#sep experts

[aaravgupta966]

Affordable SEO Services: What to Expect and How to Get Started

In today’s digital landscape, SEO is crucial for businesses looking to enhance their online visibility and attract more customers. However, many businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are often deterred by the high costs associated with SEO. The good news is that affordable SEO services are available, and they can be just as effective as their more expensive counterparts.

What to Expect from SEO Provider

Comprehensive Website Audit

SEO services typically begin with a thorough website audit. This audit will identify areas of improvement, including technical SEO issues, on-page optimization opportunities, and content gaps. The goal is to create a strong foundation for your SEO strategy.

Keyword Research and Optimization

Effective keyword research is essential for any SEO campaign. SEO services will include identifying relevant, high-traffic keywords that your target audience is searching for. These keywords will be strategically integrated into your website content, meta descriptions, and tags to improve search engine rankings.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic. This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and ensuring keyword density is appropriate. Affordable SEO services will address these elements to improve your site’s visibility.

Quality Content Creation

Content is king in the SEO world. SEO services will often include content creation or optimization. This means producing high-quality, relevant content that engages your audience and encourages them to stay on your site longer. This can include blog posts, articles, and landing pages.

Link Building

Building a strong backlink profile is crucial for SEO success. SEO services will focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable sites. This helps to improve your site’s authority and search engine rankings.

Regular Reporting and Analysis

Transparency is key in any SEO campaign. SEO services should provide regular reports and analysis to track the progress of your campaign. This includes monitoring keyword rankings, traffic, and other key performance indicators.

How to Get Started with SEO Services

Set Clear Goals

Before you begin, it’s important to set clear, achievable goals for your SEO campaign. Whether it’s increasing organic traffic, improving keyword rankings, or boosting sales, having defined goals will help guide your strategy.

Research and Choose the Right SEO Provider

Not all affordable SEO services are created equal. Take the time to research and choose a reputable provider that has a proven track record of success. Look for reviews, case studies, and testimonials from other businesses.

Communicate Your Needs

Once you’ve chosen an SEO provider, communicate your needs and goals clearly. This will help them tailor their services to meet your specific requirements and ensure you’re both on the same page.

Monitor Progress and Adjust as Needed

SEO is an ongoing process, and it’s important to monitor progress regularly. Work with your SEO provider to adjust strategies as needed based on the performance data and changing market conditions.

By understanding what to expect from affordable SEO services and how to get started, you can effectively enhance your online presence without breaking the bank. Affordable SEO can provide the boost your business needs to compete in today’s digital world.

[tizeline]

More propaganda for the @tmntaucompetition !!

Cuz y'know, there's a theme to the competition, so I thought I should actually make art for that. For anyone who doesn't know, this year's theme is different 1900s decades for the main competition, but for the prelimenary rounds it was anything before the 1920s soooo I put the Drax Bros in outfits inspired by historical Japanese clothing, look at 'em go-

[forgetful-storyteller]

Trying so hard to beat What's Up? Pop! and I'm getting further every time but that doesn't mean I'm getting far

[zvaigzdelasas]

Everyone say "thank you china" and push your governments to remove tariffs on solar below 👇[20 Sep 24]

[decolonize-the-everything]

Imagine having 2 people being stranded in space for 8 months longer than planned because America's #1 weapons manufacturer Boeing couldn't be bothered to build a thruster without skipping corners

Imagine BEING those people and this is how the articles are being written:

Meanwhile, Boeing struggled through some development setbacks. The outcome of this first test flight is a huge disappointment for Boeing and NASA. But NASA leadership has expressed its support for Boeing, and many experts, including me, believe it remains in the agency's best interest to have more than one American crew launch system to support continued human space operations.

[...]Prior to joining NASA, Williams was a Naval aviator and Wilmore a combat veteran, so these two know how to face risk and accomplish their missions. This kind of unfavorable outcome is always a possibility in a test mission. I am sure they are leaning forward with a positive attitude and using their bonus time in space to advance science, technology and space exploration. Their families shoulder the bigger impact. They were prepared to welcome the crew home in less than two weeks and now must adjust to unexpectedly being apart for eight months.

?!!!!??!?!?????!!!!!!!!!

They are stranded in space

[darkmaga-retard]

Introducing the top 10 news stories they chose not to tell you this week.

The Vigilant Fox

Sep 15, 2024

#10 - Whistleblower reveals how Big Tech is ALREADY rigging the 2024 election.

Google has the power to “turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split with no one having the slightest idea that they have been manipulated” simply by altering the search suggestions that appear as people type.

This was revealed by Dr. Robert Epstein in episode #2201 of The Joe Rogan Experience.

Epstein was chillingly told by someone in 2019, after his 2019 congressional testimony exposing the power of Google and other tech giants to manipulate public opinion and election outcomes, “I predict you’re going to be k*lled in some sort of accident in the next few months.”

While Epstein himself was not harmed, six people close to him have died in the past few years, including the tragic death of his wife in a suspicious car accident in what he believes to be a targeted attack.

Epstein stated that Google and the Big Tech companies are tracking you in ways you “have no idea the extent of.” He explained that even when you turn your phone off, it can still monitor you, which explains why phone makers no longer allow you to easily remove the battery.

