#the art industry really need to only hire people who actually care about the material

[holdtightposts]

So long, Geralt of Rivia.

Welcome, Gerry by the River.

[jade-parcels]

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The bunnies’ other jobs!

From my bunny cafe au

((I am so peeved :((( I had this all written out!! And I deleted it by accident!! Darnnnnn!!!))

Anon asked “You mentioned that some of the bunnies have day jobs so do they all have jobs outside the cafe or just a few?” (Something along these lines…again…I deleted it by accident 😔)

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Diluc/‘Angel’

After his father got bored with the wine industry, he passed the whole company off to Diluc on his 18th birthday in order to shift his focus to mining. Diluc found himself swamped with all kinds of business decisions while just barely being an adult. He expanded the company and hired some very trustworthy people to handle things for him so he could finish college

When the business was given to him, Diluc and Kaeya had an explosive fight over it. Kaeya felt like he deserved to have some say in what happens to the business, he’s still a part of the family! But Diluc refused to let him in on any decisions so Kaeya packed his bags and left (not before cussing him out in front of their father, staff and business partners). He was just in a silly, goofy mood. They’re fine now, not on the best terms but they do chat and meet up for lunch on occasion.

He is filthy rich, he couldn’t spend all of his all of his money if he tried, so he doesn’t really need the job at the cafe! Kaeya got him the job because he knew his brother was stuck in a weird, antisocial funk and needed some fun in his life

Diluc loves this job, he has a great time, but it isn’t his main job. His priority will always be the family business!! If he has to quit his job at the cafe, he would in a heartbeat

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Kaeya

Kaeya was going to go into the police academy but was scouted out by a modeling agency. They had seen him at Ragnvindr company events and thought ‘well damn’ so they gave him a pretty generous deal

Kaeya makes a good living off of modeling, the tips and paycheck from the cafe. He rakes in cash pretty quickly just cause he knows how to get it. That, and his dad sends him checks every other month as well. Kaeya thinks of it as ‘I’m sorry’ money. He isn’t wrong

He doesn’t travel much for modeling, which he doesn’t mind, so he kinda just hangs around the city with a lot of free time on his hands between photo shoots. That’s why he got this job at the cafe! It gives him something to do and it’s fun as hell ;)

Albedo

Bedo is one busy bunny. He finished college early and is getting his masters degree online. He works most days at the cafe and on the weekends, he tutors other college students in bio/chem/science related subjects

(He was actually Xiao’s tutor back when he was failing chemistry!! Xiao is very thankful for Albedo’s help!!)

His dream is to become a biochemist, he’s always been interested in cells and what makes up living beings. So having a career in that field would make him the happiest man alive

His mother and sister live outside the city in a more rural area so he spends a lot of time FaceTiming the two of them! Klee is always so excited to hear about Albedo’s experiments or the people he’s met while working in such a bustling, fun city :)

Zhongli

Zhongli is a simple man! He’s a bunny waiter and an artist

He creates intricate pieces based on folklore from different cultures, focusing mostly on dragons. His favorite medium is paint, he loves painting on glass and layering the panes in order to create a 3D piece

He sells his works to galleries, shops and anyone who wants them! As long as they appreciate the story behind the artwork. Sadly…He undersells his work. He could def be making more money but he just does not desire money or material goods the way others may

So he got his job at the cafe in order to help out his dear friend Ningguang, not for money, he only planned on working there for a month or two until she got more bunnies but…he ended up really loving the people he works with :’) he looks forward to working with them now and texts/calls them outside of work to meet up for lunch or bowling (such an old man thing to do omfg)

Dainsleif/‘Sweetie’

Dain was a bouncer at another bar before leaving to come to Celestia’s! He’s good friends with Beidou, they belong to the same motorcycle club so when she was talking to him about the lack of security at the cafe/bar, he stepped in to help out

Little did he know…he’d actually become a bunny…And like it

This is his full time job now, he doesn’t have another for the time being. While he is a bunny at the cafe, he still keeps an eye out for any threats to his coworkers and has access to the offices upstairs (Ningguang’s office and the security office)

When he isn’t waiting tables, he’s upstairs in a tank top and sweatpants keeping an eye on the security cameras and talking to the other security guards through their ear pieces

Ajax

Ajax is a student who doesn’t really have much time on his hands

He mows lawns in the summer and he’s quit his job as a cashier to come work at the cafe! He mostly works night shifts his cause he’s still going to school aaaaaand he’s on his college’s swim team! He’s about to graduate so he works close with his coach to help train the others on the team

He doesn’t really want his family knowing that he skips around in a skimpy bunny outfit and fucking customers most nights but I mean…They’re bound to find out if they see him in pictures people post

Xiao/‘Tofu’

Xiao is an art student!! He wants to be a tattoo artist :)

He’s already got one sleeve of tattoos, it’s unfinished but you can’t really tell just by looking. When he isn’t at the cafe, he’s either in class or shadowing Ganyu, his best friend and tattoo artist. Their art styles greatly differ, she focuses her craft on cutesy, colored tattoos, but she is skilled. And Xiao looks up to her

Xiao admires Zhongli too, they met at the cafe and when Zhongli found out Xiao wants to be a tattoo artist he told him that once he’s licensed, he wants to get a tattoo from him :’)

Baizhu/‘Honey’

Baizhu is a (mostly) full time pharmacist, hence why he isn’t usually at the cafe

He also has a niece, Qiqi, who he babysits often. He loves her very much so he has no problem watching her! Baizhu will even bring her to the pharmacy with him when he’s swamped with work. In the break room, he has a play kitchen, coloring books and a bunch of puzzles to keep Qiqi occupied while he works :)

When he’s not at work, he’s at home resting. He has chronic pain flare ups in his back and shoulders that can make life miserable :( he has plenty of good days that outweigh the bad! And as a pharmacist, he has access to any medicine he needs to make his life easier!

Dottore(Alain)/‘Doc’

Alain’s an oral surgeon who’s a little bit….too into his job

He isn’t phased by blood or gore so he’s easily able to conduct procedures that would make other squeamish. He’ll pull teeth, put in dental implants, remove rotten tissue, any of that without even flinching

Outside of that, he works at the cafe. He wears a mask in order to avoid being recognized even though at his job as a surgeon, he’s usually wearing a medical mask anyways. It’s just a precaution

This has nothing to do with his career but he used to be a tap dancer and actor so he’d join in on local theatre shows! He helped build sets when he wasn’t rehearsing. He doesn’t have time for that anymore (which kinda makes him sadddd) but he has all kinds of theatre playlists on his phone and in his car that he’ll sing along to

Scaramouche/‘Boss’

Scara’s job at the cafe is his main job! His side job is something you may not expect from such a grump

He works at an animal shelter! In fact, he brings cats home to train so they have an increased chance of being adopted. Someone is more likely to adopt a potty trained, socialized cat than a feral cat who doesn’t know what a litter box is. So Scara brings them to his apartment for some one-on-one socializing, training and cuddling

One time he offhandedly mentioned working at an animal shelter while he was working at the cafe and sure enough, three separate customers from the cafe came by to adopt!!! Only one actually took an animal home but he was still surprised that those people had listened to him and cared enough to come by

Scara is a jerk most of the time but when he’s at home…by himself…With a lil kitten sleeping in his lap while he plays games on his PC…Yeah, he softens up a bit

So as you can see, we have a very diverse group working at the cafe! They’ve all learned a lot from each other, come to appreciate each other’s friendship and come to help each other out when one of their coworkers is in need or upset.

[x0401x]

Have you watched Tsurune, by an chance? If yes, what do you think about it?

Finally managed to write down a reply for this! (Told y’all I was gonna do it and I did not give up, lmao.)

So this ask caught me off-guard for two reasons: one is that I never see it coming when people send me Tsurune asks now that the anime is long over and the fandom is inactive, and the other is that nobody has ever asked me this question so straightforwardly. Whenever I got asks about Tsurune, people would question me about the differences between anime and novel, the anime versions versus the canon versions of the characters, fanservice and ship tease, alterations in character relationships and my opinions on specific episodes, chapters or scenes. As far as I remember, no one has ever asked me what I think of the anime (or the novel) in general.

I won’t go into the novel since this ask is just about the anime (I can do that in another one if you like), but I’ll end up mentioning it every now and then because it’s pretty impossible to discuss about an adaptation without talking about its source material. Still, I promise this review won’t be centered on that.

This is actually a very condensed version of my thoughts, because the real thing would be a bible. It’s still a lot, though. Here comes a long-ass ride.

I guess I should start by making clear that I usually follow the history of KyoAni’s productions very closely as I’m a big fan of the studio. This includes reading the novels and mangas they adapt into anime as well. I had read volume 1 by the time the Tsurune anime came out, so I already knew what the canon was like. I must add that I was also familiar with Japanese archery to some degree and I was reading Zen in the Art of Archery when the anime was airing (it’s referenced early in the novel, so I decided to give it a try).

With all of this being said, when it was announced that Tsurune would get an anime, my first reaction was to worry. This surprised even me, because I usually have high hopes for any KyoAni adaptation, even the ones I end up not liking. I mean, it’s a studio filled with brilliant stars and holds the golden standards of the whole industry, so even when the content isn’t good, the quality of the animation itself is enough to make their shows worth anyone’s time. But the choice of director had me very concerned.

