#i always have to check multiple news websites every day for one of my classes and my surprise to see the topic as a headline

[pedriscroquettes]

what’s happening with barca and america?

lol nothing you just don’t see football on national headlines over here unless it’s something serious or about christian pulisic (lol). especially now that the government of catalunya asked real madrid to take down the video it’s a serious topic.

[pancakeke]

Advice for someone who wants to pick up a new hobby and work on it consistently? Maybe even multiple hobbies?

Love your blog btw

Watch lots of youtube tutorials and follow lots of artists that are into the things you want to get into! (like here on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) this helps with inspiration and gives you background knowledge on how things work for when you start up a hobby for yourself. Local libraries have random classes you can take so it's worth checking them out to see if they offer anything that you'd like to learn (mine does a lot of technology based stuff these days like 3D printing). Also if you have the cash, community colleges offer classes for cool things like pottery, glass blowing, sewing, watercolor, scrapbooking, and more. I checked my local community college's website and depending on the course, class fees were between $35 and $225 (the cheaper ones are one day classes and the more expensive ones are multiple day courses. also they're after hours on weekdays and on weekends)

If you can find them, join small communities for the hobbies you're interested in! so like smaller subreddits and discords (big ones suck and are mostly people showing off how much money they can spend tbh. but small ones generally have cool knowledgeable people who share progress photos, tutorials, and will help you with whatever questions you may have). Immersing yourself in a hobby environment helps with inspiration and the initiative to create!

Start nice organized bookmarks in your browser and bookmark everything that you find cool or helpful, be that tutorials, tools, materials, other artists' works, what have you. use subfolders so everything is easy to find later.

Keep a notebook on hand for your ideas. I use a cheap bullet journal because it makes it easy to create little sections on each page for multiple ideas. also get one of those multi colored pens to keep different ideas easy to differentiate from each other. This is helpful for before you start a hobby so you can plan out what you really want to do and what you need. once you start a hobby it helps you organize your plans, list materials, draw out patterns, etc.

Last thing is be reasonable with your money. always check second hand sales for equipment before buying new if you can risk it. I got a TON of knitting stuff from Goodwill once. I also got a knitting machine from eBay as part of an estate sale for half of what they normally sell for. shopgoodwill is also a good resource, as well as Facebook sales. Craigslist is still out there but god it's a pain to use. If you have a local community for a hobby become a part of it because (other than meeting cool people and having fun) you can get lucky and inherit old equipment from people for little cost or even free when they upgrade their setups.

If used isn't an option, be savvy with sales. Use camelcamelcamel to track Amazon's prices to make sure sales are *really* sales and not instances of sellers inflating prices and then discounting them back to the normal cost. As much as marketing emails suck, subscribe to emails for sites that sell things you need for your hobbies (ex. Joann Fabrics, Blick, Tandy Leather, Dharma Trading, and smaller independent supply stores).

Once you have a good idea and initiative, start small and within reason for your skill level. Don't expect to build a work room overnight or create masterpieces immediately. Build a mindset that perfection isn't real and every piece you create is another step forward in your journey as an artist. You will never stop learning and growing so there will never be a point when you are "done" and can rest on your laurels. Even abject failure in creating is experience you need so that you can fully understand the limits of yourself and your medium as well as how to work around those limits to continue creating. It can also give you a chance to stop and think critically about your methods in situations where you had a reasonable idea but went about it in a less than ideal way (<= I do this thing constantly lol, first ideas arent always the most efficient...)

Remember that creating is about fun and expressing yourself. If you arent having fun don't feel like you need to keep pushing yourself to work on something. abandoning unfun projects is 100% fine. Your energy is better spent working on things you can feel invested in anyway.

So um TLDR: immerse yourself in inspiration and community, do your research, stay organized, and have reasonable expectations for yourself. also have fun :)

[word-hunt-cheat-l3]

word hunt cheat free JH04#

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 This word hunt cheat gives you a list of unscramble word ideas ranked by length (key driver of points) and shows you where they are on the word grid. Helps you win every gamepigeon word hunt minigame with this beautiful visual solver. 25 votes, 23 comments. I got exhausted from always losing to my friends in word hunt (we play on our iPads in class), so I learned web. Word Hunt Answers – No timers! Play at your own pace! – No lives! Play unlimited word puzzle games! – Hints available to help you complete the word search. 9 This word hunt cheat gives you a list of unscramble word ideas ranked by length key driver of points and shows you where they are on the word grid. It is designed to help solve Game Pigeon's word hunt game. Enter your letters in the box need 16 letters for 4x4 boggle grid and hit the "Get Words" button. The grid will populate with the letter tiles and the words you can find in the grid will appear in a table below. This guides you through the word search puzzle. Page through the scrambled letters in the word list to find the ones you feel comfortable with playing in your word game. This word hunt cheat is based on an anagram dictionary; we've created a couple of alternative versions of the solver which have been tweaked for different games. It works regardless of word length. We have another version of the boggle word finder that is a scramble with friends cheat with scores for that game. We cover different sizes for any android device word puzzle game. Have fun with your word hunt game need a new puzzle? We've started keeping a list of places to play. The leading 4x4 boggle game that we're aware of is Zygna's Scramble with Friends. Pogo also has a game called Boggle Bash, which is another option for those of your who like to play 4x4 boggle. There are several variants of boggle available at the Puzzle Baron's website - they call it Word Twist and have 4x4 and 5x5 versions available. Know of another version of the game word grid search using 4x4, 5x5, or 6x6 grids? Send us an email and describe any special rules, we can take a look at customizing a solver One potential strategy element to consider in selecting words for traditional boggle word puzzle games is the likelihood of another player finding the same letter word in the grid. This is very much a judgement call - this boggle solver identifies a list of words, ranked by points, but you may want to focus your efforts on the more obscure selection. The boggle cheat isn't perfect - if you're really good at rattling off prefixes and suffixes for a word including plurals , it may be faster to just do this manually as you play. In this case, you would grab a root-word from the boggle cheat DESIRE and watch out for obvious versions of the word desires, desired, etc. Looking for new puzzles and a word hunt game? We're regularly expanding our collection of puzzles, word solver tools, and hidden word search game s. Check out our Free Cryptogram puzzles if you are good at recognizing patterns. These are famous or funny quotes encryped with a scrambled alphabet code - if you can guess the code, you can decipher the message. Or check out our new word swapz game if you like unscrambling words and spelling challenges. Flip letters in the original word back and forth until you manage to figure out all the meaningful words in the puzzle. Use tricks like double letters, remaining letters, anagrams, multiple words, and clues to missing words or different words. Or even apps. Of course, if you're in school it's important to keep your grades up during these digital learning days. That's why we created a Finals Calculator to make sure your final grade is still on track. This simple calculator handles the essential question every student asks: What do I need to get on my final to pass? Because in reality, if you're bored enough to read this far down the page, you've probably been too busy with words with friends , scrabble words, vocabulary words, boggle solving , playing word chums , or using another word cheat this spring Stuck solving a puzzle? No worries, we can help with that too! We offer a wide variety of word games solvers and tools to help crack pen and paper ciphers! We have solvers for boggle, scrabble, and tools to help unscramble words. You can even use them to solve words with friends and the specialized versions of boggle Scramble with Friends and large matrixes - 5 x 5 boggle and 6 x 6 boggle. These tools can also be used as a word crack cheat and ruzzle cheat. Finally, if you need to make a word scramble or crossword puzzle - for a class exercise, business icebreaker, party favor, or other special occaision - we've got tools for that too. You can even save you work for future events and classes. Or to settle a score with your friendly neighborhood word crack cheat or ruzzle cheat, of course Have them do a word search on ancient bolivian archery techniques. That'll teach em Start Prev Next End. Using This word hunt cheat: This word hunt cheat gives you a list of unscramble word ideas ranked by length key driver of points and shows you where they are on the word grid. More From Hanging Hyena: Looking for new puzzles and a word hunt game? Or even apps Of course, if you're in school it's important to keep your grades up during these digital learning days. Please send all feedback, complaints, and lucrative sponsorship deals to admin hanginghyena. All Rights Reserved. We like cookies and use them on the site, per our Privacy Policy.

[cecisinjapan]

Multi-Day Catch-up (AGAIN)

—

May 17, 2022

Midterm day. The three hours of test were broken into four sections: 50 minutes for the essay, 70 minutes for the reading and grammar sections combined, 30 minutes of listening, and 20 minutes for kanji. Thankfully they gave us a ten minute break between each section, which made it slightly less overwhelming. I think it did well on every section but the essay. I think that one was a mess. It’s so frustrating to try to write an essay in Japanese because I can’t write as smoothly as I want.

I had been planning to do something fun after the test, but I ended up going back to the dorm and just resting for the afternoon, not doing much of anything. Eventually, I did leave my room, but that was to hit up the drugstore for some eye drops since my allergies decided to act up. I ended up getting some of the eye drops that, from my understanding, are pretty unique to Japan: they include menthol as an ingredient. Menthol in your eye is a weird feeling, but I can see why they’re popular. And they did help with the allergic itching, so that’s a victory.

—

May 18, 2022

After the midterm, classes continued as normal. There’s always more to learn, after all. However, they forgot to publish the prep work on the website in advance, so everyone was a bit more frustrated with the day than we needed to be.

After class, those of us heading to Kamakura on Saturday had a mandatory pre-travel meeting. We were given a rundown of the history of the area and why it was so important in the past and were left with instructions to show up at school at 8:30am on Saturday to head that way.

This was the first nice and sunny day in a little while, so when I got back to the dorm, I had to do my laundry while I did my homework. I really needed that sunlight though. When it’s gray day after gray day, I have so little energy. We’ve been having so many overcast and rainy days that it’s hard to believe this isn’t actually the rainy season yet. That comes here in a few weeks. Not super thrilled for that.

—

May 19, 2022

Getting to school this morning was a trial. When we got to the station, we discovered that our usual train wasn’t letting anyone through the gates, so we went further into the station to check the other lines. There were huge crowds around every gate as more and more people were arriving. We couldn’t find information about why our usual Tokyo Metro line wasn’t running, but we did find information that the JR Yamanote line was expecting to resume service around 9:10 (our usual train is around 8:40), so we decided to try to catch that one, since there was at least some sort of projected time for it. For reference, class starts at 9:30, so we all had to send emails to teachers to alert them that we were likely to be late. One super packed Yamanote train ride later and a transfer back to Tokyo Metro, we managed to get into the classroom at 9:31.

I don’t handle the feeling of being late well, so I spent the entirety of class feeling off, which was not fun.

Then of course this was a day with multiple meetings after class. There was one related to our dorm, since I live in the school-owned dorm building and we just got a new dorm manager. Thankfully it didn’t really require any mental power on my part, so the fact I was still feeling off wasn’t a problem. The other meeting was the conversation class. I said maybe one or two things, but that worked out fine. Two people tend to dominate the conversations every time and the teacher seems mostly fine with that, so I took the day to sit back and just listen for the most part.

After all that, though, I needed to take the afternoon to just rest and reset so I could do better the next day. So I rested for the afternoon and evening.

—

May 20, 2022

The reset worked. I was able to bring myself back to normal for class. Which was good because we were treated a surprise: a chance to have a conversation with young Japanese people (I know our teachers are Japanese, but it’s different talking to someone who’s used to teaching foreigners versus an average young person). That was fun, but since it was a surprise, it was a bit intimidating.

I also got a chance to talk with one of the Chinese girls who was surprised to find out I was 27 the other day. She told me that they had all though I was approximately high school aged??? I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that they thought I could pass for ten years younger than I really am.

After class, I ended up going for lunch with the Korean girl from my class. She really likes burgers, so we ended up at a burger place. It was funny because the place was trying very hard to be American themed (American flag and everything) but everything was just ever so slightly not-American. The burger was good though. It was my first time having avocado in a while. It was also my first time having uncooked onion in a while, and that seemed to set off an allergic reaction in my throat. Thankfully it wasn’t bad, but I had forgotten about being wary of raw onion since it’s not as common to have in meals here.

Since it’s a Friday, the usual crew was planning to head out for the evening. I had been on the fence about going since finding out going to Kamakura would require being at school at 8:30 on Saturday, but I ended up going anyway. It was fun. We started at a place that billed itself as a “beer pong bar.” There was only one beer pong table, but it was digitized so that it kept track of cups for you. Really neat stuff. We did two rounds on it (I was on the losing team both times, unfortunately). But since there was only one table, you had to take turns with other groups. The rest of the time, we played some darts on the high-tech darts board. I honestly think this was my first time actually playing darts. When I started, I couldn’t reliably hit the board, but by the third game, I somehow dominated. The others thought I was messing with them, but part of me wonders if they let me win. The board only allowed for four players, so when another friend showed up, I swapped out to let them play. They definitely should have won against me, I think. But it was fun either way.

We left the beer pong place shortly after nine and ended up at karaoke for a couple hours. I really love karaoke. It’s so fun.

It was approaching 11:30 when we left, which is an iffy time when the trains stop around midnight. Thankfully, we managed to get on a train (I think it was the second-to-last), so that wasn’t a problem. But it did mean I got back to the dorm past midnight when I needed to be back at school at 8:30. Not ideal, but I think it was worth it (probably should have had less to drink, though).

[lovelyirony]

hi hello i am feeling very angsty so: rhodeytony ft tony's worrying lack of interest in avoiding getting kidnapped and his bodyguard rhodes' increasing stress levels to save a boss that doesn't want to be saved (and, if the flutter in his heart should be anything to go by - should not be his boss anymore). bodyguard to lovers??

Rhodey is a good bodyguard. Hell, he’s the best. 

That was why Pepper Potts hired him, after all. He’s not easy to fool, can follow anyone with a dogged determination that nearly defies human nature. He’s had successful stories before with glowing reviews from multiple people from all different threatened backgrounds. 

(Including at least three world leaders and a pope.) 

Tony Stark is...new. Well, nearly new. He’s a businessman, which isn’t anything out of the ordinary for Rhodey to deal with. 

…except Tony’s highly eclectic, a billionaire, and purposely makes his behavior as erratic as possible. 

It’s fun. What can Rhodey say? He loves a challenge, and Tony is about as challenging as they come. 

-

When he first starts, Tony tries every trick in the book. Rhodey still sticks to him, although he does leave some distance. Tony tries to make him uncomfortable by bringing just about everyone who looks home, and all Rhodey says is, “you gonna feed them cereal when they wake up? Because that’s all you have in your pantry right now, and you don’t pay me to do the shopping.” 

Tony scowls at that, and then changes his strategy. 

-

It’s an odd strategy. 

Tony decides he will just make Rhodey his friend, starting with the nickname of “Rhodey.” 

“That’s stupid,” Rhodey says, because he can already tell it will stick. 

“Not my problem, just my solution,” Tony grins. “Now come on, we’re getting burgers.” 

They’re at a sit-down restaurant. One of Tony’s favorites, actually. Rhodey is not sure why he’s sitting down across from the man with the most influence in the world, but he is. 

