just an invisibility cloak, THE invisibility cloak ron

btw who gives it to harry? is it remus? is it dumbledore? is it like an inheritance thing? whats up with that?

there are jumpscares in harry potter

he very much can hide, filch

stop being a narc mrs norris

does harry even know what his parents look like at this point? how does he know who the fuck is in the mirror of erised?? he doesnt have that stupid scrapbook yet does he

oh they nod, sure lets clear up that plot hole

they shouldve put sirius and remus in the mirror in that scene, shown his whole family, wouldve been a nice setup

how does rupert grint already look so tired as a twelve year old

big speech to give to a twelve year old Dumbledore, when you wont even tell him what you see

Emma really does just slam that book on Daniels hand, thats mustve fucking sucked

the fact that ive watched two movies that had Nicholas Flamel in two very different roles this year is very strange to me

well thats probably on account of it being a fucking dragon egg hagrid, now isnt it?

was hagrid a hufflepuff? i think he was, maybe a ravenclaw

yes four, you blonde idiot

that shot is really nice, it sets them apart

what happened to filch to make him such a miserable man?

ooh mention of werewolves, awooo werewolves of london

yeah just dip your whole hand in hagrid, dont be scared of the strange liquid, take a nice little bath

i loev that dog, i want that dog, i want to hug that dog

god just the look of that forest is so bloody cool

wait so is that quirell walking fucking backwards?

maybe ask who the fuck youre talking to before asking other questions??? wtf harry

why are yout talking to the centaur like hes your old friend harry, youve literally never met him before

snape doesnt want the stone at all Harry

god hagrid you sweet stupid man

snape is completely valid for that, if a twelve year old ever looked at me like that i would punch them

Do you think people ever loose invisibility cloaks? like theyre invisible do you think they ever just never get found again

i hate the look of the dog spit, that is so gross

they really left everything in except for the fucking potions didnt they, damn

harry potter walked so queens gambit could run

hermione, posted up

rons stupid in the later movies because he got a concussion as a twelve year old

god harry really posted up to beat up snape in fucking khakis

"I knew you were a danger to me!" Hes twelve, Quirell

let me wait for this weird dude to unravel his head scarf instead of running away

the magic in this movie is real fucking conditional isnt it

just some casual necromancy for the stone? you sure about that voldy, you two faced bitch?

let me choke out this twelve year old real quick

oh yeah why is he able to just avengers endgame Quirell? is there an answer to that? like was that ever found out

do you think voldy passing by him while he hold the stone actually killed him but since he holds the stone hes functionally unkillable and then some magic gets put into him and thats why he can return to life later when he actually goes to the whole afterlife place?

ohhh we're vouching on the blood magic for the endgaming of Quirell

do you think dumbledore came across the vomit flavored bean before or after his sister died?

Mione's got a headband! Looking snazzy!

how did Hufflepuff only get 352 points? Gryffindor literally lost 150 points this year and they only beat them by 50, wtf, is it because they kept getting caught with weed

I wont even speak on the fucking outrage that is this point awarding, its already been spoken on. However, Neville shouldve gotten more points

What if someone just stood up and started challenging Dumbledores math, that would be so funny

some of these extras are really attractive

but james potter is somehow so fucking ugly why did they do that to my mans

hagrid deserves the last shot of this film, i love him, he deserves everything, that stupid sweet man

[macklives]

session 92 end (bye 413...)

this session was so long but so fucking hectic what the fuck

im going to try and slim it down to its bare essentials rather than go on a full rant because im pretty sure i want to make a post later on about vriska’s characterisation (not anything about me liking her/disliking her, just an analyse on her life really, so it wont be too bias because thats not the point of an analysis. i also want to do one on aradia, been meaning to for a while... hmm... damn i havent done much analogies lately, and i THINK the last long post on a character i made was about davesprite??? so its been a fucking while. that being said, ill leave a lot of details out for this end of session notes so i dont just repeat myself later on. rather will keep to plot points here and then make character points in another)

alright

first we had a page or two where aradia confided in nepeta about her being dead which means nepeta is the only one to know this revelation. im pretty sure aradia confided because there was no other way around it, since nepeta was her server player, so it was inevitable. either way, aradia still put her trust in nep, which means, if you think about it, nobody else knows and nobody else ever will. and considering aradia asked nep to keep it a secret, it probably wont get explored by others until MAYBE later on, whenever its plot relevant, so everyone will be in the dark about it for a while which ill have to remember for future dialogue and scenes with aradia in them

then we met vriska

which, yes, is a meme. i may not have been on a lot of fandom platforms, but you cant escape some of the stuff that goes around the internet. even if you dont know undertale, im pretty sure you know of sans. or komaeda if you have/havent seen danganronpa. its just.. the memes, ya know? ive heard from many sources of the “vriska did nothing wrong” quote (even through mbmbam which??? WHAT) but since i didnt even know what it meant, i never explored it so then i never knew it was a homestuck thing. imagine my surprise...... i think even at the time, i wouldnt have known what homestuck was either honestly so it wouldnt even matter. i only recently learned about the fandom.... uhh, maybe half a year ago??? yeah, august, so my knowledge was slim but vriska is a thing ive heard before, which still shocks me

goddammit

anyways back to her

so her intro was something, we pretty much found out she likes DnD (a FANATIC in fact) and feeds her lusus the flesh of living trolls. which is fucked up. but i wont get too much into detail about that until i make a post about her life on alternia and the consequences of such. or maybe just alternia in general...?? or *both* heheheh but i feel i need more information before i go off on a tangent about that

then we met??? white text dude?? who is a major asshole but an asshole with insults that hURted, to think i felt bad for VRISKA when that happened. woah.

i said before, but... karkat, he cant really hit deep because his insults are just HIM and his way to express himself. like some people find it natural to just go “FUCK YOU” to show emphasis on a point, and thats just karkats way. he may do it so aggressively that it takes you a second to realize what he said, but usually i dont take anything to heart whenever he spurts out some insults. ive progressed to the point where whatever he says, is just “karkat” and not him trying to be actively mean. rather, its now funny whenever he does say anything SOMEWHAT creative, dude has an imagination that goes on for miles

but vriska?? she IS trying to be a bully, you can tell. but i feel theres something much more to that. like shes trying to prove herself and her “blueblooded” demeanours or whatever the hierarchy is. she doesnt want to show emotions so she makes herself a barrier by being mean is what i can gather from her conversation with kanaya. im pretty sure youre not supposed to understand her until its pointed out and rather see her as an “antagonist” at first, but yeah, her insults are more pitiful than anything and i also cant take her too seriously. i may not like her as a person but her character is interesting because you cant always have the goodie two shoes as the protags. it doesnt diversify the characterisation so i like vriska as someone who makes the plot work and it becomes more interesting since you have someone that makes it harder for the main crew to progress. a happy-go-lucky adventure with no trouble and no turnabouts would be boring in a way. so having a character like vriska, or like this new white text guy, it makes you stop for a second and realize oh shit okay, here’s where shit CAN go wrong and WHY. and i do especially like it when these bastards of characters somehow have more depth than being the “bastard characters”. kinda humanizes them in a way. doesnt mean you have to LIKE them continuously, but theyre humans (trolls whatever) in the end and every person has their own story whether its for better or for worse

for example, i like her being placed into the story, along with white text, by how its all leading to this “accident” and is slowly showing us hints on what happened, but in the end, it wont be until later that we know the full story. even if it was in the past, it apparently is very vital to the plot and shapes how the characters act in the future, so important aspects like that are to look out for. and usually they only occur when theres been some trouble within friend dynamics. so without these bastard of characters, plot wouldnt grow AS strong and i often keep that in mind when i explore a story.

anyways, I HAD A POINT TO THIS: so vriska and karkat are characters who are yes, mean, but it seems to be their personality, and the way they either show emotions and convey feelings (karkat) or make a barrier so they DONT show emotions to produce vulnerability (vriska), white text guy seems to mostly be out to be an asshole. he told vriska she was useless to sum it up but im not too sure if this is one of those “first dialogue” to mould out a bias opinion before we even get to the character themselves, but judging by how vriska and karkat played out, he surely means something bad and i dont know how to explain it. but i cannot base anything off from one piece of dialogue. i dont even know what else to call him other than white text guy so...... ill just leave that out for now, until we finally get his introduction

though, i do wish to mention, and will expand on, im not wrong when i say karkat and vriska are similar but in different context. sorry if youre favourite is karkat and you dont like vriska, or vice versa, but uhhhh their introductions are so similar its uncanny and the way they’re portrayed is the same except one is more on crack about the meddling, while the other is angry about the meddling. similar to how it was with karkat, we were introduced to vriska talking with someone we knew (tavros) whom she obviously didnt like, so obviously, from her point of view, she wanted to be menacing. like how karkat was menacing to jade because she wouldnt listen to his point... he got angry, so he lashed out. but us, the readers, didnt know that. we thought “oh god its this asshole” until we made it further in the story and started to warm up to karkat. it may not be the same with vriska, she may be a bully regardless, but you cannot tell me we moulded a bias towards her character as we did when we first read karkat. theyre both truly mean to other people, maybe both for different reasons, but i do want to point out the similarities and not leave that out. im pretty sure andrew basically gave us a conversation that formed our opinion of a character right off the bat rather than go into depth of WHY they did it, and how they are naturally without the conditions of the game. which, you can also see with vriska when she conversed with kanaya. andrew started off with a character who only appears to speak once, and makes you judge them from first appearance alone, without any explanation as to why they said what they said and how they are with other characters, let says. so you assume they were simply a rude character. now look how karkat turned out. so im guessing in homestuck, the first impression should never be the opinion you stick with until MAYBE 5 more conversations with that character (each one different)

OKAY done with the vriska introduction, now to slutquius

yes, hes kinda weird, i have stated that many times. i have no idea what to say about him other than he likes porn, he likes centaur dick which just so happens to be his lusus as well and if that isnt a red flag idk what is

he also likes his lusus milk, right from the udders of his guardian

fun times, fun times

my opinion of equius kinda.. differs. which i should really put in place the “dont judge by first impression” rule, because at first i thought he was rude with, then i thought he was hhh okay, because i understood why he was being so protective over nepeta and her team placement, since the people she was going to play with WERE dangerous. but if you think about it, both sides will probably put you in danger. it just depends on which ones you confide in more to protect your back rather than those which would cause trouble on purpose, in my HONEST opinion. so equius was a little overdramatic on that part, but i got what he meant. he was on the blue team and he didnt want to leave nepeta alone without him on the red. but then this session happened. and he went back to being weird again because of the whole porn thing, especially being so open about it like dude chill youre 13. but the thing is, then i felt bad for him because hes basically touch starved. to say that he could break anything he touches, i doubt people would go up to him for hugs. in fear they would be crushed to death by a simple hug. so im guessing hes rather lonely and doesnt really know how to interact because of this. so i felt sad that he had to live a life where he needs to be careful of everything he touches so it doesnt break randomly. see? poor dude. but then things got weird. and im pretty sure hes a masochist. so my opinion on equius is a fucking cosine graph

which brings us to the final point:

gamzee and equius’ conversation

i dont even know.....like.........gamzee was unaware that equius was using him for his own power play roleplay, right? gamzee knew it was a roleplay but it had had some.. idk.... obvious sexual implications? and i bet gamzee didnt really know that? he thought they were only venting out through a simple roleplay and trying to get closer because he originally thought equius hated him, considering equius flat out said “i hate you” and gamzee went “you tell me everyday and im okay with that” so.. gamzee probably wanted only to get closer to equius so he helped out his little problem which.. thats so sweet but i feel bad he was coerced into something he didnt get, especially since he was innocent enough to go along without knowing equius’ true gain

anyways, equius was getting off with the hierarchy thing. considering he’s “lower” than gamzee, and gamzee is surprisingly ...high on the spectrum??? so equius wanted gamzee to boss him around, because it felt only natural to him since he’s the “inferior one” and gamzee is The Big Man. like i get that, but it was written in a way that was so uncomfortable, that i wish i didnt. equius is just a weird character... hes not BAD per say, but hes... hes something alright

but im really liking gamzee. the two things which struck me in that one conversation, was the “i dont get why we should dictate people by the colour of their blood, i just see people as people” piece of dialogue and “i cant go around pleasing just everything so its alright if you hate me”

thats... so good, idk. i really liked that. i also really liked when kanaya said “youre dangerous but dangerous people are needed and are important because it shapes you” like <33 my fucking heart

god homestuck may be a tad on the weird side with some of its characters but it surely knows how to create great lines of dialogue

and that concludes the long 4 hour session i did, hope you all enjoyed it

with that, i rest

[euphoriacrossing]

The closer we get the more my anxiety plays up...

What if I can't keep up with my journal that I worked so hard on?

What if I mess up something I can't change on my island? (I don't WANT to have to reset, but if it's the first day i will... i don't want to have to reset two or three days in because i change my mind about something...)

And the bigger ones.... I've been so tired I can barely stay awake two or three hours at a time. I can't do a whole lot of recreational things because I'm asleep. Right now I'm attributing it to depression, but I am going to ask my oncologist if maybe the meds could cause it (the meds I DID stop, but thay messed with my hormones anyway) or if the slight bit of anemia I have could cause it maybe? What if I am not awake enough to fully enjoy the game?

I go to the oral surgeon I think for a consultation to get some teeth pulled, what if he wants to do it anytime soon after the game is out? Will it mess with my enjoybility to have that kind of procedure? (Last time I had teeth out... my wisdom teeth I did very poorly, I got two dry sockets and was in some of the worst pain... I was LUCKY to be able to sleep as much as I did, because the pain was awful. And I followed instructions, so I don't know if I am more prone to those kinds of things or if it was the fact he didn't tell me to stop my birth control or what... but it was bad. And now I have a much higher tolerance to pain meds and will have to use the ones I'm ON so they'll be less effective probably. I'll die if I get a dry socket. Pain tolerance, mine is high until you get to my mouth and then I'm an absolute crybaby.) So say he wants to do it the Monday after... will I be out of commission to play for two weeks or more while I recover? I know this sounds more important, but to me the game is important, too. I want to be able to put in at least some work daily for quite a while so I can create a beautiful island at the same time others who start on the 20th are. So it may not seem like a huge deal, but it is to me okay? Enough of a huge deal for my anxiety to use it against me.

Those are just examples though. I have an anxiety disorder which in past years has become more generalized and entwined with my bipolar symptoms. So I am in no short supply of things related to the 20th to be anxious about.