Epstein pointed out that Google is feeding users content that swings them to their preferred stance on certain issues. For example, on abortion, Google is steering users towards pro-choice content, even if they know the user leans conservative.

Adding to how perverse Google’s influence can go, Epstein raised the shocking revelation that Google is actively trying to get Elizabeth Warren out of office.

But why? She’s a Democrat? Well, the reason why Google wants Warren out of office is because “she is one of the only Dems who’s gone on record … calling for Google’s breakup. They want her gone,” Dr. Epstein explained.

“And no one knows this except you and me,” he said to Joe Rogan. Well, a lot more people know it now.

SEE MORE REVEALING STORIES BELOW:

#9 - Putin puts the West on notice: long-range arms for Ukraine will mean ‘NATO at War with Russia.’

#8 -Kaitlan Collins dies inside as JD Vance turns ambush into glorious moment.

#7 - Kash Patel delivers a chilling Kamala Harris election prediction.

#6 - CNN’s Jake Tapper unexpectedly drops a devastating critique on Kamala Harris.

#5 - Bill Maher's TDS backfires as Laura Loomer threatens lawsuits over slanderous comments.

#4 - Joe Biden sends obscure messages as he’s spotted with a Trump hat TWICE.

#3 - Leaked U.S. Army documents uncover disturbing details about the violent Venezuelan prison gangs spreading chaos in America.

#2 - The World Economic Forum FINALLY tells the truth about COVID.

#1 - Whistleblowers reveal the woman who botched Trump’s security in Pennsylvania FAILED key Secret Service training exams.

BONUS INTERVIEW: Political insider breaks down the first presidential debate and what it means for the election moving forward.

Watch our exclusive interview with Larry Sharpe.

BONUS #1 - Ohio Duck Rescue Expert Shocked by Number of Bird Disappearances in Springfield, Believes Rumors Are “True”

BONUS #2 - Kamala Harris Gives Trainwreck Answers to Simple Questions in First Solo Interview

BONUS #3 - Secret Service Tackles Trump on Golf Course After Gunfire Erupts

BONUS #4 - Dr. Peter McCullough Shares Good News About Ivermectin

BONUS #5 - How to Get Ivermectin, Z-Pak, and More

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Async mugwump linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

For 20+ years, I've processed all the information that came over my transom by blogging – mulling on why something I saw in the world caught my attention and trying to summarize it for strangers. This turns out to be a very powerful way to do a lot of different kinds of mental work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

With Pluralistic, the solo blog I founded 4 years ago, I've moved into longer, more synthetic essays that try to connect the things that caught my attention today with all those things I've written about for the past two decades. That's also proven very fruitful:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

But this move to longer works has a downside: sometimes I'll arrive at the week's end and have a list of things that caught my attention without there being any obvious way to connect them, and when that happens, I devote a Saturday edition to a linkdump. There's been 15 of these so far:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Welcome, then, to the 16th Pluralistic linkdump, and a warning, this one starts with an obituary.

Ross Anderson was one of the heroes of the cryptographic revolution, a brilliant scientist and communicator, a fantastic activist, and a scorching curmudgeon. Ross died this week. He was 67, and had chronic heart issues as well as long covid:

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2024/03/29/rip-ross-anderson/

There's so much that's been written about Ross and his legacy already, and there's doubtless more to come, but I've picked out two pieces to point you to. The first is from Danny O'Brien, who was also the guy who talked me down off the ledge the first time Ross flamed me on a public mailing list, leaving me bleeding and furious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868983

As Danny says, Ross was "the model of a politically and socially involved computer scientist," a man whose blazing intellect, fierce moral center and relentless curiosity inspired a generation of technologists to think about politics, and a generation of political activists to think about technology. Few of Ross's eulogizers (thus far) have mentioned how Ross's passion came out as fury, and – as someone who counted Ross as a friend and inspiration – I think this is a serious omission. It's hard to imagine Ross doing all that he did without understanding the anger that – along with his ethics – fueled his passion.

(Compare with @neil-gaiman's classic essay on the anger of Terry Pratchett:)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

The other obit that I want to point you to comes from Bill Buchanan, one of Ross's closest collaborators. Buchanan's memorial for Ross does a superb job of rounding up Ross's technical contributions to the field of security engineering:

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/ross-anderson-rip-59233c75fadf

Buchanan embeds videos for some of Ross's best speeches, links to his key papers (including the classic "Programming Satan's Computer," on "programming a computer which gives answers that are subtly and maliciously wrong at the most inconvenient moment possible), reminiscences of Great Moments In Ross Anderson, and terrific, lay-friendly breakdowns of some of Ross's key mathematical work.

As an unreasonable, angry person, I take great inspiration from people who channel their unreasonable anger to socially beneficial conduct – like whistleblowers. After Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge was totaled by the 95,000-ton cargo ship MV *Dali(, a vast cohort of instant experts in structural engineering, sea freight and shipbuilding has taken to the internet with a slurry of takes on the Meaning Of the Bridge.