“So, what’s new with you? Who are you?” Tony asks. “Pepper sent me your file. You’re from Philly, right?” 

“Oh my god, you sound weird when you say it like that,” Rhodey says, deciding against formality as he basically tells Tony Stark that he sounds weird and shouldn’t say “Philly.” 

“Oh what, is that not what the locals call it?” 

“I’m going to take you there and they’re going to beat you up.” 

“Not the worst Sunday night I’ve ever had,” Tony mentions. “Hey, look at the menu. I don’t want you to flounder when the waitress shows up and you know fuck-all about what they have to offer.” 

“Okay asshole, any recommendations?” 

“The banana milkshake and bacon-burger.” 

Rhodey looks at the menu. 

He does end up with the bacon-burger, but chooses strawberry for his flavor of milkshake. 

“You traitor.” 

“Oh am I? Well then let me tell Pepper that you stole the last good pen she had then-” 

Tony flings a fry at him, and Rhodey laughs. 

- 

Here’s a concerning thing: Tony has a very “c’est la vie” approach about kidnapping. 

Like he genuinely doesn’t really give a shit if he knows what’s going on, or even if he doesn’t. 

Rhodey was eagle-eyed and chased a van three fucking blocks and caught up to the driver, wherein he punched his lights out and got Tony out. His hands were bound in zip-ties and his suit was rumpled, but Tony just blinked at him. 

“You think you broke a racing record with that?” 

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did they take anything?” 

Rhodey’s all over Tony, checking for any injuries, any stolen wallets or watches, and thank god everything is there. (Not that Tony would really care if anything was stolen, save for his sunglasses. He spends far too much on those, in Rhodey’s opinion.) 

“Okay geez,” Tony says, batting Rhodey’s hands away. “I’m fine. These people were amateurs. Shit, I’m running late for my consultation meeting, aren’t I?” 

“You just got kidnapped,” Rhodey says, tone rife with disbelief. “You just got taken and your concern is with the consultation meeting?” 

“Well I figured that you were going to come by or I’d be gone a lot longer, but now that I’m not? Yeah. Yeah, I am concerned with the consultation meeting. It’s a tech start-up company, only not that shitty Silicon-nice-guy start-up. It’s a more inclusive thing. I don’t know, I read their little ‘about’ section on their website. Which needs work. But that’s besides the point.” 

Rhodey just follows, dumb in disbelief. 

The few rare times that previous clients have been kidnapped or even attempted, they’ve needed a day to recuperate at minimum. They were shaken up, and usually beefed up the security for the rest of time after it. They also scheduled therapy appointments. 

Tony treated this like it was a traffic jam and he was only running five minutes behind. 

- 

The second time it happens when Rhodey’s there, it lasts a little longer. 

Rhodey has to admit, he maybe did some...under-the-radar looks. The FBI wasn’t moving fast enough, and the legal channels weren’t up to snuff. And besides, Tony did say that he could use Jarvis if he really wanted to. 

(Turns out they both went to MIT at the same time, and Tony had been that obnoxiously short guy in his econ class that rarely showed up, but when he did he showed up in a suspiciously nice outfit.) 

It was a weekend. Rhodey had gone away for two seconds to get a drink for Tony and then he was gone. 

It was...bad. 

The problem is this: 

Tony definitely doesn’t need to be kidnapped as often as he is. He has so many inventions that can prevent that, he’s sold quite a few of them to the military. 

But for some fucking reason, he doesn’t want to be saved. No, he’s content just going along with what’s happening, even though everyone else around him wants him back. Needs him back. 

He finds him bruised and tied up to a shitty folding chair. 

“Hey darling,” Tony says, lips a bloody red. “Can you believe this chair? I would’ve thought they would at least have gotten something a tad nicer. I am their best-dressed guest, after all.” 

Rhodey looks over the torn shirt and the pants that have all but been shredded. His shoes are battered and stained beyond repair. 

“Don’t,” Rhodey says. He sounds tired. He is tired. “Don’t do this.” 

“Don’t do what, get kidnapped? I hardly try,” Tony snaps. “Or do I just have a sign on my back that you didn’t know was there?” 

“You know I was in the Air Force,” Rhodey snaps back. “I got high enough clearance that I was one of the guys who got to see what brand new toy you sent our way. I know you could use any of those, shit, you probably tested it out, so you would know.” 

“And your point?” Tony asks. “What, you’re saying I should know better? Saying you know better than me?” 

“You know what? Yeah, yeah I am saying that,” Rhodey yells as he’s untying him. “I am fucking saying that I know more than you because you couldn’t give less of a shit if you tried about your own well-being! You were kidnapped and I’ve been running myself ragged trying to get you back, and you just don’t care!” 

Tony stares at him. Really stares at him. 

“Let’s go home.” 

Nothing else is said in the car ride home. Tony can’t even look at Rhodey. 

They go home, where Pepper greets Tony with a hug and makes him swear not to leave again, and Tony says “I promise,” only they both know that he’s lying. 

But they’re not calling him out on it yet. No, not tonight. 

- 

Rhodey stays. Technically he doesn’t have to. Jarvis is the most advanced artificial intelligence system in the world. Hell, he’s the only one that’s even in his league, but Rhodey just...feels better staying. 

And Tony’s mansion is a gargantuan structure with about twenty different rooms to choose from, so Rhodey gets a nice view and tries to go to bed. 

He’s never gotten enough sleep. He knows he never would. That’s why the army loved him: he could be up at any hour and he’d be fine. That’s why his dad called him the bane of his existence in a loving manner: Rhodey would be up at four in the morning filling out the crossword before anyone else could. 

He’s up at four a.m. making breakfast. 

Tony’s pantry is still shit, but it looks like Pepper went shopping for him or had someone else do it, because he actually has eggs and juice and actual food instead of the odd pickle jar or way-too-old yogurt. 

“You’re...up,” Tony says. 

Rhodey turns around. 

“Sorry. I, um. Stayed.” 

“It’s fine,” Tony says awkwardly. “What are you making?” 

“Omelet.” 

“I always mess those up,” he says. “Either too much cheese or I forget I’m cooking it.” 

“You want one?” 

“You gonna make me one?” 

“Accidentally cracked one too many eggs, so yes. You want onions and spinach in yours?” 

“Sure,” Tony says. “What are you doing up?” 

“Always bad at sleeping,” Rhodey answers. “Can never really stay asleep for too long.” 

“Forget to take your melatonin gummies?” Tony answers, grinning. 

Rhodey can see a bruise on his collarbone. 

“You sleep okay?” 

“No, but I rarely ever do,” Tony says. “Especially after yesterday’s fiasco.” 

“You mean the whole weekend,” Rhodey says, putting the rest of the eggs into the pan. “Can’t imagine that was fun.” 

“Oh come on, it was a ball,” Tony answers sarcastically. “They let me play cops-and-robbers and I was given pizza. Clearly it was a fantastic time.” 

Rhodey stares at Tony. 

“You know in the contract that I had you sign it specifically states that you have to let me help you, right?” 

“It says you have to rescue me regardless of feelings or previous obligations,” Tony says. 

“Rescuing you doesn’t just mean I chase after vans and track you down in an abandoned warehouse, it means that I rescue you from those situations before they can happen. But I can only do that if you agree that you won’t get kidnapped,” he says. 

“And what, I want to?” Tony asks. “Do I say that?” 

“You don’t have to,” Rhodey says, flipping the omelet over. “You never think you’re worth rescuing it because you think you’re never going to be good enough and I think you think that you owe me for giving a shit.” 

Tony looks at him. 

“You’re really honest.” 

“I try to be.” 

“I love that about you.” 

Rhodey’s hand shakes slightly as he moves the omelet a bit in the pan. He hopes Tony doesn’t notice. 

“Well I would love it if you stopped being kidnapped.” 

“Aye aye, Colonel Rhodes,” Tony says, saluting. Rhodey rolls his eyes. 

“Oh my god, do not.” 

“What, am I not supposed to thank our armed services for making this country safe?” he mocks, standing up. “For going above and beyond the call of patriotism and helping keep Americans everywhere safe?” 

Rhodey threatens to eat his omelet when he breaks into singing the national anthem. 

- 

There’s an...understanding. 

Tony starts taking up training with Happy and almost agrees to regular training with Rhodey until Rhodey wants him to get up at six and do some workouts, and he yells “No!” after one workout session. 

Rhodey pointedly pretends like he’s not staring at Tony’s chest when he lifts up his shirt to wipe away the sweat. 

“Come on Rhodey my darling, let’s do breakfast.” 

Tony dragging him to breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. It’s...nice. Rhodey ignores it when Tony waggles his eyebrows as he takes the check and calls him “darling, honey, baby,” and he lets him because it sounds nice. 

He doesn’t say anything to Tony. No, you can’t date your boss. It’s unprofessional as hell and Tony probably is just doing it because Rhodey’s in close proximity and they have a good banter going. 

- 

The next time that Tony has an attempted kidnapping, Rhodey is there. 

He’s there, and he’s being taken away, dragged from Tony, and Tony for the first time looks terrified. 

Rhodey tries to struggle, tries to do anything, because Tony has to get away, and he...

He’s knocked unconscious. 

-

When he wakes up, his head hurts worse than it ever has, and for a moment he’s pissed at Tony because he forgets that he’s been kidnapped and there’s no control over the thermostat because the room is hot as all get out. 

And then he sees Tony across from him, and he’s never seen Tony angry. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, voice shaking. “I’ll get us out of here. I promise. I’m sorry.” 

“Not your fault we have assholes take us,” Rhodey says. “But god I would kill for some air conditioning.” 

Tony smiles a bit at that. 

- 

Here’s a problem: you cannot give Tony Stark anything if you want him to not escape. Either that or he has to be unconscious because he’s a stubborn son of a bitch. 

And they used actual handcuffs to keep him there. God, what a joke. 

Tony learned how to break out of handcuffs when he was twenty and chained to a bedpost on accident. (Long story.) 

This is nothing. 

But the problem is that Rhodey’s here. His bodyguard who really shouldn’t be putting his life on the line for someone as shitty as Tony, but here they are, and he has to get him out. 

“Follow my lead,” Tony whispers. 

“Well of course I will, who else has as much experience being kidnapped as you?” Rhodey mutters. 

“Okay is now going to be the time where you sass me? You’re here too. I could leave you.” 

“You’re not gonna do that, Pepper would make you come back.” 

“No she wouldn’t.” 

“Yeah she would!” 

“Not after I tell her that you used the last of her salad dressing.” 

“Shit.” 

Tony snorts, looking at the room. They don’t have security cameras, which is just...questionable. Oh my god, he got kidnapped by amateurs. 

He’s kind of embarrassed. 

Rhodey gets free, and they’re both headed towards a door, and Rhodey picks up a stray part of a metal pole, and Tony cannot lie and say he’s not intrigued by that. 

Not saying he hopes Rhodey gets to use it. 

He’s just curious how he’ll utilize it. 

- 

They get to just. Walk out. They fucking walk out. What kind of people did they get kidnapped from? It can’t be that easy, can it? 

It can’t be...

It is. 

Okay sure Tony is driving in a hotwired car and they’re being shot at, but all things considered that’s not the worst thing. And the truck is probably considered stolen anyways, and once Tony makes it to the highway, it’s not like they’ll be able to follow without making it onto national news, not that they haven’t already. 

Pepper’s very effective at getting things to trend on national news when she wants to. 

- 

Rhodey is sitting on a beach chair. He shouldn’t be, and he also shouldn’t be drinking a mimosa because it’s four p.m. and definitely the morning, but he figures since he got kidnapped he’s allowed at least one mimosa. 

“So. Your first kidnapping?” Tony asks. “All things considered, yours went well. I think next time we should go to Wendy’s or something, I was starving-” 

“I’m just. I’m glad we’re okay,” Rhodey says. “But yeah. Maybe next time. If there is a next time. I’m going to I think make you hold hands with me so that you don’t get napped by terrible, shitty people.” 

“You could’ve just asked to hold my hand, we didn’t need to be kidnapped together,” Tony says. 

“Hm, is that a breach of contract?” Rhodey teases. 

“Only if Pepper decides to enforce it, and she won’t because you’re the first bodyguard to have an actual success story with me,” Tony says. “So. I’m thinking maybe we skip the kidnapping next time and go straight for dinner.” 

“Oh thank god, I thought you were gonna say a fast food restaurant.” 

“I still could, you don’t know,” Tony grins, winking. “What if our first date is to Burger King? What are you gonna do?” 

“Be mad that I still like you,” Rhodey grumbles. 

Tony cackles, dropping a kiss onto his hand. 

“Do you think I should get another bodyguard or will dragging you away during a party be too awkward for them?” 

“...I’ll think about it.” 

(They don’t get a new bodyguard. 

No matter how much the other security complains that Rhodey’s the only one who knows where Tony is at all times, and they can’t exactly ask them if they’re busy doing...things. 

Rhodey finds it hilarious.) 

[ladynoiresupremacy]

Falling For You || Miraculous Ladybug AU - Chapter 2

AO3 | Falling - AU Series

[Previous] | [Next]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After her encounter with that new girl yesterday, Marinette was in a sort of daze. She had never felt this way before, yet the girl was on her mind for the entirety of that night. Her beautiful chocolate brown eyes gleaming with an unreadable emotion, her short flowing hair, a few shades darker than her own… 

She sighed dreamily as she relaxed into her blankets, patrol had gone fairly well - sure she wasn't too thrilled about Crimson bailing on her and leaving her to do her job alone in the rain, but meeting that girl had certainly lifted her spirits. 

She was on the brink of sleep, her thoughts becoming muddled together until one thought, louder than the rest, was suddenly brought to her attention and she shot up in bed, her eyes full of panic.

“I forgot to ask her name!” Marinette whisper-yelled, aware her parents were sleeping just a few doors away.

Plagg, who had been curled up asleep on her pillow, gave no reaction to the horror-struck expression on her face and simply muttered under his breath before rolling over again.

“Plagg! What was that anyway?” Marinette demanded, “I mean Princess? What kind of nickname is that?”

“Hey, I didn't flirt with that girl, you did.” Plagg's voice was muffled as he tried to tune out her voice under the blankets.

“Well it was still your influence.” 

“Meh.” The small kwami shrugged before rolling back over.

Marinette rolled her eyes, frowning slightly as she reached out for her phone - blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the harsh brightness of her screen. Almost two in the morning, she groaned to herself, maybe she and Crimson needed to talk about how late their patrols were getting.

A brief notification flashed up on her phone, it was Adrien of course, sending a string of memes in their shared group chat with Alya and Nino. Marinette scoffed lightly before she placed her phone back down next to her pillow, not really in the mood to chat so early in the morning.

She could hear Plagg's soft snores from the other side of her pillow, careful not to wake him again she moved slowly as she turned over and pulled the blankets up to her chin. She could think about that girl later, right now all she wanted was some sleep before she faced another day at school. 