I wish I could just be happy. And I mean, I am. We have less than a week and I'll be playing a game that is 7 years in the making for those of us that play Animal Crossing. I've been waiting with baited breath probably more than a year, to the point where when Pokemon Sw/Shld came out it was just a distraction instead of the main event, at that point I was already craving New Horizons desperately. And here we are nearly at the end of our waiting, I am happy, don't get me wrong.

But my mind never just let's me be happy.

What if I am too late to make friends in the first few days like I've planned? Everyone else seems to already have their friendships, but I knew I couldn't keep up with a friendship that long. So here is the week to make friends, and I don't feel I know how, or I feel like most people already have their friends. I have maybe two people besides my sister to play with. And I'm excited for that. But I'd love to be included in a larger group of friends or something, you know, that sort of thing is nice. If I only have a few close friends though, that'd be nice too. And i think the first few days it seems people might just be playing on their own, i don't always NEED someone to play with, I'll probably prefer to play alone, or maybe with my sister mostly, or just my close friend when I play. But it's just i guess i expected to use this opportunity to make more friends and now i feel i am wasting it. I don't often have such an "easy way" to make friends because I am disinterested in most things and just don't have a lot to talk about. This common interest is an amazing thing to talk about and should make things easier, but it doesn't as much as I hoped I guess.

What if I don't finish my journal? I worked so hard on it, but i need my dad's help with the label maker and need to finalize the decisions about what I'm going to record in it before I do make the labels. It can still be changed later because I am using labels on plastic tabs and a discbound journal but what if I don't have time once i'm playing?

Ugh. Just all the "what ifs". And I know some people will think "why'd she bother making this post?" Well random person, it does help to get them out in the open. Since most everything I have been thinking has been AC related lately, this has turned into a bit of a personal blog. Sorry for that. I do plan to make it a New Horizons blog and post as much original content as I can once ACNH is out.

Oh another one. What if posting original content is too hard?

Like, I want this blog to have original content and all that, but if you have to remove your memory card and get on a computer to do it, that's a lot of trouble and extra energy I don't have these days. And you had to do that for New Leaf and everyone did including myself, but I had more energy and it seemed easier. And it seems like it was less effort those days because people DID THINGS on the computer including myself. Now I use my phone and ipad as computers, you can do almost all the same things on them, and my laptop sits idle which might be the reason it doesn't run as well these days. Or it may just be that it's old as crap for a laptop. I mean, I guess it's moderately old for what it is, it's a very nice laptop, but I think it's the same one I had for New Leaf so it's been with me a while. Anyway, it SEEMED like less trouble because you were on the computer doing stuff anyway, so just pop your memory card in there and go while you're checking your stuff. It's not that easy on a phone, BUT I am hoping you can post photos and screenshots to SOMETHING through the Nooklink app. We don't know everything about the app yet as it isnt out yet, and I doubt you can post straight to tumblr (though that'd make things easy, huh?) because this is not the most used platform anymore, but if I can post them to anywhere (like facebook or twitter... I'd probably post them privately to facebook because I am less versed in twitter stuff, but then I did recently become an AC twitter on my personal twitter because I never used my personal twitter anyway, so... yeah...) I can grab them on my phone once they are uploaded and reupload them here. But I also plan to make my "diary like" text posts here. I am not recording a diary in my journal having to do with NH, I only want like... data and information I can use, etc. But that doesn't mean I won't want to write diary like entries, and I am less likely to lose my blog that a physical journal anyway it feels. (I say less likely... I lost my New Leaf blog for a few years there, but with effort I did recently find it.) So it could be very easy to post original content here, or if the app doesn't do things it really totally should, then it might be a bit more effort and I don't know if I have that to give right now, so I'm nervous about that. Everything I post here about my game experience is going to be more for me to look back on than anything, so I WANT to be able to post about that stuff here. But I guess we'll have to wait to see, along with waiting for the game.

And everyone knows how well waiting and anxiety get along. They are two peas in a pod, they play off each other like it's no one's business.

But I hope everything in the end will just be okay. I am "lucky" in a way. Since I'm chronically ill, disabled, and have cancer, I don't have work or school to worry about and while being sick is a big bummer, that does take a lot of stress off of me. I don't know how I would handle a job or school even just mentally these days, I don't see how it could go well and I guess that is because I am so sick, even just mentally... but I know a lot of disabled people DO still do those things anyway, sometimes because they HAVE to, so I am glad I am in a position at my age where I am still largely take care of. My disability money doesn't cover a fraction of my necessities, so I feel blessed everyday for my parents, even though my mom and I fight like cats and dogs. Annnndddd now I am getting to be anxious about what happens to me when my parents are gone and that's a WHOLE different type of anxiety... yikes... I need to stop letting my anxiety run rampant now I guess, it's gone too far.

But I am very "lucky" to be in a position where once the game comes out it can be my main focus for a while. Partially because i don't have the energy to focus on many different things, so it's good Animal Crossing can take up that main spot in my life for now.

Come on now, back to AC anxieties. Ya stupid general anxiety...

And I guess I am anxious about the typical things people are anxious about... what fruit will I get, will I like my first Islanders, etc. but to me those things arent as major. All the fruits are so pretty I could really get on with any of them I think, and hopefully my first villagers will be great, but I'll make myself a net if they're not, and I do have amiibo cards for moving in some of my favorite villagers later on, so I can deal with a dud or two.

I'm a little anxious about map layouts too, just picking the right one seems a little difficult to me since there are some things you cannot change. But I think I can make a good choice, I'm more worried if I'll be able to draw it in for my journal or not. I should draw the general layout for the map, but I don't even know if I can do that right.

Oh I also have a package to finish working on and get in the mail before Friday, BUT I finished the hardest parts (writing a bunch of postcards, basically a latter's worth of text but on postcards) last night, so I just have to do finishing touches and get it out. I maybe want to type another letter to send out, too, but if I don't get it done I'll try not to beat myself up. I got really burnt out on mail stuff lately and as much as I still get, which is about one or two things in the mail daily, I can't reply to all the things I should. I'm stressed about it, but I won't let that ruin my New Horizons time. Especially since mail was supposed to be a fun hobby for me and just... stopped. But that's a whole different thing, that has less to do with New Horizons than the other stuff.

Now I genuinely do feel less stressed since I rambled on for a while. Thanks for reading this, if you read any of it. I don't expect anyone to read all this anxiety inducing, depressing junk.

But anyway, now I am going to try and think about the Nooklink app and what kind of features I think it should have. Like I said, it really should have a way to post screenshots/pictures to social media, and I bet it's got something like that since we have the camera in game. I bet we maybe even can post pictures to social media from the switch. I mean, well, I know we can technically, but I mean I bet we can without having to leave the game. Because you can do that in New Leaf now. Gosh would that have been handy YEARS ago. I guess it came with the "welcome amiibo" update?

But at least we know we can scan in QR codes. I dunno if you've noticed but I have been collecting some and tagging them (you can find them under the "QR" tag on my blog, or by type of QR code, likes dresses I just tagged "dress") so I have them once we are able to use them in game. I am going to check my @playtimewithmadi blog to see if I have QR codes saved that I used in New Leaf, too, so I can reblog any good ones here. All of that gives me something to do, I suppose.

I could also work on my journal, or my mail. Both need to get done before Friday and need work.

But honestly, I am probably gonna play Happy Home Designer right now. I'll design at least one house, and then maybe I'll work on my mail and journal stuff. We'll see.

Anyway, thanks again for sticking with me, I love everyone who stays subbed to this blog even though the BS posts like this. Sorry for rambling on, but I needed this, so thank you for letting me have it.

Off to more distraction then...

[shattered-catalyst]

So this  isnt for anything other than just to say what happened just so I feel heard and I can explain why I cant be as energetic and socially active on here. Its not a callout post or to be reblogged/shared by people. Its not to get anyone in trouble or to cause any reaction. It’s just for me to let it out and reclaim this space again. Its been a year since it happened and I guess I’m just still noticing how badly it has impacted my PTSD. How much its changed me as a person both online and off, and this isnt a woe as me thing either this is just me feeling a need to be heard and explain my own behavior over the year and also to make one simple request of you guys: no matter what you do, always treat your rp partners as people first and writers second.

Because I feel myself becoming bitter and that isnt who I am and I dont want to be someone like that. Or like this. I want to be me again

The person who did this wont be named mainly because they dont deserve it and yall dont need to know. Their behavior when I confronted them more than cements the impression that they dont see any harm in what they said and how they reacted. And again this isnt about them though In A Way I suppose it is? it takes two to tango but it takes one to encourage someone to kill themselves.

This is going to be long because I need to inform on the activity that lead up to this  because it didnt just happen over night- though in a way it did. But you need a better picture of this person because apparently they present a really great face that only a few of us see the manipulative and toxic side of.

This person was always very judgemental and hyper critical. I witnessed a lot of very negative and toxic behavior from them but I was naive and just hoped they would mature as they grew older and gained more independence. I thought it was just a toxic friend group and that perhaps she would recognize her self destructive and immature behavior and grow from it. 

My first red flag should have been when they accused me of being their ex girlfriend SOLELY because I was living in PA. I hate to break it to yall, but PA is a big ass state and has a lot of comic book loving ladies. Thankfully I have never met this person IRL and I hope I never do.

They tried to pull me into making fun of other muns on discord, including mocking sensitive pictures from a mun’s personal blog. I blatantly said it wasnt okay and made me uncomfortable and she continued laughing and making jokes about it with her friend group on discord. She kept trying to pull me into it no matter how often I tried to change the subject.

Her group of friends also did this thing where one of them would go interact with a mun an they would take screenshots of the convo and share it with the group and mock the mun they were interacting with. Whether it be their presentation of character/grahics/writing style/ etc.

The other red flags I ignored? How much she complained and mocked other muns and compared them to me; if anyone did anything or said anything she disagreed with it was an instant blow up. She took EVERYTHING personally including other people writing the same characters she did, having differing headcanons, not knowng obscure details about canon, etc.

She once tried to make fun of a new writing partner I had who was writing the same character, and I had to break it to her that this new person could write in her first language if she wanted to; im being very vague but let me just say if you and your character have the same first language and you want to write in it then its completely WRONG for a white mun to try and make fun of you for it.

She once suggested I had stolen pictures off her pinterest when she sent me a moodboard request for my character. Jokes on her I didnt even know she HAD a pinterest and I had gotten all my pictures from the ‘green aesthetic’ tag on tumblr. Which I told her but she kept pushing the idea on me I had stolen them. I of course dismissed this and put it on the back burner despite the alarm bells going off.

This hyper critical and paranoid behavior continues with everything from other canon blogs making similar head canons/ vaguely similar graphics/ to fanfiction authors having similar head canons/plot ideas.

My penname Citrus? I didnt want one. I didnt want it. She demanded I have a pen name and if not she was going to call me Cat. Now as yall know I dont like being enmeshed with my muse so I keep myself separate from them. I didnt like being called Cat and I told her that explicitly. She kept doing it. So I had to make a pen name because she refused to respect my boundaries.

When the Deadpool movie came out she DEMANDED I change my FC to reflect the movie Despite Not Changing Hers to reflect her own characters new look - which might i add is fat erasure. It was clear then that the rules and standards she held other people to didnt apply to herself. I was labeled problematic for not giving into her demands to change FCs (which I have a literal logical reason for not changing and im not explaining that here)

So I shouldve left. Long story short I didnt because every friendship I’d been in until around this time had been abusive and toxic. I thought this was all normal behavior for people to have and I was convinced I was just being critical of someone elses opinions/ insensitive etc. Thanks to my colleagues in graduate school and to several of you on here I learned that ‘hey dumbass friends dont treat your ass like this’.

Im leaving a lot out about the shit she did/said to me but those snippets give you an idea of things.

Leading up she decided to leave fandom and asked we didnt talk about marvel I said cool okay and didnt talk about marvel with her. If I did I would ask first if she was okay if we talked about one small aspect I thought might excite her/ she would like to know about but it wasnt often that happened because she began ghosting me. Hard. She stopped replying to me at all over discord when I would try and talk to her how we used to about our lives. She didnt answer any asks for munday or character development, in fact she blatantly ignored me.

I checked in a couple times with her to make sure I hadnt done anything to make her uncomfortable and she said no. May I emphasize she said no here. Im emphasizing it right now. She said no. She said everything was fine. So when I was like hey dude this is super triggering for me can you send me like a hi every once in awhile just so I can know we’re okay because its super triggering for me. Yall know what she did? She ‘lmao’-ed. she thought that was hecka funny. Yeah triggering ‘Citrus’ is hilarious isnt it? No it isnt and I shouldve cut her ass off right then and there.

Heres where shit gets confusing: she kept fucking talking about marvel to me. Id get messages at random times about marvel and then silence for weeks. I vividly remember during this period I was cleaning the museum vault and she kept messaging me about her marvel fc’s and how she wouldnt get a plotline and how characters were wrong etc.

I remember being REALLY confused because she had said NO MARVEL. But here she was bitching at me about marvel. In fact thats all she did when she did talk to me. Which was only like three or four times during the ghosting time period. She’d bitch about marvel and then vanish.

Shed make claims about not watching her dash and thats why she never responded to me/ interacted with me. She’d say she wasnt talkng to anyone while I see her on the dash TALKING TO PEOPLE and Id like to point out Ive told her I would be fine ending anything as long as she let me know.

but she followed me on every blog and throughout this time period she made and followed me on numerous ones. She kept reaching out sporadically to bitch about her fcs/how horrible marvel was/ and thats it. 

It was extremely confusing because if someone doesnt want to talk to me I assume they will; 1. unfollow 2. block 3. say goodbye 4. ghost and stay ghosted.

Not cycle through behavior rapidly. I asked her a few times if we were good and that I was confused and I got another ‘lmao’ reaction so I assumed we were good. At this point I still have no idea what was going on/ what message I was supposed to be receiving other than confusion.

So following this is heavily suicide tw and I encourage you not to read this part and to scroll down until the suicide tw is over which is highlighted in bold- if you’re triggered by that because I care about those who follow my blog.

So thats when this shit happened. I had tried reaching out to her on a different fandom platform to try and maintain the friendship. Because she said numerous times that we were friends. So like I reached out thinking maybe she just didnt want a marvel blog period.  It wasnt too long after that that she suicide baited me.

I was in a really bad place and had been for awhile and when I posted about how the only thing holding me on was the new comic coming out and specifically said “im seriously suicidal and this comic is the only thing giving me hope #idk what to do anymore ”. I was surprised when she liked the post.

I was three steps into a four step plan. I had everything but the method planned out and was just waffling along with that. Because yknow its complicated and you do it you make it count amiright. Right. I was in a fucked up place. I had just realized I was gay, I was horrendously depressed, I was in considerable physical pain, I was working 70 hours a week, my OCD was at an all time high and the only thing that kept me on this earth was a fucking comic book. You hold onto what you need to yknow?