Now, this is Kyoto Animation that we’re talking about. In no moment did I fear for the animation’s quality. Most of Tsurune’s staff members, if not all, already had previous experience working on Violet Evergarden. And we all know that even newcomers freshly graduated from KyoAni’s preparatory school can make a stunning visual masterpiece. Yes, I am talking about Kyoukai no Kanata. And yes, I said visual masterpiece, because we also know that what these productions normally lack is the most essential part: the content.

In those cases, the one who actually makes a difference is the director. I’m a firm believer that the more inexperienced the staff is, the more competent a director they should be placed under. If not a senior animator, at least let it be a rising talent with the best prospects possible. But the schedules usually don’t help with that, so these hatchlings ended up under Yamamura Takuya’s wings.

To elaborate a bit further on why I think brighter animators should be the ones leading new packs (no, it’s not discrimination against the less accomplished, because you gotta start from somewhere), it’s because they usually have this knack for bringing the most out of the stories they’re working on. When the story is great by itself, that’s a different thing, but when it doesn’t quite reach its full potential with just the text, then the one to give it life has to be a person with more vision.

Am I saying that Tsurune is one of those stories? Absolutely. Tsurune is about archery, which is an art that is best appreciated when observed. You can’t get everything out of it just with words, and there are many things in it that people who don’t know much or know nothing about Japanese archery wouldn’t understand without actually seeing them, so the series obviously needed an anime in order to reach its full potential. But other than that, I’ll be honest: I love the Tsurune novel for its cultural baggage, the handling of its characters and its fairly innovative views in the repetitive and boring scene that sports animanga are nowadays, but I don’t consider it a well-written novel. Because it isn’t.

This might seem controvesial coming from someone who defends the canon with claws and teeth, but I’m aware of its flaws. I think Ayano Kotoko has a lot of room for improvement, and she’s evolved remarkably from volume 1 to volume 2. But volume 1 is what the anime was based off, so there was a deep need for a clinical eye in that production. One that could measure the original work’s strengths and weaknesses and balance them out by powering one up and overcoming the other. And also a certain level of knowledge about Japanese archery. Sadly, Yamamura Takuya didn’t have any of it.

As much as I admire Yamamura as a key animator and in-betweener, I believe he has a long way to go before he can be considered a good director, and I certainly don’t think he was ready for his debut when he was put in charge of Tsurune. I would rather, and I mean this in a good way, have seen him work as anything else for the rest of his career. Being a series director was too much for him. I say this taking into consideration not only the fiasco that the Tsurune anime was in sales but also Yamamura’s history in the studio before becoming a director.

This might sound funny, but Yamamura had no idea how big Animation Do and KyoAni were before he decided to join. He also was never very skilled. His in-betweening was actually not approved at first when he was trying to enter the company. He even once admitted that his knowledge of animation was extremely limited at the time, and what a time that was, because the studio was busy up to the neck with the making of Lucky Star back then. He didn’t know left and right, basically, and he recalled in an interview from last year that he is still surprised the studio actually hired him.

Despite all of this, Yamamura joined the company with the intention of becoming a director. While he did manage the feat in the end, it took him +10 years and a few frustrated attempts. Animators usually start out at in-betweening and earn other positions through passing exams. Yamamura failed his first exam to be key animator, only managing to pass half a year later. He also failed his first exam to become a director. At his second attempt, one of their colleagues even suggested that maybe he should stay a bit longer as a key animator, and I couldn’t agree more. While he did pass the test, I can only bring myself to think that he did so with an average score.

Now, I did say that this info came from a 2019 interview, when the Tsurune anime was already over. But they weren’t really what shaped my opinion on Yamamura regarding his direction. It was the anime itself. But this interview served to confirm something I had already noticed from his tragectory to series direction: with him being in the studio for so long and having worked on so many titles, it was weird to me that he was rarely an episode director in comparison to key animation and in-betweening. Episode direction is a step that I consider crucial for one to become either series director, animation supervisor or series composer. I do know that quite a few directors take just as long as he did or even longer to debut and actually do thrive in the end, but observing Yamamura’s work always gave me the impression that he was better off following decisions made by someone else rather than making his own.

Yamamura also loses points with me in that he’s backed up within the company by Kawanami Eisaku, another director who doesn’t get rave reviews on his works. He’s the one who replaced Utsumi Hiroko after she migrated to Mappa, and ever since he took over the Free! franchise, its sales decreased to less than 1/3 of each of the first two seasons separately. I personally don’t like that he seems to look down on Utsumi despite his lack of success in inheriting her legacy, but leaving this aside and focusing only on his skills, I’m not fond of directors who opt for simplistic approaches in general. I think animation is a medium that should be used to amplify the appeal of the source material, not water it down. It also feels like these kinds of directors are always trying to play safe, which (they don’t seem to realize) goes against the audience’s expectations and kills the hype. It strikes me as cowardly, to be frank. I also don’t like when they ignore what the characters had been building up and simply retool them to their own tastes. I was praying that Yamamura would be different from this bad example, but turns out he was actually worse.

I got a really bad feeling when the anime PVs of Tsurune were released. My very first impression was that Yamamura was still too much of a beginner and he wouldn’t be able to make Tsurune into a successful anime. I know this might seem like an exaggeration, but here’s the thing: ever since KyoAni started making its own titles, I’d never seen lack of hype for their upcoming works. Ever.

Until Tsurune.

Every time a PV of a KyoAni show comes out, people go crazy. It’s not always a frenzy like it was with Free! in its heyday or Violet Evergarden when the novel commercials were the only pieces of animation we had of it, but there’s usually lots of debate and speculations going on. With Tsurune, almost no one cared. You’d see next to nobody talking about it save from a few people on Reddit. And honestly, why should they bother? It didn’t seem promising at all. Didn’t show much of the characters or the story’s premise, didn’t highlight any particularly interest aspect of the plot and didn’t leave any impression animation-wise. It was very bland, to say the least. Unfortunately, so was the anime series.

It might be blunt of me, but my overall evaluation of Tsurune is that it was a really boring show. Nearly all elements that made the story and characters interesting were either taken out or squeezed into a cookie cutter mold, cliche version of what they looked like they were going to be at first but turned out not to be in the novel. And I say this because one of the things that make Tsurune a good novel is how it turns stereotypes upside-down. It introduces the readers into what seems like is going to be a typical sports shounen and starts out describing the character archetypes in the most common ways possible and puts them in the most common situations possible, then it reverses them all. That’s what’s most charismatic about the books. It’s what incites actual character development and gives us different sides of each relationship, yet the anime makes no use of it.

The anime also hardly makes any use of all the mystic, Zen and lowkey folklore-ish veils of the novel, which are supposed to add up to the archery elements. The Zen part is actually essential since Japanese archery is fundamentally a Zen form of art. Yes, art. Japanese archery is, in fact, not a sport. This is one of the aspects that elevate Tsurune above other works of the sports genre: it’s only categorized as such because it can’t fit anywhere else, but it’s not really a sports novel. That could have elevated the anime to the same status too, if only the studio hadn’t treated it like a sports one. But they made that mistake.

Still, I think the biggest sin in this adaptation was to try to cling to tropes that are considered successful and ignoring the characters’ personalities, which didn’t match these tropes at all, resulting in both characters and bonds being utterly destroyed and the flow of the story slowing down to a slug pace. By the second half of the anime, literally either nothing interesting happens or the things that were supposed to be interesting don’t hold the audience’s attention enough, which the animators attempt to cover up with queerbait. Everything is so tediously predictable that I’ve seen countless comments from the Japanese side of the fandom about how similar the Tsurune anime was to Free! and how “KyoAni only ever makes male characters like that, don’t they”. They were referring to Seiya and his weird jealousy, by the way. Even first-timers could tell that the characterization was a disaster.

The sad thing is, they were right. The Tsurune anime really did feel highkey like a Free! copycat in the characterization department. The main character is always getting swung about by everyone around him. The best friend is very clearly co-dependent. The deuteragonist is revealed to be bitter because of a deceased relative and is an asshole to the rest of the main cast for a good portion of the series. The rival from the other school is rude as hell for no reason and he’s got annoying groupies on his team who don’t exist outside of idolizing him. There are only four female characters and they have almost no screen time. And the list goes on.

As for the animation itself, I would like to say that it was perfect, but what really rang the alarm in my head was the many beginner mistakes so evident here and there, such as missing frames, the opening theme starting out of nowhere, the colors of the background often being too bland, lack of movement or scenes where the characters are too static, etc. I shit you not that when I saw the title splashing onto the screen all of a sudden in the initial ten seconds of episode one, the first thing I thought was, “This won’t sell well”. Sure enough, it didn’t.

So there you have it. I didn’t like the show. The only things I enjoyed were the archery scenes and the soundtrack. The rest simply didn’t do justice to the original work. I hope this summary has explained why, but if you want more info on it, maybe visit my Tsurune tag. You’ll find me elaborating more on particular topics in response to similar asks. Or you can send me other questions if you feel like.

That’s it!