Sleep came as quickly as before only this time she managed to remain asleep without an sudden realizations hitting her. 

~~~

Though it felt like only a few seconds until she was woken once again by the sound of her alarm blaring underneath her pillow, Plagg floated above her, his expression unreadable. Marinette blinked the sleep out of her eyes as she reached under her pillow to shut the alarm off. 

Crap . Her eyes widened. She was going to be late - she hopped out of bed, almost stumbling over but luckily she caught herself and proceeded to run over to the closet to find some clothes to wear.

“Why didn't you tell me it was so late?” Marinette hissed accusingly at Plagg.

“Is that my job?” Plagg twitched an ear casually, “hey where's my cheese, you were too busy thinkin' about that girl last night that you forgot to give me any.” 

“I'll give you your stinkin' cheese once I'm dressed and actually able to think.” Marinette retorted, picking out a pair of jeans, a plain polo and a nice blue checkered shirt - maybe it's time I did switch things up a bit. She thought.

Racing into the bathroom she quickly put the outfit on, brushing her teeth just as fast she darted back into her room, pulling on her shoes and socks. Plagg watched, eyes lit up with amusement as she stumbled over multiple times in her panic.

She pulled her hair up into a small ponytail, not having enough time to put her hair into its usual style she grabbed her bag and gestured for Plagg to go inside.

“Cheese.” The black kwami said simply, folding his tiny arms across his chest.

“It's in the bag, now hurry up we need to go!”

Plagg zipped over as soon as she told him where the cheese was, she heard his quiet, contented purrs as he chewed at the camembert inside. She sighed, climbing down the ladder and walking through the bakery. Her parents were doing some deliveries early so she wasn't surprised when she didn't see them up to their usual business in the morning. 

Usually it was her mom that woke her up if she slept in so late, Plagg wasn't usually bothered much if they were late or not, he just cared about his morning cheese. 

She heaved a sigh, slinging her bag over her shoulder as she made her way outside, careful to remember to lock the doors as she did. She navigated her way through the busy streets of Paris, checking her phone every few seconds to keep a close eye on the time. 

As she walked, her mind wandered back to last night, the girl - she really should've remembered to ask her name - was at the center of her thoughts. Better just forget about it now, she thought to herself, gripping the straps of her backpack tightly, it's just one girl in a sea of millions, I probably won't see her again. 

She met Alya at the foot of the stairs to their school, the other girl was tapping her foot against the pavement rhythmically, a huge grin lit up her features.

“Hey, not too late, an improvement.” Alya congratulated.

“What're you so happy about?” Marinette questioned, coming to a stop beside her.

“Oh nothing,” Alya's smile got somehow larger, “just… guess who got an exclusive interview with the Bug himself!”

An interview with Crimson? Huh, Marinette never really thought Crim would be so open to doing interviews, even with a lesser known website such as the Crimson Blog. Though she had to owe it to Alya, that girl sure was dedicated to her work.

“How'd you manage that?” She said, smiling as the two started towards the door together.

“After yesterday's akuma attack he had some time left so I just quickly asked if he'd be willing to do a short interview about himself and Lady Noire. I tried to get her too but she was already gone after the attack.” She seemed slightly disappointed about that fact, admittedly that made Marinette's ego grow a little bit - she'd always thought that not many people cared about her compared to Crimson.

“I'm sure you'll get her next time.”

“I hope so! I have so many questions about their powers and where they came from—” Alya started babbling on, Marinette listened intently to her friend, still smiling to herself. 

It had been almost a full year since she'd received the ring along with Plagg and her new duty as a protector of Paris - almost a full year since Hawkmoth had started akumatizing innocent people and using them against their will to attempt to gain hers and Crimson's Miraculous.

For whatever purpose that was for.

In that time Marinette had seen a lot of close calls, the battles were tough and only getting tougher, but as long as Crimson was still standing to purify the akuma and fix everything then it was okay. 

Even if it meant sometimes sacrificing herself for his safety.

She shuddered.

Luckily, both she and Alya had a free period to share that morning until their next class after lunch, so the two girls took a seat on a bench closest to the yard. Alya continued talking about her admiration for Crimson and Lady Noire, and Marinette listened, though this was something she heard from Alya almost everyday she was still interested to know every detail.

“Sup dudes!” She raised her head to see Nino striding over, Adrien in tow. The blonde was beaming at them both.

“Hey babe,” Alya smiled, sitting up to embrace her boyfriend in a delicate hug, both Marinette and Adrien rolled their eyes in unison.

“Hey lovebirds, us single pringle's are tired of watching you guys make out all the time.” Marinette chirped as Alya leaned in for a kiss.

“Yeah I'm kinda feeling like a third wheel here.” Adrien added.

“Fourth wheel.” Marinette corrected.

“Just because you guys can't find partners for yourselves doesn't mean you have to be salty about it.” Alya scoffed, giving Nino a brief kiss on the cheek before turning back to face them.

Adrien scoffed, “I could if I wanted to.”

“Alright sunshine incarnate.” 

“I could!”

“Mari couldn't possibly find a girlfriend, she literally shuts down when she so much as looks at a girl.” Nino put in.

“Dude.” Marinette said disapprovingly.

“He's not wrong.” 

Suddenly Adrien snapped his fingers, “I forgot to mention, there's a new student that should be arriving shortly who I want you to meet.”

“New student huh? Who are they?” 

“She should be here pretty soon.”

Alya elbowed Marinette lightly, “looks like this could be your chance to prove us wrong.”

Marinette shot her friend a quick glare.

Adrien looked over his shoulder, he then smiled and turned on his heel, “there she is. Hey Kagami!” He called out.

Marinette looked over to see a strikingly familiar girl walking up to them, dressed in a black shirt with a checkered red tie, a formal white blazer with a skirt matching the pattern of her tie and red sneakers. Dark hair, a few shades deeper than her own and dazzling, brown eyes.

No way, no way, no fucking way. Marinette thought in disbelief.

“Guys this is Kagami, she recently moved to Paris. Kagami, these are my friends, Alya, her boyfriend Nino and Marinette.” Adrien said cheerfully.

“Hey girl.” Alya said warmly.

“Nice to meet you dudette!” Nino dipped his hat in greeting.

Marinette could only manage a casual wave.

“It's a pleasure to meet all of you, I hope we can all become good friends.” Kagami said, the edges or her lips twitched upwards into a small smile.

Why couldn't she talk to her? She certainly had no problem with doing it last night. She cringed, remembering how she'd flirted and called her Princess . Way to screw up a first impression.

“I'm sure we will, any friend of Adrien is a friend of ours.” Alya told her.

Except Chloe. Marinette added on silently.

“That's very kind of you.” 

The group immediately dissolved into chatter, Alya was on her feet again, suddenly asking Kagami a string of questions.

“So, have you seen Crimson and Lady Noire yet?”

Marinette snapped her head up quickly, her attention pertained towards Kagami once again at Alya's question.

“I encountered Lady Noire last night.” Kagami said casually.

Marinette eagerly waited for her to say more on the subject.

“You talked to Lady Noire? Girl, tell me everything! ” Alya practically squealed.

Kagami seemed surprised, she most likely hadn't had this much social interaction before and was caught off guard.

“Well it was a very short meeting, but I had a small accident and luckily she happened to be passing by.”

“Saved by a heroine on your first day in Paris, what a story!” 

Marinette chuckled to herself.

She looked back up at Kagami who was looking more comfortable around the group already and a warm feeling filled her chest, she really hoped she'd get to know the girl more. Though, that was considering that she'd be able to form a single sentence when talking to her. 

She furrowed her brow slightly, it seemed all the confidence she had as Lady Noire melted away the moment the mask disappeared. Great, just wonderful . 

She swore she could almost feel Plagg's shaking laughter from her purse.

[zakuwatorka]

Do you want to learn Chinese but you don’t know how to start? That’s the post for you! 

Many times I got messages from people who want to learn Chinese Mandarin, but they do not know how to start, what to buy, which website is good or which APP they should download. So I’ve decided to prepare a post where I try to explain as much as I can! Basics about Chinese language, textbooks, useful  APPs and websites. 

Pinyin 拼音  (pīn yīn) Chinese romanization system

The most important thing is to get familiar with sounds and romanization system of Chinese characters.

I recommend you to watch these two videos below:

initials 

finals.

Get familiar with tones too! In Chinese there are 4 tones: 

first tone  ( ˉ ) called flat or high-level tone  妈 mā

second tone ( ˊ ) called rising or high-rising tone 麻 má

third tone ( ˇ ) called falling-rising or low tone 马 mǎ

fourth tone ( ˋ ) called falling or high-falling tone 骂 mà 

plus neutral tone!  吗 ma

If you want to practice your tones and listen to it, I can recommend you this website: Introduction to Tones. 🗣  say initials and finals at loud, 🗣  say at loud every word you learn - multiple times!  🗣  try to record yourself and listen to your audio, 🗣  if you have Chinese friends - send them your audio or try to speak with them, and ask for corrections!  🗣  if you don’t have Chinese friends - you can always send audio to apps like HiNative, HelloTalk or Tandem and see how natives are reacting on your Chinese! 🗣  if you want - you can get Chinese classes - for beginners, it’s a smart move, in my humble opinion (or get a teacher on iTalki).

Characters 汉字 (Hàn zì)

Chinese is a special language because it has characters - not letters. Each character has its own reading and meaning! 

For better understanding them, I would like to recommend you to think about them as small pictures!  There are two types of writing Chinese characters:

traditional  媽 麻 馬 罵 嗎

simplified  妈 麻 马 骂 吗

The traditional one is used in Taiwan and Hongkong and simplified one is used in Mainland China. You can see that the traditional one are more complicated and have more lines!  In the beginning, I’d recommend you to learn 100 most common Chinese Characters. Try to write characters as many as you can - at the very beginning, it’s very important to get used to a new way of writing! 

When you are already more advanced and you easily remembered 100 characters, you can read about Radicals - they will help you to understand more advanced characters and how they are constructed. 

📖  You can definitely check the book by James Heisig “Remembering the Hanzi”. He had a cool idea of how in an easy way people from outside China (or Japan/Korea) can understand and learn characters!

📝  write, write, write hanzi every day! 📝  try to post pictures of your characters on IG/tumblr or send it to someone who knows how to write them, so they can check it for you and tell you how to improve! 📝  at the beginning every character looks crappy - it’s normal! 

HSK exam 

You are at the beginning of the journey with Chinese, so I will not talk a lot about the Chinese Proficiency Test (汉语水平考试). The basic thing you should know, there are 6 levels (at the moment there are 6, but they are planning to add 3 more levels for more advanced learners). Each level has a list of characters, words and grammar points you have to know.  Don’t bother yourself with HSK exams if you don’t need at the very beginning. I haven’t touch HSK 1, 2 and 3 - I was just studying with my textbooks and I ended up at HSK 5 somehow! :D

Textbooks

At the very beginning, I can recommend you to invest in a textbook. I know a lot of people want to learn for “free” and not to spend a single $... You can always check if your local/academical library has any textbooks! I am a textbook-person, I need at the beginning of any language some books to make myself “into” the language, to feel it and understand basics.  Two series of textbooks to Chinese I know and tried are: 

New Practical Chinese Reader

Boya Chinese.

Personally, I am a fan of New Practical Chinese Reader. I used NPChR tom 1, 2, 3 and now I’m working with 4th tom!   If you already know that you want/need to prepare to HSK exam, then I highly recommend series:

HSK Standard Course! 

HSK Vocabulary Book (mini-series). 

APPs

Below I’ve mentioned few of apps that I recommend and they are perfect for the start! 

📱 Memrise - this app was with me at the very beginning and I still use it! The perfect tool to remember new vocabulary/sentences! There are plenty of official courses created by Memrise app, but also courses made by other users. Official courses have short videos with native speakers, which is a really nice bonus because you can hear REAL people :] 

📱 SuperChinese - a very solid app which is going to introduce you to the Chinese language world! They have real-life conversations, teach how to write characters, a function of speech recognition (so you can practice your pronunciation and tones) and many many more functions. Download it and you will not regret it!  📱 Pleco - Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary and life-saver. I don’t know any Chinese learner who doesn’t use this dictionary, seriously!  

📱 HelloTalk, HiNative, Tandem - all these three apps are good to meet natives! You can find folks from China and talk with them! Personally, I used them a lot at the very beginning. I wanted to see how natives are texting and make some new friends! 

📱 APPs (beside Memrise) that help you to learn vocabulary: Anki, Quizlet. 

Websites

Excellent websites for beginners are:

Little Fox Chinese

BBC Learn Chinese

Chairman Bao

Yellow Bridge

Chinese Tools

Courses on edX

Courses on Coursera 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  If you find this post useful: like, repost and follow me. And stay tuned for more info! You can also follow my instagram, where I post my everyday struggle with Chinese! 

[softwari]

3 “Best Hosting For A Travel Blog” (2021)

Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top picks? The best web hosting service for most people is Bluehost or Hostgator

You decided to start a travel blog and looking for the best hosting for your travel blog.

To develop and assemble a strong web-based presence for your travel blog, you need to have a solid hosting platform.

Here are the top best hosting for your travel blog.

1)

Bluehost

– Best web hosting for a travel blog.

Did you realize that Bluehost is home to multiple million sites?

That is a ton.

Having such a huge client base is sufficient proof that they are accomplishing something right. Their uptime is solid, worker speeds are acceptable, and all of their facilitating plans pack valuable elements for beginners and intermediates the same.

Bluehost web facilitating has been around since 2003 and they currently have in excess of 2,000,000 sites. They are the most well known, minimal expense facilitating alternative for new sites.

They are our first class web facilitating organization on the grounds that their most recent year uptime and speed are solid – 99.95% and 713 ms, separately.

you can get basic bluehost plan for $4.95 for 12 months, in which you get 50 GB SSD storage, free domain, free SSL, and free CDN and one website to host.

but my recommendation to you is to get their choice plus plan in which you get unlimited website to host, unlimited SSD storage, free domain, SSL and free CDN in just $7.45 for 12 months.

It’s ideal for WordPress sites since it’s formally suggested by WordPress.org.

VISIT BLUEHOST WEBSITE

2)

Hostgator

– Affordable Web hosting for your travel blog.

HostGator has always been known for its remarkable range of hosting services, from domains to dedicated servers.

We’ve got the web hosting provider down as one of the best when it comes to shared hosting services, simply because of its reliability, pricing, and the fact that the firm boasts of a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

HostGator offers three specific shared hosting plans, starting with the Hatchling subscription, which comes with unmetered bandwidth, free WordPress/cPanel website transfer, and a free SSL certificate.

The allocations are generous and should easily accommodate the requirements of a single domain.

HostGator’s cheapest shared hosting plan is $2.75 per month if you sign up for 36 months.

HostGator also provides WordPress hosting and, like Bluehost, has its very own website builder service too, which is not uncommon for web hosting companies to have these days.

Some of the additional benefits HostGator has up its sleeves include a 45-day money-back guarantee, free transfers for new accounts within the first month after you’ve signed up, 24/7/365 live chat support for its customers, and a free domain for a year.

If you are looking for a web hosting service provider that will give you more for your money, then there are lots that HostGator checks off in that department.

VISIT HOSTGATOR WEBSITE

3)

Hostinger

– Cheapest Web hosting for Travel blog.

Hostinger is offers some of the most affordable shared hosting solutions on the market.

Their prices literally start from $1.39/month. WOW.

You’ll have to sign a four-year contract to get the lowest deal possible, but that total contract is going to be way less than a single year with other hosts.

You don’t get a huge load of capacity, yet your site will actually want to deal with around 10,000 visits every month no issue.

You can make a simple stride up to both of Hostinger’s different plans and receive the rewards of more assets and the ability to have up to 100 destinations while as yet paying the absolute least rates around.

With Business Shared Hosting, which is just $3.99/month, you can get limitless transmission capacity, 200 GB stockpiling, and everyday site reinforcements.

That implies regardless of whether you mess up seriously, you generally approach past forms of your site.

For organizations with little or non-existent IT staff,

master client assistance is a gigantic advantage.

