#read an article and decided to try web weaving

[ladyantiheroine]

“Batman Returns Still Has the Best Romance in a Superhero Movie” by David Crow / Batman Returns dir. Tim Burton.

[billionairebabes]

Trophy Wife Aesthetics for Black Women

“Hi! What do you think are the non-negotiables of being a trophy wife? Aesthetically. For black women. I think white women have a different level up journey.”

I was asked this question in a chat but I wrote so much information that I figured I should share my response with you all as well. I’ll try to make this as concise as possible. 

I’ll start by saying that aesthetically, Black women have to be more than cute. White women are considered beautiful just for being white, we don’t get that privilege, you know? However, being beautiful isn’t the end all be all. There are plenty of black trophy wives that aren’t naturally “beautiful” but they present well. Presentation is everything kind of like food. It may taste great but you may not even want to touch it if it’s presented poorly. 

Here are my personal non-negotiables: 

1. Keep your hair done. This doesn’t mean keep your hair in a weave or wig 24/7. You can be natural too. One of the more affluent men I dated actually preferred my natural hair over wigs. But make sure it’s well taken care of, always. Deep condition, moisturize, detangle etc. Use clips in if you need the extra volume. If you’re going to do weaves and wigs, make sure your closure is “undetectable”. Keep flyaways in order with an oil or mousse. Carry a brush and comb with everywhere to touch up every now and then but not in front of him if possible.

2. Your skin has to be pretty taken care of as well. If you’re his wife, you’re going to be waking up to him every morning. I don’t believe in waking up earlier than my man to put on light makeup and stuff. Men aren’t even worth that lol. But DO try to achieve great skin so that you still are pretty when you wake up. Doesn’t have to be perfect. Many people don’t have perfect skin. But make sure you’re washing, toning, moisturizing blah blah. I’m starting to follow the 10-step Korean skincare routine. It’s on my blog If you guys want to check it out. I’ve been investing a significant amount of time in learning what acids do what and how they can address my specific concerns. Good skin overall just makes you look wealthier too. So on “no-makeup” days, you can just do eyebrows, and lipgloss and mascara if you don’t have lash extensions and still look put together. Affluent men tend to enjoy outdoor activities, there will be times when you don’t wanna be in a full face but you can if you want to. The same goes for skin on the rest of your body as well. I shower about two times a day so I moisturize my body two times a day. To moisturize I use a mixture of oils, shea butter and regular lotion. I moisturize my hands every time I wash them too. Once or twice a week, I do a full-body exfoliation. I have a dry brush that I use and occasionally, I opt for a scrub instead. 

3. Take care of your teeth - Straight white teeth against melanated skin is >>>>. Plus it makes you look prettier, more put together, and of course, wealthier. Straightening teeth is expensive but a worthy investment. If you can’t straighten now, just whiten and take good care of your teeth in the meanwhile. Brush twice daily, floss daily, and whiten throughout the week. 

4. Keep your nails done. Can’t be too long or else we’re considered “ghetto” I usually go about medium length but a lot of blogs will suggest short. My man loved my medium length nails lol. I usually go for softer colors like baby pink, sometimes white. If I’m not able to go to the salon, I clean and file my nails down to an even length and paint them with a clear polish. It’s hard to make a mess of clear polish and my nails still look nice and shiny. I pop collagen pills to improve their strength because I naturally have weaker nails that break pretty easily. 

5. Wardrobe. Try to build a timeless wardrobe with a lot of basics you can build on and mix and match. For example, blazers are a staple for me. I wear them with jeans but I can mix them with trousers too. Then I have hella basic bodysuits I can wear with either combo. An easy trick for me is to buy a ton of neutrals. I’m not a big color person so it’s easy for me to shop this way. However, do not let my preferences deter you. Black women own color, if this is your style, go for it full throttle but be tasteful. I usually go more colorful on vacations. There are tons of articles out there on how to build a good wardrobe though. 

6. Stay in shape - I won’t say there’s a specific body type you need to have but take care of your body. I’m still working on working out consistently but because of skinny privilege I’ve been able to lack in that department and still be perceived as ��fit”. Currently, I try to do flexibility stretching and exercise on Monday, Wednesday & Fridays. Stretch on weekends. If you get cosmetic surgery like a BBL, breast job etc. make sure it’s fitting for your frame. 

7. Lastly, this doesn’t apply to aesthetics but I feel as though black women have to DO SOMETHING to be snatched up as trophy wives. We don’t get pulled into that position just for being pretty as often as white woman do. For example, Alexis O. Of Reddit wifed Serena Williams who is the best tennis player in the world. Not some random girl he thought was cute. Prince Harry wifed Megan Markle who was not only a successful actress but also had an outstanding educational background to match. Janet Jackson married billionaire businessman, Wissam Al Mana. Now of course, many of us aren’t that successful yet but hopefully you get the point. Men in positions of higher status want to know that you can fit into his lifestyle and don’t have beans for brains. Having something going for yourself also gives him something to invest in. Men like to feel needed or helpful but not used. 

Additionally, owning a business or working in corporate greater increases your chances of mingling with men in positions to make you a trophy wife. There’s a reason why college sugar babies are so successful but for women past that stage, have a career, have a small business. Do SOMETHING. It also creates a safety net for you as well. Men can be unpredictable and can do horrible things. I read an article once about a man who hid his entire fortune in offshore shell companies when him and his wife were divorcing so that she wouldn’t be able to get anything. It took her lawyer literal years to untangle that web of shell accounts he spun. Running your own business or even having a solid set of skills saves you in the event of the worst of the worst. Your life shouldn’t crumble to pieces if this man decides to divorce you. Same goes for even being the spoiled girlfriend of a wealthy man. Having a wealthy boyfriend or husband is one thing, knowing how to use him as a resource is another. Girls who truly win at this game walk away from these relationships with more than a few handbags and a baby. 

Good Luck Ladies! 🥂

[avengers-nextgen]

Noctis II

“Where’s your brother?” Loki asked, following Sage about the tower and activating the defenses.

“I don’t know,” Sage shrugged, recalling Scout’s instructions on the appropriate pin to enter in the controls. If she was off by a number she could very well be zapped to death by a hidden gun in the ceiling.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Loki frowned.

“I mean what I said,” Sage replied, pressing the series of numbers with care. “We aren’t on speaking terms. It was his decision not mine and I’m not going to get into his business if he doesn’t want me too.”

“Let me talk to him then,” Loki decided.

“Don’t bother,” Sage frowned, “everyone’s been trying to. He won’t listen. Frankly it’s better this way.”

“What? You can’t say that. He depends on you!” Loki scoffed, matching his daughter’s stride as she made her way to another control panel.

“He’s not a little boy anymore. He can take care of himself,” Sage grumbled. “Just, drop it okay?”

— — —

“What’s going on out there?” Max questioned, looking anxiously about their cell.

“Something bad,” Enzo explained, pacing back and forth. “I can’t quite explain what the threat is but I’m worried. The way my dad talked about this goddess or something makes it seem like we’re about to enter some dooms day scenario.”

“That’s...not reassuring at all,” Max swallowed tightly, their skin covered in a thin nervous sweat.

“Right now the tension is in the waiting. We can’t do much until something happens,” Enzo sighed, “but even that scares me. Because what if that something is bad?”

“I wish I could offer some words of comfort but frankly I’m a bit terrified too,” Max croaked, seemingly able to sense the shift in the atmosphere.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Enzo promised, leaning against the bars to watch his friend. “I mean, maybe something goes wrong, but at lease this place is armed to the max-pun not intended-and we’re surrounded by supers. If anything we’re better off than everyone out there.”

“That’s what worries me,” Max groaned, “and you can think I’m stupid for this but I’m worried about my parents. Yeah, they suck, but they’re my family. I don’t want something horrific to happen to them. That’s not fair.”

“Listen,” Enzo reached through the bars to grasp Max by the shoulder, “I get it. My family is complicated too. But I don’t think they’ll be the target. We will. We’re the threat and as long as you don’t go to them they should be okay.”

“You’re right,” Max nodded. “Thanks. It’s unnerving not knowing what’s going on outside, you know? If you didn’t tell me these things I don’t know how sane I’d be.”

“What are friends for?” Enzo arched a brow. “I got you pal.”

— — —

“Alright, time to read up on my Norse mythology,” Scout huffed, slamming a stack of books on his desk.

“Which do you want?” Chloe asked, gesturing to a rather large leatherback book and it’s equally large counterpart.

“Does it honestly matter?” Scout whined.

“No, but I was hoping to make things less daunting,” Chloe smiled sympathetically. Both selected a book and sat down to read as fast as they possibly could.

“Notebooks and pens,” Nathaniel called, entering Scout’s room with his arms loaded. “Didn’t know how much of these you’d need so I raided a lot of the desks.”

“Thanks,” Scout smiled. “Got any gum? Preferably mint? It stimulates the mind.”

“Really? Cause I chew this all the time and I am not getting any smarter,” Nathaniel snorted, tossing the whole pack to his young friend.

“Can I help?” Penny asked, hesitantly interrupting.

“Uh...I don’t know if easing is uhm...”Scout winced trying to find a way to say as nicely as possible that perhaps this wasn’t suited for her.

“Oh, right,” Penny nodded. “Gotcha.”

“Actually,” Chloe mumbled, “you’re pretty okay at surfing the web right? Not Fox levels of good but pretty good?”

“I think so,” Penny nodded.

“Great, then I need you to look up as many news articles as possible and record what’s happening around the world. Get Arthur to help you,” Chloe instructed.

“Aye aye, captain!” Saluting, Penny ran from the room in search of the other twin.

— — —

“I really shouldn’t have ignored those maintenance messages,” Tony sighed, looking at all of the defense system statistics to realize that many were in separate need of recalibration.

“You think?” Pepper arched a brow.

“He’s got help,” Piper promised, nodding to Gen, Hope, and Orion. “Well, I don’t know so much about green bean-“

“I know enough about mechanics to maintain my own ship thank you very much. At least, before it was blow up,” Orion glowered.

“Right,” Tony nodded, “okay then. We have work to do people. We need to get this tower primed and ready for anything that comes our way. I doubt it’ll be effective from what asgardian doctor doomsday says but it’s worth a shot. Pipes you and Gen cover the third and fourth floors. Hope, you can handle the fifth and second-it requires small sizes. Orion, you’re with me and we have whatever is left.”

“Sounds good,” Gen grinned. “Got any tools?”

“Kid, I have the largest arsenal of mechanical supplies in history. Of course I have tools,” Tony scoffed, flicking a switch on his desk.

The back of his lab opened up to reveal an array of items covering the wall from floor to ceiling. “Pick whatever your heart desires.”

“How did I not know this was here?” Piper stammered, eyes wide and alight with both excitement and wonder.

— — —

“Let me help,” Bianca insisted.

“There’s not much you can do right now to help with this,” Bucky’s expression turned to one of sympathy. He and Steve were currently lifting boxes of emergency supplies down from storage.

“Well, I need to do something. I’m not just going to sit here,” Bianca frowned.

“Great,” Alex huffed, “because I need someone who has an eye for weapons to help me out with these.”

The blonde held up two large guns that looked old and unused. Well, the tech was new, but they clearly hadn’t been touched in some time. Smiling hopefully, Alex watched as Bianca’s expression softened.

“Okay, I’m in,” Bianca nodded.

“Thanks, I was worried I’d shoot my toe off,” Alex sighed. She followed Bianca down the hall to the weaponry. Alex has never really bothered going in there but the place was massive and well stocked with all sorts of equipment. “Wow. This place is huge.”

“I know,” Bianca smiled faintly, “now, what are we working with?”

Alex passed over the first gun with care. Bianca turned it over slowly inspecting it with an intense gaze. “Seems my programming might help after all. All guns have the same basic makeup. Once you know that you can handle almost anything.”

“Mind teaching me how to do this?” Alex asked.

“Sure,” Bianca nodded.

— — —

“Woah woah woah!” Peter waved his arms about as the hangar opened and a large looming aircraft descended. “Who the hell are you? This place is shut down. No visitors allowed. So turn around and go on back to your nice little hangar somewhere else. Okay? Don’t make me-“

“Shut the fuck up Quill,” Siyanda gave the man a stone cold look as she headed down the ramp. “I’m here to help.”

“Oh....”Peter winced, “my bad. We’re cool. No worries at all.”

Rolling her eyes, Siyanda left him to feel like an idiot for the time being. On her flight in she’d noticed how off everything was. The entirety of her trip had only made her anxiety worsen and her fears of what was to come escalate.

Tromping through the rest of that hangar she didn’t bother to wait for the elevator and instead marched up the stairs two at a time. Already, she could tell the entire place was buzzing with activity. It was like someone had flipped a switch demanding everyone do something important.

As if to confirm her suspicions, arriving on the ground floor was like walking into Costco on a Saturday. Weaving through the mass of people, the princess really only wanted to see one person at the moment. Finding that person took impossibly long.

Eventually, Si found Thalia lugging some large black case through the living room. The blonde didn’t notice her at first until she’d settled the case on the floor beside a few others. That’s when she was enveloped by a bone crushing hug.

“Si?” Thalia breathed, looking like an excited puppy. “You’re here! How was it? Are you queen now? What was it like? Did you get to-“

Thalia’s rambling was only silenced by an earnest kiss. Forgetting her next series of questions, she was more than happy to kiss Siyanda back.

“Okay, no love making in the living room,” Tony shivered in mock disgust as he passed by them. Siyanda only glared at the man.

“I’ll answer all your questions later, but now I need to know what’s going on here,” Siyanda worried.

“No one’s too sure what it is exactly but my uncle had some form of an explanation. It’s not quick-“

“I have time,” Siyanda assured.

“Okay. Come on, I don’t want to get in anyone’s way.” Thalia took Siyanda by the hand and pulled her off to her room.

Meanwhile everyone else was struggling to form some shape of defense to stand against a threat they didn’t know.