WELL APPARENTLY NOT

Because this person who doesnt read her dash? This person who doesnt want to talk about anything? Liked that post where I specifically stated I was suicidal and sent me a discord message saying “dont have hope”.

Thats all it said “dont have hope”

Now I know what youre thinking but hold on because it gets worse.

I said something about being confused I dont really remember because I was pretty out of it. I do remember she kept going on about how horrible the comic would be and that it would be a piece of trash. I remember telling her I was really numb and in a bad place and couldnt feel anything. I remember her sending me screencaps and continuing to go ON AND ON about how it wasn’t worth reading.

I remember with gross intensity how someone who said they were my friend was taking away the only thing that was keeping me alive.

I dont remember how the conversation ends. I called out of work for the next three days. I was catatonically depressed and unable to really move. I didnt eat either. I went to internship, work, and school in a state of dissociation.

 I took screencaps of everything and set them aside for later. IDK what I was going to use them for but I set them in a folder on my desktop, looking back I regret what I did next; because I deleted them. I deleted them because I thought maybe she had been manic or drunk and hadn’t realized the scope of what was happening. I wanted to talk to her about it and clear things up because I believed in her. I believed there was no way she would be so callous as to do that on purpose. No way would someone try and get someone they called a friend to kill themselves. So I deleted the screencaps and my post on tumblr. I deleted all evidence to protect her and I encourage you all never to fucking do that even if you think that person misunderstood the gravity of your situation. Because if you’re wrong no ones going to believe you.

I remember shifting between intense depression and total denial.

I spent the rest of that month in and out of intense dissociative states when I wasnt in class or working with my clients.  During the middle of October my sister sent me pictures of a litter of puppies and I was like ‘well, i really need to either kill myself or make sure i dont’. I spent a few days continuing to waffle with that decision but then i remembered my mom cosigned my loans and I cant leave her with that debt because fuck we cant even afford my funeral to begin with. So I adopted a dog, I named him Julio to remind me to keep living and he finally came to me on halloween.

He was the only reason I left bed on my days off. I tried not to think about it but I did.  

I continued to spiral with heavier dissociative episodes and vivid nightmares about it.

SUICIDE TW OVER

I waited until Christmas to ask her to clarify the situation and let her know I no longer felt comfortable writing with her. I reminded her what happened and told her to check her discord if she wanted to see for herself etc.

She sent two long asks of combative, emotionally abusive, and gaslighting accusations. The first thing she did was say I needed to provide evidence if I went around making accusations like that. Then she cascaded into how I always talked about marvel *points up to where i explained what happened earlier*.  She tried gaslighting me like a champion and tried turning me into a horrible person the only problem is everything she was accusing me of doing was the shit she was doing to me. Everything. 

Even if I was bad at any time I had given her numerous chances to tell me I was overstepping a boundary- she always said no. I gave her numerous times to unfollow me if she wasnt interested in interacting with me- she never did. In fact I had unfollowed her that month because of her behavior towards me and she hadnt even noticed.

I let her know I could tell she was angry,  and that I didnt take receipts of private conversations because I believed in settling things like adults, and that if she ever wanted any proof it was all in her discord anyway. I let her know she could contact me to apologize but otherwise I didnt want her on any of my blogs and I told her the first thing she should have done wasnt demand receipts but she should have asked if I was okay. Its a real reflection of where her priorities were when she demands evidence rather than checks to see if a writing partner is okay.

Even if I did something horrible it doesnt warrant someone trying to get me to end my life. 

I was notified she put a post on her blog apologizing to her followers for being a bad friend and that she was a horrible person and ofc everyone was like ‘noooo youre perfect’ and its like ya thats not for me who hasnt followed her in months- thats to save face.

Her friends blogs kept visiting my profile and going through the month where this happened.

Everything she did and said was to save face. Her blog and her reputation are the only thing she cared about. She has never approached me to apologize or anything of the sort and I doubt she ever will. I would hope she would never do this again and I hope she has grown as a person since. That her life is better and her mother is okay, that shes happy and learning. 

 I know by posting this I will never receive an apology- then again i never expected one to begin with. I could go through all the trouble of restoring the deleted files but to be honest it isnt worth it because theres no room in my life for that type of toxicity.

Since this happened I:

I have stronger episodes of depression and dissociation since.

My PTSD has increased and I have week long spikes in anxiety attacks, depression and decreased self worth if I even see her around the rpc despite being blocked, blacklisted on xkit etc.

Have more difficulty completing basic self care tasks due to an increase in depression and a decrease in self worth.

I have nightmares about this event and her to this day a year later.

I cannot interact with the RPC how I once did as I fear seeing her on my dash or any sort of information getting back to her about me.

It took me half a year to see the character she wrote as as safe again and for awhile I couldnt even look at him without experiencing an anxiety attack.

I keep having nightmares. Its been a year and I still have nightmares about this.

I find myself having more difficulties connecting with people online especially on this blog. I’m constantly on edge when interacting with people and I feel spikes of anxiety at the merest thought of someone talking about me to her.

I find myself unable to have confidence as a writer or creator online because I have been reminder of the cement wall between oc characters and their canon counterparts.

I cannot go out and just follow anyone and be friendly and trusting with them anymore, even with people I already know. In the back of my mind is a constant reminder of how she and her friends used to check up on people and pretend to write with them/ interact with them just to take screenshots of conversations to share with the group. I have become a paranoid little bitch in the past year is what Im saying. like theres 0 need for that shit.

I blocked most of the people she interacted with simply to save myself from being triggered by her blogs/ mentions of her and that isnt fair to those people.

I remember the photo incident and how people derived such joy from mocking someones body. I can think of so many incidents of them making fun of others and I remember how that could be happening about me rn, and I wonder if anyone would stick up for me like I did for the other mun.

 I hope by posting this I can try and return to the person I was before this happened. I can try and not be so bitter and reach out again to others. That somehow I can continue working on making tumblr a safe place for me again and not a PTSD laced minefield.

I would like to remind this isnt a callout and I request if you know who this is about you dont say anything to them. This isnt for them. They have NEVER reached out to apologize for their actions. They have NEVER checked to see if I was okay after that. They have NEVER shown any remorse for encouraging me to kill myself and while I hope they’ve grown from the situation and will never do it again I doubt I will ever get closure from such an event. But i DO hope by writing this I can take this place back.

Consider this my first step towards bringing this up to a therapist.

 Consider this another step to me taking this blog back and feeling safer here; and maybe just maybe Ill make up a cool pen name for myself and own that shit.

If you’ve read this far thank you for your patience with me, and I request you always treat your writing partners like the people that they are. 

This post is not intended or written to leave this blog and therefore I request you not reblog it or share segments of it with ANYONE. If I find you have shared anything on here without my explicit permission I will block you.

‘Citrus’

[fatethearcher]

Even the Mahoutokoro Robes piss me off now:

Originally I was too annoyed at some of the other Mahoutokoro shit to notice: ((Storm Petrels JKR, really? The one bird that just so happens to also have a European counterpart you'd be able to draw reference to?)), but I was thinking about the robes changing color and I realized how horrible the robes turning white thing is.... With as much nuance JKR gave characters that were considered "Dark" in the original HP books, I would think she wouldn't have resorted to such a method for detecting "dark" magic because it sounds cool. If she did her research, then I'm ashamed at how badly she interpreted her research, because being robed in white was something done to Samurai who were to commit seppuku: AKA ritual suicide. If JKR did her research she's basically saying "Hey you just revealed magic to a mundane-- or you used a 'dark aligned' spell? Well the Japanese Ministry thinks this is the equivalent to a death sentence!! :)" --- Sure she didnt exactly consider the nuances she could add to the whole "dark vs light" magic debates in the books--- but I always just kind of assumed it was because Harry was an unreliable narrator, rather than it being because she didnt consider that in her own friggin magic system she emphasizes importance of intent for spellcasting---

That's not even going into the "Robes changing as you gain more knowledge"-- like, how do you even quantify that?!?! I just took that to assume it means by what year/s you're in-- with possibly pink being 7-10 year olds that dont board there or being the color for pre-OWL students, Post OWL students having another color, and post NEWT students achieving gold robes (gold being the final color annoys me too but it can be ignored because gold has ties to alchemy and that could be the reason such an ornate color is the one to strive for in magical Japan vs something less conspicuous like black) With OWLS and NEWTS obviously just being my stand ins for whatever the equivalents are called in Japan ofc.

---

On houses at the school:

I actually like the idea of houses developing in Magical China, and that idea being brought over to Magical Japan with Seiryuu, Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu...... (AKA the houses in japan) --- and with this idea, the house system maybe spread from China to other countries with the misunderstanding that the houses were just creatures that represented values/virtues, rather than the truth of them having religious and cultural significance to the magical community..... Possibly the house system spread to the UK when the Roman Empire had a foothold there? I'd have to read up on my world history a bit more to explain the spread of this system.

Possibly the idea of a single institution for magical learning came from China as well? Because looking at how British Wizards and Witches are spread about, rather than integrated into Muggle communities, it's likely these smaller communities were where people used to hold small gatherings to teach magic, rather than sending kids off somewhere they could possibly be discovered? Idk lol

------

The Storm Petrel thing:

Even if the school IS located on Minami-Ioto (She didnt even get the modern name for the island right)- and thus need a safe and efficient way to transport the many day students to and from their homes, Giant birds are the LEAST likely option, imho, because even if they were faster than an airplane with charms to prevent kids getting airsick, the birds would need somewhere to take off and land at, and tons of charms to prevent muggles from noticing the giant fucking birds. There'd have to be a lot of them too, since Japan has such a high population.

The easier option would just be- use some form of advanced portkeys to teleport to the island? Maybe use the Tori gates at local temples as some advanced version of a port key where you can just pass through and it teleports you? Or maybe have a magical subway system that travels through the earth's crust at blazing speeds and not only has separate platforms connected to Mundane stations, but also stations in more rural areas that may be near mountains. The subway system would ofc have a shit ton of fireproofing charms attached.

Storm Petrels aren't even anything special tbh... You can literally find many breeds of them throughout the world. If she wanted a common bird, crows at least have the relation to the Tengu to go on. If she was looking for a mythological bird, yeah there aren't that many in Japanese folklore, but she could have tried using the Phoenix (or Ho-o as it would be in Japan) and say that the Ho-o is a larger variant? Even with these two options though, I'd still have the same complaint about how many fucking charms would be needed to make the ride safe for day students. At least a subway system would keep the students enclosed where they wouldn't have the risk off falling to their death, and the charms would be easier to update/modify seeing as they wouldn't be cast on a living being-- I dont know if it's canon, but I'd think that spells cast on a living being would wear off faster than those on an inanimate object. Plus there's the whole "living beings need food and water and places to sleep", while inanimate objects dont need any of that?

(I didnt come up with the subway one, that's on another person who thought of Mahoutokoro also having a train, but it uses time Turner tech to always arrive 5 minutes early--- I personally like that one a lot)

----

Other things:

-Jade isnt a Japanese thing really, it's more of a Chinese thing with most of Japan's jade being imported. Having the entire school be made of jade is not only impractical and pointless, it also would cost a lot due to it being imported. The Jade could be something to do with the school's magical defense but even STILL....

-Again, the name of the island hasn't been Minami Iwo-Jima since 2007. It's Minami-Ioto now, same Kanji but different reading. Also, why there of all places? Because it's remote? You realize the size of Japan and distance between its islands are NOT the same as with Britain right? Japan has about the same land mass as Britain overall, but its Islands are spread a lot further, meaning it has a larger amount of ocean territory. It makes more sense to put the school closer to where people are, but still in a remote location. Maybe somewhere in Hokkaido if she wanted to stick to the remote-ness and Volcano theme she has going with Minami-Ioto? Plus they students would get 4 distinct seasons in Hokkaido vs. The less distinct seasons on Minami-Ioto -- which if the 4 houses I suggested were used would be extremely important since each house would have it's own season for celebration.

-Literally the only section of the pottermore page I liked was the Quidditch one because ofc the Japanese practice during storms and/or when the Japanese Militrary are taking off nearby. They're that fucking dedicated and I love it. Still dont like the green on their uniforms (can be found on the Wiki page for Toyohashi Tengu), but that's just my personal preference- It doesn't look tasteful to me I guess lol.

----

I've tagged Mahoutokoro posts on my blog that I like and agree with for headcanons under #Mahoutokoro ... I may eventually make my own post detailing Mahoutokoro but who knows lol. I also have my thoughts on Mahoutokoro as a name on a reblog for another post in this tag as well.... not grammar wise, but meaning wise.

[patriotsnet]

Are There More Democrats Or Republicans Registered To Vote

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-democrats-or-republicans-registered-to-vote/

Are There More Democrats Or Republicans Registered To Vote

New York City Voters Shifted From Republican Or Independent To Democratic Party Ahead Of Primary

More Republicans registered to vote than Democrats

Voters

The Democratic Party in New York has consistently grown its voter base over the years and has also drawn previously party-unaffiliated and Republican voters to its ranks. In the last year alone, more than 88,000 voters who either had no party registration or were registered with the Republican Party switched their affiliation to the Democrats, potentially creating a new bloc of voters that candidates may seek to woo in races such as the crowded and competitive primary contest to replace term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to data from the state voter file analyzed by Prime New York, a political consulting firm, 67,965 unaffiliated voters and 20,528 Republicans joined the Democratic Party, for a total of 88,493 new Democrats. In that same period, 20,136 Democrats switched over to the Republican Party.

Just 209 voters from the Republican and Democratic Parties gave up their party affiliation and became so-called blank or independent voters.

New York has a closed primary system, where only those with a party affiliation can vote in party primary elections. With 3.7 million registered Democrats in the city as of February 21, compared to just over 566,000 Republicans and about 1.08 million independents, the Democratic primaries all but decide the winner of the general election as well, at least for almost all citywide, boroughwide, and district-specific seats.

Political Party Strength In Us States

Political party strength in U.S. states is the level of representation of the various political parties in the United States in each statewide elective office providing legislators to the state and to the U.S. Congress and electing the executives at the state ” rel=”nofollow”>U.S. state governor) and national level.

Can I Register To Vote If I Don’t Have A Fixed Address

Yes. If you don’t have a fixed residence or are homeless and otherwise qualified to vote in Delaware, you may register by completing the proper registration form. If registering in-person you must provide two pieces of identification containing your name. Additionally, one of the pieces must include the address that you listed on the application. The address can be a shelter, agency or another location where you receive your mail.