It is the most ideal choice in case you’re looking explicitly for a common facilitating administration that is reasonable and solid.

Hostinger gives a 99.9% uptime ensure and a 30-day cash back arrangement. That is difficult to beat at a month-to-month facilitating cost that is not exactly some espresso.

VISIT HOSTINGER WEBSITE

What I Looked at to Find the Best Web Hosting Services for a travel blog.

With regards to the best web facilitating administrations, you need to take a gander at different significant components.

In the event that you hop in excessively fast, you may get into something not appropriate for your business.

In any case, don’t let any of that uncertainty creep into your brain.

All things being equal, take it easy while we present to you every one of the elements that you should know about prior to settling on a choice.

You can gauge the distinctive web facilitating administrations and conclude which is the best answer for your particular business.

Facilitating factor #1 – Reliability:

On the off chance that your facilitating is down, nobody would have the option to get to your site.

Furthermore, clearly, you need your site running all day, every day.

Fortunately, in 2021 this is definitely not a gigantic issue since most web facilitating suppliers offer a ‘99.99% organization uptime ensure’.

That implies that your site would go down infrequently.

What’s more, in any event, when it does, you can contact your facilitating administration and you will get pay.

More often than not that would be through facilitating credits.

Assuming you need to get ready for the most noticeably terrible, you can look at our Website Downtime Survival Guide.

Probably the best practice to ensuring all that chugs along as expected in any event, when you’re enjoying some time off is to pursue the following apparatus like an uptime robot.

In the event that your facilitating administration goes too far, this device will tell you that you need to track down a new webserver to have.

Facilitating factor #2 – Speed is vital:

Hosting speed is amazingly essential with regard to SEO enhancement in 2021.

That is just since, in such a case that your pages load gradually, individuals will bob out of your site and your positioning will tumble down the channel.

You need a dependable host supplier that can ensure ideal site stacking speed.

Indeed you can’t have a clue about the specific stacking speed before you attempt the facilitating administration yourself.

Be that as it may, you can generally streamline your site stacking speed utilizing free instruments and compelling stacking speed rehearses.

What’s more, the best news is that regardless of whether your financial plan is tight, you can in any case get a decent stacking speed.

Yet, don’t expect anything marvelous for say $4/month.

By and large, the higher the value, the quicker your pages will stack.

Facilitating factor #3 – Customer administration:

Great Customer Service will prove to be useful when something turns out badly.

Particularly in case you’re new to sites, you will undoubtedly commit errors that might prompt your site to be down for some time.

Also, the additional time it’s out, the more it will set you back.

So a decent help group will assist you with getting the issues addressed right away.

Regardless of whether you committed a significant error that is difficult to return from…

Most help groups will have a full reinforcement of your site so you can return to a functioning adaptation.

You generally need your help group to have a live visit or a phone you can call.

The email simply doesn’t take care of business assuming you need to determine the issue quickly, which you should need, considering that your site is down.

We tried to incorporate just site facilitating administrations with solid relational abilities.

Conclusion:

You’re most likely going to have a long-term relationship with the hosting service you choose. So carefully look into every option that caught your eye today and select the one that fits your needs best.

These are all dependable hosting providers with a record of quality service. Whether you choose one of my top recommendations or scout out your own, use the tips and best practices we talked about to make an educated decision.

Having reliable web hosting is a must in today’s world. Make this decision like the future of your travel blog depends on it.

Disclaimer: All these hosting is shared hosting.

[perregrinstudiessometimes]

Study tips/school advice

1- Once you get your syllabi put all of the due dates in your calendar

2- Make an assignment sheet for each class that you can look at throughout the year

3- Make a full assignment sheet with all due dates from all of your classes (organized by date)

4- Don’t be afraid to email your professors if you have a question that you can’t answer on your own

5- Be sure to send thank you emails to your professor when they help you with something

6- Don’t be afraid to go to your professor’s office hours. They exist for a reason (if you are not available during the professor’s office hours email them to find a time when you are both free)  

7- Check your email! Seriously just do it! Check at least once a day! (but preferably more!)

8- If you don’t understand something do your best to get a good understanding of it as (if you have the same bad luck as I do) the one thing you don’t understand will most likely show up on the test. Don’t just hope it won’t show up on the test!

9- Don’t cram before an exam! Schedule your time so that you can relax/rest the night before the test (I will admit I normally take a glance over my notes the morning of the exam, but this is used as a refresher not an attempt for last-minute learning.

10- I see a lot of people suggest that you read through the whole exam before answering any questions. I would not recommend this as most exams are timed. Instead, I would suggest going through the exam in order skipping questions you don’t know to come back to later. (this way you can maximize the number of questions you get to that you do know the answer to without wasting time)

11- Over prepare for every test!

12- Take a mental note of how prepared you feel before a test/exam and the grade you make on said test/exam. The goal is to be able to have a pretty good guess as to what you will make on the test/exam based on how prepared you feel.

13- Use a final grade calculator (or this one) to see what you have to make on a final exam to get the grade you want (this is helpful to know what classes you will need to study more for)

14- Don’t skip class unless you absolutely have too. Showing up is half the battle.

15- On the first few days of each class wear layers because you never know how hot/cold each class will be. Take note of the temperature in each class and plan accordingly as the class goes on.

16- Show up to class a few minutes early (don’t bother showing up very early as the class before yours will probably still be in session, but you also don’t want to accidentally be late)

17- In class sit where is best for you (this will take some trial and error) I personally prefer to sit 2-3 rows back against the wall)

18- Write the date at the top of each of your papers (notes and handouts) this will make it easier to know what to study when your professor says the exam will cover everything from date A to date B.

19- Take class notes in your own words. If you can’t write it in your own words than you don’t understand it.

20- Learn and use abbreviations [here is @studyquirks post about it] and make your own for words you write often

21- read ahead in the textbooks so you will have a basic understanding when your professors bring a topic up.

22- Start studying from day one (even if it feels like there isn’t enough to go over)

23- Have specific goals for each study session.  

24- Know your learning style and use it to your advantage

25- Find out what time of day you study best (for me this is first thing in the morning and around 3-6pm)

26- Don’t skip studying a section/subject just because you don’t find it interesting. Give each subject the time it deserves.

27- Get dressed to study (there is something about having shoes on that makes me feel productive)

28- This is a link to my main study method

29- Recall is the most important aspect of studying (as it is what you will have to do for a test)

30- Study what you are weakest on most but don’t neglect stuff that you already know. Review everything at least once.

31- Make the term memorable to YOU (for example I can remember what quid-pro-quo means because I have a trump voice in my head say “quid-pro-quo I’d like a favor though”)

32- Quizlet doesn’t work for me. The act of making physical flashcards helps me learn

33- Don’t make flashcards for things you already know

34- If you need a quick basic understanding of something to google the topic followed by “for kids” (example moon phases for kids)

35- If you get distracted while studying write down the distraction and promise yourself, you will deal with it during a break/ when you are done studying.

36- STOP MULTITASKING! Seriously you will get stuff done quicker if you give each task your full attention.

37- Studying is not a competition. (I see people on Tumblr/Instagram almost bragging about how long they study for, sometimes claiming 9+ hours, a day. This is not realistic!) remember quality over quantity.  

38- Do the homework even if it isn’t graded. It will help you.

39- Make new deadlines for projects to make sure the projects get done on time (I usually set the new due take 3-7 days before the actual due date)

40- Start long term assignments within 3 days of it being assigned

41- Do all of your assignments (I often see people say it’s okay to skip a few assignments) in my opinion it is better to turn in a rushed/half-assed assignment than to have a 0 in the grade book.

42- When writing an opinion piece, you don’t have to write about your opinion (although you will probably enjoy writing about your own opinion more.)

43- If you plan on studying at the library find the least populated area (for my school this is the second floor)

44- Try and avoid the school’s library during exam season as it tends to get busy (instead try other places on campus, the public library, or a coffee shop)

45- Page flags/tabs/sticky notes are useful. Use them.

46- I prefer to use highlighters to underline rather than highlight the normal way. (the normal way makes it harder to reread as your eye is drawn to the highlighted portion)

47- Don’t over highlight (instead highlight small sections/words and expand on it in your own words in the margins/ on sticky notes)

48- When reading write summaries on sticky notes (keep these summaries concise and to the point)

59- When reading to take notes (such as from as a textbook) skim the section before doing a deep read (where you highlight/annotate) as it is difficult to know if a sentence is important without context.

50- When doing required readings for classes take detailed notes and summaries the reading in your own words both to help you understand the reading and so you can look back at the summaries when you need a refresher (like before an exam)  

51- If you know you will be asked to write about the reading keep a list of quotes (with page numbers) and a description of why the quote is important/relevant

52- If you are reading a whole book, make sure to make summaries for each chapter and keep track of plot points (for when you are making an overall summary of the book/reading.

53- In short summarize! Summarize! Summarize!

54- ALL NIGHTERS ARE A WASTE OF TIME! Try and avoid them at all costs. Plan your time effectively and you won’t have to pull all-nighters.

55- Use a website like google drive or one drive to keep all of the assignments you are currently working on, so you don’t have to worry about carrying around a flash drive.

56- Give yourself a day off once a week where you don’t work on anything school-related (for me this is Sunday)

57- Use alarms to remind you to do things/ get you to do things (I use silent alarms on my watch to remind me when to leave so I can make it to my next class etc)

58- Study groups don’t work for me and I have found that they are a waste of my time.

59- Keep a list of all the places to study around campus for when the library is closed/busy

60- The Pomodoro method doesn’t work on me. I focus too much on how much time is left and not enough on my studies

61- Try a social media break

62- Mind maps don’t work for me. I find it much more effective to use a linear progression of thoughts

63- Don’t feel like you have to join clubs if you don’t want to.

64- Give yourself incentives (ex if I make a B+ or higher on this paper I will plan a movie night with friends, although don’t disregard pleasure if you don’t do well on a test/paper)

65- Clean your desk/study area every time you are done using it

66- Follow the two-minute rule, if it can be done in two minutes do it right then (don’t follow this while studying just write down a list of everything that needs to be done and do them once your study session is over)

67- Don’t rely on motivation. Rely on discipline. Be a parent to yourself.

68- Eat breakfast if you can (I know eating early upsets some people’s stomach) and always pack a snack in case you don’t have time for lunch    

69- Try to carry as little as possible in your bag (if you can’t avoid carrying multiple textbooks try carrying one/some textbooks in your arms to help distribute the weight)

70- Keep a water bottle, chargers for all of your electronics, all the pens/highlighters, and study materials you will needs in your study area (so you won’t be tempted to get up and walk away from your studies)  

71- Keep just one folder in your bag for all of the handouts you are given throughout the day. Organize these papers by class/topic/chapter when you get home

72- Clean out your bag often (I clean out mine every day)

73- Remember the best tips are the ones that work for you!!!!

[lanaisnotwool]

413 How to Diversify Your Savings

http://moneyripples.com/2020/08/13/413-how-to-diversify-your-savings/

In times of high risk, people rush to diversify money.

But a financial advisor never really diversifies your portfolio.

Are there good ways to diversify your investments?

Tune in to find out ways to diversify, keep your money safe, AND still grow it!

Chris Miles, the "Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor," is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results. Listen to our Podcast:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/07/01/413--good-way-to-diversify-your-savings

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Hello my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys, I’m so excited to welcome you out to this show because this show is for you and it’s about you. Those of you that work so hard for your money, but you want that money to work harder for you. Now! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Today! Not 30 or 40 bazillion years from now, but right now. So you have that freedom to do what you love with those you love and do whenever the heck you feel like it.

But more than that, it’s more than just trying to, you know, have a wonderful lifestyle and flying airplanes and boats. Hopefully you’re not flying boats by the way, but who knows. But anyways, it’s not about just enjoying your life and just about yourself and selfishness. It’s about you, be able to give back. You’ll be able to bless more lives by creating a ripple effect as a Rippler and be able to bless the lives of those around you. And so guys, I’m proud to be one of those Ripplers with you because you guys are the reason I can create a bigger ripple effect in my life through what we offer this show today. So thank you so much for being a part of it.

As a reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com Not only can you download Beyond Rice & Beans, Seven Secrets To Free Up Cash Today, to find more money, but you can also watch other of these videos. If not on YouTube, you can watch them on the site. Videos of this very show, as well as other topics that are on there in the blog section. So guys check that out!

Alright today. So I really want to get into about diversifying, right? Because I’m hearing this word a lot. Like I’m getting so many people talking to me and saying, yeah, Chris, like, I really feel like I need to diversify my money. Chris, I feel like you need to diversify my money. And why does this come up? It comes up every time there’s uncertainty, right? And rightfully so, because if you have your money at risk, if it’s feeling uncertain, you’re going to say, I can’t all have all my eggs in this basket. What if this basket falls flat? What if I drop this basket and crush all my eggs? I need to get more baskets. Right? So, and there’s some merit to that because the more you try to take higher risks, the more you have to diversify. And it’s not because you have to diversify necessarily. But if you’re going to take high risks with this, right.

Especially if you do things that are out of your control, you’re essentially kind of guessing, you know, you really are. And that’s why financial advisors are telling you for years, you have to diversify all your money, right? You had to diversify in these different areas. The truth is that a financial advisor never diversifies you. They actually put you in the same exact asset class of paper assets every time, but they might say, great, well, some of this might go into the stock market. Some of this might go into the bond market or treasuries, or am I going to international stocks versus US equities and all this kind of stuff. Right? But the truth is, you’re really not that diversified. And so what most people do is they hold onto it in cash and savings or money markets. Where they might get like an annuity or something like that.

But they’re trying to do other certain things. And so I get a lot of people saying to me, Chris, like, I feel like I need to diversify my money. Now, you just go along with diversification before we talk about how to diversify your savings. Cause there are good ways of doing it. One thing that people say is Chris, well, if you do real estate so much, how do you diversify?

Here’s my thing. Here’s how I diversify. Well, one, I personally love to buy and own properties, even including yes, single family homes. I actually like them. It doesn’t mean I always want to do single family homes. I don’t mind doing multifamily. I don’t mind syndications. I got money in those two. But I really do love having a home, like having an actual properties that I own and control. I actually feel like I can, I don’t have to diversify as much because I have control what happens.