[exobyharu]

PCY - Ch5

Chapter 5 - All about you

(Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)...(Part 6)

Summary: PCY does not expect to see you again. Ever. Except in less than twelve hours, he’s about to, once again. This time, he admits that he deserves a punch in the face.

⏰ 9:09 AM 🌏 Hotel (S), City of (L) 🌞 It’s sunny but everyone’s too out of it to actually care 👥 YN, Park Chanyeol, Kim Junmyeon, Byun Baekhyun, EXO’s manager (mentioned)

Notes: After a decade, I am finally back! My biggest apologies for taking forever. I tried to make this one a bit longer than usual. Expect more regular updates! I’m sorry that PCY swears a bit here too.

Words: ~2,300

💙💙💙

Twenty-one missed calls and twelve text messages on his personal phone, all from Junmyeon: they were ominous tells that Chanyeol ought to postpone his scheduled return to the studio. Just when he finally saw the wisdom in what at first seemed like punishment by isolation, his plans of returning with news of a productive break were dashed the moment he woke up to his work phone vibrating to another message, this time, from EXO’s manager.

“Who is the girl?”

The question needed no further elucidation.

Just leave her alone, Chanyeol thought, and then he groaned, pressing his face against his pillow because he was never going to see you again, anyway. What’s all the fuss about?

It was nine in the morning, and four hours of sleep seemed inadequate, considering that he had spent at least an hour packing that evening, and the rest of the night, taking advantage of the unexpected surge of inspiration that had finally come after weeks of uninspired efforts.

He was certain that this song finally had all the missing elements that the writers at SM always complained about. He, himself, was amazed by how smoothly he had managed to put something together at three in the morning, too. Still, this was the song they had always wanted from him and he was five hundred percent sure about it.

It turned out that he just needed to quit being frustratedly self-absorbed and instead, see everything in the eyes of someone else. When he did, the landscape shifted and ideas flowed in. You were the one who made this possible for him. You made him realise that it was probably more sensible to derive inspiration from what was out there, rather than generating egocentric works that other people hardly related to.

A tremendously simple concept. How had he not even considered this?

There was something about how you were able to read into his skilfully-concealed ego problems and this made him even more self-aware. It was one thing to hear it from his friends, and for that, he had been careful ever since. He was confident with the control he had on his narcissistic tendencies. But hearing it from you, who had just met him, made you an unforgettably helpful clairvoyant.

“I think that’s how you can reach out to more audiences,” you told him last night, gingerly munching on a biscotti and possibly, launching an underhanded attack on his ego. “Stop writing about yourself. Write about what’s out there.”

“Like what?” he asked you, burning with so much eagerness that you probably felt the intensity of his stare. Stop writing about yourself. That was a headshot.

“Hmm… Well, let’s see…” you trailed off, swiping through his phone, and scanning the lengthy compilation of his serially rejected compositions. You may as well be a speed reader, seeing how you had managed to reach the end of it so quickly. That was another detail that he forgot to ask you about last night. He will never know then.

“I’m sure this will sound great when I listen to it later, but like I said, it seems that this whole thing is about having a good time,” you explained, stealing a quick glance at the way he kept his fidgety fingers tightly interlocked on the table. Chanyeol caught that and made sure to keep the signs of his bubbling anxiety in check.

Just listen, he had to remind himself. What are you being so nervous about?

“Look, I’m no writer, but if you really want to write a love song, the feelings that I want to get need to be more dynamic than what all of this gives me.”

Operational word: dynamic. Again, the point was that he lacked experience and hearing about it was getting old. He leaned in closer for emphasis – also to make sure that he did not raise his voice in frustration. “You want me to write about things I don’t know?”

You shrugged, showing him the same easygoing attitude as if the idea was naturally forthcoming at the very least. “You can always write about wanting to know instead. You know, how you would rather, or think it would be? After all, people tend to yearn for things they don’t have. It’s one that we all have in common, in my opinion. It’s a universal feeling that’s relatable.”

Longing, huh?

Was it a simple insight? It seemed more like your current state of mind that slipped through. He needed you to voice out more fragments from your internal monologue to confirm his suspicion, but you did not give him that. You scrunched up your nose instead. “Not everyone dreams of a fancy car and a supermodel for a girlfriend, Chanyeol.”

Your comment made him uncross his legs. “Yah! Quit judging my life already, will you?“ At the same time, his knee hit the underside of the table. You were both startled as everything on it shook. Tall people problems. He could not seem to switch off his klutzy side when it mattered most. It made you giggle to see some of his coffee splash onto the screen of his phone. “And I’m not attracted to female supermodels!”

Growing unfazed by his usually exaggerated responses, you raised a speculative brow. “Let me guess… But female supermodels are attracted to you?”

Chanyeol flashed a lopsided grin on purpose. “I do have a mostly-female fanbase, so I can’t say for sure that–”

“Again! My main point, sir,” you interrupted, with a playful roll of your eyes. “If you wanna add to your influence, write about other things.” He almost thought that you were really going to poke his nose with your finger. He guessed that it was just your snarky side showing itself. “Be proactive and do some research by listening to other people too. I’m sure you’ll find more feelings to write about.”

Hence, that night marked the beginning of a more dynamic Park Chanyeol, who would create art and music that may deviate from the typical industrial material he felt that he had pretty much exhausted already. Creation was his passion and he had you to thank for making him realise how he had boxed himself up too much because he was afraid to express his own vulnerability, which, ought to be the point in the first place.

This was why EXO’s main rapper wrote a fucking ballad. And it was a ballad that he could not even sing. But he wrote it and it did not matter to him who sang it. He would rather have someone else do it justice. All that mattered to him was that the song made it through. He wanted to reach out to people, and strangely, it mattered to him that you heard it too. He wanted you to hear your words played on the radio someday, knowing well that you were part of the creative process. You, that girl whose shitty day he tried to turn around, and whose underlying melancholic disposition he wished to uplift but cannot.

Will you ever find what you were looking for? Will your family ever understand you? Were you really unemployed? Or was it something you chose to say so he would stop asking questions already?

He will never find out because he will never see you again. That said, SM just spent wasteful money on hiring somebody to tail him while he was away. What was all the fretting about? Junmyeon was probably going supernova over nothing of substance and their manager had to be getting drunk on his trust issues again. Both of his phones were ringing simultaneously now, and he was about three rings away from answering one and tossing the other across the room.

Junmyeon or Baekhyun? Choose your own adventure, he thought, rolling to his side and sighing as he wearily brought both of his phones close to his face. Probably for the first and only time ever, he chose Baekhyun.

“PARK CHANYEOL!”

Eyes wide and mouth in a frenzied snarl – there had to be no other look on Junmyeon who was now yelling at the other end of the line. Chanyeol was not even surprised to know that it was him using Baekhyun’s phone. It was Junmyeon or Junmyeon. There was no choice in the first place. He half expected the possibility, and just like that, his day was shot. He rose from his bed and pulled out the curtains to see the rest of the city going about its business.

A kajillion other people with stories to write about, he remembered you say. Your voice resonated from somewhere in his head, effectively drowning out the endless buzzing of the phone he held at least a foot away from his ear. When Junmyeon had calmed down, Chanyeol finally started listening in.

“… and since you would not answer their calls, everyone’s expecting me to offer an explanation. They won’t stop pestering me and I would be in a much better mood if I did not have more urgent things to do. Listen, I don’t care wha–”

“I was asleep, okay?” he interrupted, dragging his voice and feeling the weight of exasperation on his tongue. “You can send all those calls to me now. Thank you for taking shit for me.”

“Yah! Don’t hang up!”

“Then how am I supposed to talk to them?!” Chanyeol barked. It was his first instinct, knowing well that the last time he got yelled at like this was when he was falsely accused of spreading their unreleased material online. Surely, how he chose to spend last night was not as much of a mortal sin as a breach of their contract. Because just now, Junmyeon sounded like it was much worse than that.

“Forget it. We’ve dealt with the reporters.”

Reporters? The rapper’s pulse ran cold as he instantly froze where he stood.

“We just need to get you out of there with your security detail. The staff is arranging–”

“Yah! Hold up!” Chanyeol heard the nervous rasp in his voice as panic slowly claimed the frustration that initially controlled him. “What do you mean? Why are there reporters involved?”

“Of course there are reporters involved!” Junmyeon howled. “When you go out on a date looking as you are, Mister Park Chanyeol, with a girl who received ten dozens of roses from you, OF COURSE people will take pictures and talk!”

Chanyeol’s fist flew out, punching the air in front of him. “The he- …How do you guys even know this?!”

“You mean how does social media know about this? It’s all over the internet, Chanyeol. Check your phone! Check GTN27! Wake the fuck up!”

“I am awake! And I am checking my phone now!” he went, nervously fumbling for the other phone that had finally stopped ringing. His fingers trembled, not even able to key in his password properly. It sent his mind reeling, not sure about how much he wanted to find out. Did they discover who you were? Were fans stalking you already? And the media? Were you even safe? The mere fact that they knew he sent you flowers meant that they knew your room number.