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First How Many Of The Newly Registered Democrats Are Breathing

Still undecided and want to become more politically aware? How many republicans switch to democrat as compared to democrats switching to republican, in public and in office. From this point on, democrats stuck with this stance â favoring federally funded social programs and benefits â while republicans were gradually driven to. First, it could foster greater confidence among republican. Allow registered voters to indicate a party preference when registering to vote;

Biggest Influencers: Democrats Or Republicans

To understand who influences politics, you can easily find out who the wealthy support. For example, the Walton family, the owners of the retail giant Walmart, has traditionally donated to Republican candidates. Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmarts founder, hasnt strayed from that too much. That is, until the 2008 election. In 2008 and 2016 the Walton family donated to Hilary Clintons campaign.

She isnt the only person from a wealthy family to change tradition where politics are concerned either. Many of the younger individuals in Americas richest families have begun to sway from their familys political associations as well. Below youll find the affiliation and overall net worth of the top 10 richest families in America.

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Will More Republicans Die From Covid Than Democrats

| 509 opinions shared on Society & Politics topic.Influencer2 mo People lie, right and left. Youre looking not at a number comparing those immunized or not immunized against voter rolls, but asking two questions at random, what party do you affiliate with, and do you plan to get vaccinated.Either way, its a brain dead question. More people would die regardless. Lets say that 45% between both parties is only 30% of Americans , thats enough to fall short of the unknown number that we would need to reach for herd immunity, which to the best of my knowledge no country has reached yet to find that sweet spot.It will simply mutate more and more and recircle the globe again and again. Which honestly is fine by me. The panic and blow to the economy were worse than the virus. Maybe sars-cov-3 will be more exciting though. I was in panic mode until there were more concrete numbers a few months in with cov-2.You also have to figure that if a virus becomes too deadly it wipes itself out as the hosts for that virus die faster than they can transmit it, like ebola, some strains of flu or dysentery. Im not too concerned as me and my family caught it already, and kind of figured on this sticking around like the flu. 0|0

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Americas Top 10 Richest Families

Walton;Republican; The family owns the Walmart corporation.;The Walton family fortune is estimated to be about $130 billion.

Koch;Republican; Businessmen, owners of Koch Industries, a manufacturing company.;Koch brothers have a net worth of about $41 billion each .

;Republican; Own the Mars candy company.;The three children of founder Forrest Mars are worth about $78 billion together.

Cargill-MacMillan;Republican; The Cargill-MacMillan family owns 90 percent of the largest privately-owned corporation in the U.S.;The family, as a whole, is worth about $49 billion.

Cox;Democrat; The Cox family owns a number of auto consumer sites and services . They have an estimated net worth of $41 billion.

Johnson ;Republican; The Johnson family is known for their cleaning products and hygiene products.;They are valued at $30 billion.

Pritzker;Both; Founders of Hyatt.;The family has a combined value of $29 billion in 2017.

Johnson ;Republican; Overseers at Fidelity, ensuring the cash of millions of Americans.;The family has a combined net worth of $28.5 billion.

Hearst;Republican; The Hearst family owns one of Americas largest media companies.;The family is valued at $28 billion.

Duncan;Republican; The Duncan family works mostly with oil and pipelines.;The family is valued at about $21.5 billion.

Also Check: Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

Poring Over Party Registration

This is not the best of times for the Democratic Party. No White House; no Senate; no House of Representatives; and a clear minority of governorships and state legislatures in their possession. Yet the Democrats approach this falls midterm elections with an advantage in one key aspect of the political process their strength in states where voters register by party.

Altogether, there are 31 states with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. Among the party registration states are some of the nations most populous: California, New York, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arizona, and Massachusetts.

The basic facts: In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million.

Still, Republican Donald Trump found a route to victory in 2016 that went through the party registration states. He scored a near sweep of those where there were more Republicans than Democrats, winning 11 of the 12, while also taking six of the 19 states where there were more Democrats than Republicans a group that included the pivotal battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Chart 1 And Table : Nationwide Party Registration Trends Since 2000

More than 8 million Ohioans registered to vote November 3

Since 2000, the nationwide proportion of registered Democratic and Republican voters in party registration states have both gone down, while the percentage of registered independents has steadily grown. The latter has nearly reached the nationwide percentage of registered Republicans, which has long been second nationally to the Democrats. Altogether, the combined number of registered Democrats and Republicans, which was 77% in October 2000, is now down to 69%, while the proportion of registered independents over the same period has increased from 22% to 28%.

Note: Based on active registered voters in states where the number of active and inactive registrants is listed. In the election-eve 2000, 2008, and 2016 entries, Independents include a comparatively small number of registered miscellaneous voters who do not fit into a particular category. Percentages do not add to 100 since the small percentage of registered third party voters is not included.

Richard Wingers monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, for election-eve party registration numbers in 2000, 2008, and 2016; the websites of state election offices for July 2018.

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At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. At least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops were killed, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Republicans Could Make A Difference In Tuesdays Preliminary Election In A Race This Close Every Vote And Every Constituency However Small Counts

Nobody would ever confuse Boston with a Republican stronghold; the city hasnt elected a GOP mayor since the 1920s, and these days the party almost never bothers even to run a candidate in mayoral or city council elections. This year, all five major candidates are Democrats.

Still, almost half of Bostons voters backed Republican Charlie Baker for governor in 2018. Even Donald Trump won 45,000 votes in the city, about 15 percent of the electorate, with clusters of support in South Dorchester, West Roxbury, and South Boston.

With this years preliminary mayoral campaign entering its final days, and polls predicting an extremely close race, those numbers loom large. Boston might not have enough Republicans or Republican-leaning voters to actually elect a mayor but its still a rich, often-overlooked trove of votes that could help boost one of those Democrats.

Openly courting Republican votes, of course, carries risk, since it could antagonize far more numerous Democrats. But Republicans are choosing sides, in ways that reflect their own divisions.

Nassour is openly supporting Andrea Campbell for mayor. As for how her Republican fellows will vote, she said that she encourages them, ven if you cant get a candidate who is exactly like you in all policies, its important to find a candidate who represents the character of the person youd like to see in office.

Marcela García can be reached at . Follow her on Twitter .

Read Also: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Turnout Patterns Across States Show Large Increases And Notable Shifts

National turnout shifts between 2016 and 2020 were broadly evident across individual states. Turnout rose in 44 states as well as Washington, D.C. .

Among the states with double-digit turnout gains was the swing state of Arizona, where turnout rose from 60% to 72%. New Jersey increased turnout from 61% to 78%, giving it the highest 2020 turnout rate of all states. Similarly, all but nine states showed turnout gains for their 18- to 29-year-old populations

Most notable are turnout shifts among white non-college and white college graduate populations. Only six states registered 2016-to-2020 turnout drops for non-college white voters, whereas 15 states showed such drops for white college graduates. In all but 11 states, turnout gains were greater for non-college white voters than for college-educated white voters. And particularly relevant for the 2020 election, both Michigan and Wisconsin registered turnout gains for non-college white voters and declines for college-educated white voters.

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Florida Republicans Close Voter Registration Gap With Democrats

The gap between Floridas registered Democrats and Republicans, which has been steadily closing nearly every year since 2012, is a few thousand voters away from the GOP pulling ahead for the first time in state history.

Despite two decades of Republican dominance on a statewide level, Democrats in Florida have managed to maintain their edge in the number of registered voters. But that lead is now down to about 24,000, according to data from the Florida Department of State far from the 558,000-voter-advantage Democrats had nearly a decade ago.

There are about 5.1 million Republicans and just slightly more Democrats listed in state data showing active voters as of Aug. 31. There are about 3.8 million voters registered without party affiliation and about 250,000 who registered with minor parties.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said that, despite the narrowed gap, hes feeling good. Part of what motivated him to run the party was the lack of infrastructure Democrats had, he said. Since hes taken over, the partys been making an active effort to set up a statewide voter registration system that operates year-round.

Diaz pointed to the 2008 and 2012 boom Democrats had in registered voters, which he attributed to the Florida campaigns of Barack Obamas successful runs for president and his reelection. But when those campaign officials left, they took their resources with them and the statewide party lost ground.

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Republicans Narrow Voter Registration Gap In Swing States

There are still more people registered as Democrats than Republicans in the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, but Republicans have been gaining ground.

There are multiple forces at play: Republicans are making strides with registering voters, the two-party system is losing its appeal especially with young people and Democrats are being purged from the rolls as they either move out of those states or arent showing up at the polls.

The people who have been removed from the file since are more Democrats than Republicans, said Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, a nonprofit politics data firm. Overwhelmingly, those people didnt vote in 2016. What that tells you is these are people who had already either moved from the state or already died prior to November 2016, and they just hadnt been removed at that point.

The latest national CBS News Battleground Tracker poll shows Joe Biden with a 10-point lead among likely voters, but that lead narrows to within the margin of error in several key states, meaning the race could come down to who shows up at the polls on or before Election Day.

Who Is Richer Democrats Or Republicans The Answer Probably Wont Surprise You

by Jenny Smedraon ~

Which of the two political parties has more money, Democrats or Republicans? Most would rush to say Republicans due to the partys ideas towards tax and money. In fact, polls have shown about 60 percent of the American people believe Republicans favor the rich. But how true is that? Assignment help;can help you write about the issue but read our post first.

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Are There More Democrats Than Republicans In The United States

I have been thinking about the Democratic Party and whether or not its members are more numerous than the opposing faction.

Evidence to suggest this is the case:

This party is expected to win the popular vote for president seven out of eight times since 1992. Please don’t say “this hasn’t happened yet”. If this bothers you, say 6 out of 7.

The party has received 51.9 percent of the votes cast in presidential elections from 1992 to 2016 for it or its opponent, the Republican Party. This shows that 2012 was the mean election in popular vote as of 2016.

Party registration in states that register by party says this same thing.

Trump’s approval has not gone above 50 percent ever as president on 538.

A plurality of Americans consistently supported impeachment by 2 to 5 points while it was happening.

This suggests that the partisan lean the American electorate is about D+4. I believe that it might be closer to D+5 now for various reasons and the fact that 2012 was the mean result. This can get a little bit fuzzy because of independents.

If we look at opinion polling, Gallup has collated party affiliation polls back to 2004. The most recent poll at the time of writing gives a D+11 advantage. Looking just at the net Republican/Democrat advantage, ignoring Independents, we can create the graph below – with positive percentages representing a Democrat lead, and negative percentages representing a Republican lead.

To give a theoretical perspective on this:

When Was The Republican And Democratic Parties Formed

Do more registered voters and mail in ballot requests favor democrats or republicans?

The Democratic Party was founded by Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren on January 8, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was the United States seventh president but the first democratic President.

The Democratic Partys shocking emergence can be linked to the countrys anti-federalist factions. It was during that time the United States of America gained independence from British colonial masters.

The anti-federalist factions, which democrats originated from, were also grouped into the Democrat-Republican party. This was done in 1792 by James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other federalists influential opponents.

On the other hand, the Republican Party is pretty much younger than the Democratic Party. It was formed in 1854 by anti-slavery modernizers and activists.

The republicans were against the expansion of slavery in Western territories. They fought hard to protect African Americans rights after the civil war.

The Republican Party is often known as GOP. The meaning is Grand Old Party. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. From Lincolns emergence, Republican Party started gaining ground in America.

Also Check: Why Do Republicans Hate Ted Cruz

Florida Republicans Close Registration Gap With Democrats To Historically Narrow Margin

Floridas Republicans have narrowed the voter registration gap behind Democrats to historically close levels in the final tally of voters before the Nov. 3 election.

Democrats hold only a 134,000-voter lead over Republicans in the nations largest swing state, according to a Thursday report from the Florida Department of State that shows how many active registered voters registered in time to participate in the 2020 general election. Four years ago, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 113,000 votes, Democrats held a 327,000-voter edge.

There are more than 14.4 million active registered voters in Florida.

Democrats in 1980 boasted twice as many registered voters than Republicans, but the gap between the two parties has steadily closed. Democrats saw a boost in their registrations during the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, but Republicans have regained that ground in subsequent years.

Florida Democrats had hoped to reverse the trend in 2020. Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum at one point aimed to register or re-engage 1 million voters.

Republicans crowed Thursday that their strategy would lead to victories on Nov. 3

Florida Democrats, meanwhile, have been talking up Democrats’ early turnout numbers in returned vote-by-mail ballots this election cycle.

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

What Happens When SEO and CRO Conflict?

Posted by willcritchlow

Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.

In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?

In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.

Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.

So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?

But first, some evidence

There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:

And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:

But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:

So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?

Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:

If you’re interested in the technical details of how we do the testing, you can read more about the setup of a full funnel test here. (Thanks to my colleagues Craig Bradford and Tom Anthony for concepts and diagrams that appear throughout this post).

But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.

An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing

In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.

We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:

After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:

Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:

By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):

Is this the full picture, though?

What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:

If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:

Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:

So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:

Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact

Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:

We would not:

Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:

When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:

The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:

Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:

Most of the time, we want to see if making a change will improve performance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up? But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales? In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant. If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.

Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.

All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.

The future for effective, accountable SEO

There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:

1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally

I talked in a recent Whiteboard Friday about the surprising results we are seeing from testing, and the increasing need to test against the Google black box:

I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:

2. User signals are going to grow in importance

The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.

I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[rebeccahpedersen]

Where Do I Find A Condo’s Square Footage?

TorontoRealtyBlog

This makes a great follow-up to Wednesday’s blog post, “Random Thoughts About Square Footage.”

There was a lot of conversation in the comments about how to calculate square footage, what standards to use, how developers make the calculations, what the difference between buildable and useable square footage is, and so on.

For a would-be condo buyer, this could be quite co0=\fusing.

But in my mind, it’s more than confusing; it’s downright scary.

When you consider that we pay for condos based on the square footage, not knowing the square footage, is a scary proposition.

Imagine if this were the case with other goods and services?  Imagine if you had to purchase a bar of gold without weighing it?  At $1,300 per ounce, wouldn’t you want to know if that bar weighted eight pounds or nine pounds?

To think that we value real estate based on a standard that we have no idea how to calculate is absolutely scary.

And as a reader pointed out on Wednesday, organized real estate is doing nothing to help:

Well isn’t that great.

This reeks of, “We’re afraid of failing, so we just won’t try.”

Or the classic Ned Flanders line, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas!”

I understand the argument that you don’t want to provide a platform for constant litigation, but not looking for a solution is a cop-out.

The idea that publishing square footage is not made mandatory, I understand from a potential litigation perspective.  But to basically ban agents from publishing square footage?  That’s pathetic.

What’s next?  What about a bedroom that might not be deemed a bedroom by all, because it doesn’t have a window, or a closet, or a door.  Why not ban agents from specifying how many bedrooms there are?