There’s not somebody else managing. Well, okay. I have property managers, right? But it’s not like somebody else is owning the property for me. And I’m just putting a little money into it. You know, in those kind of cases, you do need to diversify. If you’re in a lot of syndications or funds. Yeah. You need to not put all your money in those baskets because there’s a degree of separation between you and the person doing the investing. And as a result, you lose control and that increases your risk. And therefore you do need to be diversified more. For those of us who buy more real estate. How do we do that? You know, if we have more control, one, we don’t worry about diversification because as you know, Mark Cuban would say, diversification’s for idiots. Has a Warren Buffet would say more tactfully. He would say that diversification is admission of ignorance.

Basically. You don’t know what you’re doing. So you diversify in all these little places. It’s throwing spaghetti on the wall, hoping something works. That’s not what we’re talking about doing here. When I do real estate diversifying, we might diversify in different locations, right? So even though I buy the same kind of properties, I might say, well, Hey, I want to be in different markets. You know? Sure. Maybe we’ll have Memphis, but maybe we’ll have North Carolina. Maybe we have Indiana or Pennsylvania or Virginia or Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, you know, whatever. Right? Like finding these different pockets, these different markets to be in. That is how you diversify within real estate without having to own lots of different types of real estate.

Now, granted again, I still don’t mind doing syndications where we put money into like, you know, big apartment complexes and things like that. That’s fine too. I put the minority of my assets into those kinds of investments. But I personally like to do real estate. Now, when you have your savings, right? Now, switching back to this topic, you have enough savings. How do you diversify it? Well, the truth is that if you’ve got money working in different places, you do want money in savings. First and foremost, you’ve got to make sure you have an emergency savings. Right? Now. When I look at savings, of course, if it’s not emergency savings or if it doesn’t have a purpose short term, it’s usually out doing something. It’s usually in being invested in something like real estate. Right? So how I diversify my “Savings”? Is often it goes out into other investments that cash flow. Again, I like regular stable cashflow. That’s my goal. That’s the goal I try to, you know, really try to present to my clients is that’s the real key to freedom, right?

The real key to feeling secure is knowing you have regular stable cash flow coming in from multiple streams of income. And yes, they can be from some of the same assets. But, how about the money that’s just emergency savings? What about the money that’s just sitting there doing nothing? Right? That is the key. Now I’m going to tell you about what I do. This doesn’t mean that’s, this is what you have to do, but this is just kind of strategy that my wife and I have adopted ourselves because you know, the truth is, is that we want money liquid available too, just in case, you know, we never know what happens. Even though I have multiple streams of income coming in from multiple sources. My wife told me the other day, she said, Chris, I think we need to increase our emergency savings. I just feel like we need to have more cash on hand just in case.

And I said, all right, well, how much? She said, we need to have at least $200,000. Now think of it in my world. I’m thinking that is a lot of money to just have, do nothing. You know, we had, you know, well, well over a hundred thousand before, but she’s like, no, we need 200,000 in savings. So I’m thinking there’s an opportunity cost of this money. What if this money could be out invested? But I also understand the importance of, you know, she happy me happy, right? I’m sure you guys understand that. And I also understood too. I’m like, well, you know, she could be right. Sometimes she has amazing intuition that sometimes she could be right about that. And so I said, all right, let’s do that. But let’s diversify our savings. And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, we keep a lot of it.

We have a lot in the bank. We have some in our insurance savings. She’s like, I keep forgetting about the insurance savings. I’m like, yep. That’s there. We can use that. I said, let’s do this. Let’s have two thirds earmarked from the insurance savings to be part of this money. So if it’s 200,000 that she wants, like great, let’s make sure 130,000 125,000 or so of it is there as emergency. As emergency fund, right? Inside the life insurance. Inside my infinite banking policy, right? As you guys have heard it before mentioned. This is money I’m not investing with. This is money that I’m keeping as a baseline. So that means that anything above 130,000 140,000 that’s in the life insurance, anything about that? Great, that can be out investing in double-dipping. As you’ve heard me talk about, you know, making money twice where I’m making money in insurance and making money on my real estate and other investments at the same time, perfect.

That can still work, but earmarked money that we don’t touch, that we let stay in there that earns, you know, that’s 140,000 or whatever. Right? Now, the other 60,000, we split up between online savings accounts that paid better than what the bank will pay locally, but we still keep money in the bank in case we need to get money today. So it’s a three phase thing. There’s money in the bank that money we can access today, you know, to keep about a good 20,000 give or take. We probably have more than that even, but that’s the kind of money earmarked for those emergency savings, right? Then beyond that there’s emergency savings in the online banking. That’s like the other 40,000 plus. That money is there primarily, just so we can, you know, we know it can be transferred within a day or two to the local bank anyways.

So it’s that next wave. So first wave is if I need money today, you go walk into the bank, ATM, whatever, pull money out. Oh, by the way, we keep cash on hand as well. For money in case the ATM is, are broken down or power goes out EMP who knows catastrophic stuff, right? Earthquakes, whatever. We have cash too, but obviously we can walk into the bank. We can walk in and pull cash out.

Second phase, online banking. You know, there’s an online banking sources. I’ll email you guys about it, if you’re on my email list, you’ll actually get that. There’s at least 1% paying out. Even though the rates have dropped like a rock. There are still online savings accounts that pay like around 1%. So we have that as well. And that is paying a certain ammount too. And then of course the rest, it’s the life insurance. Now do the math of me a little bit, right? If I just had say we had $200,000 earning 0.1% a year in the local bank, right? I mean, do they do the math here? That’s 200 bucks a year. Not a month. A year of $200,000. 200 bucks a year.

I just got done doing an episode last time where we talked about having someone to invest in 200,000 to make almost 2000 a month, right? So, to go from 2000 a month, to 200 a year is not impressive. This is why people are like going stir crazy. I get clients sometimes I’ll have a half million sitting in their bank or their checking account. They’re like, this money could be working for me. It’s doing nothing. Well, okay. Well instead of 200 bucks a year. Can we do better than that? Well, here’s how I break it down. That 200,000, right? That he said 20,000 with a local bank, right. That 20,000 makes 0.1%. It makes a whopping, what does that? 20 bucks a year instead? So 20 bucks a year, right? So that 10% of that it’s making 20 bucks a year. So there’s 20. Then we’ve got the 40,000 earning about 1% a year. So that 40,000 earning 1% means is there any 400. That’s 420 total with this 60,000, that’s already better than 200,000 at 0.1%. Right? So there we go, 420.

Now the other 140,000 is in life insurance. Now, even those of you that might be older than me, or maybe don’t have quite the same health. Usually you can at least net a 4% return on your money. Usually it’s at least four to five or more depending on your age and health. But let’s just say it’s 4% a year, right? You go conservative here. And that 4% that 160,000 or sorry, 140,000 earning 4%. That’s making me about 5,600 a year. So 5,600 plus the 420, it means we’re making about 6,000 a year instead of 200 a year. That’s 30 times better. Right? That’s kind of like how we do that. So, you know, I had, you really explained like, Hey, the money’s still liquid. I can get to my life insurance money by the way, within a week to week and a half max.

So I know I can get to that money quickly anyways. So for emergencies, it’s amazing. By the way, it’s amazing to where I’ve seen a lot of people last few months have been reach out to me about that very strategy to say, you know, Chris, I don’t even care about leveraging it and using it to invest like you’ve taught. I just need to have money sitting around just in case. I needed something for peace of mind, but I wasn’t earning better money. Oh, here’s the other thing too, in that first example, $200,000, right? You’re only earning 200 bucks a year. Realize you have to pay taxes on that stupid 200 bucks a year. So you don’t get 200 bucks a year. Cause you have to pay taxes on it, right? Income tax on that interest, you know, with the money in the life insurance, I don’t pay any taxes on that.

The only thing I had to pay, I was on that 420, the other 5,600. I paid nothing. There’s no tax on it. It’s like a Roth IRA, no tax money at all. So now I’m keeping more money, not to mention I’m making 30 times more, but now keeping more of that money. So it’s more than 30 times as a result. And so that’s the thing that I’m trying to point out here is like, guys, you can be more efficient and that’s why some people are doing, they’re saying, you know what? Heck, this could be supplemental retirement. I’m getting a pension from the airline or whatever I worked for or from this company. Or I got this or I got this other real estate too. Honestly, I don’t even need to use this money to invest and create cash flow from it. Cool. It gives you options.

You can diversify it. You can use it however you want. I use it, whether it’s for emergency savings and I use it for investing, right? So it’s an ability to, for me to be able to use that appropriately. So using my life insurance man, some people poop all over it, but the truth is that those of us that know how to use it, realize it’s brilliant. And I’ve had many clients realize the same thing they say, man, why doesn’t everybody know about it? The truth is because most time, even there are people teaching about it. They teach you in a crappy way of, it’s someday. It’s like a 401k. You’ll lock it up and someday they’ll touch it, but they never tell you, Hey, if you design it the right way, which most don’t even know how to do it the right way.

If you designed it the right way, you can have access to cash from the first month that you set it up. You’ve got money available right away. So that’s my point guys, is that you can design it. You can diversify your savings, but you got to do it the right way and do in a way that again can create some real, some real growth, some real money, you know? So not only can you keep money safe, but at least it’s doing something for you versus doing nothing. And you’re losing it because you’re not only earning no interest, there’s opportunity costs. But now you get taxed on earning hardly any interest. So that’s my point for you guys want to diversify your savings, but for different ways to put it. But again, diversifying investments, whole another story, and it doesn’t have to look the traditional way. In fact, it could be better with less risk depending on how you do it. And you can do it well and you can make amazing returns and you can create cash flow now, which is the key.

We want that life today. Look at that. Sign on my board right here. I’m trying to get my finger on it. I’m trying to do this in reverse. There! There it is! Live your life now not tomorrow, right? This is about living that dream life today. Doesn’t mean you just go and blow it. This means you create the life now. That is the purpose of this podcast. Guys. Hope all of you make a wonderful and prosperous week. And we’ll see you later.

[foodmadewithlove]

With Delicious and Fresh Seafood, It’s No Wonder Why ‘Turner’s’ Is So Popular

I’ve always loved food. I tend to have high expectations for the meals I am receiving or eating, and strive to find places with a variety of dishes that I can choose from. If I’m going to pay for it, it has to be good. Few restaurants stand up to that measure, but I believe that I might have found one. 

My goal was to find a family-owned and operated restaurant on the North Shore, a place that has been in the family for a long time. Since my Beat Reporting class junior year, I have been a member of the ‘North Shore Eats’ Facebook group page in which members of the North Shore communities suggest and recommend restaurants and places to eat. As I became stuck trying to find places on Google, I decided to reach out and ask members of the group their favorite restaurants that are family-owned and run. I was expecting a few responses, but when I looked at my post the next day, I had ended up receiving over 230 comments. I was blown away by how many people decided to help me, and very excited to look through all the recommendations.

There was one restaurant that everyone kept commenting, a place called ‘Turner’s Seafood’. Seafood is one of my favorite things to eat, especially when I am able to enjoy lobster rolls at the beach during the summer as well as clam chowder throughout the year. Since I love seafood and due to the fact that I had never heard of the restaurant before, I decided to look it up and became overwhelmed by what I found. ‘Turner’s’ had not one, not two, but three locations around the North Shore. The locations are all different, with some focusing on on-site dining and others providing a fresh seafood market for customers. They all looked amazing, but I knew I had to go to the location which started it all.

(Above) A shot of Turner’s Melrose location that I went to. Credit: Turner’s Seafood website.

20-year-old James F. Turner emigrated from St. John’s Newfoundland in 1922, and started his career on the Boston Fish Pier. With hard work, “Jim” opened ‘Turner Fisheries’ in 1954, eventually becoming one of the leading suppliers of fresh seafood due to the new ability to fly their products anywhere across the country. Due to a myriad of restrictions and regulations surrounding the seafood industry in the 1980s, John Turner (Jim’s only son) established ‘J. Turner Seafoods’ in 1989. This new wholesale company in Gloucester dealt with the lesser amount of supplies and difficult regulations that had been implemented. 

John had four sons, who growing up learned the ins and outs of the seafood industry. In their hometown of Melrose, John’s four sons opened up ‘Turner’s Seafood Grill and Market’ in 1994. The sons decided to expand the business, first creating a Gloucester location in 2006 as well as a market in the same location that ships seafood overnight in 2010. The Turner brothers additionally opened up another restaurant in Salem in 2013. Each restaurant and location is different, but all has that same family-oriented atmosphere to them. On their website, ‘Turner’s’ boasts that 9 of the 4th generation of the Turner family currently work in the three locations.

That’s how I arrived at ‘Turner’s Seafood Grill and Market’, the sons’ original location in Melrose. The seemingly small location is located on one of the main streets in downtown Melrose, among other shops and restaurants. With the onset of warm weather, various people had been sitting in multiple tables outside the restaurant, enjoying drinks such as martinis as well as their food. When I walked in, I was met by the delicious smell of fresh, cooked seafood. The restaurant is much bigger than it looks, split into four sections. The dark colored walls are filled with various seafood-related decorations, such as oars and fake fish. To the right, a glass display case held fresh seafood such as clams and shrimp on ice, in which customers are able to purchase every day. Behind that, a bunch of small tables remain in an ‘oyster bar’ area, where customers can get fresh oysters upon request. 

On the other side of the restaurant, multiple tables covered in blue-striped tablecloths allow customers to get a full dining experience. I was seated in a high top next to the regular tables, near a string-lights covered bar that normally has seating but due to Covid has been removed. I noticed a hard working bartender, making his way through the various drink orders of the night. I could hear him constantly talking with the waitresses, creating a comfortable atmosphere that reminded me of fun family banter. 

The restaurant had the option of ordering through your phone, but I decided to order with a waitress, who welcomed us with a smile and a greeting. Since it was my first time there, she was very helpful in describing the various dishes they had to offer. ‘Turner’s’ has a wide variety of options on their menu, starting with appetizers such as clam chowder that is not bad priced at $6.50 a cup. I went there with my boyfriend, and we decided to start off with a warm crab dip as we both enjoy crab. It didn’t take too long for the appetizer to come, and we were excited to dig in. The plate contained four large soft pretzels, which we were able to dip in a ramekin of warm, delicious crab dip. It was very savory, and I could even find large chunks of crab in my spoonfuls, which greatly impressed me. It was just what we wanted to start off the night. 

It was truly hard to decide what I wanted for my meal, as ‘Turner’s’ has so much to offer. I considered getting the crab roll, but decided that since I just had the crab dip, it would be too much of the same thing. My boyfriend considered getting fish and chips, but we both knew that we wanted to go down to ‘Turner’s’ Gloucester location to eat at their specialty fish and chips shop soon. He ended up getting the yellowfin tuna burger, with fries and a brightly colored slaw as well as a wasabi aioli (that was too spicy for me, but he loved it!). The burger is one of the lower priced items on the menu at $15.00, but is still fairly large for its price and easily able to be shared. I ended up trying his burger, which seemed a little dry to me, but was still full of fresh flavor and seasonings. As for me, I love shrimp, so I decided on getting stuffed shrimp with a baked potato and brussel sprouts as my sides.