[everythingcollided]

More Than A Fan [Peter Parker]

Request:  Hello beautiful! May I get a Peter x Reader where he’s completely SOFT™️ for her and once she finds out about her best friend being Spidey she can’t help but wear/buy all the Spidey merch available? With fluff and flustered Pete? Love you lots! ❤️

Word Count: 2,153

Warnings: Swearing, slight sorta severe pining 

A/N: I was so excited to write this cause the request was absolutely adorable! Thanks to @beautiful-writings for basically being my beta reader she’s amazing! 

It’s been three days.

Seventy-two hours since she’d wrapped her arms around him in their customary hug, the comforting smell of her shampoo clouding his senses and lulling him into the safety he only ever felt around her, breath puffing right over his heart. It was normal, and Peter never expected it to stop only hours later.

He kept on seeing her face in the rain where she’d caught him maskless under the awning of a shop he couldn’t remember, hair stuck to her cheeks and neck, eyelashes lined with raindrops. She looked as delicate as a flower in the darkness, almost too stunning to be real, and Peter’s guilt clashed with the need to get her someplace warm and dry.

“I need some time,” she’d said, like a knife to his chest.

And then she walked away. Peter had never thought about how much he’d miss those hugs until she wasn’t there to give them.

Three days.

Aunt May kept on asking him if he was alright when he came out of his room with darkness under his eyes and he always said yes because he knew how much she loved her and he couldn’t bear to disappoint another woman in his life with how stupid he had been. She offered up a movie night complete with three bowls of popcorn anyway.

It was on the fourth day, when he’d just finished eating his breakfast, that his phone vibrated.

‘Can you come over?’ the text read, her name written at the top followed by the yellow heart that guaranteed he wasn’t imagining it. She really wanted to see him.

He didn’t even answer, rummaging through his closet for a sweater and barely having it over his head before charging downstairs and unhooking his bike from the rack. He completely zoned out on the ride over, going from muscle memory alone.

He was so scared that she was going to leave him. Maybe five months ago he would’ve been able to handle it; when she was just a girl with pretty eyes and a kickass sense of humor. When she was just his best friend who made his stomach feel weird, who for some reason he couldn’t even see the same as he saw Ned even though they were both equally important to him.

Five months ago he could’ve taken the blow because hey, he’d lost friends before and it hurt for a while but he still had Ned and MJ and they’d do their best to help him forget about her. Five months ago he was helplessly oblivious to the fact that his feelings for her were in no way wholly platonic and that everything she did put hearts in his eyes.

Now, the thought of losing her made Peter feel like he would be blown into thousands of pieces and he wasn’t going to let that happen. She was going to let him explain why he kept his identity from her for so long, and she was going to understand.

She was going to understand.

Peter’s heart is thrashing around his chest, thumping with the beats of his knuckles against the wooden door as he knocks. It’s warmer than he thought outside, or maybe that’s just his body heating up from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He balls the edge of his sleeve into his palm nervously, tapping his feet against the faded welcome! mat, feeling anything but.

The slight creak of the door as it opens sounds loud in his ears and he jumps, eyes darting to the figure in the frame and widening in turn. There she is, the crinkles at the edges of her eyes the first thing he sees and the large t-shirt she wears the second.

It’s bright red, with a cartoon version of Spider-Man swinging across the front. His name is etched down the long sleeves swallowing her arms in bold letters and Peter almost has to squint with the sunlight reflecting off of the material.

“So, question,” she starts casually, rocking on her feet - which are clad in socks that resemble that part of his suit flawlessly - and not at all appearing mad like Peter had expected and prepared for. “You wear boxers, right?”

He’s dazed by her attire and it takes him a moment to realize what she’s just said, cheeks coloring. “Yeah? Yes, I do. Why?”

She nods, ponytail swishing. “Great. Come on.”

And then she’s pulling him by the hand into the house he’s been in so many times he has it memorized, down the long hallway decorated with pictures of her with missing teeth and pigtails, of the two of them with their arms around each other holding participation ribbons at a science fair with gigantic grins, and into the living room.

There are bags littering the carpeted floor as well as the coffee table standing in the middle of the room and the couch. Boxes peak up out of the abyss here and there, tops ripped open and dropping styrofoam peanuts over the ground.

“Shit, I forgot what box they were in,” she mutters, gracefully weaving through the mess. Her shirt rides up as she rummages through a box and Peter spots web designs crawling over her shorts.

“What is all of this?” He finally asks.

“Did you know that Stark Industries owns this whole Spider-Man brand? They have, like, everything.” She’s practically inside of the box now, balancing on one leg as she submerges her limbs in search of...boxers, was it? Her voice echoes against the cardboard and Peter decides to help her before she hurts herself.

He wades through the plastic and moves behind her, pressing a hand to her back to let her know he’s there. She sends him a grateful smile as she moves to give him room. “Mr. Stark didn’t say anything about...a brand?” She hums in confirmation at the questioning edge, Peter’s chest filling with warmth at the thought that Mr. Stark would do such a thing for Spider-Man, for him.

His hands brush against fabric in the sea of green and pink peanuts and he latches onto it. She chuckles at the product. “See, boxers!” Little Spider-Men are swinging around the dark blue background. “I also ordered sweatshirts, shorts, socks, pillows - they have pillows isn’t that cool? I think I got a few bras too.”

Peter flushes at that and sends her an incredulous look. She glances at him, eyes widening when she’s realized what she just said. “I mean, they were available.”

“You bought all of this stuff?”

“Of course.”

Peter feels that little gnawing at his stomach again, the same one he’d felt days ago. He looks around at all of the packages, and the thought of how much money all of it must have cost makes him wince. “Why?”

She furrows her eyebrows, fingers fiddling with the edge of her sleeve in the way she’s always done when wearing long sleeves. “Well, why not?”

Peter runs a hand through his messy hair. “You said you needed time,” he hates how fragile his voice sounds in the quiet room, how easily she gets under his skin. “You haven’t talked to me at all and now you’re acting like everything’s fine and I’m just...really confused?”

She seems to slouch into herself at his words, eyes softening. Her teeth tug her bottom lip into her mouth and she takes her time in bringing her gaze to Peter’s. She takes a step forward, a question sparkling in her eyes, and he finds himself nodding. All he’s wanted is for her to be here, to be on good terms with him, and he knew he’d do whatever she needed to get there.

She circles her arms around his waist and lays her head against his chest. Briefly, he wonders if she can hear how fast his heart is beating, but she speaks before he can fully freak out about that. “I’m sorry. It just took a lot of processing. I mean, first I had to deal with the identity thing, and then there’s also the constant worrying I’m going to have to deal with because I know you’re gonna get hurt, you idiot.”

There’s a pause, and her voice lowers.

“I was mad for a bit. Hurt, I guess. That you didn’t tell me. But then I thought about everything you’ve done for me and hated myself for ever thinking about ditching you for saving the world. So, instead of being the worst best friend ever, I decided to hit the internet and get some merchandise so that I could be your biggest fan.”

Peter twirls a piece of her hair around his finger, pulls her tighter against him. “You didn’t have to do all of this.”

She lifts her head to look at him, eyes narrowing as she observes the contours of his face. “You know I’m always here for you, right?”

He does, but the past three days show something different than that promise and she must see the confliction on his face because she frowns and takes a step back.

She runs her hands over her face and sighs. “Peter, I know what I did, it hurt me too, okay? But I didn’t want to try talking to you when my emotions were all over the place. I could’ve said anything and I wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t dumbly ruin this because I hadn’t given myself enough time to let it sink in.”

“Please understand,” she begs, digging into a ripped bag and producing a shirt identical to her own. “Don’t let our matching shirts go to waste.”

Peter cracks at that, laughing and reaching for the article of clothing. “Seriously?”

Her lips lift in the grin she’s been trying to hold back, shrugging. “It might be a little big, but, yeah. Seriously. We can be Spider-Man’s biggest supporters.”

“Ned’s gonna want one too.”

“I ordered four. Just in case MJ wants one too.”

Peter unfolds it, heart bursting. He should’ve known that she wouldn’t abandon him, that instead, she’d do something like this. She always found ways of sweeping his feet out from under him and leaving him dumbfounded.

All of that guilt and worry from the previous days fizzles into nothing. Peter’s stuck just standing there and staring at his best friend, wondering how he found someone like her that chose to handle him on a daily basis.

“So,” she starts, clutching a white pillow with Spider-Man illustrations to her chest, eyes wide and vulnerable. Peter’s heart skips a beat. “Am I forgiven?”

It’s in that moment that Peter almost crosses the three steps separating them and presses his lips to hers. It’s a quick wave of emotion that’s gone as fast as it came and his stomach sinks a bit when he realizes he has no right to do something like that.

Peter pretends to think over, mostly so that he can get his brain back on the right track and away from her lips. “Did you get sweatpants?”

Her expression morphs into a mix of a smile and agitation. “Yes.”

“Then yeah,” Peter’s face heats in the intensity of her smile. “Just don’t spend this much money on me again.”

“Would I be a proper fan if I didn’t have the merch? I don’t think so.”

“You don't have to have merch to be considered my biggest fan.”

She shrugs and tosses the pillow at his chest. “It’s a bonus.”

He throws it back. “An expensive bonus.”

“Oh, just admit you love me, dork.” She retaliates by hitting him in the shoulder and though it’s harmless, her words catch him off guard.

“I love you,” Peter says, and it’s blurred on a line between best friends and something more and it scares him how close it is to the latter.

But she’s naive to it all, balancing the pillow on top of his head with a smile on her lips that makes him feel like the luckiest person in the world. “That’s more like it.”

She steps back and claps her hands together. “So, you gonna help me unpack or what?”

“You only called me over here to be your slave.”

“No. I called you over here to apologize, and to prove how awesome of a friend I am.” She crosses her arms. “And for you to be my slave.”

Peter blows air out of his nose. “Only because you’re my biggest fan.”

“Can I get you saying that in the suit on video?”

He gives her a look.

She puts her hands up. “Okay, fine. Kidding. Let’s get working, Spider-Boy.”

They work fluidly and have everything stacked in piles soon enough. She nudges him and jokes about them starting a fan page and Peter can’t help but think they’ve made a step towards something. Maybe it’s what he wants it to be towards, or maybe not.

But it’s something.  

[selkie-elf]

Song of the sea chp 2

Guess who finally decided to update their fic after like four months? This dude who has a writers block: 

Read in ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137992/chapters/34765178

” How are you feeling Taako?” Sazed asked, hugging Taako tightly. Taako wrapped his arms lazily around the waist of the tiefling and sighed. ”I’m sorry babe. I don’t know what got in to me last night” Taako laughed quietly in to Sazed’s shoulder. Sazed chuckled and carefully looked at the small bruise on his husband’s forehead. One long curl hid it pretty good.

”You must have hit your head pretty bad. Do you remember anything about last night?” the tiefling asked, walking towards the kitchen. There was a strong scent of coffee in the air. He remembered. He and Sazed had argued, again and he had run off. He had ran to the dock and then Kravitz… ”No, I don’t think I remember” Taako sighed, sitting down on the chair. Sazed mumbled something and poured a cup of black coffee to Taako and himself. Taako thanked his husband, wrapping his fingers around the warm cup. ” You talked in your sleep again honey” Sazed muttered, spreading the newspaper on to the table and started to read. ”What did I say? Something fun?” Taako smiled, taking a big gulp of bitter coffee. Sazed smiled to himself, before raising his eyes from the paper. ”Your usual gibberish. Something sounded like ”Karavi” or something. Oh and at midnight you turned your head and just shouted ”Seals!”. I tried to keep my voice down, but let me just say, it was hard” Sazed giggled. Taako stared at his coffee cup. ”Seals?” he whispered, ears perking up a bit. ”I have theory. What if you saw a seal and tried to pet it and got swept to the water? That’s something that you would do” the tiefling laughed and took a closer look at the paper. Taako joined the laughter, carefully tapping the bruise on his forehead. ”Clumsy me”, Taako whispered in to the cup, drinking the last drop of the coffee. Sazed folded the paper in half and stood up. He gave Taako a small kiss on a forehead, before walking to the door. ”I’ll go to the market. You need anything?” ”No, I think I’ll manage. And I can always go to the market myself if I need something badly” Taako smiled, stretching his hands, before reaching for the newspaper. ”Okay honey! And please, go and get the nets. There could be a lot of fish there after the storm. Love you bye!” Sazed yelled, before closing the door with a small slam. ”Bye” Taako hummed, eyeing the paper, trying to see what had caught his husbands attention.

A news article of a local artist who had started to make necklaces of seashells. They had become become a popular hit in the mainland, and people were excited to see if their small island would finally get some long awaited attention. An advertisement for stronger nets. That was probably the thing that had caught Sazed’s attention. Taako sighed and turned a page. Leaning his head on his hand he started to read one of Barry’s articles. He smiled weakly. He really liked his brother-in-laws writing style. This time he had written his usual stuff of rising tides and upcoming storms, warning people not to let their kids to wonder too close to the shoreline and taking care of their ships. Noticing the small text in the bottom of the article, written in cursive and careful letters, Taako quickly turned the pages.

It had been another year already. How many had there been now in total, twelve? Taako didn’t even bother to remember. It was not like anything had changed. He still missed her and Barry was not doing any better either, still writing his stupid poems in the end of his articles. He closed the paper throwing it to the weaved basked holding their fire wood. If Sazed had already seen the most important advertisements, he didn’t see any reason to keep the paper on their kitchen table any longer. Taako walked back to their bedroom, pulling a pair of grey shorts from their wardrobe. He changed his shirt to a brown sweater, a one where he didn’t care if couple bloodstains landed on it. After braiding his hair and grabbing the knife from the counter, Taako stepped outside.

Couple grey clouds still sailed on the sky, but the sun was shining. A pleasant breeze flew by as Taako walked to the deck. On the hill, Taako could see that Sazed had let Garyl out of his stall to pasture with their small hoard of lambs. Taako made a mental note go buy some oats later that week. Sazed had already thrown some hay for the animals, but most of the lambs seemed to be more interested in the fresh green grass on the ground. Taako would have much rather spent his day with Garyl, brush his fur and watch the as their sheepdog which Taako called Dupree would try to get the lambs to stay in formation. Sazed called the dog with a different name, but Taako didn’t really think that the dog cared. It just liked getting his belly rubbed and getting treats. It was not like the dog was going to get them any awards in best herder competitions, but it didn’t need to. Right now the dog was sleeping near the fence, curled up next to an old ram. Taako smiled and continued his trotting down the hill, his tail swinging from side to side anxiously.