As an industry, we have to do better than this.  We have to raise our standards, and provide the consumer with better, more complete, and more accurate data so that they can make an informed purchase decision.

I have long maintained that TREB should make square footage mandatory, and the simple way to do that would be to get together with MPAC and work out a deal so that we have access to the square footage reports.

For those of you that don’t know (and this includes many Realtors…) MPAC has a slew of real estate related products available, customized to each property.  And by “each property” I mean every property, since MPAC is linked to every single listing on MLS, current or past, and has an easy-to-use interface for those properties not appearing on MLS.

For example, I just looked up a newly-listed condo, and if you click “Store,” you see the following:

Right there, you’ve got twelve products that you may, or may not, find helpful with respect to your property search, comparative market analysis, or upcoming listing.

These are tools that Realtors have at their disposal for every property out there, be it house or condo, and these are far from cost prohibitive.  Then again, if agents balk at paying $400 for a fantastic photographer to help advertise their $600,000 condo listing, then maybe $6.00 for a building permit report is a bit steep.

But the one product that every Realtor should be familiar with is this one:

The Residential Floor Area Report contains a square footage amount, on which MPAC presumably bases taxation.

This square footage, again – presumably, would be from a source deemed accurate, likely from the builder.

Having purchased about a thousand of these reports over the years, I can personally attest to the fact that they almost always match any available floor plan.

So it is my contention that the Toronto Real Estate Board should, at the earliest possible opportunity, make the inclusion of an MPAC Residential Floor Area Report mandatory for all condominium listings, and failure to provide the square footage and/or the document shall result in an error message when one tries to submit the listing to MLS.  That’s the case when you don’t fill in the taxes; you can’t submit the listing.  Same goes for any mandatory field – you get an error message in RED.  Of course, you can put “$0” for taxes, but that’s not the point.

The point is, if we, as sales professionals, want to do our job effectively and to our fullest capability, we will find a way to provide consumers with this information.

So where does a person find square footage for a condo, in lieu of an MLS listing?

Here are the most effective ways:

1) MPAC

As described above, this is an option available to Realtors for $5.00 per property, and I believe the public can open an account and gain access as well.

2) ONLINE FLOOR PLANS

As a client once asked me, “How is your Google-Fu?”

If you’re willing to put the time and effort into it, you can probably find any floor plan from a condo in the past ten years.  You just need patience.

I have complied a massive database of floor plans on my laptop, for thousands of units in hundreds of buildings.  Every time I see a new floor plan, whether it’s attached to an MLS listing, or even a soft copy at a condo I’m visiting, I file it away.

There are a lot of real estate agent websites out there that have floor plans for newer buildings.  I don’t feel like plugging those agents here and now, but let’s just say they’re easy to find.

There are also a lot of websites that have the word “floor plan” in the body of a web-page, whether visible or hidden, and that means that hundreds of clickable search results on Google will return zero actual useful information.

A colleague of mine at Property.ca told me once that his goal was to accumulate the floor plan for every single unit in the city of Toronto.  Quite the endeavour!  Condos.ca was, and still is, and industry leader in Toronto condominium data, but a database of floor plans would be something else altogether.  I told him that I would gladly pay an annual fee for access to a database, as would many agents, I’m sure.  Then again, most agents won’t pay $5 for the floor plan from MPAC for a property they’re listing, and being paid $10K, $15K, $20K or more to sell, so perhaps my suggesting that floor plan database subscriptions would go through the roof is wishful thinking.

3) PAST LISTINGS

In many condos, the square footage for Unit #1101 is the same as Unit #1201, and the same as Unit #1301, and so on.

Again, with some time and effort, this is an easy search through the archives of MLS.

Because most agents don’t include the actual square footage in listings (I would estimate less than 20% of historical listings have an actual square footage), this endeavour can be painstaking, but it often bears fruit.

When I’m doing a Comparative Market Analysis for a condo, I’ll include the exact square footage for every comparable unit.  When I see other agents give a “range,” like 500-599, I laugh.  Imagine that gold bar, weighing somewhere between 8 and 9 pounds, and being expected to pay $1,300 per ounce.

To find the square footage of every unit, the first place I go is to the MLS archives.  First, I look up the history of that unit, and if the building is old enough and the unit has been sold before, I might find it.  Then, I’ll go to the archives for all the units with that model number, and 95% of the time, I’ll find the square footage.  Of course, I have a rule that I need triple-confirmation, otherwise it doesn’t fly.  If 1201, 1301, and 1401 are all said to be 542 square feet via past MLS listings, then we’re good.

4) MAINTENANCE FEE MATH

This is a very inexact science, but it can get you anywhere from 90% to 100% accuracy.

In virtually every building in the downtown core, maintenance fees are apportioned by square footage.

So if you can solve for “X,” you can figure out the fees.

Keep in mind that basic maintenance fees, per unit, do not include a locker or a parking space.  Those are separate, and are lumped in with the overall fees on MLS.

So if Unit #1201, with parking and locker, has fees of $451.87, and is measured at 652 square feet as per MPAC, floor plan, or other source, then you know the fees are 69.3 cents per square foot.  And you’re looking at Unit #2707, which also has parking and locker, and shows as having fees of $655.52 on MLS.  Get your friend from NASA to work this complicated mathematical dilemma, and voila – the unit is approximately 946 square feet.

Just remember, you need to compare apples to apples.  So if you’re looking at a unit with locker, and no parking, then you need the square footage of another condo with locker, and no parking.  And, since we know maintenance fees usually increase one out of every two years on average, then you need a comparable sale that’s very recent.

5) PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

Are you good on the phone?

Suave, charismatic, and convincing?

Property management has the square footage for every condo in the building, so why not call them up and just ask?

They don’t have to give it to you, of course.  And human nature is to question a person’s agenda and integrity.  Just say, “I’m looking at buying Unit #XXX that’s currently listed for sale, and there’s no square footage on the listing.  It just says 900-999, and I’m trying to figure out the exact square footage.”  Maybe give them my “bar of gold” anecdote, and the person on the other end of the line will see the logic, and respond in kind.

Now this might not work if you needed the square footage of sixteen units for a CMA that you’re doing, but if you’re just a prospective buyer looking for one unit’s square footage, I see no reason why the property manager wouldn’t help.

–

I’m not a “car guy,” but I’ll give this analogy a shot.

There are different types of engines, right?  V6 and V8?  I’m assuming that the difference between those two is about……..V2, or something?

Right.  Okay.  So there’s also litres, horsepower, and torque, and I won’t even guess at things like HEMI and turbochargers.  I just hear the words on television ads.

So if you’re a car-buyer, do you want to know the size of the engine?  Does the engine in a Lexus IS 250 differ from that of a Lexus ES 350?  If so, would you want to know, or just guess?

What if the windows on the car were tinted, and you couldn’t see inside?  What if you had to guess whether the seats were leather or cloth?  What if you didn’t know whether there was a navigation system in place?

The fact that we as Realtors are not required to provide exact square footage is mind-boggling, and I’m downright embarrassed as an agent.  Considering the “price per square foot” metric is the most commonly-used evaluator of condominiums, it’s puzzling as to why we haven’t made this mandatory as of yet.

Fear is not the best motivator.  If the folks at TREB are afraid of being sued, then use those same lawyers who say, “There’s no upside to this, just leave square footage out,” to draft some legalese that covers themselves, and agents if need be, in the event of a discrepancy.

We could avoid all of this if TREB just used some of their accumulated war-chest (from their Competition Bureau fight…) to work out a deal with MPAC, but I didn’t intend to turn this blog post into a TREB-bashing, so I’m going to stop here.

One final thought about square footage sources, for both buyers and sellers: what’s the deal with virtual tours?

If you’re using a virtual tour’s floor plan on a listing for the square footage source, should you get further verification?

Does the virtual tour usually end up higher or lower than MPAC?  That’s tough to say.  I’ve seen it both ways, to be honest.

And that begs the question: what source do I use when I have two different numbers?

Truthfully, folks, I leave that up to the seller.  If MPAC says the unit is 635 square feet, but the floor plan shows 646, I will ask the seller what they want to use.  It’s up to them, and that’s not me passing the buck; it’s me giving my client options as to how they want their condo marketed.  I would suggest they use MPAC, but MPAC has been wrong before, and I’ve seen first-hand instances of MPAC being lower than an in-hand floor plan from my seller, albeit maybe 2-3 times, but it’s happened.

I’m not God, and I’m not the authority on this.  I leave this decision to my sellers, and I would advise all listing agents to do the same.

As a buyer, if you see square footage on a virtual tour floor plan, I can tell you that in my experience, it’s lower than the MPAC square footage about 70% of the time.

But then again, two sources are always better than one, so when in doubt, just go for a deeper dive!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The post Where Do I Find A Condo’s Square Footage? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Originated from http://bit.ly/2HMXOuW

[viralhottopics]

The Epic Story of O.J.: Made in Americas Creation

When Ezra Edelman set out to make the documentary O.J.: Made in America, he had one goal: To make a five-hour movie about howthe 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case became a flashpoint for talking about race and the American criminal justice system. Not only didhe hit his goal, but he overshot that runtime by about three hours.

“No sane person would do this,” Edelman says now, sitting in a lounge in New York’s Post Factory, where his doc was edited. Talking about it now its like ‘This is fucking crazy.’ The whole thing is a huge leap of faith. You have no knowledge of what exists from an archival standpointyou dont know anything. You just go, ‘Lets try to tackle this to the best of our abilities.’”

In the end, he took some 800 hours of footagesome from archive material, some from interviews with 72 peopleand boiled it down into one single 467-minute movie. It took him more than two years. But he didnt do it alone. In fact, it wasnt even entirely his idea. We spoke with Edelman and his creative partners to get the story ofhow they created the wildly ambitious documentary.

February, 2014: The Beginning

Connor Schell, executive producer and senior VP, ESPN Films: Weve been producing a series of documentary films at ESPN called 30 for 30 since 2009. In that time, we gained more of a foothold in documentary filmmaking, working with various directors, and tackling topics of real cultural importance where sports is your window in. I certainly knew Ezras work and Id been thinking about O.J. Simpson for a long time, but our pursuit of wanting to do something on O.J. Simpson always started from, Well, how do you conceive of something thats not obvious? This is territory thats very well-covered, be that in books, articles, or other documentary films. Obviously, theres a section of this story thats from [the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in] June 1994 to [Simpson’s acquittal in] October of 1995 that, if you make a project about O.J. Simpson, youre going to have to cover. But I was always interested in the full picture. What came before and what came after. And where could O.J.s story take you? That led to a few conversations between Ezra and I and he conceived of this approach and of this film.

Edelman:The thing he first said was We want to make a five-hour film. Thats what interested me. That was before he even told me what it was about. When he told me what it was about I was not that interested. My thought was What can I add to this story? They had already done a film on O.J.June 17, 1994, Brett Morgens rendition of the day of the Bronco chase. Connor wanted to do something more challenging and that jibed with something I wanted to do.

Schell:We were interested in the context, in the story of race, of celebrity, and how O.J. helps you tell that story. We started the conversation about a really long movie by saying OK, when you get to that period, why was it so meaningful? Why did it mean so much to white American and black American and why did they view it so differently? Thats a story were really interestedin telling and therefore, it needs to be long.

April 2014: The Research

Because Edelmans movie details thehistory of the relationship between the the Los Angeles Police Department and African-American communities long before Simpson was a student the University of Southern California, his team had to find footage of events like the Watts riots and families from the South moving to LA.

Edelman: From there it was a few months of me just reading. That’sall I did: I got up and I read. Jeffrey Toobins bookThe Run of His Life, Lawrence Schillers bookAmerican Tragedy. This great book by Lou Cannon called Official Negligence, which is about the history of the LAPD. But the first thing I did, was address the practical question of How the fuck do we get this done? So that meant just calling Caroline [Waterlow, the movies producer] and being like Caroline, so theres this thing. Its going to be big. I think itll be interesting. It might not be so fun, but I can think of no other person who I would want to help me craft this.

Caroline Waterlow:I remember we had pizza. My initial reaction was O.J.? You feel like its a story that surely we know about. All the films Ive worked on have been predominantly archival, historical docs, so the idea of being able to get into the early context and history became interesting to me quickly. Then my job was to hire people to figure out how to do that. This is not a job for a young associate producer whos like just starting out. You cant ask them, “So, can you call the former DA of Los Angeles?” We needed really experienced people who knew what they were doing.

Edelman: She found all the people for the team and from there it was just the combination of experience and alchemy.

Edelman and and Waterlow soon brought on producer Tamara Rosenberg, who was tasked with tracking down all of the docs sources, and producer Nina Krstic, who had to find and create a database of 500-600 hours of archival footage.

Tamara Rosenberg: I got a phone call from Caroline first and I was like, O.J.? Nothing in my resume points me towards that subject. But then I had my first meeting with Ezra and he already had an outline of what he wanted to do and it was very apparent to me that that wasnt going to be any other O.J. story. This was going to be differentand great.

Nina Krstic:His enthusiasm was a clincher. Also, it was like, “How can you refuse such a challenge?” How do you find archive of that that someone has never seen before? I think it was a challenge Id dreamed about my whole life and there it was.

Edelman: [Deadpan] I just want, for the record, to note how much both of them talked about my enthusiasm.

Schell: He jokes about it, but when hes engaged, its all he can think or talk about. Hes in.

Edelman: Which I imagine is comforting for an executive. [Laughs.]

August 2014: Building the Story

Edelman: With this large of a canvas, there was a need and an ambition to tell O.J.s story with some sort of thoroughness. I was interested in telling the story of what happened to him after the trial; at the same time, I wanted to tell this other story about therelationship between the black community and the police department in LA, and that that was going to inform this greater story about race in America. Then there was this story about him as a cultural icon that existed on this other level. But it all came back where we were going with the trial. It feels like the ultimate American Studies paper.

O.J. Simpson arrives next door to Watts a year after the riots, but hes in this really white, conservative, apolitical place, right next to a place that had just burned out of frustration. You see all these parallel tracks and its like, ‘Isnt this everything we were talking about with the trial years later?’ Thats a core place to start the story.director Ezra Edelman

O.J. becomes famous for football, and thats all he has to do to get noticed. Then right down the coast theres a community of people in Watts that were so frustrated and outraged with how they were being treated by the police that this sort of ends up inciting the riots in 1965. And this is what this community is doing to have their voices heard. So theres this juxtaposition. Then O.J.arrives next door to that like a year later, but hes in this really white, conservative, apolitical place, right next to a place that had just burned out of frustration. You see all these parallel tracks and its like, Isnt this everything we were talking about with the trial years later?