When the food arrived, I was very impressed with the overall presentation. Four shrimp sat in the middle, all stuffed with a breadlike seafood vegetable filling. My baked potato was to the left, with a pad of already melted butter sitting in its ridges. The brussel sprouts, which contained bacon, sat on the right. My mouth was watering even before I dug in. The presentation was great, but the food was even better. Each shrimp tasted like it had just come out of the ocean, and the bread filling reminded me of Thanksgiving day stuffing. The filling was a perfect combination with the shrimp, as it added extra flavor and texture. They were topped off with a lobster basil cream sauce, which was heavenly. It had an almost buttery taste to it, a creamy flavoring that was delicious on top of the shrimp. The sauce seeped into my brussel sprouts, which combined with the smokey flavor of the bacon throughout. 

(Above) The meal I got at Turner’s, a stuffed shrimp dish with a baked potato and brussel sprouts.

The star of the show truly were the roasted brussel sprouts, which were fresh and perfectly charred to perfection. I normally don’t like whole brussel sprouts, but these changed my mind. They were a 2 dollar upgrade, but completely worth it. My baked potato with butter was pretty good, but nothing special, tasting starchy like a normal potato without any seasoning. Even so, it was a delicious meal overall. My dinner wasn’t badly priced either, a steal at $22.00 for a large plate of fresh seafood (which is usually highly priced!). After I ate, I was so full and pleased with what I had just gotten. 

When the check came, I was shocked to see that the price wasn’t higher. I feel that they gave fresh, delicious seafood for a great price, which is amazing. After we left, I knew this could be deemed as one of the best restaurants I had tried in the North Shore area. I will definitely be back, and I of course want to try the other ‘Turner’s’ locations in the area. I encourage you to check out the various ‘Turner’s’ restaurants across the North Shore, you won’t be disappointed!

[adhdtoomanycommas]

ADHD, Gifted Programs, and Accidental Accommodations

So one big thing has been on my mind pretty consistently since I got diagnosed last year at the age of 30—why did it take so long to figure this out?  At no point in my K-12 education or my 4 year bachelor’s degree schooling did any teacher or counselor question or suggest I may have ADHD, despite the fact that I check nearly every single box on every diagnostic criteria (both inattentive and hyperactive!)

One obvious reason is sexism.  Pretty early in my reading on the subject, I learned that ADHD is dramatically under-diagnosed in girls and women. Partly this is because of different presentations, but a lot of it is just that the stereotype people have in their heads of what an ADHD kid looks like is always a boy.  

But the other big reason, and the one I want to talk about today, is the fact that one of the few ADHD diagnostic boxes that I didn’t check was “bad grades.”  So really, the question is, why weren’t my grades bad?

That’s not to say I was especially good at school work. My backpacks, desks, and binders were always a complete mess, and I NEVER did the homework.  I would do the big projects (at the last possible second, of course) but daily homework just straight up didn’t happen.   If there was time left at the end of class I would sometimes quickly do the homework for the next day, and occasionally jot down some approximation of it in the minute or two before class started, but when I was actually at home, I never touched it.

But here’s the thing with ADHD brains:  We can focus on things with no problem, as long as we find them interesting.  And I’ve always read quickly enough that doing the reading for class was usually interesting. And for the most part, the class content itself usually seemed interesting enough.    But probably most importantly, I consider tests interesting. There’s always been enough of a challenge racing-the-clock game-like aspect to them to me that I would stay engaged on the tests, and even if didn’t completely know the material, I was good at using logic to get a pretty good guess (like using all those tricks they teach for standardized tests—narrowing down the options on a multiple choice question, looking for answers in the other questions, etc.)

So even in the classes where turning in the daily homework counted for part of the grade (math and language classes mostly) I was usually able to scrape a B with only the occasional C thrown in,  and everything else was A’s.  

But part of my saving grace was the “gifted” classes.  I was very lucky that, despite not knowing about her own (probable) ADHD,  my mom knew enough about how she worked as a student to know that me (and my brother) really needed to be engaged and challenged in order to thrive.  Because of this, she advocated for us hard—she insisted we be allowed in my elementary school’s “gifted” program in kindergarten (based on our test scores of course)  even though the “gifted” program officially wasn’t even available until first grade.  And when we moved to a different state, she advocated for us again and got us included even though the “gifted” class was “full.”   She knew that nothing would make us fail faster than being bored in class, so she made sure that there was at least one day a week when we would be challenged and actually get to engage with material we found interesting.  

Aside,  despite how essential they were for me to thrive in school,  the entire concept of “gifted” programs and “gifted” kids is problematic as hell.  Half of the screening is basically just looking for class signifiers and seeing whose parents had enough free time to give them a head start (or whose parents have the time to advocate for their kids the way my mom did for me).  Not to mention there’s likely a massive racial bias. So in all this discussion of why I did ok despite my ADHD, it’s important to note that there’s a lot of privilege at play here determining who gets access to these types of programs.  

This is also why I keep putting “gifted” in quotes--  I don’t think there is anything inherent about academic ability. Also, academic ability, reading ability, testing aptitude, etc. are definitely not indicative of intelligence. Plus the entire concept of the measurability of intelligence is based on eugenics ideas, so clearly one should take the whole thing with a huge grain of salt.

Nowadays the term all the parenting blogs like to use for kids like me, with ADHD (or dyslexia, or autism, or whatever else) who also test well enough to be flagged as “gifted,”  is “Twice Exceptional”  which is a term that makes me immediately want to punch whoever uses it. Seriously,  it makes me gag.  Like, it doubles down on the “special” euphemism and seems entirely designed to make parents feel better about their kid without any consideration to how the kid feels.  No kid wants to be singled out, especially one who’s already probably pretty socially isolated (which I could digress about but that’ll be another essay for another day), and being Twice singled out certainly doesn’t help anything.  

But ultimately the teaching in the “gifted” class itself wound up being really good accommodations for ADHD. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if they were better than the accommodations in the separate classes actually intended for kids with ADHD and other learning issues, though since I wasn’t diagnosed as I kid I can’t actually speak to that as I don’t have any experience there.  But in the gifted classes, firstly, we were given more specific subjects as opposed to the overviews we got in regular classes.  And it’s way easier to be engaged on specific subjects like ice age mammals, or the wreck of the Titanic, than it is to be engaged with a broad list of dates or categories.  We did logic problems that were presented as games, but that were indirectly teaching us the basics for higher level math. In 6th grade, we did research projects and got to pick our own subjects completely, so we could write about whatever we were hyperfixating on at the moment (mine was on medieval warfare as depicted in the Bayeux tapestry).   And if we happened to get excited and blurt out an interesting fact vaguely related to whatever was being discussed, that was likely encouraged instead of reprimanded like it would be in the normal classroom. This continued into high school, as honors and AP level classes tended to be a lot more discussion based rather than the top-down approach at other levels, as well as affording more opportunity to choose one’s own subjects.

The story you’ll hear from (or about) a lot of ADHD kids (especially undiagnosed) flagged as “gifted” is of hitting a wall at some point, academically speaking.  That did happen to me briefly, in middle school. We started being assigned a lot more long-term projects, and there was a bit of a learning curve while I figured out how to put things off Until the last minute and not Past the last minute.  But thanks to some patient teachers who believed in me (which I might not have had outside of honors classes), I managed to pull out of it and improve my grades (with the exception of the only report-card F of my entire academic career, from a sadistic gym teacher who seemed to think that enough berating would cure asthma).

Even more stories I’ve read and heard from people who were diagnosed with ADHD as an adult say they hit that wall academically when they started college—the first time they were really self-guided in their studies.  But again, there, I was saved by an honors program.  In this case,  it was the Honors Tutorial College,  a truly strange program at Ohio University.  I was tracked into HTC by one particular professor who very much wanted HTC to expand into the art program and decided that because I had both strong test scores and a strong art portfolio (and probably, lets be real, because I was the daughter of one of the other professors) that I was the perfect person to be the first student in the new program.

OU’s website describes HTC as “flexible curriculum and one-on-one tutorials with renowned faculty that allow your curiosity to take the lead in your education.” It’s rigorous, but comes with a lot of perks, like waiving certain gen-ed classes,  being able to take classes without first taking the required prerequisites,  and designing one’s own independent study classes individually with instructors.  And those perks are (as far as I know entirely accidentally) the perfect accommodations for an ADHD student (and probably pretty good for Autistic ones as well, based on some of my peers in the program).

A lot of the gen-ed classes I waived were ones I probably would have been bored in and thusly not done well.  Being able to skip pre-reqs meant that, for instance, for my English requirements I was able to take far more interesting classes like Shakespeare’s Comedies,  YA Lit,  and Playwriting instead of English 101, 102 etc.  If I wanted to learn about something in particular, I had help finding a professor willing to help me in an independent study/tutorial class.  Being the pilot of the program meant I was able to shape it so that I could get an art degree without ever having to choose one medium (which as far as I know is still an option for anyone pursuing an HTC Studio Art degree).  And at the end of the program, when we were required to complete a massive thesis project and paper (at basically graduate level), not only could I choose my subject to meet my hyperfixations, but I had individual help from a professor keeping me on task on the less-fun parts at every step of the way.  

HTC students are required to keep their GPAs above a high threshold. At one point one of my grades (in Latin class) was low enough to hurt my average, and I was called into HTC headquarters for a check-in meeting.  I was asked why my grade had fallen, and I explained that the class wasn’t that interesting (at that level it was mostly grammar) but that it was getting better as we were moving up into translating more actual historical material. That explanation was entirely accepted.  Imagine if “it’s not interesting enough” was considered a valid excuse for grades slipping for everyone, how much less stressful school would be for ADHD kids!

So ultimately it’s pretty much been having the luck and privilege to get myself flagged for “gifted” classes that kept my grades up throughout my school years.  Accidental accommodations have continued into my adult life as well. At my most recent office job, for instance (which I lost due to covid layoffs), I had a pretty hands-off boss who just didn’t care if I doodled, got up to stretch my legs every once in a while, and listened to audiobooks at my desk all day as long as the work got done.  

I didn’t need a diagnosis to get these accommodations, because they were given freely, which meant I was able to succeed even without knowing about my own ADHD.  If I had been diagnosed, and had had to ask for accommodations, I wonder if I would have done as well as bias against people with ADHD means people wouldn’t have expected as much from me.  

So if you’ve made it this far, I’ll ask for the same for others that I got for myself.  If you are a teacher (or a manager in an office setting),  I strongly encourage you to consider how to make your classroom, office, etc. more accessible in general, without someone having to disclose a diagnosis or be singled out for accommodations.  The biggest easiest one you can do is to allow (or even encourage) doodling in lecture settings. Even for neurotypicals,  there have been plenty of studies proving people retain information better when doodling, so everyone should know by now that someone doodling doesn’t mean they’re not listening.   If at all possible, encourage discussion and contribution.  Give everyone breaks to stretch and move around.  And give as much freedom as possible on what to learn about.  You might be surprised what people are capable of when these reasonable steps are taken to give everyone room to thrive.  

That’s all for now,  hopefully you got something out of this unwieldy ramble.   I’d be curious to hear if you’ve run into any accidental accommodations in your life and how they’ve helped.  Until next time!

[fireproofkings]

The making of a sweater series

Part 1 || Part 2

Two things before we start: First, this is a long one and it has a few photos so buckle up if you’re reading. And second, I apologize in advance for the state of my nails in any of the pics, I know they are incredibly awful, but I promise I’ll do them tomorrow.

If you know me, you know I am the worst at keeping up with things, and if not, the fact that I have 7k drafts can give you a pretty good idea.

Last Saturday (July 11th) I went out and bought everything just as I expected, but while I was out shopping, Louis decided to attack us.

That’s one of those things you will always remember what you were doing the moment the news hit. I was buying all the supplies to make Harry’s sweater when Louis announced he was finally free.

My phone was blowing up, and when I went to check why, all of my group chats were screaming, and the lovely Ed (@literlarryreal) was sending me long voice notes telling me all the thoughts she has and let me tell you, it was a ride.

Yes, I cried in public and no, I am not ashamed to say it was not the first time I have done so with something Louis related.

Anyways, getting back on track, I spent way more than I was expecting to, but it’s alright lol. I am confident it’s all going to be worth it.

Under the cut you can find a summary on everything that happened this week with the process, and more pictures of Jack, my dog.

Here’s everything I bought that day. The quantities are exactly what is in the pattern in JW Anderson’s website (plus an extra colour I bought but then found a better match for, which I might use if I run out of any colour). I did end up finding everything, but I had to go to a few different stores to do it. There’s kind of a shortage due to the current situation and the fact that these aren’t essential goods.

I wanted to start that same Saturday, but I decided to finish that scarf I was making before, just so I wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of changing needles and storing it away where it would probably get messed up, so I finished it and here’s a photo of it:

I ended up doing an infinity scarf, and have some yarn leftover, maybe I’ll do a hat or something like that in the future. Yes, those are my PJ’s don’t judge me.

Then I procrastinated starting the actual sweater for all of Sunday and Monday (12th and 13th). That’s something I tend to do, if you haven’t noticed.

One thing I hadn’t thought of as particularly hard, ended up being something out of my nightmares (I also tend to over exaggerate, if you’re reading this, you’re really getting to know me lol).

That green square is incredibly awful.

The pattern itself isn’t that difficult, but if you have to undo some lines it completely falls apart and you have to start over. This happened to me like three times the first time I attempted it.

Usually it takes me half an hour to 45 minutes to do one square, this one took literally two hours and a half. But it was so much easier and quicker the second time around. Putting in a lifeline and doing tallies in a notepad every time I finished a line helped a lot.

Jack did end up making it better. Even if him laying directly on top of it made it difficult to work.

On the other hand, the black and red jacquard squares were something that had me slightly worried. The technique is kinda confusing and is very easy to mess up if you are not paying attention.

The first few lines I did wrong, but then I learned how to do it properly and while the handling of the multiple strands of yarn is difficult, you get the hang of it pretty quickly.

But then, horror struck.

I realised that for some reason I was doing the squares 12cm long and not 14cm like they are supposed to be. So that panel was going to end up being 6cm shorter than the others in total, which doesn’t seem like much but was definitely going to show.

Here you can see the mess. I had to undo basically two whole squares, since the first one was 14cm (I really don’t know what was going on in my brain) and the second one, which was a jacquard pattern one, could be continued, but those two squares cost me about a whole day of work.

I was so frustrated I decided to stop for the day and take a long hot shower.

I came back to it the next day and Jack made it all better (can you sense a pattern -no pun intended- here?).

So, to wrap it up:

They are lined up in the way they go in the completed sweater. The little notes on top help me keep track of which one is each of them. The numbers in blue show the order in which they were done.