The sea seemed to have calmed down. Taako still spent a good while on sitting on the shore, trying to see if it would throw an extremely mean wave at his feet. But there didn’t seem to be any. Small waves just rolled to the shore, barely touching his toes. When he was sure that the sea had forgiven his rage, he pushed his small rowboat to the waters.

Constantly on the edge, Taako rowed quickly to the nets and started to gather them on to the floor of the boat. The small fishes stuck on the net still tried to jump out of the boat with effortless gasps for breath. Taako tried to reach for the next net as fast as he could when he noticed something. A large shape swimming just by the side of the boat. Taako froze. Even in the dark water, Taako could see the golden glimmer of the creature’s eye, as it dived deeper, only to appear on the other side of his small rowboat.

”Kra…Kravitz?” Taako stuttered as the seal lifted it’s head above the surface to breath. Half of Taako’s body was still hanging over the edge of the boat, while his fingers were tangling in the net. But his eyes were completely locked in Kravitz’s. He just stared as the seals blew couple small bubbles to the surface before it dived again, a big back flipper splashing the water, sending small waves that splashed against the boat. After taking a moment of gathering his thoughts, Taako finally pulled the last net from the water. There was not as much fish as he felt Sazed had hoped for, but enough for a week’s meals for Taako at least. Sazed would probably preserve some of the meat in salt, something that would last in longer fishing trips. Taako took the oars and started to row back to the shore. When taking a quick glance to the water, he could see Kravitz’s shape following the boat, carefully swimming just near enough, keeping a small distance.

Taako finally rowed back to the shore and pulled the rowboat to the dry ground. Kravitz stared curiously as Taako started to untangle the nets from each other, before pulling them to the deck. The knife shimmered in the faint sunlight as Taako tried his best to get the struggling fish out of the web without doing damage their gills. ”Sorry fishies but I gotta eat” Taako murmured as the fish still tried to jump from his hand. He quickly hit the fish on the head, making it unconscious before placing it to the wooden basket he had grabbed from the rowboat.

While cutting up the fish, carefully gutting them, Taako could see Kravitz swimming in curious circles just below his feet who were dangling over the dock. Once on twice his silver fur would touch Taako’s toes, sending shivers down the elves spine. ”Shit”, Taako cursed as his knife went straight through the fish. He was good with the knife, Sazed had made him gut up the fishes countless times, but usually he didn’t have a three meter long seal splashing it’s flipper just below his feet. Taako could still cut up the meat so it could be eaten, but there was a chance Sazed would notice his mess up and giggle for a while. Taako groaned and looked down to the water:

” You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Taako could almost swear that he saw a teehthy grin on the seals face. Taako tossed the fish to the water and the seal almost jumped up to catch the fish from the air. In the sunlight, Taako could see the white rows of sharp teeth in it’s mouth. Taako felt a shiver again, but it could have been just the water splashing againts his feet. Kravitz still seemed hungry, as he continued his swimming around Taako. Just as he was going to try the same trick, already raising his back flipper to the air, Taako made a proposal. ”If you want more, come up here. You look pretty in your human form” Taako threw the idea to the air, watching carefully for the seal’s reaction. For a moment the seal froze in it’s place before starting to swim further away from he deck.

Taako sighed in disappointment, before bringing his eyes back to the bloody fish on his hand. Maybe that was something you should never say to a seal, human, thing. Taako took a deep breath before burying his knife to the fish’s stomach. Once again, the knife stabbed way too deep, as he flinched in surprise as the long form of the seal jumped on to the deck. Now Taako could see the seal in it’s whole length. Grey spots were scattered all over it’s back, and some whiter fur grew on it’s face, making it almost look like a skull. Taako sucked up a small breath as two hands suddenly appeared from the chest of the seal, and pulled the the seal’s face up, revealing a gently smiling face under. The same smile that had brought comfort to Taako when he was hurt and cold. That smile made him loosen his scared grip on the knife loosen. ”Hi again. Taako was it?” Kravitz grinned. Stuck between his teeth, Taako could see some white fishbones. ”Yeah. And you are Kravitz right?” Taako asked, letting a small breath out. The man nodded and peeled of rest of his seal skin. Taako looked carefully as the beautiful man sat down next to him, keeping a safe distant. ”So Kravitz… What are you?”

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[homewardaffiliate]

How to Write a Article – A Homeward Perspective

– By Jayson Gold-Pambianchi

Welcome back, fellow Homeward Affiliates! And greetings to our new visitors.

In last week’s article, How to Make Money in Affiliate Marketing – Homeward Affiliate, we compiled a variety of essential skills into steps that every marketer should take to further their path to success. Good marketing is an art, and as an artist, we Homeward Affiliates must have a mastery of our material to be successful.

Today, we will be delving a bit deeper into content creation, honing our ability to influence and intrigue our readers with quality content. After all, it is our writing which moves customers, conveying the value in the products and services which we advertise!

In this article, we will discuss how to:

Write Well While Avoiding Formality

Tailor Content to Your Target Audience 

Pick the Right Tone 

Maintain Intent While Writing

Weave Content Together, Forming a Web of Quality Work  

Without any further ado, let’s jump right in!

Writing as an Art, Not an Analysis

I think we can all relate to the school-stereotype which taught us that if we wanted to write well, we would have to be formal and analytical; and my goodness is this inaccurate. Not that our school or college writing lessons were bad, in fact, quite the opposite, since they gave many of us our foundations for writing; but this old fashioned policy of writing ‘professionally’ mainly applies to an academic environment.

As we affiliates know, the wide world is not inherently interested in academic writing, and in fact, people relish the opportunity to enjoy good writing when it isn’t steeped in an analytical style. No marketing campaign advertises as if they’re speaking to a group of intellectuals. They instead know that people want things to be kept relatable and simple, and this is how one draws website visitors to their work and turns them into avid followers.

For example, although I try to write rather eloquently and I understand that every Homeward Affiliate is here to learn, no one wants to feel like they’re reading a research paper. I don’t need to flood my articles with statistics and jargon to convey the value of a service like Wealthy Affiliate or try and give advice on how to craft well-written content.

Don’t ever be afraid to use:

Contractions, BOLD LETTERS, italics, underlines, sarcasm, conversational wording, or a first-person perspective.

Moreover, if I can’t write the way I feel is best, I lose passion for my work, and that is the last thing I need, taking away my drive to help others find success in the digital marketing industry. Art is meant to be vibrant and expressive, not drab, and machine-like. When you write, be as an artist with a canvas, not a robot in an assembly line.

Targeting Your Audience

It’s good habit for a writer to put themselves in the shoes of their reader: How will people feel when they are reading my work? Will it have the desired effect? Will it resonate with them?

It is important to ask one’s self these questions and know that you’re molding your content to the right population. While this doesn’t mean that you have to completely change your phraseology to connect more with car enthusiasts as opposed to techies (as an example), it is important to know what kind of writing your targeted audience responds to most positively.

In a similar regard, remaining within a relevant subject area is vital, as this is the way you establish yourself as a respectable voice within your niche. Just imagine; a car enthusiast wouldn’t want to start reading an article about the new tesla car model and finish the same article reading about household appliances. If you would like to craft content that weaves related products and services together, that is absolutely fantastic, but be sure that what you write about isn’t too varied, otherwise, it can appeal.

The Right (Positive) Tones

As an author, it is of course entirely up to you to decide what tones you use in your writing. Do you want to seem neutral for an unbiased review? Confident, when urging your readers to take action? Any and all styles have their place, but I would still recommend trying to inject a bit of extra positivity into all fo your content.

When people come to you for guidance and advice, they are more often than not in search of someone who is charismatic, supportive and benevolent. Being positive helps people to fight off negativity, and fuels their ambitions to excel and self-optimize. In a way, part of your job as an affiliate marketer is to function as a success coach and a leader, unveiling the products and services which can help make the lives of your readers more fruitful and telling them how it can.

As I discuss in my article, Free Website Images – The Best Way to Use Them, using negativity is a relatively effective marketing tactic. However, it can easily become very rude and unethical, by scaring people into making a purchase to avoid ‘losing out’ as an alternative. Remember, your job is to raise people up and cultivate within them the means for their empowerment! And with great power comes great responsibility.

Your Web on the Web

Interlinking is a fantastic way to improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) quality of your website. By linking to articles within articles on your website, you convey to browsers like Google, Yahoo, and Bing that your work has great internal value; therefore increasing the probability that your content will appear higher on browser search lists to be discovered. Moreover, it allows your readers to more easily navigate between related articles, especially if they are new followers and are just discovering your website.

Recall that hypothetical Tesla article that I mentioned? If you write an article about a new Mercedes model and want to make it easier for readers to compare and contrast them, why not link to the former article in the latter? Interlinking is a fantastic method to increase your popularity and offer a wide variety of insightful content to your readers.

You’re Ready to Write!

With a basic understanding of how you can craft content and shape it to fit the desires of your niche audience, you should feel prepared to begin writing. Don’t worry if it is a bit of a challenge at first! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and skills such as these take time to perfect.

If you would like to receive help and advice from a community of seasoned marketers, I welcome you to head on over to check out my Wealthy Affiliate in my review! The community is designed to help educate affiliates to hone their marketing and writing skills, regardless of their level of experience.

Otherwise, if you have any questions about writing, or if you’d like me to take a look at your work, please let me know! I’d be happy to speak about it with you. Until next time, stay well.

Warmest wishes and kindest regards,

– Jayson Gold-Pambianchi

See you on the other side, Homeward Affiliate!

source https://homewardaffiliate.com/how-to-write-a-article-a-homeward-perspective/

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The Definitive Guide to Marketing with Instagram

Reaching potential customers with a branding message they recognize and relate to is integral if companies want to stay relevant and continue to grow. Otherwise they become outdated, competitors start gaining traction and, over time, the company doesn’t replace lost customers with enough new ones. The business starts losing money. Product sits on the shelf. The big kahunas get mad. Bonuses get slashed.

It’s a bad scene.

Smart marketers don’t let this happen because they always keep an eye out for the newest, most impactful way to engage and interact with potential customers.

Social media has made great strides in filling the bill during the past decade, and shows no signs of slowing down. Potential clients live on social media! Posting, tweeting, and sharing selfies are mainstays of behavior across all generational groups.

Since it’s likely buyers are on social media, companies need a presence, too. But saying “social media” these days is broad. Which channel do you choose? Do you need profiles on more than one? With limited resources, how do you get the most bang for your buck?

Facebook is still the biggest social media platform, but it’s got another one nipping at its heels.

Instagram.

Launched in 2010, the photo-centric platform has exploded in recent years and is now in second place as the most used social media channel on the web.

According to Pew Research Center, about half of Instagram users check Instagram once a day, and a third check it several times a day. This frequency of visitation beats out all other social media sites except for Facebook.

The level of growth and engagement Instagram has reached in such a short amount of time should make marketers take notice. Thinking about reaching your audience via social media means more than just Facebook.

Not sure you understand why you should adapt Instagram into your marketing strategy? Here’s your definitive guide to marketing with Instagram.

Why is marketing with Instagram relevant?

Small business owners must spend their time working on initiatives that move the needle toward wider brand recognition, more potential customers, and bigger revenue. Advertising budgets may have grown stale over the years, and the “same old, same old” may not be producing the results they once did.

But, is this a reason to look to Instagram for marketing’s needs?

Yes!

Three reasons marketing on Instagram is relevant to your business are:

Build Brand Recognition

Set yourself apart from your competition with greater brand recognition. Reaching out and engaging potential customers with interesting photos and helpful information allows them to get to know your products without a hard sell approach.

Luckily, Instagram is still wide open with possibilities. According to Instagram, there are 15 million business profiles active on their site. It sounds like a lot, but Facebook eclipses that number with 50 million!

This is good news, because chances are your competition isn’t marketing with Instagram yet. This increases the platform’s relevancy to you because it won’t be as noisy and crowded, and you will have a better chance of connecting with your audience.

Tell A Unique Story

Buyers are increasingly looking for more than a product or service. They want an overall pleasing experience. Instagram marketing gives you the stage to showcase your storytelling skills and weave a tale your current and future customers love.

Interesting blog posts, case studies, customer testimonials, and statistics can all be shared with your Instagram followers. Capitalize on the visuality of the site. Over time, these build into a completely personal marketing campaign that draws in and connects customers with your brand.

Gain More Engagement Than on Other Platforms

Another reason Instagram is relevant to your marketing goals is because their audience is more attentive and engaged. Forrester Research reported in a recent study that Instagram users are 58 times more likely to like, share, or comment on a company’s Instagram post than a similar post on Facebook.

Why is this?

Because a picture is worth a thousand words.

Instagram is photo-driven. Marketers know that visuals are crucial to content’s success. Articles and blogs with photos get 94% more total views than their picture-bare counterparts.

A consumer’s eye is naturally drawn to a picture more than to words. The mind starts crafting a story and making judgments from the context of the picture and the photo’s quality. All this happens faster than if the same consumer is reading the same information.

Perhaps the most relevant aspect of Instagram to marketers is the ability to capitalize on the value of photos in creating emotion and telling a story. Once strategically chosen picture can showcase a brand’s identity, company culture, and product.

If nothing else convinces you that your company should be marketing with Instagram, the above point should do it!

Using Instagram for marketing is relevant and can bring about positive connections and an increased customer base. But, even if you are a pro at negotiating other social media sites, Instagram may seem a bit involved and confusing. Common questions from companies looking into Instagram marketing are:

Where do I begin with marketing on Instagram?

Choose An Admin

Depending on the size of the business and the marketing team, there may be only one or several people involved in developing your social media presence. Pick the most savvy one to be the admin.