Waterlow: There was a big bulletin board that I had made. That was the first place that we started building timelines of O.J.s life and what was going on in the world. Then just names. [Prosecutor] Marcia Clark, of course, but also the names of childhood friends. It was just a board of a million names.

Edelman: It was organized chaos. I was looking for first-person voices:people who lived through this history at every point, whether its O.J.s football career or the LAPD. When you look at the people who are the most important and impactful people in the film, youre like I didnt know who any of these people were. I was standing on a train platform somewhere in Connecticut, and Tamaracalled me up and she was like, So I just talked these guys, I dunno, they were a couple of O.J.s childhood friends… and I had never heard of them, but thats exactly where this whole thing comes together. Every time that happens, its like a small victory.

Rosenberg:My character list is a 100-page Word document. In there are people we did interview, people who were maybes, and just people we looked at, and people who just said no. It was a big casting job. It was a constant dialogue with Ezra. As he felt ready to tackle a certain period of O.J.s life, then we started populating those areas with people. So it would be OK, were ready to talk about his USC years, and then I would go on the hunt for his team players from those years.

We had a great PA on the team, who was very good at tracking people down. I would just send names to him, and he would triangulate and I dont know what to find people. He would post on message boards. I dont even know what he did and I dont want to know. He would just send me a phone number and be like I have a good feeling about this one.”Then it was just a job of calling them and saying Hey, this is what were doing and really trying to impress upon them that this was not just another O.J. doc, and that was hard because a lot of these people had approached by the press before, so we were guilty by association.

Waterlow: And then as soon as we found a person it was a matter of Is there any footage of that amazing USC game? and Nina [Krstic] would have to get involved.

Nina Krstic: When I got started in September the first goal was: find every single interview with O.J. And then it was filling in the historical stuff. So there weretwo layers to it. There was also finding stuff that was pre-90s and then it was Rodney King, murder trial, and everything else. Once you get to the 90s theres tons of stuff, but we dont want to see the same footage all over again. Also, with news stories, I wanted raw footage, because I dont want a news editor from 94 deciding whats good and whats not good.

Fall 2014-Winter 2015: The Interviews

Waterlow:Ezra did every one of those interviews, so to prep for those was major.

Edelman:There is a method to the madness. You know you want Marcia Clark, you know you want these bigger characters, but youre not going to call them up initially. You want to be as prepared before you get to that point. But also, you just have to start. So we interviewed 72 people; 66 are in the film, but two of the people that arent we interviewed on the first day because you just need to get going.

Rosenberg:Some people I would talk to for many months before we finally got them. Hands down, as a group, the jurors [for Simpsons murder trial] were the hardest to convince. We reached out to a bunch of them. Some we couldnt find. Ezra and I met with Yolanda Crawford at some stage and although she was hard to find, once we found her and talked to her she was on board.

Edelman: We ended up going to shoot in Las Vegas in January of 2015 to interview someone we didnt actually end up getting to interview, which is one of the jury consultants for the defense. But we were going there so it was like, We should probably try to talk to people involved in the robbery. Talk about a place were not at yet. But sometimes you just have to figure it out.” Thats where youre making a mini movie within the massive movie.

Waterlow: With this film, more than any others that Ive worked on, there was a lot of Dont say nolet me have coffee with you. We had to make our case about who we are and what we were doing. There were several trips to LA, in October, November, and December. Las Vegas in January. There were five or six shoots in the fall.

Some people I would talk to for many months before we finally got them. Hands down, as a group, the jurors were the hardest to convince.producer Tamara Rosenberg

Edelman: The jury was a big part of the canvas, but the prosecution was an even bigger part. And we were having no luck. There were just four main people [in the prosecution], and we need at least one. That was really stressful. I really wanted Chris Darden. I spent a week reading his book and writing him a letterno response, no response, no response. But we had to keep going. I finally got [district attorney] Gil Garcetti’semail from a family friend in January or February, four months after wed started shooting, and he said, Youre welcome to come out and talk to me next time youre in LA, but I wont do an interview. You go and have a lovely conversation for two hours and hes like Im still not doing an interview and Im like, Dude, that could have been the interview. This could be done. But after three conversations and two visits to his house, it was like 10:30 pm on a Tuesday nightand he wrote me an email or sent me a text and said, Alright, Im going to do it. There was a palpable sense of relief.We had already gotten to the point where we were going to start editing.

February, 2015: Editing Begins

Waterlow: There was lots of archival being gathered the whole time. We knew there would be plenty for [Bret Granato, one of the film’s three editors]to start. Thirty interviews, maybe.

Granato:I had wasted a lot of my sophomore year in college following the trial. When we first started, the first thing I put my hands on was the Watts riots section. When I first talked to Ezra I had mentioned that I knew a lot about the trial, and he was kind of unimpressed by that. [Laughs] He said that he really wanted Los Angeles to be a character. So that was the first thing we touched.

Edelman:While he was working on another film, before he was officially working on this, he was taking the audio of the interviews that we had shot and listening to them on his own. So he showed up with this sense of where we were going.

Granato:How Ezra works is he creates this 50-60 page document of the roadmap. We met a few times before the edit to go over that. Its very specific with him: Were going to start with Watts.

Krstic: I made sure that every section of O.J.s life had at least a representative amount of footage to give Bret the freedom to start with it. Then there was also the massive job of organizing over 500 hours of footage, sub-clipping it, keywording it, making the job a year down the line so much easier. My eyes still cross when I think about this, but I basically made a huge database, and then every entry in the database has a clip and its all searchable.

Schell: The amazing thing is the exercise in logistics. Ezras off researching and doing an interview, Tamara is three or five shoots ahead of him, trying to get people lined up. Then Brets trying to tell a story around all of these parts

There was the massive job of organizing over 500 hours of footage, sub-clipping it, keywording it, making the job a year down the line so much easier. My eyes still cross when I think about this, but I basically made a huge database, and then every entry in the database has a clip and its all searchable.producer Nina Krstic

Waterlow: And Nina is IM-ing all day with three people being like What do you need? What do you need? What do you need?

Schell: The idea that it could all come together to fit the vision laid out is quite astonishing.

Edelman: Im used to feeling like I have to be in control of everything. But this was the first time where it was like, That shit aint gonna work. I talked to Tamara a lot because were talking about the characters and interviews. And Caroline and I have this its a little more fraternal.

Waterlow: Im the truth-teller.

Edelman: We just have our own thing. Bret and I get to talk about the story, butunfortunately for himIm sitting behind him like Pig-Pen and the sky is always falling and hes like Dude, this is hard enough. But with Nina, shes the one person, and I say this lovingly, shes a machine.

Krstic: It was never-ending. Even when we were locked, there was still always one little thing wed need.

Granato: I feel like all of our scenes were built initially to just tell it the best way it could be told, then we would make it betterbut when we were making it better, we werent necessarily making it shorter.

Spring/Summer, 2015: Interviews Continue

Rosenberg: We found Carrie Bess, one of the jurors, pretty early on and Ezra and I met her and had coffee and she was fairly non-committal. I made it a habit ever time wed land in LA to drive to her place. She didnt use email and barely used the phone, so it was just about me showing up and saying hi. She would give me lemons from her lemon tree. We had a cute relationship that way. But she never fully committed. So finally on one of our last trips to LA, I remember sitting with her under her lemon tree and saying, Carrie, you have to do this. Luckily enough she was like, OK, come back in a couple of days.

Edelman:She didnt have any interest in us and this thing. Sometimes shes engaged and sometimes not. Sometimes shed say something profound and wonderful, sometimes she says something kooky. Theres a realness to her. As a documentary filmmaker, what more do you want?

Rosenberg: I had a feeling on the day of the interview that I had to show up before the team, so I drove over and of course Carrie Bess had completely forgotten. She was covered in paint because she was re-painting her house. I pushed her in the shower and went to her closet and opened it and took out like three different outfitsand was like Wear this!

Edelman: That wasnt even the last LA trip. The last real shoot that Tamara and I went on in LA was we interviewed [Ron Goldmans father] Fred Goldman and Mark Fuhrman.Fuhrmanwas reluctant to do the interview and, like a lot of people, was not thrilled at the idea of this being donebut healso didnt know who we were. Why would you trust someone with your sensitive feelings and your past? I found someone who engaged us respectfully, and in a trusting manner. I think the guy deserves a lot of credit.

Waterlow: Thats a testament to the job Tamara and Ezra did on the interviews. Many people after the interview would say Thats the smartest interview anybodys ever done and Ive talked about this a lot. Including Marcia Clark.

I remember just sitting for a whole week just reading Marcia Clark’s book, reading articles, watching stuff, and not picking up the phone.producer Tamara Rosenberg

Rosenberg:I remember just sitting for a whole week just reading her book, reading articles, watching stuff, and not picking up the phone. I think its in Slouching Towards Bethlehem where Joan Didion just sits next to the phone for three hours, staring at it. I had the same thing. And by the time I talked to her I was fully prepared. The first 10 minutes of the phone call did not go so well, and I remember in that call where I was like, Ugh, shes gonna say no. Then we turned a corner. She asked me what I was doing during the trial and I wasnt here. [Rosenberg was studying in Israel.] I think that made a huge difference. The fact that I wasnt one of these people who was obsessively following it and aware of every single flaw and what was going on with her hair and wardrobe, that changed something. Then she was great. I love Marcia. And she sat for how long? Six hours?

Edelman: About five hours. Shes pretty fierce. She is so in control of who she is and what she experienced.

Rosenberg: Somebody like [news helicopter pilot] Zoey Tur, was one of those wonderful moments where archival and casting were working together because she was on both our radars for different reasons. Nina was looking at her because the footage she had shot of the riots and the Bronco chase and I had her on my radar as a storyteller. We both pursued her and got this great material.

It felt infinite. Its like looking at the sun, though, you dont want to ever look at the big picture.editor Bret Granato

Waterlow: And I loved how unabashed she was about things. Shes like Yeah, Im a journalist, Im going to get the fucking story. She represented that so well, and owned it.

Krstic: All told, there was about between 500-600 hours of archival footage and then 72 interviews.

Waterlow: Its probably 800 hours total, if were talking about interviews and archival footage.

Granato: It felt infinite. Its like looking at the sun, though, you dont want to ever look at the big picture. You trust the process. My job is to create as compelling a five-minute thingas I can, and then take a step back and see if it connects. But I wouldve melted if Id actually thought about what we were trying to do. Its too much to comprehend.

January, 2016: That Other Massive O.J. Show

Edelman had known about it for a while, but in January 2016, when he took his forthcoming doc to a Television Critics Association event, he had to come face-to-face with the fact that Ryan Murphy and his FX juggernaut were also releasing a massive retelling of Simpson’s tale: The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Not only would it be based on a book by Jeffrey Toobin, who was one of Edelman’s sources, it would be coming out months before Made in America hit theaters or ESPN.

When youre making this huge thing and you find out someone else is doing a 10-hour series nominally about the same thing, youre like ‘What the fuck?’director Ezra Edelman on The People v. O.J. Simpson

Edelman: To be honest, there were concurrent documentary projects that were being done that were causing a lot more stress than that. Having said that when youre making this huge thing and you find out someone else is doing a 10-hour series nominally about the same thing, youre like What the fuck? But you can only worry about it so much. Ill admit to being personally not thrilled. What are the odds? When we went to the TCAs in January to basically publicly announce the existence of this film three weeks before Sundance, all the journalists in the room had already seen the first six episodes of the FX series and they were all telling us how incredible it was.

Waterlow: We kept being like, “I didnt make that. I dont know how to answer that.”

Edelman: My legitimate fear was: Here is a 10-hour television series about O.J., about the trial, its going to be on television before ours will be out in the world, I dont know that people have that appetite to watch another huge thing about O.J. Thats why it was important for me for it to screen at Sundance, because that was before it was on TV. That way it was clear we werent drafting off of the success of that. That made me feel OK. Frankly, that didI can now sayabsolutely whet the appetite and re-engage people with this story in a way that they wanted the non-fiction narrative. It worked.

January to May 2016: The End (Sort of)

Granato: Ezra and I would stay late nights and work on the film and I dont think there was a single walk back to the train that wasnt about the film and how to make the film better.

Edelman: I didnt ask about your kid?

Granato: Did you know I have a kid? [Laughs] The last night when we locked itit didnt feel like a lock, but it was my last night therewe were still talking about the film. I dont know that I ever had a moment where I was like Ah, thats done! It is such a living, breathing creature. It still doesnt feel done.

Schell: Even when we had gotten to picture lock and submitted the film to Sundance, and it was accepted Even after it screened there, Ezra was obsessed with the fact that it was still a temp score.

Edelman: That was causing me a lot of angst. Itwas a continual process. The first few months of this year, I was still working on the film. We upgraded footage after Sundance, we swapped out the score. We were working up until the time it was screened in theaters in the middle of May. We were working up to the day we had to deliver the hard drives [to theaters]. I watched the last two hours of this on Vice the other night, against my better judgment, and if I could go into the edit room today there would be some things Id want to do.

Waterlow: Because we had these intermissions built in, theres three drives for each version of the film. I remember calling box offices and calling theater managers and being like Did you get it?!

Because we had these intermissions built in, theres three drives for each version of the film that we had to send. I remember calling box offices and calling theater managers and being like ‘Did you get it?!’producer Caroline Waterlow

Schell: This is not a small ask of someones time, to have people commit to an entire day of having someone watch something. But then to understand how engaged they are and the conversations they want to have afterwards is incredible to see.

Edelman: Again, if we knew what we were doing, we wouldve never started.

Schell: But to add to that, whats incredible about the media environment we exist in right now, is that this can exist as a film, and also on ESPN and via video-on-demand, and via DVD, and streaming.We can expose millions of people to that story.

Edelman:People dont necessarily have eight hours and 15 minutes to spend in a movie theater. I get that. So, we worked really hard to create this thing, and if people watch it on their TVs streaming, thats fine. Ive never seen it on TV. Ill never watch something Ive done on ESPN with commercials. Not the previous film I did, not this one. It makes me want to throw up in my mouth. I know this should be experienced as this beginning-to-end thing, but we have fractured lives. Thats not the world we live in.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2jgNGdM

from The Epic Story of O.J.: Made in Americas Creation

[patriotsnet]

When Have Republicans Controlled Both Houses Of Congress

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/when-have-republicans-controlled-both-houses-of-congress/

When Have Republicans Controlled Both Houses Of Congress

There Were 26 Additional Seats Up For Election But None Of These Seats Changed Parties Louisiana Could Still Switch But We Wont Know Until December And It Wont Make A Difference To Democrats

Republicans keep control of the House and Senate

The rest of the Senate races didnt switch parties this year. This includes 16 seats held by Republicans and nine held by Democrats. We still dont know the outcome of the Senate race in Louisiana as it has moved to a run-off that will be decided in December.