Some of these are very stupid indeed, like the idea that somehow "DEI" caused the collision. But you don't have to be an expert in maritime issues or civil engineering to understand the importance of this report from The Lever about shipping giant Maersk's culture of retaliation against whistleblowers:

https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/

Maersk is the company that chartered the MV Dali; Maersk is also a key player in the cartel that controls the world's shipping. Maersk was just sanctioned by the Labor Department for retaliating against a whistleblower who complained of unsafe conditions on the ships that Maersk chartered:

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/Maersk-Sec%20Findings%20-FINAL%20071423_Redacted.pdf

Maersk's policy required employees to bring concerns to their supervisors before alerting the Coast Guard or others. This is not how that stuff is supposed to work. OSHA called this policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”

The whistleblower – chief mate on the Safmarine Mafadi – complained of "unrepaired leaks, unpermitted alcohol consumption onboard, inoperable lifeboats, faulty emergency fire suppression equipment, and other issues." We don't know (yet) what happened on the Dali, but it's obvious that a company that retaliates against whistleblowers, rather than heeding their warnings, is prioritizing covering its ass, not operating safely.

Which brings me (inevitably) to Boeing, and to poor John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who took his own life earlier this month. Barnett's suicide has stirred up similar low-yield online chatter focused on whether Boeing assassinated Barnett, a question that categorically cannot be answered through the method of arguing with internet strangers.

But there is a lot to say about Barnett: in particular, there's the substance of his whistleblowing, the specifics of his complaints about Boeing. For that, we can turn to the always-fantastic Maureen Tkacik, whose American Prospect piece "Suicide Mission" is definitive:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Tkacik does a great job of painting a picture of Swampy as a member of the tribe of unreasonable and angry people who refuse to sideline principle in order to get along. More importantly, Tkacik shows us what made Swampy so angry: a company that was hell-bent on lobotimizing itself by forcing out any technical expert who might point out inconvenient truths about the safety risks of high-profit strategies.

As Tkacik writes, Boeing once thought about "knowledge" in terms of expertise that could be brought to bear on the unimaginably complex task of making reliable, airworthy jets. But under the "value-engineering" financialized culture that arose after the McDonnell-Douglas merger, the company viewed knowledge as "intellectual property, trade secrets, and data." In other words, the point of knowledge was rent-extraction, not safety.

At the root of this transformation was the Jack Welch protege Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, the former 3M CEO who took the helm at Boeing. McNerney was openly contemptuous of the company's senior engineers, branding them "phenomenally talented assholes" and rewarding managers who found ways to force them out of the company. It was McNerney who decided to produce the 787 "Dreamliner" in non-union shops, far from Seattle and its phenomenally talented assholes. Instead of these engineers, McNerney turned to Boeing suppliers to do the major engineering work on the 787 – despite the fact that many of these suppliers "lacked engineering departments."

The 787 was, infamously, a $80b-over-budget boondoggle, haunted by technical failures. Swampy was part of the "cleanup crew" that tried to salvage the 787, and witnessed first-hand how the company purged all the engineers who managed to ship the 787 despite McNerney and his "value engineers" and retaliated against workers who tried to unionize the South Carolina facility.

In particular, it was safety inspector who came in for the most savage punishment. When the FAA decided to let Boeing mark its own homework – hiring in-house safety inspectors to replace government inspectors – they pretended to believe that these Boeing-payrolled inspectors would be able to operate independently of Boeing's leadership. The inspectors tried to operate this way (not least because they were criminally liable for oversights that occurred on their watch) and McNerney's Boeing came down on them like a ton of aviation-grade aluminum.

To further neuter these inspectors, Boeing management ordered the inspectors to outsource their work to the mechanics they were supposed to be supervising – that is, the FAA outsourced safety checks to Boeing inspectors, and the inspectors outsourced those checks to the mechanics themselves. Tkacik: "Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal under the Federal Aviation Administration charter."

Swampy kept careful records of every way in which this system produced unsafe aircraft and an unsafe workplace – including the day he discovered that someone had removed 400+ defective parts from the rejects box and installed them in aircraft in order to meet deadlines. Swampy's reports were key to establishing that the company's much-trumpeted "improvements" in safety reports were down to a culture of "bullying" – not any improvement in safety itself.

When Boeing went to war against Swampy, they barely bothered to pretend that they were playing by the rules. He was told one day that he was four-weeks into a 60-day "corrective action" that no one had told him about. The "corrective action" paperwork had a blank for Swampy's comments. He wrote, "Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability. It is obvious leadership is just looking for items to criticize me on so I stop identifying issues. I will conform!"

Shortly thereafter, he was forced out altogether. Managers who tried to bring him on their teams were told that no one was allowed to hire John Barnett. His name appeared on a secret internal memo entitled "Quality Managers to Fire." Meanwhile, the value of Boeing shares had tripled.

After Boeing's 737 Maxes started falling out of the sky, Swampy's painstaking documentation of the flaws in the 787's production took on a new urgency. A program of random inspections of 787s found major defects in all of them ("Boeing Looked for Flaws in Its Dreamliner and Couldn’t Stop Finding Them" –WSJ). An Aviation Week diagram of problem spots with the 787 marked red arrows over "every single section, from the tip of the nose to the horizontal stabilizers":

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/new-boeing-787-fix-details-reveal-extent-gap-check-challenge

Boeing's war on "brilliance" did its work: after everyone who understood how to make a safe aircraft was forced out of the company, financialized CEOs were able to cut corners on safety, triple the share-price, scoop up billions in government subsidies and bailouts, all without those pesky "phenomenally talented assholes" pointing out that they were going get (lots of) people killed.