“Look, I’m sure it’s not what you think. YN would not–”

“We know,” Junmyeon’s tone was abruptly much kinder and Chanyeol knew that this was because there was finally someone else with him, wherever he was. There were people, in fact. He must have stepped out of a room or something. The rapper was relieved that all the yelling was finally over, at least for now. “Listen, YN YLN? We know she’s not responsible, okay?”

“You–” he choked out, eyes wide and tilting back as the realisation finally hit him. “She’s with you?!”

The immediate response that he got was the voice of Baekhyun, distinct in the background. He was asking for his phone. A second later, Chanyeol heard a whine that was cut off by the sound of a door slamming shut. There was complete silence once again.

“Yeah. We found her before those undercover reporters at the hotel lobby did. You can thank the staff later,” Junmyeon said, his stern voice echoing through what seemed like their empty dance studio.

“Is she okay?!” Chanyeol exclaimed, his eyebrow twitching as he attempted to hold back his emotions – whatever it was that he was feeling. Anger? Worry? Extreme impatience? “Let me talk to her!”

“She’s with the staff.” Junmyeon was dismissive and it was clear that the guy was not going to let him talk to you. “People on the internet dubbed her Biscotti Girl and she hated it. That’s why she gave us her real name. She would not say anything more after that.”

Biscotti Girl? More than the ridiculous nickname, Chanyeol found himself closing his eyes and smiling in relief because it seemed that your identity was not revealed. It was all that he could ask for at the moment. The rest, he could deal with much later. This was all his fault any way.

“Don’t worry about her. I made sure she’s comfortable. Right now, we’re working on getting you here as soon as possible.”

Right. It was difficult to see sometimes, but Junmyeon was on his side. He had always been.  “Now, I’ll quit it with all this leader bullshit. As your brother, is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Other than dumb excuses? Chanyeol did not think so.

“I’ll explain everything to you when I get there, hyung,”

His voice was even, but his mind was racing decathlons for possible explanations that provided you the easiest way out of this predicament. If the entire company had his back no matter what mess he got himself into, he wanted to make sure that you at least had him. It had come to this, after all. He can only imagine how much trouble he’d caused you. So much for writing a song to make you feel better. The song was not even enough to save him this time.

Chanyeol pressed his forehead against the window and groaned.

You. Fucking. Genius.

💙💙💙 - to be continued - 

[c-is-for-circinate]

Ok, if I’m going to keep proper DM records for D&D on this tumblr, I need to actually write them.

Being An Account of Game #1: In Which Several Youth Attend A Party, And Some Experimental Magic Has Less Than Optimal Results

[all game logs thus far]

The Setting:  It is a Thursday night in the city of Karna Vi, called by many the last surviving bastion of the Trava Empire in Highnorth.  In the mostly student-inhabited districts around the University Karnassa, scholars are working, resting, eating, hanging out--and having parties.

More excitingly, there’s a classics major party tonight.  And it’s not just any classics majors.  It’s the self-styled Young Pre-Glorians.  In a society mostly built on a relatively even mix of human, gnome, and dwarf citizens, where humans are the unnecessarily tall people who don’t live nearly long enough to ever get really good at rulership or scholarship (though gods know you won’t find a more versatile, intense group of people in any species you can name), this little cluster of classics majors includes two humans, two tieflings, and a half-orc, all living in one slightly shabby student apartment.  Every single one of them is going to be dead before they’re a hundred.  Every single one of them is obsessed with figuring out how things worked at least 2000-4000 years ago.  And they party like it.

Our NPC hosts for the evening include Peary (a bubblegum-pink tiefling who makes historically accurate bathtub gin, and reconstructs ancient crafting methods from diary fragments and scraps, and den-mothers all the rest of her roommates with constantly chipper affection); Athenasi (or Athen, a human cleric of the Church of Lost Things made entirely out of sticks and paleness, who buries himself in ancient records trying to reconstruct the specific rituals used to properly worship long-mislaid gods); Riva (an enormous half-orc sportsball player and also wizard who mostly only bothers using spells to light his bonfires and translate dead languages, intent on uncovering the distant origins of magic as written ritual); Lisha (a human who got briefly campus-notorious last year when she reconstructed an ancient power-binding ritual well enough to actually summon an archdemon who hasn’t been seen in three millennia and somewhat incidentally get herself warlock powers); and Wren (a dark-skinned, gray-haired tiefling who knows very nearly everything there is to know about the politics and power struggles spanning half a continent and seven centuries, 5,000 years ago, and does not particularly care to know anything else).

These five like hands-on experimentation and practical research.  They’ve thrown historically-accurate parties in celebration of a dozen ancient forgotten holidays, with Peary’s bathtub gin to really make it work.  There’s rumors about an invitational-only orgy last year.  In short, their parties are the place to be if you’re the kind of nerd who likes to study hard and party harder.  Which...does not quite describe our PCs, but it’s a fun party to be at anyway.

Marion the human paladin has spent enough afternoons pouring through ancient records with fellow church acolyte Athen that they can’t really turn down the invite, even if Athen’s insistence on “you need to talk to other live people more than once a week!” is ridiculous and hyperbolic anyway.  Kevin the elf barbarian has been a cornerstone of the University sportsball team for ten years straight, and would never turn down a party invite from a teammate, let alone a party that looks as promising as this one.  Kou the halfling bard, who spends so much time with the music-majors half the university forgets she isn’t one, got invited along with her bard friends to be the entertainment.  

Gnome rogue Reigenleif, of course, is the beer supply.  Reigenleif is always the beer supply.

It’s a Thursday night, and a four-bedroom apartment with attached rooftop deck is crowded full of graduate students eating cheese, drinking a dozen different kinds of alcohol, and arguing about history.  Life is, for the moment, good.

The Hooks:

One by one, each of our PCs--vaguely familiar to one another, in a nodding-acquaintance sort of way, though nothing like the friends they’ll be by the end of the week, let alone the eventual end of this campaign--finds themselves tugged into conversation with an acquaintance.

First (in-game time, though we played these way out of order thanks to a handy d4), before the party even begins, Reigenleif heads down into Old Town to pick up some beer.  It’s one neighborhood over from the district of ancient, pre-Imperial ruins and thousand-year-old buildings where the University and its denizens live, so most students don’t know to come this far for good, cheap beer in the first place.  (Of course, even if they did they wouldn’t know to go where Reigenleif’s going.)

Her destination is a small bakery owned by two dwarven brothers and a sister.  Out the front, they sell excellent bread, with a very nice additional line in cakes and cupcakes.  Out the back, the middle dwarven brother Milosh acts as middle management for a smuggling ring that’s known in the right, quiet corners for its ability to get just about anything for anyone, given the right place.  Reigenleif runs errands on his say-so on weekends, in between avoiding her own research and helping out with everybody else’s.  Buying a few kegs of decent ale that hasn’t been marked up for tax, and then reselling it to thirsty college students, has basically been paying her rent for the past two years.

“How’s the family?” Milosh asks, and, “how’s that school thing going?”

“Eh,” says Reigenleif, and, “school’s school,” and, “parents still want me to go straight,” which isn’t even a pun because every player at the table is so generally disinterested in heteronormativity that it’s too easy to even bother with.

“You know,” Milosh says, “you really want to do more of this and less of that, could be Anna’s got a job for you.”

Anna’s not a real person--she’s been the code name for the leader of the smuggling ring for over a century, and given that her so-called last name literally means ‘human’, probably if there ever was a real Anna Cheloveko, she’s long dead now.  An Anna job might be hard, but it’ll pay, and then some.

The job, Milosh explains, isn’t too complicated.  There’s a certain package that needs to get to the city of Ormiras, and then past Ormiras a week or so’s travel up into the local mountains.  The contents of the package don’t matter, but with the strictures on the large industrial teleportation circles downtown, it’s unlikely to pass through without comment.  A University student, on the other hand, looking to do some research in the library of another University, could use one of their teleportation circles without anybody raising an eyebrow at their research materials, now, couldn’t they?  Grab a few friends to head with you up into the mountains, and when you come back down, there’d definitely be a job waiting--back here in Karna Vi, or with some of Anna’s friends in Ormiras.

(Reigenleif and her player go on a digression about bags of holding, immovable rods, and other magical items attempting to pass through teleportation circles, and then the potential of measuring continental drift with immovable rods over a long enough period of time.  Milosh raises his eyebrows and wonders if maybe Reigenleif should stick with those University-types after all.  This is about to prove extremely indicative of Reigenleif’s entire character.)

With that offer in mind, Reigenleif heads off, six kegs of ale for thirsty college students in hand.  This would be tricky for the average human, let alone a three-foot gnome, but Milosh lets her borrow the Bag of Holding for the job.  It’s no real risk.  He knows where Reigenleif lives.  He knows where her parents live.  She’s good for it.

Second, an hour or two into the swing of the party, Kevin and Riva are out on the roof deck supervising a cluster of increasingly tipsy party guests as they climb onto each others’ shoulders and attempt to joust with a couple of sportsball sticks.  The pair of them are taller than any two gnomes stacked together.  They are taller than nearly any gnome on top of any dwarf here.  They are taller than most double-stacked dwarves.  They make good referees.