The open seat of Sen. David Vitter could now end up Democrat, but it still wont matter for Democrats when it comes to control of the Senate. The two candidates on the Louisiana ballot to fill Vitters open seat are Louisiana state Treasurer John Kennedy and Foster Campbell .

But this wasnt always the case: Up until a few weeks ago, Senate seats in Florida, Arizona, and Ohio were seen as pretty competitive races. The races only began to open up in recent days.

In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio had a 3.7-point lead over challenger Patrick Murphy heading into Election Day. And in the other two states, incumbent Republicans John McCain and Rob Portman both enjoyed double-digit leads over their opponents, securing easy Republican victories.

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This Is The Future That Liberals Want

Say the Democrats win. Then what?

If Democrats manage to hold the House of Representatives and win back the Senate and the White House in November, the party will have full control of the federal government for the first time in 11 years. Police reform, climate change, and health care are all on their agenda. But before newly empowered Democrats get to any of that, they will very likely pass a relief package to address the coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic crisis. Then, they will aim to fundamentally change how voting and government work in the United States by expanding voting rights, reducing the influence of money in politics, strengthening ethics rules, and maybe even ending the Senate filibusterreforms they hope will make Americas democracy work better and the rest of their agenda easier to carry out.

If there is any political capital to be spent, the concerns over democracy reform take a front seat to everything in the agenda, a senior aide to a progressive senator told me . It would mean so much just in terms of building long-term power, a senior aide to a progressive House Democrat added.

What Is The Difference Between Republicans And Democrats

Republicans and Democrats are the two main and historically the largest political parties in the US and, after every election, hold the majority seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the highest number of Governors. Though both the parties mean well for the US citizens, they have distinct differences that manifest in their comments, decisions, and history. These differences are mainly ideological, political, social, and economic paths to making the US successful and the world a better place for all. Differences between the two parties that are covered in this article rely on the majority position though individual politicians may have varied preferences.

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Biden Introduces Attorney General Nominee In Wake Of Capitol Riot

While introducing his nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said the nation needed to restore the independence and integrity of the Justice Department.

What we witnessed yesterday was not dissent, it was not disorder, it was not protest it was chaos. They werent protesters dont dare call them protesters they were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. Its that basic, its that simple. I wish we could say we couldnt see it coming. But that isnt true. We could see it coming. The past four years, weve had a president who has made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done. We need to restore the honor, the integrity, the independence of the Department of Justice in this nation thats been so badly damaged. And so many former leaders of that department in both parties have so testified and stated that. I want to be clear to those who lead this department, who you will serve. You wont work for me. You are not the president or the vice presidents lawyer. Your loyalty is not to me. It is to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation, to guarantee justice. As everyone who watched yesterdays events in Washington now understands, if they did not understand before, the rule of law is not just some lawyers turn of phrase. It is the very foundation of our democracy.

Recommended Reading: I Bet My Numbers Would Be Terrific

Isan Control Of Congress

This table shows the number of Congresses in which a party controlled either the House, the Senate, or the presidency.

Party

^U.S. Senate: Party Divisions

^The Anti-Administration Party was not a formal political party but rather a faction opposed to the policies of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The faction eventually coalesced into the Democratic-Republican Party.

^The Pro-Administration Party was not a formal political party but rather a faction supportive of the policies of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The faction eventually coalesced into the Federalist Party.

^ abThough Washington never formally joined a party, he was broadly sympathetic to the coalition which later became the Federalist Party.

^Washington disapproved of formal political parties and refused to join either party, though he became a symbol of the Federalist Party.

^Adams won election as a Democratic-Republican, but he sought re-election as a National Republican.

^Whig President William Henry Harrison died April 4, 1841, one month into his term, and was succeeded by John Tyler, who served for the remainder of the term. Tyler had been elected as vice president on the Whig ticket, but he became an independent after the Whigs expelled him from the party on September 13, 1841.

^Whigs held their only trifecta from March 4, 1841 until later that year when the Whigs expelled Tyler from the party on September 13 and he became an Independent.

^

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Visual Guide: The Balance Of Power Between Congress And The Presidency

Which party controls Congress? Which, the White House? The answer reveals the balance of power in the two branches of government that have elected officials .

Americans seem to prefer that the checks-and-balances envisioned by the founders be facilitated by having different parties control Congress and the White House.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the time Congress and the President are at odds; that is, most of the time the same political party does not control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

Congress has usually been controlled by the same party; with the odd man out being,;literally, the President. Only 16 times since 1945 have both branches of Congress and the Presidency been controlled by the same party; the Democrats have held this advantage more often than Republicans . However, it has happened four times since 2003, making this seem more common that it has been, historically . Prior to WWII, having House, Senate and White House controlled by the same party was the norm.

Since 1945, the House and Senate have been controlled by different parties only six;times . The first three were under Reagan . The other three have been since the 2000 elections, which makes this seem more normal to us than it is, historically.;From 1901-1945, this happened only twice.

And there have been only two complete turn-overs of Congress since 1949: one in 1995 and the other in 2007.

How Is Senate Majority Chosen

The Senate Republican and Democratic floor leaders are elected by the members of their party in the Senate at the beginning of each Congress. Depending on which party is in power, one serves as majority leader and the other as minority leader. The leaders serve as spokespersons for their partys positions on issues.

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Iowa Montana And South Carolina

Though Iowa, Montana and South Carolina are all traditionally right-leaning, polls had shown tight Senate races in those states, and the Cook Political Report had rated each a tossup. But come Election Day, Republicans easily won each race.

In Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst, the Republican incumbent, dispatched Theresa Greenfield, her Democratic challenger, by 6.6 percentage points. In Montana, Senator Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent, won by more than 10 percentage points against Steve Bullock, Montanas two-term Democratic governor.

And in South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, survived a challenge by Jaime Harrison, a former chairman of the states Democratic Party, winning by 10.3 percentage points.

Election Results : Veto

SE Cupp: Republicans have let Trump get away with too much

See also: State government trifectas

Two state legislatures saw changes in their veto-proof majority statusâtypically when one party controls either three-fifths or two-thirds of both chambersâas a result of the 2020 elections. Democrats gained veto-proof majorities in Delaware and New York, bringing the number of state legislatures with a veto-proof majority in both chambers to 24: 16 held by Republicans and eight held by Democrats.

Forty-four states held regularly-scheduled state legislative elections on November 3. Heading into the election, there were 22 state legislatures where one party had a veto-proof majority in both chambers; 16 held by Republicans and six held by Democrats. Twenty of those states held legislative elections in 2020.

The veto override power can play a role in conflicts between state legislatures and governors. Conflict can occur when legislatures vote to override gubernatorial vetoes or in court cases related to vetoes and the override power.

Although it has the potential to create conflict, the veto override power is rarely used. According to political scientists Peverill Squire and Gary Moncrief in 2010, only about five percent of vetoes are overridden.

Changes in state legislative veto-proof majorites State

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The laws largely focus on tightening voter ID requirements, purging voter rolls and restricting absentee and mail-in ballots.

Texas

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New Hampshire Hasnt Been Called Yet But That Wont Change The Balance Of Power In The Senate

New Hampshire, where Sen. Kelly Ayotte has a narrow margin over Gov. Maggie Hassan . Votes have only been counted from 94 percent of precincts, so there is a possibility that Hassan could still win, but with Ayotte wining 48.1 percent of the vote compared to Hassans 47.8 percent, it seems as if Ayotte will hold onto her seat.

Annual Congressional Competitiveness Report 2020

Ballotpedias Annual Congressional Competitiveness report for 2020 includes information on the number of elections featuring candidates from both major parties, the number of open seats, and more.

HIGHLIGHTS

More U.S. House races were contested by members of both major parties than in any general election since at least 1920, with 95.4% of races featuring major party competition.

Of the U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators who were eligible to run for re-election in 2018, 55 of them did not appear on the general election ballot in 2020.

In the 53 open seats where an incumbent either did not seek re-election or was defeated in a primary, there were 13 races where the incumbents district overlapped at least one pivot county in 2008 and 2012, before switching to support President Donald Trump in 2016).

In 20 races, only one major party candidate appeared on the general election ballot, the lowest number compared to the preceding decade.

Read Also: Donald Trump Saying Republicans Are Dumb

Y Control In Congress And State Legislatures

In the politics of education course I teach this semester, I was looking for a nice overview of trends in party control for Congress and state legislatures. Just a simple chart showing trends in which party holds the majority in the House and Senate and whether similar trends occur in state legislatures. We often just focus on one or the other, but I want to see Congress and states on the same graph.

But I couldnt quite find what I was looking for. So in its absence , I compiled data from the Senate and House history pages along with the National Conference of State Legislatures partisan composition page.

A few notes about whats being measured here. For the states, NCSL tells us whether both chambers are controlled by a given party. If Democrats hold both chambers, then the state is coded as Democrat. States are coded as Split if Democrats carry one chamber and Republicans the other. Nebraska is omitted because it has a non-partisan unicameral legislature, but I put them in the Split plus NE category just so we have all 50 states. And all data are as of January of the given year, except 2016, which uses December to reflect the outcomes of the most recent election:

Shifting gears to Congress, the chart shows the percentage of members from each of the two parties:

But these three charts are hard to put the full picture together, so the following combines them into a single visualization that I think tells the story a little clearer:

Data:

What The Midterms Mean For President Obama And 2016

Only one in three voters in exit polls said the country was on the right track, and one in five said the government in Washington could never be trusted to do whats right. Two-thirds said the economic system is unfair.

The Republican swing fit a historical pattern: The last three two-term presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all served their last two years with the opposing party controlling both houses of Congress.

And the party controlling the White House has lost seats in the House in the midterm election every time but twice since World War II.

In the Senate, Democrat Mark Pryor of Arkansas was ousted by Rep. Tom Cotton, and Mark Udall of Colorado was bounced by Rep. Cory Gardner. Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan lost her seat to Thom Tillis.

Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire held off a furious challenge by ex-Sen. Scott Brown.

Republicans Joni Ernst in Iowa, Steve Daines in Montana, Mike Rounds in South Dakota and Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia all captured seats held by retiring Democrats.

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What Happened The Last Time Republicans Had A Majority This Huge

They lost it.

Josh Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University and Princeton University and is the author of;Lincolnâs Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincolnâs Image. He is currently writing a book on the making of Lyndon Johnsonâs Great Society. Follow him .

Since last week, many Republicans have been feeling singularly nostalgic for November 1928, and with good reason. Itâs the last time that the party won such commanding majorities in the House of Representatives while also dominating the Senate. And, letâs face it, 1928 was a good time.

America was richâor so it seemed. Charles Lindbergh was on the cover of Time. Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Jean Lussier went over Niagara Falls in a rubber ball . Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in a talkie . Irving Aaronson and His Commanders raised eyebrows with the popularâand, for its time, scandalousâsong, âLetâs Misbehave,â and presidential nominee Herbert Hoover gave his Democratic opponent, Al Smith, a shellacking worthy of the history books.

The key takeaway: Itâs been a really, really long time since Republicans have owned Capitol Hill as they do now.

But what if the Republicans of 1928 owed their demise to a more fundamental force? What if it was demography, not economics, that truly killed the elephant?

On a surface level, the Great Depression was to blame.

By Patricia Zengerle, Susan Cornwell

4 Min Read

A Quick Guide To The Eight Competitive Senate Races We Watched Most Closely

There were 34 Senate races this year, but only eight had a reasonable chance of a seat switching from one party to another. There were four races where Democrats led in the polls and four where Republicans were ahead. Most of them were very close, with the exception of the Illinois race between incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk and challenger Rep. Tammy Duckworth , where Duckworth handily beat Kirk.

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Control Of The Senate Could Be Decided By Georgia Races

;There are two races up in Georgia this election, a regular Senate race and special election. The rules in Georgia for both the regular Senate election and the Senate special election require a candidate to win a majority, and if none of the candidates clear the 50% threshold, the race goes to a runoff in January.;

Recent polling in the race between incumbent GOP Senator David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff has been tight, and the presence of a libertarian candidate on the ballot could prevent either Perdue or Ossoff from clearing the majority. In the special election, 21 candidates have qualified to be on the ballot, including Democrat Raphael Warnock, who has led in recent polls. GOP candidates Senator Kelly Loeffer, who was appointed to the seat last year, and Congressman Doug Collins are also on the ballot. If no candidate clears the majority, that race will also go to a runoff in January.

[patriotsnet]

Will The Republicans Win Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/will-the-republicans-win-back-the-house/

Will The Republicans Win Back The House

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Donald Trump pledges to help Republicans win back the House

Indeed, 2020 was actually a Democratic-leaning year, with Biden winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points. So theres a good chance that states will be at least a bit redder in 2022 than they were in 2020.

That could make these retirements less of a blow to Republicans than they first appear. Whats more, by announcing their retirements so early, Burr, Toomey and Portman are giving the GOP as much time as possible to recruit potential candidates, shape the field of candidates in a strategic way in the invisible primary and raise more money for the open-seat campaign. And in Ohio specifically, Republicans still look like heavy favorites. Even in the Democratic-leaning environment of 2020, Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points, implying that its true partisan lean is probably even more Republican-leaning. Ohio is simply not the quintessential swing state it once was; dating back to the 2014 election cycle, Democrats have won just one out of 14 statewide contests in Ohio and that was a popular incumbent running in a blue-wave election year .

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Read Also: When Did The Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

The Squad Coasts To Reelection

Three high-profile Democratic members of the squad in the House of Representatives held their seats in a comfortable fashion.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will continue to represent New Yorks 14th District, defeating the Republican John Cummings by a wide margin, while Rep. Ilhan Omar also ran well ahead of the Republican Lacy Johnson in the race to represent Minnesotas 5th District.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib also defeated her Republican challenger, David Dudenhoefer, and will continue to represent Michigans 13th Congressional District.

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A Zombie Republican Party Will Overwhelm Joe Biden In The 2022 Midterms

President Biden promised he will restore the soul of America. Hes already running out of time. The commander-in-chief is 78 and unlikely to see out more than one term in office. By the time the pandemic crisis passes mid-2021, inshallah Biden could find his administration has run out of gas before it ever really got started. A week is a long time in politics. Two years can whizz by.

For now, Biden appears to hold the aces. He has a Democratic majority in the House Of Representatives and his vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. The economy, stimulated to its guts, is expected to roar as this year goes on. His opposition, the Republican Party, looks prone wrecked by its calamitous marriage to Donald Trump. The Republican base still hates the Republican establishment and vice versa. The infamous storming of the Capitol on 6 January, we are told, has tarnished the American right for a generation or more.