Let’s say Kate is the admin.

Kate needs to download the Instagram app onto her tablet or smartphone. This gives her the access she needs to post conveniently and adhere to the schedule marketing lays out.

Once she has the app, she should launch it and start to…

Create A Page

Kate can give either her work email or an email IT sets up specifically for social media usage. Enter that along with the other required information. This part of it should take no more than a couple of minutes.

Choose A Username

Businesses want to pick a name that their customers and prospects will recognize. Kate also needs to consider the company’s handle that she uses on Twitter, if applicable, and either use the same or something similar.

For example, if the company name is Macon Flower Shop, the handle could be @Maconflowers, @Maconflowershop, or @FlowershopMacon. Any of these are easily recognizable to people in the area.

Try to avoid alternate company spellings or a series of numbers when creating the handle.

Designate Account As “Business”

Within the Settings, Kate should note that this profile belongs to a business. This will let her add important information like the company’s store houses and physical address.

Write A Bio

An important piece of the setup includes a killer bio section.

Kate needs to drill down into what she and the company want the audience to know. What sets the company apart? The bio section will most likely take the most time to create than any other part of the setup. Companies frequently use tag lines and mission statements as part of their bio. Share a few words about the type of information the company will be sharing on Instagram. And always, ALWAYS include the website address.

Decide On A Photo

Some businesses choose their logo to be their main photo, and that’s ok. It’s better to brainstorm for a picture that shows the essence of your business. In the Macon Flower Shop example above, instead of a logo, they may showcase a beautiful bouquet of bright flowers.

How do I build Instagram followers?

Setting up an account on Instagram is the easy part. But, even the most descriptive bio and the greatest picture won’t help you market your product or service unless you figure out a way to get people to follow you.

There are several ways to build followers so your marketing efforts on Instagram reach your target audience. Here are three powerful ones.

Employ Relevant Hashtags

A hashtag, formerly known as a pound sign, is a roadmap that helps users navigate through the millions of voices on social media to find the ones that interest them.

It’s important that marketers brainstorm hashtags in advance, and plan to use them consistently in the Instagram marketing strategy.

Do a little research. Look at the hashtags your competition uses. Instagram tells you how often a particular hashtag has been used.  Search hashtags that you think your followers would use and make a list of the ones that are popular.

In addition, create some of your brand-specific hashtags that you can use to build recognition. Marketing promotions, events, and product rollouts should have their own hashtags.

Remember that a post can have more than one hashtag. It’s smart marketing to add one or two popular hashtags and one or two branding hashtags. But don’t get carried away. Too many hashtags will dilute your message and make it seem like your company is trying too hard to get noticed.

Post Killer Content

Start marketing with Instagram by sharing killer content that showcases your brand. Crisp, intriguing photos with descriptive posts and relevant hashtags is critical in the beginning more than ever. Post BEFORE you try to get followers. After all, if a user looks at your profile and you only have one photo they will be less likely to follow you.

Develop a story with your posts before you rev up your “follow us” initiative. Below is an example of a new startup, Beauty Clout, posting content about their story prior to building up Instagram followers.

Once you embark on posting and using valuable hashtags to promote your brand and improve find-ability, start a mission to…

Follow First

As you post interesting information with hashtags, your audience will slowly start finding you. Hurry the process along by finding your audience.

Use the hashtags that help them find you to find them. Run a search and check out the people who are using them. These could be your buyers.

In addition, follow associations and groups that tie into your business so people who follow them will have more of a chance of seeing and following you.

Contests and Giveaways

Everyone likes to win something. Create a contest and advertise it on Instagram as well as other social media channels where you already have connections. Think about an email campaign to your contacts encouraging them to follow you. And, of course, post the announcement of the winner.

What should I do to increase engagement on Instagram?

Marketing with Instagram requires more than setting up an account and watching followers flock to you and become your customers. You must understand your buyer persona and their needs and pain points. What question can they get answered or which pain points can be addressed by connecting with you? Keep these answers in mind as you share information and build your brand.

If you don’t pinpoint your buyer, which hopefully you have already done to help your other marketing efforts, your message may be off base. You could end up with a bunch of followers who aren’t viable prospects.

Entice them to engage by…

Posting Relevant Content

Posts need to back up the claims in a bio. The pictures need to be high-quality and interesting, and captions catchy. Out-of-focus photos and boring, rambling captions turn an audience off immediately.

Create a system of consistently sharing great photos with captions and hashtags. Include links to your blog, demos, videos, and other information about your company. But not on every one! Instagram is a place people go for enjoyment, not to be sold. Connecting and building rapport with them is the goal.

Aiming and FIRING

Don’t wait for prospects to knock at your door! Once your page is up and you have shared a dozen or so awesome posts, start liking and commenting on posts. Engaging your audience is essential in gaining followers and increasing visibility of your brand.

Set up a system where you like and comment on a certain number of posts every day. This organically builds your base of followers with people you want to see your content.

How can I boost sales?

Marketing with Instagram helps your company boost sales organically. By getting your message in front of potential customers, connecting with them and forming trust, you build relationships that turn into profitable partnerships.

And there are even more ways to increase your revenue using Instagram than your basic social media strategy.

Calls-to-Action

Instead of a closed-ended post, prompt your audience to do something! Tempt them to click on a blog link, register for a webinar, download an eBook, and enter a contest with powerful calls-to-action (CTAs).

To work efficiently, CTAs must be concise, short, and understandable. Use them strategically to guide people through your sales process.

Instagram Ads

Amplify your Instagram efforts by investing in advertising. According to Instagram Advertiser Statistics, 75% of Instagram users have taken action after looking at an Advertising post.

Ads are a great addition to your organic efforts because they reach further and are seen by more people than your regular posts. More visibility equals more followers and engagement, leading to greater brand recognition and finally, what we all want to hear, more sales!

Tracking Conversions

Tracking and reviewing results should be part of any marketing campaign including Instagram.

Set goals ahead of time as to what you want the campaign to accomplish within a certain time frame, and then measure the results. This makes it easier to see the types of posts that work for your brand and which ones are less-than-brag-worthy.

They Saw It!

Once your initiative is started, watch how many people viewed your posts. Is there a certain rhythm to it? Do more people like certain posts, or do they respond better on a particular day or time? This insight helps you make the most out of your efforts.

You should also measure…

They Liked It!

Engagement is another critical analytic. Watch how many likes and comments each post receives, the average likes your post receives, and the likes and comments compared to the views. If tons of people view your post but few like it, something isn’t inspiring them to connect.

They Went for It!

Taking action on a post should be your ultimate goal as a marketer, because it’s what ultimately moves the needle. Did the audience click through to the content or event you were offering? If so, congratulations! But don’t get too frustrated if this takes awhile. They need to get to know and trust you first.

Using those big marketing noses to sniff out new ways to reach customers and increase revenue is smart. It guards against staleness and stagnation and keeps your company efficient and competitive. Marketing with Instagram is a tool that shows great promise when used strategically and consistently. Enjoy high quality leads, a strong conversion rate, and more closed business.

[bigyack-com]

Internet Giants, Defied by Bitcoin, Now See Its Tech as a Remedy

SAN FRANCISCO — Not so long ago, the technology behind Bitcoin was seen in Silicon Valley as the best hope for challenging the enormous, centralized power of companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now, in an unexpected twist, the internet giants think that technology could help them solve their many problems.The chief executive of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said last week that he hoped to fund the creation of software for social media that, inspired by the design of Bitcoin, would give Twitter less control over how people use the service and shift power toward users and outside programmers.Likewise, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he hopes the same concepts from Bitcoin could “take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands.”This push toward decentralization — the buzzword people in tech are using to describe these projects — has already gained enough currency and has sounded outlandish enough that it was one of the central themes of the satirical HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Though Bitcoin’s digital tokens are widely used among the tech set, its underlying concept — a network of computers managing the currency without anyone in charge — is what’s most interesting to many people working on decentralization.Countless entrepreneurs are working on decentralization projects, including the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. He founded Solid, which seeks to fix the problems of the centralized internet by shifting the ownership of personal data away from big companies and back toward users.But the other efforts have largely been aimed at taking down Twitter and Facebook rather than helping them solve their problems. And the two behemoths have plenty of problems, from policing their sites for toxic content to dealing with pressure from regulators who think tech companies have grown too powerful. Not surprisingly, the efforts at Twitter and Facebook have faced skepticism and questions about whether they are just trying to land some positive press while dodging responsibility — and regulations. “When a company does something like this when it is under pressure, it becomes a way to distract attention by appearing to do something,” said Mitra Ardron, the head of the decentralized web project at the Internet Archive, which has hosted the Decentralized Web Summit the last four years. Many people working on decentralization projects are concerned that Twitter and Facebook are trying to align themselves with the work’s countercultural spirit without giving up their enormous power.“The monoliths see it as a threat to their model, so they try to weave in the concepts into their own products to maintain control,” said Eugen Rochko, the founder of Mastodon, a competitor to Twitter. With around two million users, Mastodon has been one of the most successful alternative projects. Mr. Dorsey said Twitter was just starting to look at the idea and had committed only five people to it. Facebook has moved ahead with its Bitcoin-inspired cryptocurrency and has beefed up encryption, but the company has otherwise taken few steps to decentralize its services. Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg, though, have frequently discussed decentralization, suggesting they have a personal fascination that goes beyond business interests. Mr. Dorsey also hired a small team at his second company, Square, to work full time on Bitcoin, without any commercial responsibilities. And he recently announced that he was hoping to take an extended sojourn in Africa to understand how Bitcoin was working there.“It’s clearly catching on in part because people believe in it,” said Neha Narula, the director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the M.I.T. Media Lab. “It’s not necessarily that it is cheaper or more efficient or faster or easier. In fact, it is much harder. But it’s clear that this idea speaks to people.”Mr. Dorsey’s tweets last week suggest that he wants the new team, Blue Sky, to build essentially a basic version of Twitter that would be available for anyone to copy. This would make it easier for outside developers to build on top of Twitter and to compete with it. A competitor might be able to offer a version without ads, or one that recommends tweets to readers based on different standards.While that would most likely pose a commercial threat to Twitter, Mr. Dorsey said it would also force the service to be “far more innovative than in the past” and could draw more overall users to it. The idea of decentralization harks back to the basic design and ideals of the internet, which was supposed to be a global gathering place where everyone was welcome and no one was in charge.Mr. Dorsey said the invention of Bitcoin had made it possible to revive those early ideals. The key to Bitcoin is its blockchain database, which provides a way for a network of disconnected computers to agree on a single set of records for every Bitcoin in existence.Mr. Dorsey is following in the steps of the many cryptocurrency advocates who have argued that the underlying technology could be used to record all the users and activity on a social network, and to agree on a single set of rules for the network, without having any single company in charge. He said, though, that it would most likely take “many years.” Facebook has pursued several projects over the past year that would shift control to its users. The company’s most notable effort with blockchains is the Libra cryptocurrency, which aims to create money outside the control of any one company. The Libra effort has faced crippling opposition from politicians, regulators and even some of the project’s original partners. But it appears to have inspired central banks in China and Europe, which are also considering ways to duplicate Bitcoin’s underlying technology.Already, many start-ups have tried to use blockchains to create social networks to compete with Twitter and Facebook. But these networks, with names like Minds and Steemit, have faced many of the same problems that Bitcoin has, struggling to attract mainstream attention and leaving users to fend off hackers themselves. Many investors have largely given up on blockchain investments.Several up-and-coming projects focused on decentralization, including Mr. Berners-Lee’s Solid, have steered clear of the blockchain entirely because they don’t believe it is useful for anything other than financial transactions. Mr. Dorsey said one of the great appeals of a decentralized future was that Twitter would no longer be the only one in charge of deciding what is and isn’t allowed on the network. To many people, that sounded like an effort by Mr. Dorsey to wash his hands of the hardest but arguably most important responsibility of social networks today: identifying and filtering bad actors and disinformation.“I’m concerned that Twitter may try to foist the responsibility for dealing with these problems onto the decentralization community,” said Ross Schulman, the senior policy technologist at New America’s Open Technology Institute.A spokeswoman for Facebook had no comment on the company’s efforts.Mastodon, the Twitter competitor, allows anyone to tweak the software in order to create his or her own version of Mastodon. If people don’t like the rules set up in one version, they can move to another.But Mastodon has provided a window into just how difficult these problems are to deal with, even with decentralization. The Mastodon software was created to form a refuge from anger and hate speech on Twitter. But recently, a social network with close ties to hate crimes and the far right, Gab, used Mastodon’s software to create a new home after it was pushed off the mainstream internet. Mastodon’s leaders were opposed to it but could do little to stop it. “Building these types of decentralized social networks comes with a slew of challenges that we haven’t figured out how to solve yet,” said Ms. Narula, who was a co-author of an article titled “Decentralized Social Networks Sound Great. Too Bad They’ll Never Work.” Read the full article

[chaiteakusuri]

Running with a Ghost: Chp 6

It’s finally here!

Chp1, Chp2, Chp3, Chp4, Chp5

Chapter 6: Guilt and Gigabytes Read it on my A03

           Alfred didn’t know how long he sat at the foot of his bed that evening, staring at the sliding door to his closet, but he knew a lot of other things now, too much.

           Alfred knew he ran away, again, he knew all he’d done was scream and run, again. He knew he did exactly the opposite of what he told himself he was going to do. He knew that that ghost used to be a human being and he knew he made that ghost- human being cry.

           He made them cry.

           He made Ivan cry and Alfred felt like his heart was being ripped from his chest.

           Alfred knew that evening that he would find no peace in sleep, if the jarred American could even find sleep at all after coming to fully understand ‘just how much of a dick’ he had been.

           That why, at 2:30 in the morning, the American stood in front of the coffee maker, in the scarcely lit kitchen where he was noticed by his brother who was on a trip to the bathroom.

           “....ed...fred....Alfred!”

           Alfred jerked, tearing his eyes away from the rhythmic drip of the coffee pot to look to his groggy brother.