Tkacik closes by saying that Swampy's former work colleagues refuse to believe he killed himself. A former executive told her "I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys…It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere." I confess that I don't know what to make of that, but I'll say this: if Boeing killed Swampy, that's just one of hundreds of murders they committed. Whether or not Swampy's death was their fault, the deaths of everyone who went down on the 737 Maxes that crashed is on their hands.

That's what "profits before people" means, after all: sacrificing human lives to make yourself richer. It's the foundational tenet of the conservative movement, though that impulse is often checked by other factors, like human decency. It's only when sociopaths get a sustained run at leadership that you see what they really want.

Which brings me to the UK, which has been governed by the Conservative Party for 14 years. The Tories are tipped to get destroyed in the next election, and a long article in the New Yorker by Sam Knight catalogs the many ways in which Tory rule has devastated the UK:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

The thing is, after 14 years, it's impossible for the Tories to blame anyone else for the state of the UK. With strong Parliamentary majorities, Conservatives were able to govern as they pleased – the only compromises they made were between their own internal factions. The ideological commitment to making the rich richer, privatizing everything, subordinating governance to market forces – that's all them.

It's all them: the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars, on them. The catastrophic traffic, housing, jobs market, and precarity, on them. Plummeting health, on them. The austerity, on them. The withering of the country's courts and prisons and police, its wilderness, its programs for young people and pensioners, its public health, its diplomatic corps, its road maintenance – on them.

A country where the police can't afford to prosecute burglaries – on them (4% of burglaries are prosecuted). The 2.5 year delay between a rape arrest and its trial? On them. Mass closures of schools that are literally crumbling? On them.

43% of the countries courts have closed. On them. Cuts to prison funding, coupled with longer sentences? On them.

And of course, Brexit – on them. Every part of it. The referendum. The referendum question. The failure to negotiate a deal with the EU. All on them. The collapse in British living standards, all on them. The fact that the 20% richest households in the UK have been untouched by all this? Also on them. But you might not notice it in London, where people earn an average of 400% more than people in Nottingham.

The only growth sector outside of London are the Citizens Advice Bureaux, whose client rosters are growing even as their funding is cut. Where the CAB once primarily catered to people who couldn't make ends meet due to disability, unemployment and other reliable predictors of economic distress, today, CAB advisors are seeing homeowners, people working two jobs. Desperation is "like a black hole, dragging more and more people in,"

More Conservative growth: Tories presided over a doubling in the rate of NHS antidepressant prescriptions, and a 20% rise in long-term health conditions. No wonder Tory Britain had the world's worst pandemic outcomes for a wealthy nation – that's on them, too.

Knight's article closes with a Tory MP who believes that "the key thing for the Conservatives now is to be more conservative…Toryism must have its day again."

We can't count on oligarchs to rescue us from oligarchy – not even when oligarchy's failures push society to the breaking point. There's always a rationalization explaining why we just had to lean harder into oligarchy.

You hear echoes of this in the pro-monopoly choir, whose squeals of outrage at the rise of a new anti-monopoly movement grow louder even as monopolism's failures grow clearer. One of the more tangible expressions of monopoly's failures is the Ticketmaster/Livenation octopus, which controls the entire live music industry – key venues, promotions, and ticketing. Ticketmaster fucks over music fans, but it also cheats famous musicians, the kinds of people with big microphones, so we know a lot about how bad it is:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/20/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop/

Of course, the fact that Swifties hate Ticketmaster lets the pro-monopolists dismiss critics as foolish young girls, not Very Serious People Who Understand Economics and thus can see that Ticketmaster's monopoly is Good, Actually.

Last week, Congressman Bill Pascrell dumped a ton of litigation documents related to Ticketmaster's sleaze, and Matt Stoller broke them down:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-unearthed

The docs reveal how Ticketmaster's system of (formerly) secret kickbacks let it choke out any competitor, so that it could charge fans more and pay artists less. The mechanics of the scam are beautifully laid out in Stoller's post – as is the many ways in which it violated both the law and Ticketmaster's numerous consent decrees arising from its previous lawbreaking.

This kind of scam breakdown is essential. It's easy to think that we, as mere normies, can't hope to understand the machinations of the corporations that prey on us. But once you pierce the veil of performative complexity, what's left behind is a set of crude tricks and transparent ruses.

Here's one of those transparent ruses: Discord's terms of service require Discord users to actively opt out of its "binding arbitration" system. Binding arbitration is when you sign a contract saying you can't sue the company no matter how much it harms you – instead, you promise to have your disputes heard by an "arbitrator" (a fake judge paid by the company that screwed you). Unsurprisingly, these fake judges are awfully tolerant of their employers' crimes.

Discord says that once you click through its garbage legalese novella, you have just a few days to opt out of this binding arbitration clause – if you happen to miss that fine print, you have "consented" to giving up your legal rights.