The Republican Party, for all its problems, remains the strong favourite to win the House in the 2022 midterms, possibly by a large margin, and they may even take back the Senate

Trump or no Trump, the Grand Old Party marches on. The mistake pundits make is to confuse Republicanism with a normal democratic movement. It is more like the political equivalent of the undead a zombie army that horrifies every sane voter but somehow always wins because people hate the Democrats more.

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How Many Senators Are Chosen

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

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An Incoming Class Of History

Several of the newly elected state representatives are making history.;

The Republican Madison Cawthorn, 25, who beat the Democrat Moe Davis to represent North Carolinas 11th Congressional District, will become the youngest member of Congress in modern history.

The Democrat Cori Bush is set to become the first Black congresswoman from Missouri after winning in the states 1st Congressional District.

The Democrats Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres will also be the first openly gay Black men to serve in Congress, after winning in New Yorks 17th and 15th districts respectively.

And nine out of the eleven Republicans who have so far unseated incumbent Democrats are women wins that will drastically expand the representation of women and especially of women of color in the House Republican caucus.

Currently, there are just 13 voting female Republican representatives in the House and 11 female Republican incumbents who ran for reelection in 2020.

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Gop Lawmakers Threaten To Punish Democrats If They Win Back Control Of Congress

‘When we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,’ said Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Republicans are outraged that Democrats are governing by majority rule in the House. In retaliation, they are vowing to do the same things they now decry as unprecedented and wrong.

“Never in the history of our country has a Speaker acted like such an authoritarian,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted on Thursday.

He was upset that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had rejected his request to appoint Republican Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both men voted to overturn the 2020 election results and pushed the lie that President Joe Biden only won because the election was stolen.

“Never in the history of Congress and the select committee I checked with the historian has this ever taken place, where the one party decides who’s all on the committee,” McCarthy told Fox News in a video he with his tweet. McCarthy in fact voted to give Republican then-Speaker John Boehner the exact same unilateral appointment power in 2014 for the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

But while House Republicans claim they are being mistreated because the majority won’t let them have their way, they are also promising to retaliate by turning the same actions they criticize now against Democrats in 2023.

TAGS

Democratic Accomplishments Just Give Republicans Something To Undo

Yes, even if the Democratic trifecta is very likely to end next year, and even if Republicans win their own in 2024, theres no way around the fact that in an amazingly short period of time Biden and his party may wrack up a mini-New Deal that reverses many years of atavistic Republican and meh Democratic policies. That has to be an enduring blow to Republicans, right?

Maybe not so much any more. One of the benefits of being conquered by a free-spending protectionist and isolationist is that the GOP is now pretty flexible in terms of its old Reaganite core ideology. As Rand Paul just cheefully said, if Democrats raise taxes something that horrified old-school Republicans like the ugly face of sin itself theyll just lower them next time they have the power to do so! Bidens accomplishments give the opposition an agenda, which is useful at a time when it isnt exactly brimming with policy ideas. Republicans may very well embrace the most popular Biden initiatives while demonizing the ones that dont poll so well. Its an easier strategy than the one they followed in those more principled days when they lectured voters about the need for entitlement reform.

Recommended Reading: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Inside Republicans’ Plans For A House Takeover

The National Republican Congressional Committee has identified 47 House Democrats it intends to challenge, though the district maps won’t be known for months.

Link Copied

House Republicans surprised nearly everyone last November when they almost captured the majority.

Then they spent January roiled by the deadly attack on the Capitol, confronting a second impeachment of then-President Donald Trump and answering for a whirlwind of offensive conspiracy theories from a firebrand freshman GOP congresswoman.

But the National Republican Congressional Committee has landed on a plan to regain the momentum with which it ended 2020: Ignore all that.

We’re gonna talk about all the stuff that matters to people, said NRCC Chair Tom Emmer, citing school reopenings and job security. We’ll follow through on a game plan. Hopefully, people will allow us to operate under the radar again because they won’t believe us. And we can surprise all of you again two years from now.”

And Emmer now in his second stint leading the House GOPs campaign arm brushed aside Democrats new strategy to link the whole party to QAnon: My colleague down the street might think that some fringe extremist theory is something that people care about, he said in reference to Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney , the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But fewer people believe in QAnon, Emmer said, than think the moon landing was faked.

By MERIDITH MCGRAW and GABBY ORR

The Midterms Introduced Extreme Divisive Politics

Scalise predicts GOP will win back House after ‘radical’ Pelosi-backed votes

As for the contracts lasting impact? Most of its ideas and proposals did not pass Congress, or were vetoed by Clinton, and, according to Teske, the ones that did pass were not radical departures and instead relatively minor in scope. But it did put Republicans back in power in Congress, which theyve largely held onto in the years since.

The Gingrich approach of extreme right ideas, combined with a scorched-earth personal level of politics in attacking opponentslater seen in Clintons investigations and impeachmenthas also had a major impact on American politics he says. It helped bring a much more win at all costs mentality, and a divisiveness that persists today.

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A Change Of Leadership In The House

Should Republicans take back the House of Representatives as expected, some changes will happen quickly. For starters, Nancy Pelosi will no longer occupy the role of House Speaker; furthermore, if the GOP regains the House majority, Leader Kevin McCarthy is widely expected to become the next Speaker of the House.

Last month, the Democrats passed the single most expensive spending bill in American history. It cost nearly $1.9 trillion dollars.

Lets see how your money is being spent.

Kevin McCarthy

Secondly, a GOP-controlled House would restore balance to Washington D.C. The days of Democrats being able to pass whatever bills they want with votes only from their party will come to an end. Getting Republicans back in control of the House means that Biden and Democrats will have to do more than just talk about bipartisanship.

What do you think about the latest survey from the National Republican Congressional Committee? Do you think the GOP will take back the House during next years midterm elections? Let us get your predictions for 2022 in the comments section below.

Election Senate Odds: Will Republicans Regain Upper Chamber

Democrats are narrowly in control of the U.S. Congress, but Republicans are licking their chops for next years midterm races because, over the last 30 years, the party out of presidential power has usually made substantial gains in midterm elections during a presidents first term, with the most substantial occurring in 1994 and 2010.

Given Democrats extremely slim margins of control, the prediction that the Democrats will lose at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress can be supported by historic precedents.

However, changes in the Senate have been less consistent than in the House. And given next years election trajectory in Congress upper chamber, the likelihood of a Republican takeover there deserves a second look.

Can Democrats hold their 50-50 majority in the Senate?

First, lets take a look at the collective odds for Congress.2022 Election Congress odds

Republicans only need a net gain of one seat to capture the Senate, but Democrats are well-positioned to make gains because the GOP will be defending more seats. Moreover, several seats are being vacated by Republicans in swing states where Democrats have experienced some electoral success over the past 5 years.

With the polarizing nature of the current American political landscape, neither oddsmakers nor bettors believe theres much of a chance that control of Congress will be split following the 2022 midterm elections but thats the most likely scenario at this point .

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What Is The New Balance Of Power In The House

House Democrats held onto their majority but lost seats to Republican challengers.

More than a dozen incumbent Democrats lost re-election bids, despite earlier projections they could gain up to 15 seats.

Democrats took the chamber after they netted 41 seats in the 2018 midterm elections, their largest single-year pickup since the post-Watergate midterms of 1974. But some of those new Democrats were among the partys losers in 2020.

Rep Emmer On Why He Thinks Republicans Will Win The House

Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee and is leading the GOPs efforts to win control of the House in November. Emmer joins Judy Woodruff from Minneapolis to discuss his reaction to the Republican National Convention so far and why he thinks his party will win a majority in the House this fall.

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What Was The Outlook Prior To The Election

Republicans needed to get to 218 seats to win back the majority they lost in 2018. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, in early 2019 identified dozens of Democratic-held districts to target. They included;30 Democrats;who were elected or re-elected in 2018 in districts that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. All but one Dave Loebsack of Iowa sought re-election. Most were first-term members who defeated or succeeded Republicans in the 2018 election. Republicans won some of these Trump Democrat districts but needed to unseat most to win back control of the House.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, identified more than 40 Frontline Democrats it expected to have very competitive re-election campaigns. Many of these members represented;suburban districts;that have diversified their populations in recent years. In most of these districts, Democrats were running for re-election for the first time. The Frontline Democrats amassed large campaign funds.

Democrats also identified more than three dozen Republican-held districts they intended to target, including seven in Texas.

Democrats also made a play for the suburban Texas districts of retiring Republican Reps.;Pete Olson;of the 22nd District and Kenny Marchant of the 24th District. They lost the 22nd District, but the 24th is currently too close to call, with Republican Beth Van Duyne leading.

Gop Control Of State Governments Gives It The Edge In Contest To Redraw Congressional Maps To Its Advantage

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, hopes to become speaker of the House after the November 2022 elections.

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The Census Bureau released the preliminary findings of its 2020 U.S. population count on Monday, setting the stage for a once-in-a-decade congressional redistricting process that could in itself be enough to give the Republican Party the five additional House seats needed to recapture the majority following the 2022 midterm elections.

Under the new count, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will each lose a congressional seat. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Florida will gain one seat, while Texas will add two.

Read more: New York, California set to lose House seats; Florida and Texas to gain after Census Bureau reveals 2020 counts

New census data and reapportionment add challenges for the Democrats in the midterm elections, wrote Sarah Bianchi, political analyst at Evercore ISI, in a Tuesday note to clients, pointing out that states that President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election lost a net three congressional seats.

New York could be where Democrats decide to abandon a principled stand against gerrymandering and use their supermajorities to overrule the independent redistricting commission to create a map that nets Democrats four more seats.

Also Check: Who Was The Leader Of The Radical Republicans

Nbc News Polls Predicts Republicans Will Win House Back In Massive Landslide

August 18, 2021, 7:40 am310 Views

According to a new poll, Republicans are on track to retake the House in a historic landslide in 2022.; And this isnt according to Fox News or another right-wing source, this is coming from NBC.

Based on all factors, youd have to consider Republicans the early favorites for the House majority in 2022, poll tracker David Wasserman told NBC.

Democrats best hope is that Bidens approval rating stays above 50 percent and that Republicans have a tougher time turning out their voters without Trump on the ballot.

Bigleaguepolitics.com reports: The NBC report cites the all-too-predictable trend of the presidents party losing House seats in midterm elections, Democrats choosing not to run for reelection in some cases, and Republicans reaping the benefits of increased online donations, which are now on par with those of Democrats.

As for the Senate, its anyones guess as to what will happen. The chamber is currently deadlocked at 50-50, and at least five GOP senators have announced that they will retire after next years midterms.

2022 will be an interesting and impactful year. Keep checking back with;Big League Politics;for midterm election coverage.

House Passes $35t Budget Framework After 10 Dem Moderates Cave To Pelosi

Trump has ‘no plans’ for third party but will help Republicans win back House and Senate in 2022

The House Democrat in charge of making;sure the party retains control of the chamber after next years midterm elections is warning that a course correction is needed or they could find themselves the minority again with current polling showing the Democrats would lose the majority if elections were held now.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told a closed-door lunch last week that if the midterms were held now, Republicans would win control of the House, Politico reported Tuesday.

Maloney advised the gathering that Democrats have to embrace and promote President Bidens agenda because it registers with swing voters.

We are not afraid of this data Were not trying to hide this, Tim Persico, executive director of the Maloney-chaired DCC,;told Politico;in an interview.

If use it, were going to hold the House. Thats what this data tells us, but we gotta get in action,;Persico said.

Maloney, in an interview with NPR, said issues like climate change, infrastructure, the expanded child tax credits, immigration policies and election reforms will;attract voters next fall.

Were making a bet on substance, Maloney said. Whats the old saying any jackass can kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build one. Its harder to build it than to kick it down. And so were the party thats going to build the future.

Maloneys dire warning failed to surprise some Democrats who have been sounding similar alarms.;

Read Also: Did Trump Say Republicans Are The Dumbest

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

What Happens When SEO and CRO Conflict?

Posted by willcritchlow

Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.

In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?

In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.

Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.

So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?

But first, some evidence

There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:

And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:

But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:

So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?

Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:

If you’re interested in the technical details of how we do the testing, you can read more about the setup of a full funnel test here. (Thanks to my colleagues Craig Bradford and Tom Anthony for concepts and diagrams that appear throughout this post).

But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.

An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing

In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.

We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:

After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:

Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:

By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):

Is this the full picture, though?

What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:

If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:

Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:

So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:

Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact

Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:

We would not:

Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:

When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:

The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:

Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:

Most of the time, we want to see if making a change will improve performance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up? But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales? In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant. If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.

Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.

All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.

The future for effective, accountable SEO

There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:

1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally

I talked in a recent Whiteboard Friday about the surprising results we are seeing from testing, and the increasing need to test against the Google black box:

I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:

2. User signals are going to grow in importance

The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.

I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

What Happens When SEO and CRO Conflict?

Posted by willcritchlow

Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.

In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?

In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.

Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.

So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?

But first, some evidence

There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:

And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:

But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:

So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?

Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:

If you’re interested in the technical details of how we do the testing, you can read more about the setup of a full funnel test here. (Thanks to my colleagues Craig Bradford and Tom Anthony for concepts and diagrams that appear throughout this post).

But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.

An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing

In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.

We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:

After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:

Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:

By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):

Is this the full picture, though?

What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:

If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:

Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:

So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:

Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact

Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:

We would not:

Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:

When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:

The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:

Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:

Most of the time, we want to see if making a change will improve performance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up? But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales? In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant. If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.

Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.

All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.

The future for effective, accountable SEO

There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:

1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally

I talked in a recent Whiteboard Friday about the surprising results we are seeing from testing, and the increasing need to test against the Google black box:

I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:

2. User signals are going to grow in importance

The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.

I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

What Happens When SEO and CRO Conflict?

Posted by willcritchlow

Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.

In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?

In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.

Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.

So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?

But first, some evidence

There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:

And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:

But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:

So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?

Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:

If you’re interested in the technical details of how we do the testing, you can read more about the setup of a full funnel test here. (Thanks to my colleagues Craig Bradford and Tom Anthony for concepts and diagrams that appear throughout this post).

But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.

An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing

In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.

We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:

After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:

Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:

By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):

Is this the full picture, though?

What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:

If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:

Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:

So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:

Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact

Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:

We would not:

Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:

When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:

The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:

Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:

Most of the time, we want to see if making a change will improve performance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up? But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales? In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant. If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.

Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.

All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.

The future for effective, accountable SEO

There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:

1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally

I talked in a recent Whiteboard Friday about the surprising results we are seeing from testing, and the increasing need to test against the Google black box:

I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:

2. User signals are going to grow in importance

The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.

I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!