           “What on earth are you doing making coffee at--” Matthew looked to the clock, “2:30 in the morning?” The other asked in disbelief, the fact that he lived in Canada most of his life shining through in his sleepy, accent laden, voice.

           Alfred looked at his brother for a long moment before returning his attention to the coffee pot to begin preparing himself a cup.

           Matthew watched, concern beginning to pervade through his features. “Alfie, is something wrong?” He asked, further concern rising in him as his brother prepared himself an uncharacteristically unsweetened cup of coffee; only upon retrieving a funnel would anyone be able to get Alfred Jones to ‘drink’ black coffee. Matthew felt his heart sink when he saw his brother nod.

           “I accidentally flirted with a ghost.” Alfred murmured, the most serious, worn out, and grave the upbeat man’s expression had been in months.

           Matthew blinked, silence commanding him as Alfred gathered the mug in his hands and began his journey back to his room.

           Matthew blinked once more and he felt all concern leave him. “Flirted--! Augh!” he cried in frustration before making his angry, sleepy way back to his bedroom to go back to sleep.

           Alfred, however, did not sleep; his guilt weighing so heavily on him that the idea of getting any type of restful sleep for the rest of the week was beyond him. Rather, Alfred sat at his computer, the shine from the monitor being the only source of light in the room. If he couldn’t find sleep, he would be productive; productive in some sense of the word, anyway.

           Alfred F. Jones considered himself a master of at least three things: Dark Souls, knot tying, and finding answers on the world wide web. The internet: Alfred’s second home. So, rather than allowing himself to go to sleep, Alfred decided to search the internet for his ghostly “acquaintance”, Ivan Braginski. “Okay, Mr. Braginski, let’s learn some more about you shall we?” Alfred asked of the empty room as he opened his internet browser.

           Rapidly cooling coffee by his side, the young American searched through the long hours of the late evening and the wee hours of the early morning for any and all information he could find on the ghostly man; after hours of searching, Alfred sat, tired eyes behind his glasses staring at his computer screens, several tabs visible between two windows sharing the computer screen.

           The hours of searching for the American yielded in several significantly old articles about the specter, or, more specifically, about the man before he was a specter.

           “Ivan Braginski.” Alfred murmured, surprise engulfing his features as he recognized the name of the site that published this article; the publisher was Millennium University, the very same university at which Alfred attended years prior to earn his business degree. Feeling sudden worry well up in his chest, Alfred looked at the screen for a long moment. Opening this tab very well may be like opening Pandora’s box, the American thought.

           But, under further deduction, this also may be the only way to learn the truth: the whole truth; this may be one of the only ways to ease the blonde’s troubled mind.

           Alfred scrutinized the blurb for a long moment before clicking the link, the simple action like disarming a bomb for the American in those brief moments.

           “A good person would turn into a good ghost.. right?” Alfred questioned the shining computer screen, hoping an affirmative answer would lie within.

           For a moment, while the page loaded at speeds comparable to those of honey attempting to ooze its way out of a clogged honey bottle, Alfred was sure that Ivan must have been a good man; the school wouldn’t highlight the life and actions of a horrible person.            Upon further thought, however, Alfred realized that the school has, in face, covered horrifying events in the past and that it was a very real possibility that Ivan could be the cause of one of those horrible events. Ivan, potentially, could even be the worst.

           As this realization dawned upon the American, Alfred tried to dispel all thought, logical or otherwise, and simply wished for the page would load. The blonde cursed himself in those moments for being cheap and not investing in a fancier, quicker internet router and modem.

           Alfred looked down at his keyboard, swallowing thickly and rapping his fingers against the wooden surface of his desk while he waited.

           Finally, the moment came and the screen flashed before displaying the page of information he yearned so badly for. But, Alfred couldn't bring himself to drag his eyes up from his desk; he couldn’t convince himself to look back at his computer screen. At this, Alfred let out a frustrated groan, “Hhhh, what if the ghost was a murderer?” Alfred wondered in dismay, “What if the ghost I flirted with was a murderer?”

           Alfred anguished thusly for a painful span of five minutes, words similar to ‘psychopath’ and ideas of ‘it’s always the quiet ones’ running through his mind in the same manner which he run from Ivan on two separate occasions: sporadic and frenzied.

           As these thoughts and ideas continued to pervade deeper and deeper in Alfred’s mind, a more morose, less violent thought crept to the forefront of the young man’s brain. Alfred remembered the way Ivan sobbed. Alfred remembered the way the sobs rang through his ears and shook his mind; they had been the cries of a sad soul, an innocent soul, a painfully lonely soul.

           It was with those memories weighing heavily on his mind and his heart that Alfred brought his gaze up.

           Alfred was going to get to the bottom of this.

           Upon tearing his gaze up and away from his desk, Alfred’s eyes were greeted with the familiar looking layout of the university’s website; there were slight changes, Alfred noted as he gave the page he’d loaded a quick glance over. During his scan of the page, he noted that he was deep in the archived section of documents created by the university. While looking for a date to solidify the time line of the article, Alfred’s eyes happened upon an empty square. When Alfred noticed a loading circle in the middle of the box, he concluded that it must be an image and he waited several, long moments for it to load on the page.

           Alfred would later be ashamed to admit that, due to intense staring and paranoia, he jerked in surprise when the image finally loaded. Alfred’s shock quickly tapered off, however, as he took in the image displayed before him. It must have been him; it was Ivan.

           The man in the image looked exactly like the ghost; if nothing else, Alfred at least he had a positive I.D.. No close examination whatsoever was needed for Alfred to clearly see that Ivan was well liked by the community during his life. In the image, Ivan held a generously sized watermelon which was securely tucked in the crook of his arm. In his other hand, he held the stalks of two sunflowers, both boasting huge floral heads; Alfred made the safe assumption that Ivan had grown these crops himself. The joy was plain to see on the man’s face, making it easy for Alfred to tell why the plaque described the deceased man as a green thumb. Unbeknownst to himself, Alfred adorned a smile of his own while admiring the delighted man’s visage. However, upon remembering his intended purpose of entering the site, Alfred snapped his eyes away from the image to begin reading the contents of the article, his worries of murderers having been quelled dramatically by the happy picture just to the right of the words he read.

           Alfred muttered softly to himself as he read, “Ivan’s life, like the early blooms of spring, was too short. He came into our lives and his life was, as if by a greedy passerby, plucked too soon from this life and without warning.”

           “Oh no...is this a eulogy?” Alfred whispered quietly to himself, as if he didn’t want his computer to hear. Alfred scanned over the rest of the article quickly, trying to hastily get the gist of it while trying to ignore a twisting feeling in his chest. But, despite his efforts, Alfred could feel his heart sink and twist and ache as he read the last several lines of the article.

           “So, it is on this day and for all the days after that we will greatly miss Ivan Braginski: whose smile could light up a room and whose hands could beautify any landscape.”

           Alfred sat, eyes glued to the last lines of the article. His eyes shot up through the rest of the paragraphs, catching the words “beloved”, “heartwarming”, and “sweet” before his gaze fell back to the right half of the screen, to the picture of Ivan. Alfred glanced over the cute features of the now confirmed Russian man, noting an adorable, weaved gardener’s hat atop his head and Alfred couldn’t stop the agonized groan from escaping his throat. A moment later, Alfred allowed his head to fall, connecting hard with his desk. Alfred let out a cry of pain, but he felt he deserved the suffering at that point.

           “Oh god... everyone loved him.” Alfred murmured through squished lips against the hardwood of his desk. Guilt encompassed the entirety of the American’s being and he twisted and craned his neck to give the eulogy another, quick look over. Alfred let his face bury itself back into the wood of his desk once his spotted the word “cheerful” and he let out an exacerbated heave of a moan, “I made the cute gardener that everyone loved cry...”

           Alfred thumped his head begrudgingly against his desk, regretting every action he’d taken up to that point; how was he going to get himself out of this pit he dug for himself?

[evaaguilaus]

Google RankBrain: Clearing up the myths and misconceptions

It’s been nearly 3½ years since Google first announced their usage of RankBrain (October 26th 2015, but it had started being rolled out early 2015, in multiple languages).

In that time, there’s been little in the way of details coming from G about what it is or how it works.

The result is that numerous SEOs have stepped up to fill that void with their own speculations and opinions, and in doing that, have caused all sorts of confusion.

This is my attempt to correct and clean up some of that mess.

(There is a TL:DR at the bottom if you want to skip the verbiage :D)

What does RankBrain do?

Though there isn’t much publicly available, what we do have is fairly specific:

“If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.”

– Greg Corrado, from Bloomberg’s Google Turning Its Lucrative Web Search Over to AI Machines}

Or, if you want it more succinct than that;

“… Lemme try one last time: Rankbrain lets us understand queries better. …”

– Gary Illyes (@methode), on Twitter

Google receives a fair percentage of queries per day that it hasn’t seen before: 15% at last check.

These may include misspellings and typos, elisions/omissions, unusual phrasing/syntactic structures, the wrong word(s) being used, negations (“not x”), things that have only just happened etc. etc. etc.

RB receives these weird, wonderful, and new searches, and attempts to identify existing searches and results that are probably suitable for the searcher’s query.

How does RankBrain work?

Again, we aren’t exactly given a guided tour by G on this, but there are a few bits and pieces.

“… RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities — called vectors — that the computer can understand. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries. …”

– Greg Corrado, from Bloomberg’s : Google Turning Its Lucrative Web Search Over to AI Machines

So, rather than looking at words and attempting to parse them and understand the semantics (traditional Natural Language Processing [NLP]), it converts them into numbers and plots them on a chart (with multiple dimensions, not just X and Y).

Items near each other possess some form of relationship. The type of relationship will be reflected by each term’s position and distance from its neighbors.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it sounds very similar to Word2Vector.

So when G receives a query it doesn’t quite recognize, it can find semantically related pieces, and look at the results.

But, what if it’s wrong?

Well, that’s where Gary Illyes’s answer to a question on his recent Reddit AMA may come in:

“…

RankBrain is a PR-sexy machine learning ranking component that uses historical search data to predict what would a user most likely click on for a previously unseen query. It is a really cool piece of engineering that saved our butts countless times whenever traditional algos were like, e.g. “oh look a “not” in the query string! let’s ignore the hell out of it!”, but it’s generally just relying on (sometimes) months old data about what happened on the results page itself, not on the landing page. Dwell time, CTR, … those are generally made up crap. Search is much more simple than people think.

…”

– Gary Illyes (@methode), on Reddit

I’ve added the bold to draw your eye to the key part.

G may go back and look at what gets clicked for different searches, and check their performance. This can help the system learn what suggestions are suitable, and which ones are fails.

If you want something with a bit more meat, you may be wanting some patents?

If so, I was lucky enough to get some help from Bill Slawski, who pointed me to two potentially interesting patents:

Computing numeric representations of words in a high-dimensional space, and

Using concepts as contexts for query term substitutions

The first patent (computing numeric…) was worked on by Greg Corrado, from the Bloomberg quote previously referenced.

If you don’t fancy suffering the trauma of reading the patents, Bill has two far nicer bits that get you the insights without the need for painkillers:

Citations behind the Google Brain Word Vector Approach, and

Investigating Google RankBrain and Query Term Substitutions

Example of what RankBrain may be doing

How about we walk through a simple demo of the type of thing that RB does?

Query: How Nemee 2020

Google receives that query, and has nothing that appears to be a match and little that seems above a weak relevance.

So, it needs to do some work.

It can identify the type of query by the use of “how”.

It can identify a time factor by “2020”.

Or it can identify several potentials for “nemee”, including “meme”.

The query is vectorized, and the nearest neighbors for those vectors are found.

Included in the results are vectors that represent:

“How to”

“how do I”

“how do people”

“create a meme”

“pronounce meme”

“say meme”

So we have two probable query types:

A question of how to say …

A question of how to make …

But we have a 3rd factor, the “2020”. When we look at the result groups, there are barely any pre-existing queries or results that include time with pronunciation, where are there are a moderate number of “how to” queries and results that do.

RB decides that the most likely results that match this query are those from the “how to make” queries, and so the results you would receive would match;

“how to make a meme 2020”.

Does RankBrain use user experience signals?

No.

And that’s what this post is about — clearing up all the baloney some people have been pushing about “Dwell Time” and “Click Through Rate” and “Bounces” etc.

RankBrain doesn’t use UX signals from your pages.

For quick confirmation;

“… Dwell time, CTR, … those are generally made up crap …”

That’s from Gary’s AMA response I quoted above.

But, you can use a little common sense yourself at this point.

Ask yourself the following question:

Why would a system that is built to try to encapsulate relationships between text-strings be looking at how long someone spent on a page, or how fast they left?

When you stop and look at it that way, and consider the example above, you can see how site based UX signals have no relevance for RankBrain.

The only such metric we know they may use are SERP-based clicks to identify what type of results appeared relevant to that type of query.

Can you optimize for RankBrain?

Yes.

Google has even told us that we can

“… Optimizing for RankBrain is actually super easy, and it is something we’ve probably been saying for fifteen years now, is – and the recommendation is – to write in natural language. Try to write content that sounds human. If you try to write like a machine then RankBrain will just get confused and probably just pushes you back. But if you have a content site, try to read out some of your articles or whatever you wrote, and ask people whether it sounds natural. If it sounds conversational, if it sounds like natural language that we would use in your day to day life, then sure, you are optimized for RankBrain. If it doesn’t, then you are “un-optimize …”

– Gary Illyes (@methode), talking to TheSEMPost

I know — it’s a bit lame.

But, if you roll back a bit, G have actually spelled out how to optimize for RankBrain!

“… If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with …”

“… making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries …”

“… predict what would a user most likely click on for a previously unseen query …”

All you have to do is fly in the face of standard SEO practices, and aim for the exact opposite of what you would normally go for — high search volume.

Instead, look at all the queries, and then generate variants that aren’t in the lists.

I know, that’s even lamer!

(But, be honest, you did want to know :D)

But there is more — particularly for those that deal with time-relevant content; events and occurrences.