They’re cleaning up some good-natured bruises and spilled beer when Kevin’s friend Poppy finds him.  She’s a half-elf, and barely as tall as his bicep.  She has dark curly hair, and smudged-up makeup, and she is already drunk.

“Kevin,” she says.  “Kevin, Kevin, look.  Can I ask you a favor?  Can I beg you a favor?  Please?”

Poppy is in Kevin’s cohort in the art history department--they started with the same incoming class, ten years ago.  You don’t really graduate out of university, in the Nine Cities.  You study until you get hired into a professorship or government position, or you run out of money, take a lesser job, and quit.  Poppy’s dad is an elf, with plenty of resources to throw in her general direction.  She hasn’t run out of money yet.  Ten years is a lot longer for a half-elf like Poppy than it is for Kevin.

Poppy says, “if I don’t do something big, I will never get hired, ever.  I will never amount to anything.”  She says, “I know there are Glorian-era ruins on the Iris Peninsula that haven’t been found.  I know there’s something there.”  She says, “I know there are elven aesthetic motifs in Glorian-era Irissan fragments.  Seven hundred years before elves ever made it to this continent.  If I go, I can prove it.  It will matter.  It will mean something.”

“You grew up on Iris,” she says.  “And you’re good at hitting things.  Right?”

It’s been 512 years since the Elven Ascendancy broke their isolation and sailed forth into the world for the first time in six millennia.  Five centuries since the very first elves set foot on the continent of Nokomoris.  The Glorian Empire conquered half the Iris Peninsula, and was driven out, and collapsed, a thousand years ago.  Not a single soul under Glorian rule had ever even heard of elves.  And sure, elves live on the Iris Peninsula now--in the cities, like proper elves, in shining tall buildings with a lovely background view of the tangled wilderness where they never, ever go.  Elvish art in Glorian-era ruins?  It would upend everything anybody knew about history.  It would be huge.

“It would probably make my parents really happy if I tried to do a big art history thing instead of focusing on sportsball so much,” Kevin muses.  “Sure, I know people.  We can probably put an expedition together.  I bet my parents would be happy with that.”

(Kevin and his player do sound enthusiastic about the idea of getting some good research and publishable papers, which tells this DM a lot I didn’t already know about his priorities.  Sure, he likes sportsball, but getting an actual job in art history would make his parents happy.  Kevin says ‘that would probably make my parents happy’ like it’s the only long-term life goal he’s ever bothered assuming he probably needs.)

Third, Kou and her band take a set break.

Lio’s been switching between singing and rocking out on the zither, because even in a cluster of bards, Lio makes a good frontwoman.  She’s a tall dwarf, dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyeliner, dark everything.  She’s a star in the music department, a cornerstone of student activities committees, a manic pixie overachiever, a goth anarchist who knows exactly what’s wrong with the world today, the artificial urban-wilderness divide that’s been imposed on society in the new century, the problems of traditional religion and modern capitalism.  She’s a level 3 bard.  She’s got a townie boyfriend in one of the local guilds who doesn’t mind when she makes out with boys, girls, and everything else on offer at parties.  She is, without question, the coolest person Kou knows.

Lio is drinking water and also taking a couple of shots of Peary’s bathtub liquor, and Kou is hanging out and watching the party, and Lio sighs.

“You want to get out of here?” she asks.  “Not tonight, I mean--the whole University conspiracy.  Just go.”

“Yes,” Kou says, instantly on board without a single detail.  Her girlfriend has been gone for three weeks.  Her body is ready.  Her entire everything is ready.  “When?  Where’re we going?”

“We could totally make it as bandits out by Zakri,” Lio says.  “You know they’ve been doing all kinds of weird construction stuff along the main road between the two seas, trying to restart the canal project, and the main road’s been in shambles for months.  I have a total plan.  We could camp out along one of the smaller roads and take out caravans, be bandits, live like queens.  It’d be great.”

“Yes,” Kou says again.  “Absolutely.  I’m in.  I know some healing stuff, and I have a pocketknife.  Let’s do it.”

(Kou asks precisely zero questions about where, or how, or why, or even who, for the entire conversation.  I knew this would be the case by halfway through session 0, and I am delighted to be proven right.  Kou is ready for absolutely everything and absolutely nothing.  It’s going to be great.)

“Hmm, but we’d probably need more people,” Lio muses, in that way people do when they remember all the practical reasons they’re mostly joking about quitting their job and running away to live in the woods.  “Unless you know how to use a sword.”

“I know some people!” Kou says.  “Let me see who I can talk to.  We can totally do this.”

Fourth, Athen takes a break from circling around the party with an eye out for any serious injuries or alcohol poisoning risk to find Marion in the kitchen, eating cheese and arguing about historical probability and textual interpretation with Wren.  They’re having just about as much fun as an antisocial math nerd with a special interest in history can have at a party full of academics who also have a special interest in history--which is kind of a lot, come to think of it.

The party is loud and boisterous, so they head to Athen’s tiny closet of a bedroom to chat.  There’s something he needs to talk about, and Marion’s a good enough friend to listen.

“So you’ve been talking about doing some fieldwork,” Athen says.  “Have you thought about going west?”

Athen’s family lives west of Karna Vi, in the wide highland plains of the Highnorth, where there’s nothing for miles but cattle, a few sheep, a lot of rye and oats, and the occasional potato field.  In his grandfather’s day, they were part of the Trava Empire, and that was fine.  Theoretically their village doesn’t belong to anyone but themselves, now, and they farm as best they can, and sell what surplus they can at the closest big trade-town to someone who carts it into Karna Vi and sells it to city bakers and and housewives and leatherworkers, and it’s fine too, mostly, except for when it’s not.

Lately it’s not, so much.  The Uvencatra Empire in the western mountains has been making some motions towards marching eastward across the plains, and they’re eyeing the region Athen’s family is from next.  He’s concerned.  He’s really concerned.  He’s maybe about to drop out of school concerned.

“You know how to fight things,” Athen says.  “And maybe you’d find things over there, in the Western Orthodox church records.  I can go home and help heal people, but I don’t know how to protect them.”

“Oh, I am not the right member of my family for this,” Marion frets, and Athen frowns.

“Would any of the rest of them care?” he asks.

“Point,” Marion agrees.

(They’ve got a quiet monotone the whole time, slow to assemble sentences except when they start contemplating the actual possibilities of research within the Uvencatra Orthodox churches, spilling out hypotheses and jargon like water.  Marion’s player has degrees in anthropology.  Marion cares about Athen’s problems, but has no real thoughts about them.  Marion has thoughts about historical research.)

“Let me think about it,” Marion says, and the party goes on.

The Fight

By dawn, most of the party has cleared out, though not quite all of it.  A couple of failed Con saves mean that Kou is dozing in a chair in the living room, not quite with it enough to notice the rest of the band leaving, and Marion is passed out cold in Athen’s bed alone.  Reigenleif has spent most of the party hanging off to the side, watching people and occasionally scooping up anything that appears to maybe be a weapon that’s been carelessly left sitting around, tucking it into the Bag of Holding just to make sure this party doesn’t go sideways in a nasty way; she can’t leave until the kegs are given back over into her keeping, so she might as well help clean up.

Kevin, out on the deck, has not actually realized the party has ended yet.  He’s only just beginning to notice the lack of people as the first rays of sunlight creep over the city, and a very loud bang sounds from the top of the roof.

It jolts Kou dozily awake and Marion tumbles onto the floor in an instant.  Kevin and Reigenleif, already outside along with Riva, look up just in time to see the outlines of Wren and Lisha on the roof in the pale morning sun, alongside some billowing smoke and two cat-sized things skittering along the roof tiles in acid green.

Then Wren falls off the roof to the deck and takes so much damage in a ten-foot fall that her scrawny little NPC self ends up unconscious.  Then combat begins.

There’s a flutter and a flurry as the quasits on the roof hiss at everyone and skitter away.  Initiative is nobody’s friend, and fighting something ten feet above everyone’s head isn’t easy, but Reigenleif upends her entire bag of holding and sends a pile of belt knives, a couple of blunt-ended reproduction historical weapons, and a fancy letter opener skittering out over the desk, and hides behind a convenient barrel.  Riva grabs a sportsball stick.  Kou has enough movement to rush out onto the deck just in time to see Lisha fall; “Oh, fuck!” is now the official incantation for her Healing Word, and Wren is safe, although not very happy.

Kevin tries to intimidate the quasits, all six-foot-seven of burly elf growling directly at them, and it actually works on one.  The intimidated quasit instantly turns into a bat and swoops off through an open window into the living room to Get Away.  The other quasit, annoyed at the attempt, casts Fear on Kevin in retaliation.  It is super effective.

Marion makes it out to the living room, wearing no armor but carrying the heaviest candlestick she could grab, just in time to see an acid-green bat swoop through the window and start destroying things.  It’s very early and she is probably slightly hungover but also she’s a good researcher and knows what a quasit looks like, so she whacks it.  It bites her, poison and all--make that definitely pretty hungover.

Athen made it outside around the same time as Kou, and has been trying to heal people who need it as Riva tries to whack at a tiny demon on his roof, Kevin attempts to cower behind a gnome, and Reigenleif and Kou both throw things.  Kevin succeeds in a wisdom save after another round or two, and manages to do some good thwacking damage.  The quasit turns into a foot-long centipede in an attempt to escape, and skitters along the wall through the door into the house, before Kou Cutting Words’s it to death.