But every time Discord changes its ToS, the clock for opting out starts ticking again, and Discord has just changed (that is, worsened) its ToS again:

https://discord.com/terms

That means that if you send an email right now to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com with "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord" in the body, you can escape this consent theater:

https://mamot.fr/@trishalynn@mastodon.sandwich.net/112175832989845038

Consent theater is a particularly galling corporate ruse – the idea that we chose to allow them to abuse us. Consent theater gets more outrageous by the day. Take Soofa, who operate streetside digital kiosks that identify you by grabbing your phone's unique wifi and Bluetooth identifiers:

https://gizmodo.com/digital-kiosks-snatch-your-phones-data-when-you-walk-by-1851368948

Soofa sells this data to advertisers – claiming that by walking down a public street, you "consented" to being tracked and sold.

The only reason this flies is that the US hasn't passed a federal consumer privacy law since 1988's Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from telling people which VHS cassettes you took home. Congress keeps on failing to pass a privacy law, despite garbage companies like Soofa.

But that hasn't stopped the administrative agencies from acting to defend your privacy! The FTC just dropped its latest Privacy and Data Security Update, a greatest hits list of the actions the Commission took while Congress failed:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024.03.21-PrivacyandDataSecurityUpdate-508.pdf

One of the best things about the current administration is the number of extremely competent regulators who know exactly how much power they have and aren't afraid to use it to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The new FTC report, which details how the Commission's existing powers let it go after the commercial surveillance industry from smart doorbells to review fraud, from kids' programming to medical data, from lax security to data-breaches, is a bright spot in an otherwise grim week.

One more bright spot, then, before I wind up this linkdump. All week, I've been humming a half-remembered lyric, "come on baby/you're a link in this chain/put your hands together/and get free of the pain." For the life of me, I couldn't place it.

Last night, I searched for it (using Kagi, the post-Google search engine I've been paying for for the past month, and which I'm loving) and discovered that I had somehow completely forgotten a whole-ass band that I once loved: Toronto's Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, whom I saw live on many occasions.

The mystery lyric came from "Death is the Great Awakener," a fucking banger of a post-gospel track that I've been listening to on nonstop repeat as I wrote this. It's a hell of a tune and I'm intensely grateful to have it back in my life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6RUb63Tx3w

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/30/dewey-502/#rip-ross-anderson

Image: Waffleboy https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffleboy/28198395465/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[matan4il]

I've seen arguing over how many people were slaughtered on Oct 7 itself. IDK the exact answer, because from what I've gathered, no one does so far. The last time I saw an article addressing the forensic work on this (which was about a week ago), it said 1,248 people had been identified, but I know there have been victims of the massacre identified since, I know there's still the unidentified victims to take into account, and the missing people (those that we can't know yet whether they'd been murdered on that day, kidnapped, or murdered and their body was kidnapped). There have been some bodies that were brought in together with all the rest, but were then identified as Hamas terrorists (my guess is their bodies weren't among those the forensic experts struggled to identify, unlike the bodies of their victims, often mutilated and burnt beyond recognition). Based on the number identified already, and the number of bodies still unidentified, over two months after the massacre, I find it hard to believe that the final number of Oct 7 victims will be less than 1,300 people. But like I said, nobody knows, there's still no official number, not until either the work of identification will be done, or until it's confirmed that there are no more ways to identify the remaining victims of Hamas' slaughter.

Even before the final number, it is the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, it is the second deadliest terrorist attack ever (if we take the lowest possible number of fatalities. The worst one is Sep 11, when 2,996 Americans were murdered by al-Qaeda), and the deadliest one ever if we adjust the number of victims to the attacked country's population size (if we take the not final figure of 1,248 people massacred on Oct 7, once adjusted for population size, this would be roughly equivalent to over 42,500 Americans murdered, meaning that for the Israeli population, this is over 14 times the scale of the Sep 11 attacks). Think about the number of Israelis (and Jews) impacted by this attack, before we start talking about the over 5,000 people injured on Oct 7, or those kidnapped. Hamas' massacre is also the single bloodiest day in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict for one side. So anyone telling you that the Palestinians have been "suffering Oct 7 every single day for years," is either incredibly ignorant, or straight up lying. Anyone who knows the history of the conflict, or of terrorism, knows that there is no underestimating the unique brutality of Hamas' massacre.

Out of the people massacred on Oct 7, who were not Israeli citizens, there were at least: 39 victims from Thailand, 10 from Nepal, 4 from the Philippines, 3 from China, 2 from The United Kingdom, 2 from Sri Lanka, 1 from Canada, 1 from Cambodia, 1 from Germany, 1 from Moldova, 1 from The United States, 1 from Tanzania, and 1 from Eritrea. Altogether, at least 67 foreign nationals.

At least 26 people have been killed by direct rocket hits, of which at least 15 were killed on Oct 7. At least 20 were killed by Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) rockets from Gaza, and at least 6 by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon. Of the 26 known victims of rocket fire, 2 were citizens of Thailand, 14 were Israeli Jews, and 10 were Israeli Arabs. This doesn't reflect the full effect of the rockets on Oct 7, since the fate of many people was sealed when they started fleeing the barrage of around 4,000 rockets fired into Israel, only to run straight into ambushes set up by Hamas terrorists, like many of the Nova music festival victims, where over 360 people were murdered.