The first one was pretty easy except for the green square I talked about before, I started that one on Tuesday (14th) and finished on Wednesday (15th). That same day I started the second one which I finished early on Thursday (16th), it was really uneventful which I appreciated a lot, apart from my pointer finger hurting from pushing the needle, so I decided to invent some kind of protection with tape and silicone, which failed extremely, because it rides up and falls off.

Here you can see my failed attempt at some kind of protection for my pointer finger. I basically need a thimble, but I can’t find one online.

Maybe the uneventfulness of panel number two was to make up for the absolute nightmare that was the third panel that I had started that same day, the one I talked about being 6cm too short. It threw me off the loop for the rest of the day, which meant I only finished it late on Friday (17th) and by then I was too tired to do anything else.

Yesterday, on Saturday (18th) I started the fourth one, but I didn’t have the energy to work that much, and today, Sunday (19th), I haven’t done much more than a couple of rows.

By this point I have 3 completed back centre panels and another one 3/4 of the way done. I just have that 1/4 and the two side panels (that include shoulder shaping) left to finish the back, and then I have the front, sleeves, cuffs, collar, ribs, and button band to finish the knitting. Then it’s all ready to sew together.

Just as I did with last post, I want to close this off with some pointers for what is coming, just to keep myself on track and look back to later:

This week I want to finish the back and leave it all ready for sewing when I’m done with the rest of the knitting.

I have to write for a fic exchange I wish I had started earlier but I’m still confident on the time I have left, so that will be my priority, and not knitting.

I start classes again on August 3rd and I hope to be finished by then (with both the sweater and the fic lol), I am kinda confident I will be able to do it since I’m kind of 1/3 of the way through, so if I keep the same pace, or an even better one, I’ll be able to make it.

Something I’m not looking forward to is doing the shoulder shaping, I have no idea how to.

I have been worried the yarn I bought isn’t going to be enough (it might be just my anxiety talking), but I think it’s going to be okay since I am nearly 1/3 of the way through on the squares with one of the colours, but I haven’t gone through that amount of yarn yet.

I have made the executive decision to not do the tassels with the left over yarn and to sew the panels and ribbing together right sides together (so the seams will be on the inside) to give it a more polished look, but this might change in the future.

I’m starting to see it take shape, even if only the back, and I’m really excited!!!

If you want to see the other posts in these series go to the top where the other parts are linked or go to the tag here.

[collegeessayguy]

This list was compiled by my screenwriter friends Ed and Whit. Thanks, y’all.

Need more fun ideas? Hopefully this helps. Check out Part 2 here.

TO DO

Learn how to cook. From Michelin-starred chef, Massimo Bottura. He hosts an online cooking class on his Instagram and Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street has made its online cooking class free through April 30th.

Live Yoga Classes!

How about origami! One of my favorite skills learned as a child was origami. But my friend Becky had to teach me in person! And we all know “in person” is stupid now. Let’s learn online! It’s free.

Another thing I loved as a kid were Rebus puzzles — those visual word puzzles which hide common phrases. There are hundreds of them on the bottom of this website but make sure to do them in order because they list the answers to the last set on top of the current set.

Have a picnic indoors. Get a video of the outdoors and throw it up on your TV. Then, on your computer or phone, bring up some birds chirping or other nature sounds. Put them both on at the same time, put a blanket on your floor, and have a picnic. Believe me, it’s worth it.

FOR KIDS

A great google doc I did NOT make but was asked to share. Tons of kid-focused lessons and activities. Some stuff for grown-ups, too!

Sesame Street is chipping in because of course they do. They’re making games, videos and more all free. Their content list is constantly being updated so check out this page to keep up-to-date.

The Broad (a great museum in Los Angeles) offers a weekly “Let’s Make Art! Family Workshop At Home.” Every Friday they post a new project on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Here’s the first one on YouTube!

Drawing class for kids every day on Instagram. You’ve probably heard of this one. It’s been going around a lot. But just in case, here you go!

TO HELP

Help make masks for our doctors and nurses!

A friend (writer) and his wife (ER doctor) created a tax deductible fund where you can donate money that goes directly to buying meals for ER and ICU staff. If you’ve had the thought of donating food to those on the frontline, this is a great way to do it (and tax deductible!)

TO FEEL

Want to brighten up your day? Watch the Berklee College of Music students sing: “Love Sweet Love.” It’s really great.

Here’s a good article about what you may be feeling. And what you may be feeling is grief.

A friend suggested that since we’re all washing our hands to the tune of “Happy Birthday” multiple times a day, why not include a different friend’s name each time? That way you’re thinking about your good friends Katie and Grant instead of mindlessly singing “Happy Birthday” to no one like a crazy person.

TO WATCH

Part One we listed the Metropolitan Opera’s free shows but other operas are airing their own productions. The Vienna State Opera is showing pre-recorded operas. You have to register but then it’s free. And a new one every day!

Just something to lighten the mood and astound you: a magic trick. But honestly? Maybe the best magic trick I’ve ever seen. I know magic doesn’t usually translate on video but this one does. A true master.

Watch a movie series in chronological order. The Marvel movies come to mind, here’s the list. But there are other ways to watch movie series rather than chronological. How about watching the Star Wars movies in “Machete Order”? Episodes: IV, V, II, III, VI, VII, VIII, IX. Or, for something shorter but still Star Wars, how about this amazing reimagining of the Kenobi/ Vader lightsaber fight. If only all the films were made this well!

You’ve probably seen plenty of places to watch Broadway shows but how about documentaries ABOUT Broadway shows? Here’s a list of some great ones to watch!

I was going to list only the best of this list but Gizmodo has so many good, “nerdy” ideas for free viewing that I’ll just link the article. It includes: CBS All Access, Quibi, Showtime, and Amazon Kids. Also some great places to read: Audible, Internet Archive, and Scribt.

Sports! Sure, the NBA and NFL aren’t playing live games but that doesn’t mean we can’t get FREE access to their Passes. The NBA League Pass is free through April 22nd and the NFL Game Pass is free through May 31st. It’s all replays and classic games but still.... free sports!

And Sir Patrick Stewart is reading Shakespeare every day on Twitter. It’s worth a listen.

TO LEARN

Interview your partner/roommate/child/parent. If you’re quarantined with someone else, why not REALLY get to know them? For many years my job was traveling across the country interviewing strangers for consumer product research. But why does it have to be strangers? Interview your family or friend. Really get to know them for one hour. Ask them questions that don’t normally come up in day-to-day life. “Greatest fear,” “biggest regret,” “dream occupation,” “if you had a magic wand, what would you change in the world right now?” And you can’t say, “Cure the pandemic!” Tip: Have them answer every question in a complete sentence so you can understand their answer without having to hear the interviewer ask the question. Plus, as my boss always told me: “No matter what they say, ASK WHY?” That’s when the answers get interesting. For an ADDED activity, take your interview tape (from your phone or camera) and edit it on iMovie. A one hour interview should cut down nicely to 10 minutes. You get the experience of editing (very easy on iMovie) and then you have a piece of history from your time together.

TO PLAY

Free jigsaw puzzles! For adults and kids. And although I miss the hands-on feel of the puzzle, if you’re desperate, this is pretty good. Make sure to go to Full Screen mode. Makes a world of difference.

Make your own board game! Why just spend time PLAYING when you can ALSO spend time MAKING your game? There are some easy ones like “Can’t Stop” which are great for kids and adults alike. Or how about Otrio? It’s tic-tac-toe but more fun. Just google the game and make your own board and pieces. You can play it on the floor, on a table, or in the yard.

For more ideas, check out Part 2 here.

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 29 Feb 2020 (EFF dream-job, Medicare For All Bond Villain, Bloomberg's Sackler connection, Tory housing crisis and more!)

Today's links

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director: It's a once-in-a-lifetime dream job.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to sign a binding arbitration waiver."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL: A 26% alcohol habanero spirit from Empirical Spirits.

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations: Just helping out the "Friends of Mike."

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis: No one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII.

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts: Tories are always swallowing spiders to catch their flies.

This day in history: 2012, 2016 (leap years!)

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director (permalink)

There are lots of ways techies can help EFF – contributing code to our projects like Certbot, Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere and/or joining up and writing a check. But right now, there's a rare chance to work directly to make profound change with us.

That's because EFF is hiring a Tech Projects Director.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/eff-seeks-tech-projects-director-lead-awesome-technical-team-and-help-us-save

It's a huge gig, the kind of thing that only comes up once in a very long while. You don't just get to oversee the impressive roster of EFF projects, you also get to set future priorities.

"Some people join EFF having been burned by unfeeling tech companies or corporate law jobs, and coming to EFF can feel like coming home – a place where everyone genuinely wants you to be successful, where we do our best to leave drama at the door even as passion is welcomed."

I've been with the org for EIGHTEEN YEARS and this is so, so true.

Even if you're not right for this gig, keep checking in with our help wanted page.

https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs

We're growing fast, first because the world is severely messed up, and second because our member-donors recognize how well situated we are to make a difference and they're funding us to expand.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition (permalink)

We're all familiar with the Bond villain setup: "Mr. Bond, I see you've ingested my poison."

But what follows in Matt Haughey's "Monologuing" is a fabulous satirical take on the Medicare For All moment.

https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2020/02/28/monologuing/

"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to…"

Locate in-network doctors on our website

Cross-reference with the benefits PDF you were sent last month

Create a login

Verify your last three home addresses

(before the poison hits)

Call your doctor and agree to see a physician's assistant so you can get treatment in less than 3 week

Agree to a $100 urgent-care co-pay

Pay $1200 for the ambulance to the ER

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, I expect you to continue to wait on hold because your call is very important to us and may be monitored for quality assurance purposes."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL (permalink)

"FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL" is "a habanero spirit made from a base of pearled barley, Belgian saison yeast, and koji. The clear product is rectified with a habanero vinegar that gives it a 27% ABV. This imparts an intensely fruity habanero profile without any of the heat."

It actually sounds delicious.

https://us.empiricalspirits.co/products/fuck-trump-and-his-stupid-fucking-wall

It's $85 plus $35 S+H in the USA for 750ml.

Serving suggestion: "With red grapefruit juice, topped with sparkling water and cornichon as garnish"

I'm a little bummed that they take out the capsaicin, as I love spicy booze.

My current favorite is a spicy, sugar-free Old Fashioned:

2 shakes Hellfire bitters 2 shakes Angostura bitters 1 jigger decent bourbon Orange zest (wipe over rim, squeeze into glass, then drop in the drink) Serve over a whiskey rock in a lowball glass

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations (permalink)

The Sackler family became some of the world's richest billionaires through the actions of the family business, Purdue Pharma, which committed a string of felonies as it conspired to addict the world to its killer opioid, Oxycontin. The company's bribery of doctors, scientific frauds, and corruption of its regulators allowed it to kickstart the opioid epidemic, which has so far claimed 200,000 US lives, more than were lost in Vietnam.

And yet, until very recently, the Sackler family was primarily known for its art philanthropy, firehosing its money and name over some of the world's most prominent art institutions. As the family's role in corporate mass murder came to light, artists demanded that institutions remove the Sackler name. It worked! Nan Goldin's stunt of showering the Guggenheim with Sackler opioid prescriptions was just one of many amazing actions.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/nan-goldin-leads-a-protest-at-the-guggenheim-against-the-sackler-family

The Louvre also removed every mention of the Sacklers from its spaces.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190721-sackler-name-removed-louvre-opioid-crisis-france?ref=tw_i

But you know who DIDN'T ditch the Sacklers as they were becoming social pariahs? Guess who expressed rock solid billionaire class solidarity with the poor, beleaguered plutes when their reputation laundry failed them?

Mike Bloomberg, of course!

As @propublica reports, when the Sacklers worried about their collapsing reputations, they knew who to turn to: the ex-mayor whose return to his news organization meant that reporters who chased billionaires were sidelined.

https://www.propublica.org/article/bloomberg-sacklers-opioid-crisis-public-relations

While Bloomberg had been mayor, his newsroom created a "billionaires team" that investigated the doings of the super-rich, including the "Friends of Mike" (FOMs) whom everyone understood to be untouchable under Bloomberg's management.

Upon his return, he heaped scorn upon these investigative reporters: "Why is that news? Why do we have to probe into that stuff?" Mike's return to the newsroom created "a culture of not wanting to upset billionaires."

So naturally the Sacklers turned to him! And Bloomberg obliged. After meeting with Mortimer Sackler, Bloomberg gave the Sacklers crisis communications advice and helped them his old mayoral press secretary, Stu Loeser. According to Bloomberg, Loeser was perfect because of his new communications company's "political instincts and deep connections."

Loeser went on to work with the Sacklers as they pushed out the story that opioid addiction was the fault of weak-willed criminal addicts, not corporate drug-pushers.

Loeser now works as a Bloomberg presidential campaign spokesman.

With Bloomberg's help, the Sacklers were able to continue to leverage their philanthropic donations to shore up their reputations, particularly by embarking on joint projects with Bloomberg Philanthropies. Bloomberg posed with Sackler heiresses at the opening of the Sackler Wing of London's Serpentine Gallery (which eventually took the Sackler name off the building), and then served as chair of the Serpentine Sackler Galleries.

His news organization ran multiple, glowing stories about the Sacklers' generosity, and continued to work closely with the Sackler families, even as they were committing a string of crimes.

For example, money laundry to the tune of billions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Fraudulent misrepresentations of the company's role in the opioid epidemic.

https://www.propublica.org/article/data-touted-by-oxycontin-maker-to-fight-lawsuits-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story#167506

And giving some of the weirdest, most risible, most terrible testimony in the history of corporate criminal depositions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

Just more Friends of Mike!

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis (permalink)

The climate crisis is an existential threat to our species (and many other species besides). It turns out that Keynes was more prescient that we knew. He proposed that you could start an economy by paying half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. Instead, we spent more than a century subsidizing our ancestors to dig up fossil fuels and now we'll have to pay our descendants to spend 200-300 years getting all that carbon back into the ground.

If we don't, our civilization will collapse and our species may go extinct. There's no time for half-measures. That's why Bernie Sanders's version of the Green New Deal is such a big deal.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615292/bernie-sanders-has-an-audaciousand-hugely-expensiveclimate-plan/

He's the only leadership candidate whose plan actually confronts the scale of the crisis.

The $16T (yes, TRILLION) plan includes $2.5T to convert all US energy to renewables, "ending subsidies, mountaintop-removal coal mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels."

He'll also ask the DoJ to investigate criminal frauds committed by energy sector companies that spent millions to delay action on climate by pumping out disinformation along with their CO2.

The budget also includes $2T for a retrofit of our homes and workplaces, $1T to retrofit roads and other infrastructure.

There's $3.6T to convert the US's vehicles to electric, $85B for charging stations and $100B to improve electric car manufacture.

There's $900B for mass transit and high-speed rail, and $150B to improve emissions from aviation and marine transport.