Lisha tries to jump off the roof to get down and help, and sprains her ankle.  Athen is already inside giving Marion a hand, and none of the PCs seem inclined to help.

Between Marion and Athen, the second quasit goes down relatively quickly.  The first one has already disappeared into nothingness, and the second one follows soon behind.  Marion lay-on-hands’es themself, and drinks some water, because they have utterly forgotten that quasits have venom at all and damn, this hangover.  The nauseous feeling passes after a minute or so, anyway.  Athen goes outside to heal Lisha, Peary appears from her own room wanting to know what the hell is going on out here, Kou is jumping between ‘I insulted it and it died and I’m real cool!’ and, ‘did my entire band just ditch me here because I fell asleep?’, and everything is equally as chaotic as it was in the middle of the fight, when the knock sounds on the door.

The Head of Campus Housing brought security with him, and he’s not happy.

The Aftermath

Marion pulls rank and some excellent persuasion checks to keep the entire set of Young Pre-Glorians from getting evicted right now, and everybody else in the room from being put on housing probation.  Marion lives with their parents on the other side of the city, or, more accurately, in the library--housing probation doesn’t mean much to them, but it does matter to everyone else.

Lisha, apparently, was attempting to use the limnal nature of sunrise, sitting over a party that both was and was not a party any longer, with people below who were drunk, and dreaming, and no longer drunk, on a day of particular celestial configuration, to do some magic experimentation, because obviously.  Wren wanted a familiar.  Lisha could totally use a ritualistic setup to cast a spell she isn’t high enough level for and doesn’t actually know, and also alter it to bind to somebody that isn’t even her, and make it work.  Maybe not today, but probably next time, right?

The PC’s are somewhat annoyed with Lisha, but also agree that the university just does not have enough ritual magic experimentation labs, and that really needs to be corrected.  They also figure that, housing probation or no, it’s maybe not a bad time to get out of town for a bit.  They’re good at fighting things together!  They’ve got some options!

They toss some ideas around--Kou’s option involves banditry, and Marion’s pretty sure they’re not allowed to do that, but Reigenleif’s has, like, three weeks in the mountains, and that sounds pretty awful too.  Athen and Poppy both need help, and they’re both friends--Kou doesn’t care where they go, and Reigenleif is up for whatever sounds interesting.  Poppy’s research trip sounds like a good way to make the university like them, which after this display might be particularly useful.

In the end, the decision comes down to Marion, who’s happy to help people but is mostly only considering either of these treks as a road to more god-research, to help define the variables to determine the maximum number of gods the Church of Lost Things still has to discover.  There’s a western orthodox church in the Uvencatra Empire, out past where Athen’s family lives, and they could have all sorts of records and knowledge that Marion doesn’t...but nobody knows what the hell is going on in the Iris Peninsula.  The entire place is apparently a forest, and that means people don’t travel it much for some reason?  It’s all sort of unclear and difficult to understand from this side of the continent.  So what the heck, Poppy’s thing it is.

Poppy is somewhat taken aback to be woken up slightly hungover at 10 AM by Kevin and also a random human knocking on her dorm room door to tell her that yes, they and two other people she’s never met are in for her expedition, and also can they leave tomorrow please?  But also sure.  Why not.  These things happen when you ask Kevin for help.  She’ll talk to her advisor to push those expedition grant funds through, and they’ll leave on Monday.  Maybe let’s have lunch or dinner this afternoon?  After Kevin and Marion sleep?

Reigenleif, meanwhile, takes Kou along to return the bag of holding and empty kegs to Milosh, in the hopes that having a highly charismatic good-persuasion bard along might just increase their chances of persuading Milosh to let them keep the Bag of Holding for this journey.  Little does she know that, while Kou is fun and delightful and good at persuasion, she’s also an awkward flailer who doesn’t entirely understand what they’re supposed to be convincing Milosh of in the first place, and has no proficiency in deception whatsoever.

The conversation stumbles and bobbles a bit, before Reigenleaf gets to the meat of the situation: they’re not going to Ormiras, but does Anna maybe need something delivered or picked up from another of the Nine Cities?  Perhaps something on Iris?  Like, say...

“Cloud Bay,” Reigenleif says, naming the only city on the Iris Peninsula she can remember at 7 AM on zero sleep, which is unfortunately not the same one Poppy mentioned to Kevin earlier.

“Cloud Bay?” Milosh says.  “Shitty weather and elves?  What’re you going there for?”

In an attempt to leverage her higher Deception score over Persuasion, Reigenleif starts to spin a relatively believable lie about engineering research and her own degree work.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t roll particularly well.  More fortunately, or perhaps more unfortunately still, Milosh doesn’t actually care ‘why Cloud Bay’, aside from as a rhetorical question, so it’s not particularly useful in any case.

“Look,” Milosh says.  “Let me talk to Anna about Cloud Bay.  Check back in tomorrow or Sunday, maybe we have a job for you there, maybe not.  A’right?”

They snag a couple of muffins on the way out.  Kou feels a little useless, but so be it.  Marion crashes in Kevin’s room, since he just needs a corner to meditate in anyway, and everyone naps until the meet-with-Poppy time in the evening.

The Campaign Plan

Poppy is just a little taken aback at the new crew she seems to’ve acquired, but she’s ready to go and they’re game, so, sure.  Let’s do this.

She elaborates a little on what she told Kevin, in some angles, and says less in others.  The Glorian Empire, as some of the party know better than others, stretched out from here in Karna Vi across most of the Attiks Sea and around the continent.  They sped the civilization in the Midlands, they spread the Eight Churches throughout the continent, they founded cities, they built roads.  They founded Port Charé on the coast of the heavily-forested Iris Peninsula and began to build in, cutting trees and building roads and forts and towns as they went.  Kera the Conqueror, famed emperor, oversaw the expansion across easily half of Iris, naming literally everything after himself as he went.

Iris was hard to conquer, and the Empire began to pull out not long after Kera died.  They left ruins and roads, and the people of Port Charé, who’d lived in this city for two centuries at this point and were not about to move back to the other side of the sea, even if this was going to be the only bastion of civilization for a thousand miles.  There was a working road to Ormiras.  They’d manage.

As for those ruins, deep into Iris--who knows what’s there?

Sober and in front of three strangers, Poppy doesn’t say anything about pre-Elven Incursion elven aesthetics.  It doesn’t really matter, because Kevin told everybody everything, but some things are just too historically improbable to admit you believe.

“So,” says Poppy.  “Are you in?  I can get grant funds and our travel paperwork Monday morning.  We circle into Port Charé and follow the roads as far as they go.  I have an old map, Imperial-era.  We can find things nobody’s seen in hundreds of years.”

The party doesn’t need to ask each other.  They’re in.  They all know they’re in.

Six months on an archaeological expedition in a forest for four city kids, three of whom have never seen anything more than a single ten-acre orchard in their lives?

Oh yeah.  Total piece of cake.

[unlovedaddict]