As these are “new”, the queries likely will be too (at least partially). To gain an advantage here, you might be able to look at similar searches yourself, and look at the patterns they possess. Once you have some samples and associated search volume data, you can pick and choose the ones you feel are most advantageous and relevant, and then weave them into your content.

If you want a little more insight into RB, and things like Association Rule Learning (delving deeper into the computing side of things), Dan Taylor has a previous article that may be of interest: Here’s how RankBrain does (and doesn’t) impact SEO

Does RankBrain influence rankings?

No — it’s a matter of inclusion.

Though Google has stated that RB is one of the most influential Ranking Factors, it’s not a typical SEO factor.

Unlike Titles or Link Text, it’s not a gradient or variable — it’s Boolean.

Either you are perceived as relevant, and included in the SERPs for a query — or you aren’t.

So you can optimize for RankBrain — but it isn’t a matter of ranking influence, it’s a matter of index inclusion.

TL;DR

What does RB do?

It attempts to answer unknown queries by looking at previous search data and the relationship of the terms used in those searches.

How does RB do that?

By converting words into numbers and plotting them into vector-space.  

It can then break a query into parts and look for similar terms in the vector space to try to understand the relationship and potential intent of the search.

Example:

Query : “how nemee 2020”

Convert query to vectors, find closest vectors, try to calculate probable matches.

Two distinct query types are surfaced; “create” and “say”.

“2020” associates more strongly with “create” than “say”.

RB will return SERPs for “how to make a meme 2020”.

Does RB use UX?

No.

It handles words and vectors.  

Things like Bounce Rate, Long Clicks etc. aren’t used.

Can you optimize for RB?

Yes.

By writing naturally and ensuring your content contains variations.

For some types of content (occurrences/events/news) you may be able to check similar searches and get ahead of the pack.

Does RankBrain influence rankings?

Not in the traditional SEO sense. It’s not about “position”, it’s about whether you show for that query or not.

The post Google RankBrain: Clearing up the myths and misconceptions appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/05/google-rankbrain-clearing-up-the-myths-and-misconceptions/120782/

[randomgirltalking]

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave

.... When first we practice to deceive.

This #JussieSmollett saga has got me doing what I rarely do... reading mainstream media news 😛. I’m sure many of you have heard the story by now... random actor from a TV show they don’t play here has the munchies in the middle of the night (who hasn’t?!) and bundles up to make a trek to Subway for a late night snack. Along the way he gets attacked by two men who yell homophobic and racist slurs against him, telling him that this is “MAGA country” (apparently MAGA is the new racial slur ... like it literally stands for Make America Great Again, but okay...) and pour bleach over him. Oh and let’s not forget the noose around his neck.

When this story broke, an outpouring of anger and disbelief was felt around America. Love and grief was poured upon poor Jussie. Celebrities hashtagged, reposted, condemned and sobbed that “love trumps hate”. My favourite white guilted social justice warrior, Matt McGory urged non POC (that’s people of colour for folks that don’t know) to check their white privilege.

Yes, this story was terrible. In this day and age, incidents like this are shocking to read about. The anger and sadness was completely justified.....

If it was true.

A few people that I follow on Insta started being quite vocal about the fact that this story did not add up. I mean, this was literally the day after it happened not two weeks later when a ripple of doubt was starting to appear around Jussie’s story.

1. Going out in subzero temperatures Mmmmkay I can understand being so hungry that you leave the warmth of your house to grab a quick feed. Actually, I don’t understand cos I’m lazy as fuck and would rather deal with hunger pains then leave my comfy house in the middle of the night. I also would have realized that it’s 2019 and UberEats exists.

2. Two white men are stalking the streets of Chicago(One of Obama’s stronghold cities) in freezing temperatures with bleach and a noose, presumably looking for a black person. And they happened to come across and recognize Jussie Smollet (who I’m assuming was bundled up against the freezing night). They also knew that he plays a gay character on a predominantly black cast show as Jussie claims that they yelled out “Empire n****r.”

3. He didn’t immediately call the police and he left the noose on I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and assume that he didn’t want to be left alone and vulnerable on the cold street. He left the noose on to preserve evidence. Okay yes, I can understand this. I mean, I would personally be horrified to come out of an attack to find rope around my neck and believe you me that shit would be yanked off and thrown the fuck away from me ASAP. But, other people react to things differently. I can see a level headed, calm person keeping that shit on as proof. Except... okay did anyone see that GMA interview he did with Robin? I’ll delve into ripping the piss out of it soon but he clearly told a visibly cynical Robin that he was not initially planning on involving the police and that it was his friend who he was with that called the cops. Why would he keep that shit on him if he had no plans to report it? I mean, apart from his pride as a gay man that kept him from calling the police, as he tried to convince us in the interview 😒

4. He did not want to hand over his phone So, Jussie was on the phone to his manager when he was jumped so there’s a clear timeline of events. His manager even heard the perpetrators say “this is MAGA country!” So great, he has proof that this crime was committed. I’m not going to mention that Jussie told Robyn that after he was attacked he took his phone out of his pocket, where his manager was miraculously still on the line. He somehow managed to have a quick window of opportunity to slide his phone in his pocket before he was attacked. Oh, look, I did mention it. Anyway, we all read that Jussie refused to hand over his phone. In his interview he claims that he did not want to hand over his personal information/data to someone he didn’t know. And you know what, I actually understand this part. I too would be reluctant to hand over sensitive information (especially if I was somewhat famous) to the police. Sorry, I’m just a big believer in privacy. Anyway, police speak states that when he did hand it over it was “heavily redacted”. This could mean it was edited, forged, deleted etc so I’m not going to speculate for sure what that PR heavy phrase means.

Okay, can we now talk about that farce of an interview with Robin for Good Morning America? A lot of people claimed that it was an Oscar worthy performance but is it really great acting when we can tell that he’s acting? I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a pin in his pocket that he was using to stab himself with to conjure up the trickle of tears he squeezed out. I’m sure it would have created worse wounds than the chicken scratches that were on his face after two grown as men punched and kicked him.

Another thing I noticed about his interview was the amount of unnecessary information he gave. I love true crime docos. I remember watching one where they described how they knew that certain criminals were lying. There was one story about a man who had sadly murdered his step-granddaughter. The police said that on the day of the crime, the murderer described his day in great detail. What time he woke. What he ate for breakfast. That he vacuumed his house because his dog shed, what he fed his dog etc... yet he couldn’t remember exactly what time his step-granddaughter left the house or what their exact words were to each other. The investigator stated that the guilty party would do this to deflect from the finer details which might catch them out aka trying too hard to be innocent. I couldn’t help but think of this example when I listened to Jussie explain that he went to the fridge, found it empty, decided to go to Walgreens for food and a smoke, found it closed, went across the road to Subway for a sandwich and salad, texted his friend to ask if he wanted anything, then texted his manager, then his manager called... “Too much information!” I remember thinking. It wasn’t until the next day that I read an article by a behavioral therapist stating that he was surprised by the amount of unnecessary information Jussie gave. Called it!

We’re reminded of the threatening hate mail that Jussie received, laughabley worded in cut out magazine letters, making us wonder if we are in a Hollywood movie plot. Robin asks Jussie “why you?” As if these two men were loitering outside of Jussie’s place, hoping he’ll come outside into the cold at 2am. Jussie gives a proud smirk and says “I come really hard on 45.” (That’s not a gay fetish, that’s the number president Trump is) Yeah, no shit, Jussie. You and every other 10,000 people from Hollywood. When I went on his Insta I could have been on any liberal Hollywood celebrity page... all recycling the same rhetoric, all with the same hashtag, at the same rally/march, doing the same fist in the air sign....😴 He didn’t have anything profound, original or controversial to say and he definitely did not go “hard” on anything. And no offense, Jussie, but there are way more impactful celebrities that people care about. So, we still do not know “why you.”

When Robin rightly mentioned the reasons why people doubted his story... Jussie angrily interjects to promote the opening hours of Subway and to remind everyone that not only is he black in America but he is gay, too. He also wishes to let everyone know that as a gay man he is not weak (cos as a society people think that LGBTQ means weak) and that he fought the fuck back. So much so that he scared two muscle bound Nigerians away and came away virtually unscathed. Oh but he does not advocate violence, though. He wants you to fight back somehow, though. Especially if you’re a little gay boy (his words). He also wants you to remember that when somebody reports a crime long after the fact and no one believes them, to remember that he reported (reluctantly) straightaway (after 45 mins of considering it despite leaving the noose on) and no one believes him. He also wants you to see the truth, but you don’t want to see the truth but you know it’s the truth but you don’t want to.. see the truth? Also, he wants you to know that he was on Grindr when he was single, but this was not a Grindr date gone wrong.

Anyway, all joking aside, if Jussie’s story turns out to be true, I will delete this post and pretend nothing happened because, like Jussie, I too have pride.

Now, you may feel that there is no hero in this story, no hope. Well, that is where you would be wrong, my friends! The real hero in this story is the Subway sandwich artist who had prepared and wrapped Jussie’s sandwich so securely that it survived a beat down from two gym enthusiasts. Please Subway, do the right thing and give this hero without a cape a well deserved raise!

[harrisjv]

OptinJoy Review Discount And Bonus

OptinJoy Testimonial - Are you searching for even more expertise about OptinJoy? Please go through my truthful evaluation concerning it before selecting, to assess the weaknesses as well as toughness of it. Can it deserve your effort and time and money?

OptinJoy Evaluation & Overview

Supplier: Dan Ashendorf

Item: OptinJoy

Introduce Date: 2019-Feb-17

Release Time: 11:00 EST

Front-End Rate: $27

Specific niche: General

Exactly How 10 Leading Web Marketing Experts Accomplished Mind-Blowing Success (Part 1)

A lot of web marketing professionals never ever accomplish success. Some have a wonderful idea however fail to see it through, some don't have actually the required commitment, as well as some fail because they are looking for a fast dollar. But these leading OptinJoy web marketing professionals are definitely not the case.

Today we're going to show you exactly how 10 of the top internet marketing professionals achieved fast as well as substantial success with their tasks. Seeing their secret sauce, you also will be inspired to act as necessary.

Right here you will locate understandings from the very best internet marketing experts around:

Rough Aggarwal, Shoutmeloud

Matthew Woodward, MatthewWoodward.co.uk

Brian Dean, Backlinko

Jessica as well as High cliff Larrew, earning money with Amazon.com FBA

Clay Collins, Lead pages

Noah Kagan, AppSumo

Peep Laja, ConversionXL

Steve Brodsky, Checklist Builder's Academy

Lisa as well as Jason, 100 days of actual food

Ryan Lee, Ryan Lee dotcom, The Millionaire Exercise

Harsh Aggarwal, Shoutmeloud

Harsh blogs at Shoutmeloud.com. He is one of one of the most popular blog writers as well as top net marketing professionals in India. He has been interviewed several times, both by magazines and by other bloggers around the world.

The Shoutmeloud Facebook follower web page has more than 60k sort as well as the blog site has over 95,000 newsletter clients.

Shoutmeloud initially went live in December 2008 as well as currently OptinJoy has been virtually a years of blogging.

Suffice to state that Harsh is the poster kid of the Indian blogosphere.

He mainly shares what he learns about WordPress, holding, plugins, blogging etc. It's intensely individual which's what makes him so inspiring.

Just how this internet marketing professional got going

Harsh started blogging as a pastime yet it quickly ended up be his profession. He launched his very first blog on the Blogpost platform and within three months of doing so, he started obtaining a cozy action from the neighborhood.

Boosted by his success he moved to WordPress as well as acquired a premium domain. During that time he didn't even have a credit card to get the holding package and also used that of his pal's daddy's.

His blog started as a way to kill his boredom. After falling short in 4 campus option interviews he was finally approved into Accenture. He was put however then he can join just a year later on.

Within a few months of blogging, he started to make $700 monthly with his blog. The year passed swiftly as well as it was now time for him to decide whether to continue blog writing or sign up with the work at Accenture. He went with the work yet gave up after 6 months.

Risk to be the daydreamer

In India, it's a lot harder to seek a career in blogging. Many people don't understand what blog writing is. It's even harder for them to recognize if generating income with a blog is feasible.

If you're a blogger lots of people would certainly think that you waste your time the entire day before the computer.

Which was 2008. An individual in India going the non-traditional route would certainly face tight resistance from relatives, household, and also buddies as we have a much more closely weaved household framework below.

Paulo Coehlo's book" The Sorcerer" explains OptinJoy well. When somebody begins pursuing his/her dream after that loved ones try quiting him. This is since our loved ones do not want to see us fall short.

But when we finally realize that love is not a repressive pressure, we can make it an inspiration to progress.

It took him time to persuade his moms and dads but he finally made it as well as there has actually been no looking back since.

If he had been a designer, he 'd been making 5k annually, yet as a blog writer, he makes more than 50k and also lives the life of his selection.

Yet not everything has actually been smooth

I additionally reviewed his individual blog site Denharsh( See Troubles with Functioning From Residence Full-time) where he describes the challenges of being a full time blog owner. The greatest issue is the loneliness that you deal with. Bloggers exchange hundreds of emails. Yet when it involves satisfying people, they rarely fulfill anyone brand-new.

Aside from that, there is the consistent pressure of efficiency and also remaining updated. Blog owners do not have weekends as well as you work everyday.

I do concur with the blog post however I really feel that a great deal of these troubles can be resolved conveniently. Getting a group or remaining as a paying guest can introduce some firm in the life of the lonely blogger.

It's not essential to make every person recognize every little thing. For the most investigative family members, my solution has actually always been that I make more working from house than at a workplace.

( See After 1826 days of blogging all I can state is Blogging is amazing).

Matthew Woodward, MatthewWoodward.co.uk

Matthew Woodward is among the leading internet OptinJoy marketers in the UK. His blog site is provided among the most effective 100 blogs in Technorati, has actually won numerous awards like being noted on Problogger as a top blog site, and has actually likewise been featured on Unbounce's listing of top 75 blog sites.

It was launched on 5.02.2012 and currently takes pride in an International Alexa ranking of 5800.

Allow's see how he tackled it and attained all this in less than a year.