In all, the plan creates "20 million jobs, while offering wage guarantees, job training, and other assistance to displaced energy workers."

As James Temple writes in MIT Tech Review, there are some odd quirks, like a rejection of carbon capture, but these are issues in the margin that administrative agencies staffed by independent experts (not corporate shills) might tweak.

But this is the plan we need. Remember, no one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII, and a Nazi victory would have merely put half the human race in mortal peril, while the climate crisis threatens us all, and without the hope of regime change down the road.

The purpose of the economy, the justification for markets, is that they promote human prosperity and progress. Scratching in flooded rubble for canned goods and drinking your own urine is not "progress." If our spreadsheets can't figure out how to allocate capital to heading off an extinction-level event, we need new spreadsheets. As our friends at Prager "University" like to remind us, "facts don't care about your feelings."

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts (permalink)

Margaret Thatcher sold off council houses to create more Tories, on the theory that home ownership made you a Conservative. But the end of council estates just meant that private landlords were able to gouge local governments for substandard housing for poor people. Predictably, this only worsened, with rents spiraling for poorly maintained, dangerous housing. Eventually, David Cameron got a genius idea: he'd cut how much money families could spend on private rent.

After all, this was much more politically feasible than ordering landlords to provide decent housing at a fair price. Landlords make campaign contributions and vote Tory, and a majority of Tory MPs are landlords themselves.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/corbyn-tried-pass-law-make-homes-safe-last-year-conservatives-rejected/14/06/

By contrast, council tenants vote Labour and are (by definition) too poor to bribe politicians. Just as with Thatcher's selloff, the outcome of Cameron's policy was totally predictable to anyone whose wealth didn't depend on their denying it.

People couldn't pay their rent, so they became homeless.

You know what's more expensive than paying rent for poor people? Helping homeless people. The savings from Cameron's cruel policy of limiting rent subsidies were totally wiped out by the millions more that local governments had to pay to find temporary shelter for the wave of homelessness Cameron had created.

That's not all, of course. Voter turnout among affected households plummeted, and when they did vote, it was in the Brexit referendum, where the housing benefit cuts strongly correlated with a Leave vote: "We also observe that a one standard deviation increase in the level of exposure to the cut in a district is associated with up to a 2.2 percentage point greater level of support for 'Leave'."

https://voxeu.org/article/housing-insecurity-homelessness-and-populism

The inability of the British private sector to build affordable housing and the unwillingness of the public sector to fill in the gap has produced a ghastly quality of life. In Camden, £1500/month gets you a 27sqm "flat" whose bed is literally a mattress wedged next to the toilet.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/uk/london-renting-compared-berlin-gbr-grm-intl/index.html

And yet, Greater London has never had a better ratio of bedrooms to people. It's just that HALF the beds in the region are empty on any given night. But with 60% of the UK national wealth represented by property in the southeast, the last thing the Tories want to do is fix this misallocation, which has been such a boon to the ownership class.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/14/great-housing-disaster-danny-dorling-review

This day in history (permalink)

#8yrsago In Minecraft, a fountain of cats at the top of the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iNw2YcAK9Wc#!

#8yrsago Smithsonian building archive of printable 3D scans https://www.cnet.com/news/smithsonian-turns-to-3d-to-bring-collection-to-the-world/

#8yrsago Finance industry bemoans hard times in an era of reduced bonuses https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex

#4yrsago Crapgadget apocalypse: the IoT devices that punch through your firewall and expose your network https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/

#4yrsago Press looks the other way as thousands march for Sanders in 45+ cities https://web.archive.org/web/20160314104804/http://usuncut.com/politics/media-blackout-as-thousands-of-bernie-supporters-march-in-45-cities/

#4yrsago FBI claims it has no records of its decision to delete its recommendation to encrypt your phone https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160226/14181133727/fbi-claims-it-has-no-record-why-it-deleted-recommendation-to-encrypt-phones.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Alice Taylor (https://twitter.com/wonderlandblog), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/) and Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/.

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[jeanvaljean24601]

How to Watch Mad Men and More Great Shows for Free Right Now

Another day, another brand new streaming platform out there begging you to subscribe to its service so you can ignore your family members and binge-watch a bunch of TV shows and movies in the name of entertainment. This time, it's NBCUniversal's Peacock, which offers a free tier as well as  two premium options (one with ads and one without). The service  features a number of programs for free, including Friday Night Lights and even Parks and Recreation, but Peacock isn't the only place you can stream great shows without breaking the bank.

Below, we've gathered up a number of shows that don't require you to shell out money for Netflix,  Hulu,  Amazon Prime,  Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, and/or  whatever other streaming service subscriptions are out there. Sometimes you just need a simple freebie. And you know what? You deserve it. So check out the list below and take comfort in knowing it won't cost you a thing.

Watch it on: IMDb TV

Until recently you had to have a Netflix subscription to watch Mad Men, AMC's Emmy-award winning period drama from Matthew Weiner that was dedicated as much to style as it was to substance. The 1960s-set series, which traced the rise and fall of flawed Madison Avenue advertising executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm) through his own complicated relationship with identity, was a pointed commentary on the toxic masculinity, sexism, and racism of the era. It also changed the way we watch and talk about TV. If you haven't seen it yet, now's the perfect time to do so.

The Dick Van Dyke Show

Watch it on: Tubi (complete series), Pluto TV (complete series)

Realizing  The Dick Van Dyke Show is streaming for free feels a bit like winning a secret lottery or viewing an exceptional piece of art without paying the museum admission fee. The popular comedy, which ran for five seasons, was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke as the head writer of a TV show, while  Mary Tyler Moore portrayed his wife. It's a timeless classic — one that took home 15 Emmys during its run, and if you've yet to experience it, you literally have no excuse at this point.

The Dick Van Dyke Show Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Watch it on: ABC app (complete series)

Felicity is best known as the show in which Keri Russell cut her hair (not to be confused with the show in which Keri Russell wore a lot of great wigs, aka The Americans). Depicting Felicity Porter's (Russell) college years and the struggles that accompany trying to figure out who you're supposed to be, the show is also famous for Scott Speedman's whisper-talking and the ongoing battle of Ben (Speedman) vs. Noel (Scott Foley). Although the WB series was previously streaming on Hulu, you can now watch it for free on the ABC app.

A reimagining of the kitschy original series, Syfy's Battlestar Galacticastarred Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan, James Callis, and Jamie Bamber and explored the aftermath of a nuclear attack by the Cylons, cybernetic creatures invented by man who evolved and rebelled against their creators. The show was critically acclaimed for the way it tackled the subjects of science, religion, and politics, and for the way it explored the deeply complicated notion of what makes us human. Everything from the miniseries to the two BSG films (Razor and The Plan) is currently available to stream for free on Syfy's website, so there's no better time to watch it. So say we all!

Watch it on: IMDb TV (complete series), Tubi (complete series), Pluto TV (first 13 seasons), YouTube (first 13 seasons)

For many millennials, the fourth series in the Degrassi franchise, Degrassi: The Next Generation, is the defining iteration of the long-running Canadian series. The drama series, which was sometimes so overly dramatic it was actually funny, tackled everything from date rape and suicide to sexual orientation and teen pregnancy. The series, which launched the careers of Drake (then known as Aubrey Graham) and Nina Dobrev, is streaming on multiple free platforms.

Watch it on: ABC app (complete series)

Eli Stone really had it all, which is to say it had Victor Garber singing George Michael songs, Loretta Devine singing George Michael songs, and George Michael singing George Michael songs. What else is there? ABC's offbeat two-season comedy-drama starred a pre-Elementary Jonny Lee Miller as Eli Stone, a high-powered San Francisco lawyer whose brain aneurysm gave him prophetic visions — which usually involved his friends, family, and colleagues breaking into song. Aside from a couple of ill-advised plotlines (the pilot, which suggests vaccines cause autism, is best forgotten), the show was a blast: a weird but memorable cocktail that should have stuck around for more seasons because, as I mentioned, Victor Garber sang George Michael songs. Also, Sigourney Weaver played God?! -Kelly Connolly

Watch it on: YouTube (nearly every episode)

A true Canadian treasure,  The Red Green Show was a long-running comedy starring Steve Smith as Red Green, a handyman who constantly tried to cut corners using duct tape and who had his own cable TV show. It was a parody of home improvement shows and outdoor programs and featured segments like Handyman Corner, Adventures with Bill, and The Possum Lodge Word Game. The show ran for 15 seasons, airing on PBS in the States. 

TV Premiere Date Calendar: Find Out When Your Favorite Shows Are Back

Watch it on: IMDb TV (complete series), ABC app (complete series)

Critically beloved but struck down before its time,  My So-Called Life has been praised for its realistic and honest portrayal of teenage life, not just via Angela Chase (Claire Danes), but through the show's young supporting cast as well. Now considered to be one of the best shows of all time, it tackled topics like homophobia, homelessness, drug use, and more without ever feeling preachy or like an after-school special. Also, Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) could lean.

Watch it on: CW Seed (first five seasons), IMDb TV (first five seasons)

If you don't have Netflix but still want to watch  Schitt's Creek, you'll be happy to know you can watch the first five seasons of the heartwarming, Emmy-nominated comedy series, about a wealthy family who loses everything they own except the town of the show's title, for free on CW Seed and IMDb TV.

Dan Levy and Catherine O'Hara, Schitt's Creek Photo: Pop TV

Watch it on: Peacock (complete series); IMDb TV (complete series)

You may never know what it feels like to have Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) be proud of you, but you can pretend by watching all five seasons of  Friday Night Lights, a series that was as much about a Texas community as it was about the sport that united it. By the end of the show, you'll be asking yourself "What Would Riggins Do?" and tattooing "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" on your body, all while chanting "Texas forever!" Trust me, it happens to everybody.

Watch it on: CW Seed (complete series)

It is relatively easy to forget that The CW series The Carrie Diaries was a prequel to  Sex and the City, because the charming show, which lasted just two seasons, was able to stand on its own. The coming-of-age series that followed a teenaged Carrie Bradshaw (AnnaSophia Robb) was relatively innocent compared to the original series. The show's 1980s setting made it easier for the writers to focus on more harmless family storylines and teenage heartbreaks, but the show never shied away from the heartstring-tugging drama of young adulthood either. It's a shame the show never got the kind of ratings it deserved and wasn't able to exist beyond Carrie's high school years, but the Season 2 finale works well as a series finale, so viewers won't feel as if the story was left incomplete. android tv box

Watch it on: CW Seed (complete series)

It's a shame Bryan Fuller's saturated dramedy  Pushing Daisies, about a pie-maker (Lee Pace) with the ability to bring the dead back to life, couldn't bring itself back to life after becoming a casualty of the 2007-08 writers' strike. A whimsical delight, the show featured the pie-maker teaming up with a local private eye (Chi McBride) to solve murders by reviving the victims for a brief time. Known for its quirky characters, eccentric visual style, and Jim Dale's pitch-perfect narration, it remains must-see TV.

Watch it on: IMDb TV (first seven seasons); Peacock

Columbo kicked off nearly every episode by revealing the crime and its perpetrator to the audience, which means unlike most crime dramas, the show was less about whodunnit and more about Peter Falk's iconic raincoat-wearing homicide detective catching them and getting them to confess. Oh, and just one more thing: it's great.

Watch it on: CW Seed (complete series)

The charming and playful Forever, which starred Ioan Gruffudd as an immortal medical examiner, was the one show that could have saved ABC's Tuesday at 10 p.m. death slot. But the network still canceled the series anyway, enraging the show's fans, who have never let the sting of its death go. Luckily, it now lives on, ahem, forever (aka until the content license expires) on CW Seed.

Watch it on: IMDb TV (complete series)

It sounds odd to say The Middle, which ran for nine seasons on ABC, was unfairly overlooked, but it always felt like the series, which followed the middle class Midwestern Heck family, was a bit of a hidden gem. It wasn't as popular with Emmy voters as, say, Modern Family, and critics also failed to give it its due, but it was a real, heartfelt, reliable family comedy with mass appeal, and you can stream it on IMDb TV for free. h96 tv box

Watch it on: ABC app (complete series)

Trophy Wife's short life — it was canceled after just one season — can probably be chalked up to its unfortunate title, which was meant to be ironic but ultimately kept viewers from tuning in and experiencing the warmth of the show and the relationships at its center. Malin Akerman starred as the young wife of  Bradley Whitford's middle-aged lawyer, and the comedy explored the dynamics between the two, his children, and his two ex-wives, who were played by  Marcia Gay Harden and  Michaela Watkins. h96 max x3

Watch it on: NBC app (complete series)

Loosely based on the Biblical story of King David, Kings was a compelling drama before its time. Rudely cut down after just one season by NBC, the show starred Ian McShane as the king of the fictional kingdom of Gilboa, while  Christopher Egan portrayed an idealistic young soldier whose counterpart is David. The show also starred Sebastian Stan, which is reason enough to want to check it out.

Watch it on: ABC app (complete series)

Ray Wise portrays Satan in Reaper, a supernatural dramedy about a slacker (Bret Harrison) who reluctantly becomes a reaper tasked with capturing escaped souls from hell after it's revealed his parents made a deal with the devil many, many years before. The fact the show only lasted two seasons is a crime against humanity. Luckily, you can watch it in its entirety for free on the ABC app. h96 max x3

Watch it on: IMDb TV (complete series)

A team of experts led by a kooky old scientist (John Noble), his son (Joshua Jackson), and an FBI agent (Anna Torv) investigate strange occurrences around the country, X-Files style, in the J.J. Abrams-produced Fringe. The series is one of the best broadcast science-fiction shows of all time, particularly in its first three seasons, and perfected the art of the serialized procedural by weaving the show's deep mythology and excellent character work into weekly standalone stories, making it easy to binge or watch in spurts. And by the time the end of Season 1 starts, you'll have a hard time stopping. -Tim Surette

Watch it on: Tubi (complete series), Vudu (complete series)

Although American TV producers would eventually adapt  Being Human, the original British version, which followed three supernatural beings trying to live amongst humans, is far superior. The show, which ran for five seasons, starred Aidan Turner, Russell Tovey, and  Lenora Crichlow as a vampire, werewolf, and ghost, respectively. So skip the U.S. version entirely and watch the U.K. series for free.

Watch it on: Pluto TV (complete series),  Vudu (complete series), Tubi (complete series)

The Australian young adult-oriented series Dance Academy is not exactly what you'd call "great television," but it is great fun. Brimming with teen angst and melodrama, the series, which ran for three seasons and even had a follow-up movie, followed a handful of dancers at Sydney's National Academy of Dance as they trained in the sport they loved while also falling in and out of love with each other. The acting was sometimes questionable, but the series itself was addictive, not to mention one of the easiest binges you'll ever encounter. h96 max tv box

3rd Rock From the Sun

Watch it on: Tubi (complete series), Pluto TV (complete series), Crackle (all six seasons),  Vudu (all six seasons)

You might think a show about a group of socially awkward, 1,000-year-old aliens in human skin suits who are trying (badly) to pose as a human family and blend into an ordinary Midwest town might sound ridiculous, and, well, that's fair. But  3rd Rock From the Sun was still charming in even its most bizarre moments and gave its cast a lot of room to play up their roles and create an ensemble of weirdos that, at some point or another, start to tap into their newfound humanity and relish their new home here on Earth. -Amanda Bell.