Seven Common Myths About SEO 2019

Lots of people are usually still unaware of the essential uses of SEO, but along with time and more expansion these people will learn. Businesses with multiple websites and SEO-agencies can set up report layouts. Its search engine marketing group provides expertise in Pay-per-click marketing services, organic SEO and sociable media optimisation. The particular ads that you often notice on various web pages proven and those that also show up on the rightmost side associated with search engine results are inorganic SEO examples. While I nevertheless see this trend in have fun with with many enterprises still within the midst of their electronic transformation, the convergence in the particular MarTech space is creating numerous synergies and opportunities and this particular should be seen as the welcome development for brands plus agencies who are looking with regard to an edge in regards in order to their SEO driven content marketing and advertising or outreach strategies. Along with the only complete certainty that SEO's, Website owners may have several adjustments to make to internet sites under their care in the particular mobile and voice search scenery. The basics of GOOD SEO hasn't changed for years - although effectiveness of particular elements provides certainly narrowed or changed within type of usefulness - a person should still be focusing upon building a simple site making use of VERY simple SEO best practices - don't perspiration the small stuff, while all-the-time paying attention to the essential stuff - add plenty of unique PAGE TITLES and lots associated with new ORIGINAL CONTENT. Keyword research is definitely THE first step of any kind of SEO campaign. Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targets increasing the authority associated with your domain through the act associated with getting links from all various other websites. Regarding: Search Engine Journal's flagship meeting, SEJ Summit, is dedicated to providing SEO pros the actual require, with an agenda of initial, first-run presentations covering the newest SEO and PPC tactics through renowned experts, plus excellent social networking opportunities. SEO combines official research engine guidelines, empirical knowledge, plus theoretical knowledge from science documents or patents. This will be a half-day workshop at LeadsCon that will be designed in order to give attendees an end-to-end look at of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how it works, and touchable things they can do these days to improve their SEO efficiency. After the Search engines Panda algorithm appeared, SEO professionals realized just how much key phrase frequency and density matters. SEO means optimizing your content articles so it shows up even more often in search results. 33. With social media systems like Facebook diminishing visibility associated with companies and brands, SEO (as well as paid promotion) will be becoming critically important for traveling traffic to your social stations. 2019 dates TBD. ). Why go to: One-track conference full of forward-thinking, tactical sessions in SEO, development marketing, the mobile landscape, analytics, content marketing and more. ” Don't miss the LeadsCon Meeting in Vegas, March 4-6, 2019. You may generally see outcomes of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts once the webpage proceeds to be crawled and listed by a internet search motor. Possibly the best form of interpersonal media to pay attention in order to when turning to SEO is usually Google Plus. 1 of the most successful approaches to ensure your clients get your photography business is by simply implementing an SEO strategy, this specific is more than just doing it to number 1 upon Google, it means ensuring the fact that a varied and steady supply of traffic is planning to your site, over plus above that of your opponents. If you are usually willing to improvise your web site search and boost up your own Google ranking, but do not really have time or resources intended for doing that, hire an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist for the same objective. Mobile SEO will be mobile search engine optimization or even optimizing content for a much better search ranking. Titles on pages and explanations affect what people see within search results, so it's important to check these out within any SEO audit. Search motors give some guidelines for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, but big search engines maintain result ranking as a business secret. Along with $80 billion forecast to turn out to be spent annually on SEO — and content marketing set for you to be considered a $300+ billion industry by simply 2019 — it might end up being tempting for stakeholders to observe SEO and content marketing since cost centers rather than profits centers. While that will theory is sound (when concentrated on a single page, when the particular intent is to deliver energy content to a Google user) using old school SEO strategies on especially a large web site spread out across many web pages seems to amplify site high quality problems, after recent algorithm adjustments, and so this type associated with optimisation without keeping track associated with overall site quality is self-defeating in the long run. Content written simply by customers gives sites legitimacy plus it earns SEO juice each from manual and automatic ranking systems. Throughout 2018, this trend is upon the rise and if anyone invest in making your web site mobile friendly you will delight in higher search positions in 2019 as well. When making a web site for Google in 2018, a person need to understand that Search engines has a long list associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. Besides getting social plus having a good time, your own social media profiles can favorably affect your SEO efforts. Since so many people trust in voice search being the pattern in 2019, I, Nicole Bermack (this article's author), am coining the word VSO - voice lookup optimization. Clever brands and agencies are changing new SEO, social and articles marketing strategies to join their own customer conversations. Search engine marketing (SEO) is the art plus science of getting pages in order to rank higher in search motors such as Google. A person can audit your page's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION health, compare SEO metrics with regard to a number of pages, plus analyze both external and inner links on any given internet page. Content companies that will offer SEO content creation solutions are experts in creating content material that are not only improved for search engine rankings yet also add value for your own business in terms of brand name awareness, customer engagement and enhanced sales. "SEO" is a term that is usually used to describe the procedure by which visitors a specific site is increasingly generated simply by search engines through search results. These white-hat cellular SEO tips will help a person to avoid internet search motor penalties and maintain better on the internet visibility. SEO or research engine optimization techniques will deal with these requirements of a web site. AI and tone of voice search have already begun in order to impact SEO, and as these types of technologies continue to develop, all of us can expect to see a lot more changes in the way SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is performed. In the second chapter of our SEO guideline, you will learn how lookup engines work, how people utilize them and what type of research queries they submit. You need in order to provide regular posts either daily or at least several occasions a week in order in order to gain a following and offer enough unique SEO content in order to keep your search engine rankings high, attract new viewers plus convince people that you are usually the expert in your industry. Voice lookup will change the way we interact along with search engines and it may make SEO even more aggressive and vital to online achievement. Our SEO outreach team connect your brand and curated content with key on-line influencers to get people speaking about you & sharing your own message. Yet, with the research engines like google continually modifying their rules SEO may appear confusing and overwhelming. Understanding what these words really indicate, and how SEO analysts make use of them to boost your cyberspace search engine results, may end up being a whole other story. SEO specialists started in order to abuse PageRank in order in order to raise the rankings. Now could be a great time to take a nearer take a look at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing information because search is getting even worse for those types of B2B plus B2C businesses. SEO marketers plus writers typically come up along with different kinds of content in order to place the necessary keywords within. These are some of the particular most used types, and every one helps to help with the level of variety in conditions of website content. Certain black hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques, such as keyword filling, are thought to be the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION equivalent of spamming, and lookup engines will penalize them. Internet marketing is exclusively driven by SEO or research engine optimization. Others are usually simply traditional PR firms that have learned SEO as nicely as the value of hyperlinks. Here's a cliche among electronic marketers: Search engine optimization (SEO) isn't what used to become. Google announced that will they released several minor enhancements over the period of the particular time of about a 7 days and after analysis, experts inside the SEO industry concluded that will the updates were the outcome of keyword permutations and web site using doorway pages. SEO, or Search Motor Optimization, means setting up your own website and content to show up through online search results. People that want to take their company to some new height plus generally and mostly believe within the way of SEO advertising. Siteimprove SEO incorporates sixty six unique SEO checks, including tests for missing meta descriptions, punctuational mistakes, broken links, outdated data files, poor readability, and links in order to unsafe domains. But in the event that we're looking for a larger trend it's that SEO plus what we call real marketing” will continue to blur the particular lines between them as the particular job of the SEO will become that of a traditional internet marketer - having to understand the particular user, the competitors, the market place and also the implementation part. Thanks for going to the world of Search Motor Optimization (SEO). For example, we regularly make content on the topic associated with "SEO, " but it's nevertheless very hard to rank nicely on Google for such the popular topic on this acronym alone. What can this industry shifts show about the particular future of SEO and content material marketing? Search engine marketing (SEO) is on a move. Whether a person are an SEO Professional, Electronic Marketing Agency, SMB or Brand name, looking to increase your visitors or to monitor your web site's evolution, this SEO software will certainly provide you with best within class digital marketing strategy evaluation and insights for your company. Their expertise will be incredibly valuable because there will be plenty of science to SEO, plus it is constantly changing because search engines like Google carry on to update their algorithms. From a content viewpoint, I'd say one of the particular best ways to get SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value out of video will be to focus your efforts upon addressing your customer's pain factors. In 2018, SEO is content and content material is SEO, content is electronic and digital is content. Before starting a good SEO project, site owners ought to carefully read through the site owner guidelines that every search motors provides and follow recommended greatest practices. This is clear that when website owners hire a search engine marketing SEO expert, they stand the better chance of maximizing their particular SEO services. Search motors cannot understand this type associated with content, so it's essential to design and style video pages in an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION oriented manner. Subscribe to our weekly SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and daily SearchCap newsletters for a summarize of all the latest SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION related news, tips and techniques from Internet search engine Property and other sources all more than the Web. When most likely Blog9T logged in, go to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Toolkit » Keyword Research » Keyword Overview. For almost any SEO technique to operate successfully you will need content and that will can come in any type like keywords, articles or sites. From 2019, AI may be utilized by the businesses to acquire higher rankings upon search engines. For that reason, it can be a great idea to incorporate expenses intended for professional SEO content in your own quarterly marketing budget. Google will see right via sneaky, black hat SEO methods like creating duplicate pages, producing pages with thin content simply for the sake of obtaining more pages and buying inbound links. SEO focuses upon rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results. SEO hence helps you get traffic coming from search engines. With Ahrefs, a great starting place for keyword research regarding SEO is the Keywords Explorer tool. Topics: SEO, backlink, articles marketing, social media marketing plus advertising, analytics, and more. 60+ sessions on hot topics, accomplishment stories and strategies in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION, SEA, PPC, Social Media, On-line Marketing and SMX Future Observe. 2018 (I believe) will be a lot associated with catch up on current SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION themes, with the biggest trends” occurring around voice queries to find results. Therefore, SEOmonitor tracks all of the appropriate data that could influence SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION performance and displays it within the Keyword Events Timeline. If you forget that will quality content is a best priority, then you can definitely forget about having an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy. The particular way we asking the device is different from person in order to person. therefore, optimizing your internet site 100% mobile friendly to accomplish cellular voice search is very essential to SEO 2019. I actually am just newbie and significantly i do get frustrated whenever articles doesn't rank on best or near top, but individuals like you and many additional also inspire me to never ever give up. There are a number of points that i wasn't recognized up to now but appreciate to you, you are constantly make us learn important issues about seo. To get a better SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, helps your website can obtain on the top among well-known search engines like Bing plus Google. On the various other side, you can ensure a good effective content marketing campaign just when you apply the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques properly. SEO -- Search engine optimization: the procedure of making your blog better with regard to search engines. The purpose of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION writing is to make your own company more visual, more attractive in website search engines. SEO will be the practice of increasing the particular quantity and quality of site visitors to your website through natural and organic search engine results. 31. SEO data can notify a smart social media technique. Solid keyword & marketplace research assist SEO strategy plus allow us to offer realistic projections and forecasts of opportunity inside your market. Nevertheless, when this comes to developing and performing an audio SEO strategy with regard to your business, just creating content material for the keywords your clients are looking for is each arduous and, well, wrong. In this situation, in, the article ranks correct after the official Google suggestions (and it makes sense that will Google should be number one on their own branded query) but Smashing magazine is proven as a position 0” little of text on the question Google pop up guidelines” within. Search Engine Land, a top quality SEO blog this is the pillar of the community will be ranking after Smashing (which occurs to be really a style blog than an SEO one). If you speak about search ranking in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're talking about the placement of your content on research results pages (SERPs). Kent Lewis, Creator, and President of Anvil, the performance-based firm based out associated with Portland, says that in 2019 voice search and Amazon research will end up a lot more notable than they were in 2018. Google Search Console (Webmaster tools) is one of the particular SEO basics. If you would like to find out how I actually actually do it, visit Write-up Czar for the free gift plus details of the way i use content marketing and SEOcious to get top Google listings. It really is geared towards SEO professionals (in-house and agency), marketing managers, and business people. But now SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION considers tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, along with other social signals. Besides rank the web site, the SEO team turns into fault Client's marketing or product sales team by converting surfers or even visitors into buyers. Because therefore much sharing now takes place on major social media systems, social signals may become simply because important to SEO as period on page, editorial linking, plus content quality. Using social press marketing in PA with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics can help boost the website's ranking and popularity. This may create friction and the impact that most well-designed websites are usually very poorly optimized for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. They have impacted SEO during the past as well by bringing back links, and today it's even even more. We all wished to look at a massive group that included businesses of almost all sizes and in all industrial sectors so we could really observe how SEO traffic increased whenever the only common denominator was including reviews to their site. In reality, this is section of the SEO technique we have used to gradually grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile will certainly account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop is usually designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques regarding their business including social press, organic SEO as well because paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be go through over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know exactly how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore lessen your in-house price. Right now there is probably no more fundamental strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links in to your site - it is definitely an easy way to increase traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Generally there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine ranks of a website. You've added even more relevant content to your website blog post and increased the on-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targeted against your focus keyword(s). Before my first ISS, I actually had always thought I may possibly just learn everything by myself personally about global online marketing subject areas for example International SEO just by means of doing online investigation and experimentation, but honestly nothing beats this efficiency of attending a meeting like ISS where one could share your experiences and rapidly gain a treasure trove associated with learnings and best practices through other international marketers. That method, you and your SEO may ensure that your site will be designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. Even so, a good SEO can furthermore help improve a current web site. If you need to know what kind associated with SEO trends are going in order to develop in 2019, look simply no further than the trends that will are developing in search within both 2017 and 2018. Webmasters are usually going to remain competitive within the online business when they will stick with SEO experts. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and social media marketing assure that one's site has the particular best SEO Online marketing, which usually means that their company may remain competitive in the on-line market. An SEO ("search engine optimization") expert is somebody trained to improve your presence on search engines. From an SEO perspective, anyone want to have more inside links pointing to your almost all important content. SEO companies are able to track almost every aspect of their technique, like increases in rankings, visitors and conversions. The strategies which were the simplest (reciprocal links or directory submissions) perform not work anymore, therefore the particular SEOs spend a lot associated with time trying different approaches. The particular Moz Pro is another collection of Tools that check the particular important factors related to your own website's search ranking. Selection of key phrases or phrases plays an important component in an SEO campaign given that it saves you the pictures in the dark. In 2019 the particular digital marketing companies can anticipate a lot of voice queries, and by 2020, about 50 percent of the searches will become either voice searches or image-based searches. Read our Mobile SEO 2019 Checklist before you decide in order to implement. Typically Seven Common Myths About SEO 2019 the first facet of optimizing images will be including your keywords in typically the image file name (seo_guide. jpg). The inevitable modifications that will occur in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in the near future are usually abolition of keywords stuffing plus spam backlinks, real-time personalized customer support by online marketers, improvement within the quality of visual content material as a result of advancement of video SEO, optimization associated with websites with conversational keywords plus generating massive quantity of current data. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION remains one of the lengthy term marketing strategies that function best for companies that are usually looking to improve their on-line visibility. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the particular most important marketing things to consider upon your studio website. SEO might generate a sufficient return upon investment However, search engines are usually not purchased organic search visitors, their algorithms change, and right now there are no guarantees of carried on referrals. A great starting point whenever using keywords for SEO is definitely to identify existing pages that will may use some optimization. These are called keywords, plus as you will see, they will are an important part associated with SEO. In fact, this particular will actually hurt your home page's SEO because search engines such as google will recognize it because keyword stuffing - or the particular act of including keywords particularly to rank for that key phrase, rather than to answer the person's question. Prior to we begin, one thing a person want to keep in thoughts when using one of the following SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION elements is not to overdo it. You might be enticed to shove a lot associated with keywords onto your pages, yet that is not the objective. In situation you create links to various other websites and reverse, it can improve your SEO ranking. In fact Cisco predicts that globally, on-line video traffic will be eighty percent of all consumer Web traffic by 2019 (a quantity that is up from sixty four percent in 2014). I've bookmarked therefore many SEO websites and assets that it's overwhelming to also look at. Link authority is the major component of SEO, yet purchasing links is forbidden simply by Google, Bing, and other research engines.