Acknowledging the chance

I had additionally felt the exact same things which stimulated Matthew to produce a blog site that contained workable material. During that time, guest blogging remained in much vogue with established sites like Problogger, Copyblogger, Johnchow accepting filler material in the name of visitor messages. If 6 posts went online every week, 5 of them would certainly be guest blog posts with rehashed content.

There was even a term for that kind of web content-- epic crap.

There was a requirement for content that was new and refreshing. Matthew generated Search Engine Optimization video tutorials that showed for the first time what it took to rate a site on Google.

Well, to put it simply, the videos had to do with tiered link building, article rotating, hacking visitor blogging and so on

. Finally, Matthew decided that the function of the blog was to help individuals. He wanted to achieve that whenever a person requested for Search Engine Optimization assistance, claim in online forums, his tutorials would be the ones shared.

Matt Cutts constantly said that fantastic web content is something that works to the community, something one-of-a-kind and something that has original research study.

Developing an exterior web link is against Google's guidelines. The funny thing is that although Matthew is a specialist on web link structure, he did not develop web links to his blog.

I find that the least common tutorial on his blog site, on locating your OptinJoy target market is one of one of the most useful ones. (See Exactly how to find and also involve your target audience online commercial?). In Matthew's case, he set about listing the leading most online marketing discussion forums and also established Google alerts to find people who required assist with or were discussing Search Engine Optimization.

Producing a tale

Individuals love stories as well as can relate to them. A blog site is a more major organisation, but I have commonly really felt that Matthew made use of the power of narration amply on his blog. By developing a video collection of Tiered Web link building tutorials, he made people return for even more. For more months than I can count these tutorials were one of the most shared as well as checked out products on his blog.

Introducing a discussion forum that additionally fueled the concept helpful individuals and at the very same time indulged in the advantage of user-generated material was an additional master stroke.

The outcomes

Matthew is now a component of the top net marketing professionals and makes most of his revenue via associate sales. He does appointments also, yet the majority of the time he's hectic taking a trip and also has little time to devote to the numerous people who intend to throw money at him.

His success for the past year:.

632,452 page views

31,715 hours/3.6 years invested reading my messages

Won 5 significant honors

$ 73,334.09 revenue

There are a few points that I gained from following him around given that the day he started MatthewWoodward.co.uk.

1. Plan, yes strategy

I have actually seen a lot of us who would begin an on-line OptinJoy organisation or blog site with no thinking. They would throw away six to 7 months on it as well as would then abandon it with a bitter heart. The key grievances would certainly be that there is no web traffic, no money etc

. Prior to beginning his blog site, Matthew invested months thinking of what the content technique would be. He intended on exactly how to get traffic. He likewise realized where his target audience lived online as well as performed his actions on reaching out to them.

One of his visitors in Costa Rica Yeison started a blog site mytanfeet.com which is totally about Costa Rica. In less than 6 weeks this guy that can not compose English correctly had his blog site featured on two newspapers and made $350. Over 90% of blog writers do not make a cent. Currently, it does over $1000 every month. As well as they have gone on to release among the very first multilingual marketing blog sites yeisonkim.com.

2. Don't stress regarding the cash

Don't begin a business or blog site in which you do not have your heart. Passion regulations every little thing. Nowadays one can make money from anything. I heard that some person offered a fish for $10,000. The cash will come if you construct something that individuals like and intend to associate with.

3. Play by your crucial strengths

According to Noah Kagan (later in this article), everyone on the planet is an incredibly human. Everyone has superhuman strength in some field. Some succeed at advertising, some at composing, still others in Excel. At the age of 13, Matthew constructed his first site on computer game. He made these trendy video clips which showed people just how to play the game appropriately.

Quick forward a couple of years later he makes these uber amazing tutorials with elegant graphics and also CTAs rolling in and I resemble, "Wow, just how does he do that?" Few individuals put in that much effort right into what they are doing. But with his experience making videos it's a crucial stamina that Matthew has.

Think of what you can do much better than others as well as you will certainly find your essential toughness. ( See Just how I constructed a leading 100 OptinJoy blog site in year as well as how can you do it also?).

What Is OptinJoy?

OptinJoy Is A Revolutionary Software Program That Uses Cutting Side Modern Technology to Siphon Leads on Auto-Pilot, Bringing in a Deluge of Customers, Traffic and Sales

PROS

Never ever seen prior to suite of Opt in devices

Beginner Friendly Lead Capture Equipment

Sensational Themes for Maximum Conversions

Functions on any gadget

Calculators, Tests, Kinds, Polls, CTAs

Social Sharing for Maximum Website Traffic

In The Cloud Software program

Accessibility real-time statistics regarding participants

Author

Have you ever heard the name Dan Ashendorf? If you are active in the advertising market, the name is as well acquainted to you. Dan Ashendorf is a fantastic distributor on the market. He always launches great items to offer the demands of customers. Some of his items are best known as Associate Hero, Dragon Commission, TrafficMojo, Bonus Monkey, as well as Viral Video Clip Payments.

Recently, he remained to accompany his associates and also launched OptinJoy. The following section in my OptinJoy review will certainly assist you obtain a summary of this product.

How Does OptinJoy Job?

3 Steps That Take You From Complete Beginner To Successful Internet Marketing Professional.

Action 1: Produce

Select among our lead drawing items - and select the very best, most interesting call to activities (we show you how).

Step 2: Publish

Just hit the publish button as well as you're done - the material is released across social media, ready to siphon the leads like an efficient suction device.

Step 3: Revenue

" The Money is in the List". View as your auto -responder loaded with hungry subscribers, eager to acquire your product.

Price & Evaluation

Front End $27

Produce unrestricted types

Create endless surveys

Produce limitless quizes

Create unrestricted CTAs

Share on FB, Twitter & Pinterest

Download leads

Integrate with Autoresponders

3 motifs

Tracking Pixels

OTO1 PRO $37

Produce unrestricted forms

Produce endless polls

Create endless quizzes

Create unlimited calculators

Produce limitless CTAs

Share on FB, Twitter & Pinterest

Download leads

Incorporate with Autoresponders

Integrate with Infusionsoft

20 themes

100 design templates

Press alerts

Download and install survey, quiz & calculator responses

OTO2 DIAMOND CLUB $27 Persisting

Recurring Layouts

Benefit Monkey Subscription

OTO3 AGENCY $197

OptinJoy Firm License

OTO4 TRAINING $197

16 weeks of team training

Final thought

" It's A Large amount. Should I Spend Today?"

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[confrontingbabble-on]

“Why do we respond to fictional characters, whether they dwell in the pages of a well­-loved book or on one of our many screens, as though they were real people? The short answer is empathy.

In our brains, empathy lives in a little lobe called the right supramarginal gyrus. When we interact with other humans, we use ourselves as something of an emotional yardstick to try to figure out how they’re feeling. We read their body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and use our own internal experience as a gauge to guide our interactions with them. What’s interesting is that in studies where this part of the brain was disrupted, participants reported finding it increasingly difficult to not project their own emotional states onto others. This, of course, is something that we all do to some degree, particularly if we’re stressed or trying to make decisions more quickly than our gyrus can handle.

Now, when we empathize with someone who is physically in front of us, we have the potential for a tactile experience — hugging them, squeezing their hand reassuringly — that bolsters our emotional response. On some level, empathy is a conscious process — and there are ways to improve our ability to empathize with others. But at a neurobiological level, there are certain functions that either exist or don’t in each one of us. Sociopaths, presumably, have a lower functioning gyrus. Empaths, on the other hand, have a higher functioning one.

One thing that helps us empathize with family and friends, no matter what our baseline capabilities to do so are, is trying to fill in the details of what we don’t know about their situation. Interestingly enough, this is also more or less what we do with fictional characters; in fact, it’s sometimes easier to empathize with them because we are often given, expositionally, far more detailed and intimate knowledge of a character than we would ever know about someone in our real lives. And, as in life, it’s our nature to fill in the blanks when we’re presented with a character that we haven’t gotten to know very well yet.

Fanfiction is one way that we do this on a community level. Headcanons, a term in fandom that refers to what an individual believes to be true about a character, even though it’s not “canon”, are another way that we flesh out the details of these character’s lives as we attempt to understand and, ultimately, feel for them on some level.

On a neurobiological level, our experience of consuming fiction is actually very real. Measurably so. When we read about the scent of coffee, for instance, the olfactory center of our brain lights up. We can’t really smell it, but we’re familiar with the scent and we can conjure it up. Especially if the language is rich and helps us recreate the experience. Metaphors can be helpful in giving us a vibrant, multi-sensory experience when we’re reading, similes help a wider range of readers experience the same emotion, based on our own internal experiences.

The biggest philosophical dilemma we face is defining what it means to be real.

On a somewhat basal level, “we” are real and fictional characters are “unreal”; at most they are representations or amalgams of real people, but they themselves do not possess any actual solitary identity in life. They are not flesh and blood. We cannot engage with them on that touchable level we could with, say, a friend who we are comforting. In film and television, we can often extend our feelings for characters to the actors who portray them which is innocuous at best but potentially quite unnerving for the actors at worst. Still, trying to define a character’s relative “realness” is often a testament to how they’re written and how they’re played by the actor.

Literary theorists struggle to accept that a character can be real, because taken out of the context of their universe (whether in book, television or film) they aren’t able to stand up on their own. Of course, one could argue that there are some literary characters who are so timeless, so placeless, that this argument would be rendered invalid. Books and film have often taken a stab at their own high-budget versions of fanfiction, taking well-loved characters (that are likely in the public domain) and plopping them into alternate universes. Think Once Upon a Time.

Whether or not characters are ontologically “real”, our familiarity with them renders them very emotionally potent; a kind of emotional truth that we experience at a biochemical level quite the same as we would with strangers whom we get to know over the course of a season — or years, for the loyalist of fans.

Our interpretation of the actors that portray the characters, or even the writer who penned them, may not always be that misguided. Actors are often typecast. Writers often insert elements of their own personality into a character or two, even subconsciously. Our relationship to the characters, then, does stem from relating to the actor humans who bring them to life in our imagination. It’s all based on real emotions. Real experiences.

Some philosophers have proposed that the emotional response we have to fictional characters can’t be real because it’s not directed at real people. It’s “irrational, incoherent, and inconsistent” to think we can direct real emotions at unreal objects, argues Colin Radford.

To further elaborate, he asks us to consider how our emotional response to a horrible event would change if we later found out it was false. While we believe it to be true, we respond empathetically — however, if we believe an account to be false, or if we know it to be, we cannot rationally empathize. When we read a book or watch a film, however, we are knowingly partaking in something false, yet somehow are still greatly moved by it.

Another philosopher, Kendall Walton, wonders if what we experience watching a horror movie, for example, is not real fear — but quasi-fear. These almost-but-not-quite-emotions are not based on belief, but make-belief. Children playing a game of make-believe with their father, in which he pretends to be a monster chasing them, will playfully run and hide from him but not hesitate to run back to him when the game is over. These quasi-emotions account for our enjoyment of being spooked during a scary movie, or our desire to have a good cry watching something like Steel Magnolias for the umpteenth time. Further, it’s not as though just any movie or book can give us those fun (or awful) heebie jeebies or make you cry big man-tears.

While we may choose, however, to engage with fiction we do not appear to be in control of our emotional responses to it — quasi or not. And even still, how is it then that we can go full-well into a movie, or pick up a book we’ve read a million times, not only knowing the emotional climax is coming but knowing full well it’s not “real” — yet we still find ourselves tearing up? Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

We would do well to remember why we read or watch films in the first place; isn’t it to experience that which we have not experienced in our real lives? Understand other people’s lives, inner and external? Isn’t a mark of good characterization how “real” they feel to us?

We’ve all heard anecdotes about actors who play medical professionals on television finding themselves in situations where actual medical care needs to be rendered — and they have to remind those around them that they are not, in fact, a doctor. They just play one on TV.

It’s the purpose of the creators of such characters that we suspend our belief in order to see the actor as the character; we look at the skill of artists like Meryl Streep who seamlessly become the character, where we don’t have to put much effort in at all to convince ourselves that it’s Miranda Priestly and not just Meryl Streep with a great haircut. But how do we “decide” on an unconscious level that it’s not Meryl Streep on our TV?

Philosopher Tamar Gendler posits that we have two competing levels of consciousness — belief and alief. The former being what governs our intellectual knowledge that yes, fiction is not fact. Where the latter, what she calls “alief” is our brain’s ability to suspend our belief that fiction is not “real” — which is what makes watching movies enjoyable. We can get “lost” in them, but as soon as the credits roll and we return to our day to day life, we know it was just Meryl Streep with a superb haircut.

This system of alief, however, is a process that becomes increasingly more well developed as we grow up. This is why children are even more enraptured by stories than we are. If you’ve ever taken a young child to a live theater performance, you’re probably familiar with the struggle of having to explain to them that the actor playing the character was only pretending to be hurt.

Psychologists have also been interested in what they call “experience-taking”, wherein we subconsciously take on traits, attitudes and behaviors of our favorite characters. Our faves (problematic or no) are often such because we strongly identify with them. In one study, psychologists found that participants had a much harder time “experience-taking” when they were reading in front of a mirror; presumably because they were constantly reminded of their own self-concept. Thus, “experience-taking” can only happen when an individual can suppress their own identity and “lose themselves” in the book or the film.

“Experience-taking” is different from putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, which is more “perspective-taking” —like when we were discussing empathy earlier. The act of taking on experience, traits or attributes is very powerful; since it happens on an unconscious level, over time positive change can develop for the individual: increased confidence, motivation and a greater level of comfort socially, for one.

If you Google “why do we get attached to fictional characters?” 2,800,000 results are returned. Some of them are articles like this, asking questions about the psychology, the philosophy, of how we relate to our favorite characters. Others, however, are a slew of message board posts and blogs where people wonder rather frightfully if they are “sick” for developing very real emotional responses to characters that they know, intellectually, are not real.