This is 5 years old Yazan Abu Jama'a, who was killed by a direct rocket hit on Oct 7:

I think the worst part about this post is writing "at least" so many times, knowing that every single one of these figures may be updated with a greater number.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[daily-pokemon-trivia]

List of active pokemon mystery gifts (SV)

Order is the expiration date from soonest to be gone to latest

No code, receive via internet - mythical pecha (no end date)

NE0R0T0MCOVER - special rotom phone cover (no known end date)

L1KEAFLUTE - Cetitan (31st Aug 2024)

SWEET0RSP1CY - either 1 sweet or 1 spicy herba mystica (30th Sep 2024)

L1K0W1TH906 - Liko's Sprigatito from the anime with a partner ribbon (30th Sep 2024)

TEAMSTAR - Revavroom (31st Oct, 2024)

WEARTERASTALCAP - terastial cap cosmetic item (30th Nov, 2024)

SEEY0U1NPALDEA - Gimmighoul (30th Nov, 2024)

Y0AS0B1B1R1B1R1 - Yoasobi's Pawmot (28th Feb, 2025)

SUPEREFFECT1VE - Expert belt (28th Feb, 2025)

G0TCHAP0KEM0N - 30 quick balls (28th Feb, 2025)

SPECIAL CODES (codes specific to real world events or things)

Till October 31st 2024 you can get a special birthday code if you show up to a real world Pokecenter on your birthday month with your Switch. You either get a Pawmi or Charcadet which know the event exclusive move celebrate (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan)

[dreamings-free]

by Peter Bevan | Evening Standard | Sep 4th 2024 (excerpt)

What are the best products for styling hair?

“It really depends on the type of hair and look you’re going for,” says Krystle Gohel, celebrity groomer who regularly works with Louis Tomlinson. “For straight hair, sea salt spray can be great for adding a low-maintenance gritty feel and for curly hair, curling mousse or an oil-based product is great to define curls.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by LTHQ (@lthqofficial)

So, those with curly hair tend to need creams which help with frizz and breakage while those with straight hair usually opt for volume-enhancing alternatives like sea salt spray or matte clay. There are also pomades and gels which deliver a slick finish or hair spray if you want extra hold. 

Haircare experts Horace, Patricks and OUAI all enrich their styling formulas with worthwhile ingredients, too, rather than the nasties you might find in some of the mass-market brands. Gohel’s favourite brands? “The brands I use most are Paul Mitchell, Bumble & bumble and Balmain. And I love my Dyson hairdryer which I use with the diffuser to create soft waves.”

-> full article here at standard.co.uk

Peter Bevan and Krystle Gohel instagram stories 6/9/24

[gear-project]

2024 Guilty Gear Calendar

[JANUARY] Jan 1st: Anji Mito (New Year’s Day) Jan 16th: Happy Chaos/ Tyr (National Nothing Day/Appreciate a Dragon Day) Jan 28th: Zato=ONE/Eddie (Daisy Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: Janis, the Cat and Mascot of the Jellyfish! [FEBRUARY] Feb 8th: Jam Kuradoberi (Bubble Bath Day) Feb 9th: Chipp Zanuff/ Mizuha (Static Electricity Day) Feb 14th: Valentine (Saint Valentine’s Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirates: Febby who does the Laundry, Accounting, and Book-keeping! Also Leap the Administrative Director and Cook! [MARCH] Mar 5th: Baiken (Multiple Personalities Day) Mar 14th: Bedman (World Sleep Day) Mar 18th: Nagoriyuki (National Supreme Sacrifice Day) Mar 28th: Raven (Something on a Stick Day) Mar 31st: (World Backup Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: March, head of Communications (despite the fact she doesn’t talk much). [APRIL] Apr 7th: Robo-Ky (National Robotics Week) Apr 20th: Millia Rage (Easter) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: April, Helms-woman and ace pilot of the Airship! [MAY] May 5th: May (The day Johnny found her) May 9th: Testament (Lost Sock Memorial Day) May 11th: Alternate Timeline Day (Twilight Zone Day) May 12th: Fanny (International Nurses’ Day) May 14th: Sol Badguy (Guilty Gear Foundation Day) May 31st: Sin Kiske (International “No Tobacco” Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: May, the Powerful Princess and 2nd in Command of the Jellyfish! [JUNE] Jun 3rd: Ramlethal Valentine (Repeat Day Repeat Day) Jun 8th: Ariels/Chronus (‘Big Brother’ is Watching Day) Jun 15th: Zappa (Power of a Smile Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: June, the Desk Manager and Aristocrat of the Jellyfish! [JULY] Jul 1st: Leo Whitefang (Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day) Jul 26th: ALL OR NOTHING! Day Jul 28th: System Administrator Appreciation Day This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: July, sword expert and combat professional! [AUGUST] Aug 3rd: Izuna (National Watermelon Day) Aug 14th: Daisuke Ishiwatari/Chimaki (Summer Romance Day) Aug 21st: Dr. Faust (National Senior Citizen’s Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: Augus, strong melee and grappling expert extraordinaire! [SEPTEMBER] Sep 2nd: Justice (National Blueberry Popsicle Day) Sep 8th: Answer (International Literacy Day/Bury the Hatchet Day) Sep 9th: Kliff Undersn (Chrysanthemum Day) Sep 12th: National Video Games Day Sep 25th: Toshimichi Mori (BlazBlue Creator Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: Sephy, the Ship’s Kind Doctor! [OCTOBER] Oct 9th: Goldlewis Dickinson (International Beer and Pizza Day) Oct 16th: Leopaldon/Gig/Judgment (National Boss Day) Oct 18th: Potemkin (Health and Sports Day) Oct 24th: Johnny/Venom (National Billiards Day) Oct 25th: National Comic Book Day Oct 26th: Bridget (Coming Home Day) Oct 31st: Slayer (Halloween) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirates: Octy, Crow’s Nest Navigator specialist! And of course don’t forget about Johnny, the Captain! [NOVEMBER] Nov 6th: Giovanna (National Redhead Day/National Nachos Day) Nov 9th: CHAOS NEVER DIES! Day Nov 10th: Asuka R. Kreutz (Forget-Me-Not Day) Nov 11th: Dr. Paradigm (National Education Day) Nov 20th: Ky Kiske (Feast of Christ the King Day/Absurdity Day) Nov 25th: I-No (Elimination of Violence against Women Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: Novel, the Ship’s Engineer and Weapons designer! [DECEMBER] Dec 5th: Kum Haehyun (Prohibition Repeal Day) Dec 13th: Jack-O'Valentine/Aria Hale (National Cocoa Day) Dec 17th: A.B.A. (Paracelsus’ Birthday) Dec 25th: Axl Low/Dizzy/Elphelt Valentine (Christmas Day) This Month’s Jellyfish Pirate: Dizzy, the Ship’s Administrative Coordinator (on indefinite leave). PLEASE NOTE: –As always NEW Characters may be announced as the Year goes on, Dates may be altered/adjusted as information is revealed! –Characters that have no Birthdays may get one, and Characters with Birthdays may have theirs corrected as needed! –Other Holidays are just personal fun/preference/Optional! –Also Note that this List may not go in to effect until after it is posted! Meaning some holidays will go in to 2025!

[there-are-4-lights]

Happy Pride from Paul Roberts who is still CEO of the LGBT Consortium!

Here's the full transcript from tribunaltweets, the relevant day is Sep 12th. Includes such hits as "i don't think there are many couples like that" (when asked about butch and femme women together), this bit above about how dating sites banning women from seeking to date women only isn't denying them a service based on their orientation (proving that the people wanting the EqA characteristics clarified have a point, but his org is, predictably, doubling down in the other direction), and, of course, he's not an expert :)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 22, 2023

The Senate has confirmed three top defense leaders. Last night it confirmed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he retires at the end of the month. Today, it confirmed General Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and General Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant.

The Senate filled the positions at the top of our military by working around the hold extremist senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put on more than 300 military promotions, allegedly because he objects to the government’s policy of providing leave and travel allowance for service members who have to travel to obtain abortions. 

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post focused on the House Republicans today, though, when she wrote: “The GOP completely gone off its rocker—incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You'd think the reporting would reflect it.”

Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Today, right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote over a Pentagon funding bill, keeping what is normally an easily passed bipartisan bill from even reaching the floor for debate. McCarthy acknowledged to reporters that he is frustrated. “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

The extremists do indeed appear unconcerned about the effects of their refusal to fund the government, and since they have the five or six votes they need to sink the measures McCarthy wants to pass with only Republican votes, this handful of representatives are the ones deciding whether the government will shut down. 

McCarthy could pass clean funding bills through the House whenever he wishes, but he refuses. To do so would mean working with Democrats, and that would spark a vote to throw him out of the speakership. And so, rather than keep the members in Washington, D.C., to work on the appropriations bills over the weekend, McCarthy recognized he did not have the votes he needs and sent them home.

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” 

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

Extremist leader Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) responded to Trump’s statement with his own: “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution” to fund the government,” he wrote. “Hold the line.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted: “House Republicans refuse to fund the government to protect Donald Trump.” 

Trump’s accusation that President Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department against him and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the opposite of what has really happened. Not only has Biden stayed scrupulously out of the Justice Department’s business—leaving in place the Trump-appointed leader of the investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, for example—but also we received more proof yesterday that it was Trump, not Biden, who weaponized the Justice Department against his enemies. 

Nora Dennehy, who abruptly resigned from former special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, explained in her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state supreme court yesterday that she quit because Trump’s Department of Justice was tainted by politics. Before joining the probe, she said, “I had been taught and spent my entire career at [the] Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner.” 

But Trump and his loyalists expected Durham’s investigation to prove that there was a “deep state” conspiracy against him, and then–attorney general William Barr seemed to be working to support that fantasy, even though there was no evidence of it (as shown by the fact the investigation ultimately fizzled). Barr was, she thought, violating DOJ guidelines in his public comments about the investigation and in his consideration of releasing an interim report before the 2020 election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it,” Dannehy said. “So I resigned.”

The resistance of the extremists to McCarthy’s leadership is spilling over into foreign affairs as well. Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., where he met with President Biden at the White House and with leaders at the Pentagon, and spoke to a closed-door session for the Senate. But he did not speak to the House of Representatives. While McCarthy met with him privately, the speaker maintained that “we just didn’t have time” for him to address the House. 