What we look for when it comes to relating to characters isn’t necessarily the same as what we would admire about them. In fact, when it comes to really distilling down to what makes us really, really, really love a character, it’s not so much that we think of them as our fictional counterpart, but that we’d like to be friends with them.

At the root, our attraction to fictional characters may not be that we identify with them that much at all — but rather, we just really enjoy spending time with them. Whether it be in the pages of a book, a new season of TV or a feature length film, for a few hours at least we’re lost in their world.

And maybe the mark of a truly memorable fictional character is how often we take them with us when we head back to reality.”

http://www.themarysue.com/the-psychology-of-fandom/

[randomrichards]

10) 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE Who would have though a sequel to Cloverfield would not only surpass the original, but leave it completely in the dust? The fact this found footage monster movie even had a sequel in the first play was a surprise. But it’s a miracle that it turned out as thrilling as this film. With the exception of having giant monsters and the word Cloverfield, these two films couldn’t be more different. 10 Cloverfield Lane not only does away with the found footage style, but it also it does away with the monster movie genre in favour of a paranoid thriller. It may not be epic, but writers Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken and Damien Chazelle and director Dan Trachtenberg more than make up for it with pure tension, gripping performances and an unsettling environment. The film makes the bold move of having the most of the film take place in a bomb shelter. What a setting it was. With cinderblock walls and low hanging lights both creates a sense of claustrophobia and recalls the atomic age. Then there’s the living room, which tries to create the illusion of perfect Norman Rockwell-esque homestead. These don’t hide the cinderblock walls. But what really brings in the tension is John Goodman’s performance. Goodman is a rare actor who elevates every scene he’s in, but he really brings his A game as Howard. He presents himself as a gentleman to our heroine (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), taking her in and fixing her broken leg. Like Annie Wilkes from Misery, there’s something unsetting about his manners. He is so intense that a chuckle can set him off, as one uncomfortable dinner proves. He is such a paranoid lunatic that for all we know, he could be making up the chemical warfare in the outside world. Sure, the ending leans too much into conventional action scene, but the earlier scenes are still excellent. 9) JACKIE Natalie Portman’s has a great chance of getting her second Best Actress Oscar. She practically vanishes within the role of Jackie Kennedy, capturing her look and voice to perfection. But the true strength of her performance was how she conveys power within Jackie’s pleasant persona. Without ever raising her pleasant voice, Jackie takes command of every situation, determined to ensure the legacy of both her husband and herself. But her demeanor’s put to the test when her husband’s assassinated. Though she tries to maintain a dignified power during funeral plans, her voice can’t hide her traumatic grief. In a powerful scene, Jackie tearfully wipes the blood off her face, and then returns to a dignified manner to face the press. Though Portman’s sure to get all of the attention, director Pablo Larrain, cinematographer Stephane Fontaine and writer Noah Oppenheim deserve equal acclaim. Oppenheim portrays the events around the assassination in disjointed manner, connecting them all through Jackie’s interview with a journalist (Billy Crudup). Fontaine uses a classic fuzzy camera style to create the feeling of nostalgia. Putting it all together, Larrain captures a Guinevere recalling a time when she had her Camelot. 8) HELL OR HIGH WATER Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) investigates a series of bank robberies committed by brothers. That’s the plot in the nutshell. As he has done with Sicario, screenwriter brings complexity into a simple plot, creating a relevant character study disguised as a mix between a modern western and a heist movie. Not since Bonnie and Clyde has a crime drama so perfectly captured the frustrations of its time. Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster) are among many desperate people screwed over by the banks. Throughout the film, both Hamilton and the brothers encounter people struggling to make ends meet. Hamilton has a hard time investigating the crime when locals are rooting for the robbers. With their towns full of foreclosures, you can’t blame them. Adding to the layers are the complex performances. Pine portrays Toby as an intelligent yet desperate measure with an intricate plan to save the family farm. Bridges brings depth into a caricatured stoic lawman, portraying him as an old guard starting to realize how out of touch he is in a digital world. He’s sure to get the most attention, but it’s Foster who steals the show. In sharp contrast to his brother, Tanner is an unhinged ex-con looking for a thrill. He’s restraining himself for his brother sake, but he’d rather go out with guns ablazing. It would have been so easy for any actor to chew the scenery, but Foster keeps the character grounded enough to be sympathetic. In the end, this film is a portrayal of desperate people struggling for relevance and security in a world running out of both. And it does so while bringing us some kickass robbery scenes and car chases. 7) MOONLIGHT Theatres in Edmonton seemed to be very determined to make people see this indie sleeper. Since its premiere at the Edmonton International Film Festival, Landmark cinemas had it show in two theatres; a luxury usually reserved for Marvel movies. Right now, the Garneau Theatre has been showing this over and over throughout late December and early January. In some days, it will be the only film shown there. What makes Moonlight so special? Well, it is a beautiful, sensitive portrayal of the life of a gay, black man in Miami. In his childhood, he is Little (Alex R. Hibbert), a bullied little boy who finds a reluctant in Juan (Mahershala Ali), a drug dealer. In the second part, he is Chiron (Ashton Sanders), a bitter teenager whose emerging homosexuality makes him a target of more hostile bullying. As an adult, he is Black (Tervante Rhodes), a man who decides to reunite with Kevin (Andre Holland), a longtime friend who betrayed him as an adult. At the centre of this film is how Chiron’s environment affects him…or doesn’t. Throughout the film, we see people like Juan, his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monae) to Kevin offering him some form of guidance. But their advice is undermined by the complexities of their circumstances. Juan’s appalled by Chiron’s mom’s drug addiction, until she points out the crack comes from him. Kevin tries to get Chiron to stand up for himself, but Kevin himself is not above peer pressure. Writer/director Barry Jenkins doesn’t demonize these people for their flaws. He portrays their flaws with great empathy. The visuals are as beautiful as the character’s depth. Cinematographer James Laxton brings out the sunny setting of the Miami suburbs. Though he shoots most of the film in a realistic setting, once in a while, once in a while, he will present a stylistic shot, like the neon pink lights through Paula’s bedroom door or an overhead shot of Chiron walking down a road while being tormented by his bullies. Jenkins combines this to create a beautiful portrayal of humanity. 6) WEINER We’ve seen documentaries about political scandals, but rarely do we get the scandals from the politician’s point of view. Directors Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg accidently got this rare opportunity while filming Anthony Weiner’s 2012 New York mayor campaign. As the film starts, the film shows us how respected this New York congressman was before the scandal. He was revered as a crusader who wasn’t afraid to get loud and mean for the sake of the people, as we see from live debates. But then he gets busted for sexting and his reputation goes downhill. After resigning, he launches a comeback through his campaign for Mayor. At first, it works perfectly with him gaining the majority lead. Yet when you hear supporters appraising Anthony Weiner, you can’t let go of the awareness of what’s going to happen Of course, he tweets a photo of …himself to Sydney Leathers and it all goes downhill for “Carlos Danger.” Again. This film started out as an underdog story of a politician’s redemption but this scandal takes this documentary to a new level. It’s rare you get to see a political campaign react to a scandal. We see the Weiner team attempt to keep voters on their side as Weiner and his campaign leaders discuss strategies to save their reputation. When Leathers leads a media mob in a march to confront Weiner, we get a scene of the campaign strategizing a plan to lead their leader out of a hotel without being confronted. Of course, their candidate isn’t helping matters by pulling one boner after another. With all of these screw ups, the filmmakers outright ask him why he’s letting them film all this. With yet another sexting scandal in 2016, you’re left to wonder how a guy as smart as he is could do such stupid things. 5) ART OF THE PRANK When I read an NPR article about Jestin Coler, a democrat creating fake right wing news sites in order to “infiltrate the echo chamber of the alt right[1],” this documentary popped up in my head. Known as the Godfather of the Media Hoax, Joey Skaggs has been baiting the media with fake projects since the 60s. Whether he’s playing the owner of a “brothel for dogs” or donning a priest robe and carrying a confession booth on his bicycle, major news items always lap it up. And now he plans to try his hand at pranking film festivals with a fake documentary about regrowing teeth using shark DNA. It’s a shame this documentary’s getting so little attention. With high concerns about fake news, nowhere is there a more perfect time for this documentary to be released. Through his elaborate media hoaxes, Skaggs exposes the failure of news media to fact check their stories, choosing sensationalism over journalism. No matter the persona Skaggs portrays, it’s incredibly easy for him to get a platform to weave his pythonesque spider web. Tragically, nothing seems to have changed. With rejections from of the shark DNA “documentary”, there’s some sign of hope, but you can’t be too sure about that. 4) LA LA LAND Old cinema fantasy clashes with new cinema reality in this visual delight of a musical. In nearly every way, writer/director Damien Chazelle blends these two styles with grace. The graceful choreography and beautiful imagery captures the magical feeling of the golden age musicals. Unafraid to use fantastical elements in their numbers, this film even has one dance number where our heroes float atop the roof of a planetarium. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren brings out the neon colours of the L.A. environment, complimenting Justin Hurwitz’s jazzy music. Outside of the musical numbers, Sandberg and Chazelle contrast the dazzling imagery with a grounded, realistic look at L.A. The visuals aren’t just here for eye candy. They match the internal conflict the dreams and reality of our heroes. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) try to work hard to achieve their dreams, but they are constantly confronted by harsh reality. Sebastian’s obsession for jazz has a hard time fitting in the modern world. Mia has it the worst, dealing with one failed audition after another. When one finds success, it only emphasizes the failure for the other. Even their romance is fragile. Through these characters, Chazelle celebrates the dreams of artists and their failures. 3) MIDNIGHT SPECIAL Is there anything Jeff Nichols can’t do? Since Shotgun Stories, this writer/director has delivered one extraordinary film after another. This year, he brings two films; Loving; a biopic about the Loving family, the loving couple who made interracial marriage a constitutional right and Midnight Special; a supernatural road movie about a father trying to protect his son. The film hits the ground running with Roy (Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) on the run from the law while Roy’s son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) reads comics in the backseat. Alton has some extraordinary powers, which not only attracts the attention of government agents (among them Adam Driver) but a religious cult (led by Sam Shepard). Throughout the trip, Roy and Lucas try to keep the boy in hiding while they can help him achieve his destiny. But they don’t know what destiny awaits Alton when they reach their destination? The film begins with a lot of questions about Alton? Why do his eyes glow blue? What does the cult want with him? Why does he have to be shielded from sunlight? The ambiguity creates a sense of mystery which builds a sense of intrigue throughout the film. At its core, it’s a film about father’s need to protect his son. Shannon gives a heartfelt performance as a desperate father who doesn’t know what lies ahead for his son, but knows he must fulfill his destiny. At the same time, he fears this destiny may require him to let go of his son. There are other great performances, from Kirsten Dunst as Alton’s mother to Sam Shepard as the manic, yet charismatic cult leader. The ending to this film is one of the most beautiful scenes of the year. It left me in awe. 2) ARRIVAL It takes a great director to create suspense out of language translation. It takes a daring writer to put it at the centre of a science fiction film about aliens arriving on earth. It takes a great actress to hook the audience into a linguist’s fascination with understanding alien language. All three gather to create this haunting beautiful film. While Denis Villeneuve gets a lot of praise for his directing, Eric Heisserer deserves equal praise for creating a screenplay that defies sci-fi tropes. Based on Ted Chang’s “Story of Your Life,” Arrival tells the story of Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist who’s hired by the military to interpret alien language after 12 spaceships land across the planet. First of all, it’s refreshing to have a sci fi film where the first reaction to alien arrival isn’t to shoot them down. Instead, we see world leaders try to work together to understand the meaning behind the circles. Heisserer creates a sense of mystery around the translation, which may reveal the alien’s intent for earth. Heisserer also uses the loss of Bank’s daughter to build on themes of grief, memories and fear. Arrival brings Heisserer’s script to life with awe-inspiring visuals. The floating giant spaceship alone is a sight to behold, but when Louise floats into a gravity-defying dark hallway to the giant white window, you feel like you’re transported into a different world. Adams certainly helps by bringing the audience into Banks’ fascination with this unique language and need for meaning. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the layers this film has. But that would give too much away. 1) I, DANIEL BLAKE I got to see the preview of this film at the Edmonton International Film Festival, and I blew me away. A Palme D’or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, I, Daniel Blake is Ken Loach’s unflinching neorealist comedy of working class struggles. When we first meet Daniel Blake (Dave Johns), he’s applying for Employment and Support Allowance after suffering a heart attack. His application’s rejected due to a mix up and he’s deemed able to work, even though Daniel’s doctor says working at this state could be fatal. In his struggle, he meets Katie (Hayley Squires), a struggling single mother desperate for work. But with an uncaring system and little means of survival, both of them are forced to take desperate measures. Writer/director Ken Loach brings us yet another brutally honest masterpiece of neorealism. Since Kes, he has always portrayed the working class with a lot of empathy. This time, he looks at the working class frustrations in the times of recession. Throughout the film, he tries to appeal for his benefits, but is met with frustration from overly-complicated policies and indifferent social workers who care more about maintaining orders than helping people. When a welfare worker does show any compassion, he gets punished for it. These make any chance of an appeal seem unlikely. This leads to a very powerful scene where Daniel graffiti his demands in front of a welfare office. Katie has it the worst. She is one of many working class people who are losing their means of financial security. As single mother, the only work she can find doesn’t give her enough to feed her children and heat up her home. As a result, she’s forced to live in hostels and depend on a food bank. She gets her benefits rejected because she was unable to get to the welfare office on time. Hayley Squires deserves Oscar consideration for her devastating performance, conveying Katie’s attempt to hide her desperation around her children. Despite the brutal portrayal of these character’s struggles, the film is also very funny. When Daniel has never used a computer in his life, which proves a problem in a world where applications are online. There are a lot of jokes at the expense of his cluelessness on a computer, like thinking he needs to move the mouse on the computer screen. There are also jokes aimed at everyday frustrations. After some practice, Daniel finally completes an online application…only for the computer to freeze just as he’s about to hit the apply button. This film’s getting a limited release this year and hopefully it will get wider recognition. [1] He and other writers tried writing fake news for liberals, but they never seem to take the bait.