As part of their demands, House extremists want to cut funding for Ukraine’s defense. This would, of course, work to strengthen Russian president Vladimir Putin’s hand in his war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told MSNBC that it is “absolutely essential” to Putin that Trump win back the White House in 2024. “I think it is Putin's main lifeline in order to find some way to salvage what has been a debacle in Ukraine for him," Brennan said. "If Trump is able to return to the White House...Putin could have a like-minded individual that he can work with, detrimental to U.S. interests certainly and detrimental to Western interests overall.” The intelligence community assesses that Putin worked to help Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and is pushing pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine propaganda now.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assured Zelensky that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and work with allies and partners to make sure it has the weapons it needs. Lara Seligman of Politico reported today that the Pentagon will continue to fund Ukraine operations even if there is a government shutdown. Military activities deemed crucial to national security can be exempted from being shuttered during a government shutdown.

And finally, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances. 

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.”  Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote. 

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[zvaigzdelasas]

A senior Ukrainian official has said that the impact of Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh is being exaggerated as a Russian effort to distract the world’s attention from the war in his country. In an interview with the Moldovan public broadcaster, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that the blockade was being “pumped up” in order to “distract attention from the war in Ukraine and redirect it to other conflict spots so the whole world looks there.” In the interview, the Moldovan presenter framed the blockade in Karabakh as a Russian plot. “Some experts” say that Russia is preparing a “Crimea scenario” for Karabakh, she said to Podolyak, suggesting that the territory’s new de facto leader, Russian-Armenian billionaire Ruben Vardanyan, was sent from Moscow for the purpose. While Armenian sources claim that 120,000 ethnic Armenians are living in Nagorno-Karabakh, “in fact it’s three times smaller,” the presenter claimed, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the same tactic of distorting population sizes as part of the process of seizing control of Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.[...]

Podolyak’s reading of the conflict was echoed in a number of other officials’ statements at around the same time. Lyudmila Marchenko, a member of parliament in Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party who has long supported Azerbaijan, gave several interviews in which she made many of the same points. “As an ally of Russia, Armenia is using similar methods to maintain control over Nagorno-Karabakh that Russia does for control over Crimea,” she said in one interview. “Raising the estimates for the quantity of people living in these territories, Vardanyan speaks about 120,000 residents, but by objective assessments there are 40,000 people there.” Another MP from a different party, Igor Popov, wrote an article at the same time also taking issue with the population estimates, and denying altogether that there was a blockade. “Azerbaijani activists are not preventing the transit of civilian and humanitarian transportation,” Popov wrote. “But the leadership of unrecognized Karabakh is using the situation to show shortages of food and the threat of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ and blaming Azerbaijan and the activists for it.”[...]

Ukraine has long taken a pro-Azerbaijan position vis-a-vis the conflict with Armenia. The conflicts share some common patterns, as Armenia and Russia have forcibly taken Azerbaijani and Ukrainian territory, respectively, with the purported aim of unifying their ethnic kin on that territory.

25 Jan 23

21 Feb 23

9 Sep 23

11 Aug 22

I've been told that Ukraine's analogous to Armenia here, while Azerbaijan is analogous to Russia. strange that Ukraine doesn't seem to think so.

[winstein-nin]

Mario's Confusing Birthday

The reason for this subject is that I firmly believe that Mario debut in July 1981, contrary to the common assumption that he started in Super Mario Bros. (notice how the anniversary milestones specify the game's name, and not the character?). So there we have it: every character insisting that they know much about Mario, but they never actually do. Even the creator of Mario mentioned how much of Mario's character is a mystery.

The birth dates are a reference to significant dates in Mario's history. If you can guess where they are from, you're officially a Mario expert. But for the non-experts, here are the dates:

Toad - Sep 13: Super Mario Bros. release date

Peach - June 23: Super Mario 64 release date

Koopa Troopa - March 14/June 21: Mario Bros. release date

Pauline - July 9: Donkey Kong arcade release date

Yoshi - August 5: Yoshi's Island release date

Daisy - March 10: Mario Day

Toadette - October 11: From Nintendo Power

Birdo - August 12: Super Mario Wiki's debut date (This was done for The 'Shroom, so it's appropriate to use this wiki's date)

Colouring for the strip uses mono-colour for each character. It's experimental on my part, but it's also admittedly quite rushed. You see, this is a comic and doing many images can take up time, especially when the script received changes throughout the process. A simple colouring saves time by not picking up too much from the palette, which is ideal for something that's longer than previous works where the comics didn't even last more than 4 panels. Also, it's hard to notice, but white is absent from the page, where light shades of specific colours are used to convey that.

Thank you for reading.

[darkmaga-retard]

Next Democratic president and vice president may implement sweeping plan for "fighting misinformation" and "hate speech"

Michael Shellenberger

Sep 02, 2024

Brazil’s banning and blocking of the social media platform X is far more extreme than anything being proposed in the United States, social media regulation experts are telling the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. One implication is that we need not be concerned that Brazil-style censorship will ever happen in the US.

In fact, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz both repeatedly endorsed the three main censorship tactics used by the Brazilian government: censorship of election “misinformation,” de-platforming political opponents, and cross-platform bans so that a person is banned, not just from one social media platform, but many or even all of them.