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Grammar Choices For Graduate And Professional Writers, Second Edition

Grammar Choices For Graduate And Professional Writers, Second Edition This means manufacturers will be fighting over readership and paying individuals to have a look at their content. At least, this is the awful future in accordance with Mark Schaefer. Like most creative career paths, it’s hard on the market. Only essentially the most devoted scribes become true pros and make their residing this manner. They are continuously studying, continually writing, and continually work toward improving their recreation. They will handle your project with great care whereas aiding you in producing your greatest work and progressing in your profession. If you work within the service business, production, performing arts or one other profession that's been shut down because of the COVID-19 crisis, we have got your again. Award Winning Screenwriter and Studio Founder Jacob Krueger’s screenwriting workshop is the muse of every thing we educate at the studio. Rest additionally helps you put issues into perspective. You can even do analysis on the newest trends in the area of interest you write about. Your Shopping Cart will be saved and you'll be given a link. You, or anyone with the link, can use it to retrieve your Cart at any time. I used some actually low-cost companies and got what I paid for. Not that they won’t want to – they just won’t be able to. Writing for content marketing requires even more diligence. It needs to mirror the model’s voice, use the best keywords in the best locations, handle the target market effectively, and be readable and helpful. Even extra explain the basic elements that make up good content material. You’re alleged to be taught these after which apply them to your content advertising and copywriting. Writing is a area of expertise, similar to any other trade, and these people realize it inside-out. They read widely and absorb different writing methods. They understand the fundamentals of developing a stable article, whether quick or long. ⇾ For extra instruments and services go to our Resources web page. Good, thorough research have to be a vital a part of content material creation for lots of niche industries. This is as a result of they know the details are everything. Paying attention to them is how the writing reaches its height. If it’s really good, the content material may also pull the reader into the textual content. It will encourage them to maintain studying aaaaall the best way all the way down to the end of the web page. Learn 7 Act Structure, an natural approach to building your script, and an entire new way of thinking about screenwriting and TV writing. So, even if you have that connection on the inside, you may still need to use by way of conventional means. After all, the corporate could have to show that they're hiring in accordance with SHRM and EEOC Guidelines whereas vetting all candidates equally. Ergo, the necessity for a nicely-crafted resume stands. If there’s one lesson I discovered from life, Hollywood and video games it’s that group composition matters. As talked about in our last article, nothing happens in a vacuum. The composition of your job search group will bring you to success in case you have the proper players. With a background in education and entrepreneurship, Jake Lester presently writes for the tutorial running a blog tasks. Jake writes for a lot of blogs and provides useful recommendation for entrepreneurs, college students, and educators. He likes to cover stories in productivity, careers, and training. In the post’s main part, don’t be afraid to say things as they're, the people who are consuming your content material aren’t shy so you shouldn’t be shy too. With this technique, you readers will end up sticking round and consuming all your content material as they may know what to expect. You should not be writing for long hours, this isn’t good in your well being and creativity. You should rest as usually as you can so that your brain can take a break and come up with contemporary ideas for the submit.

[fipindustries]

An interesting chat i had today

Anonymous at 8:24 PM

then again I have a weird opinion on education so I'm not really the best guy to talk about it, I think

Fip industries-Today at 8:23 PM

what's your weird opinion?

Anonymous at 8:24 PM

that compulsory education needs to be abolishedbecause its quite literally illegal, has actually made more people illiterate over the last century, and is actively anti individualistand not only is it ethically wrong, its economically obsolete since we're in a post industrial revolution society, so being a subservient little kraut doesnt make anyone any money anymore

Fip industries-Today at 8:25 PM

what would you replace it with? honest question, this isnt a "gotcha" or anything

Anonymous at 8:26 PM

sunday school and private schoolsalso encourage more families to function as their own businesses and corporations instead of giving everything to larger oneseveryone being obedient and going to college to be a cog in a machine is actively economically dangerous because like, now you're getting stem students out of workthat should be the absolute height of employment, youre a fucking junior scientistbut because theres too much supply, boom, undervaluedmeanwhile there's no supply of low end trade educated peopleso fuck it, get a bunch of immigrantsand like, hey, it makes sense, but lets not pretend it isnt the only reason immigrants are tolerated, they just want to make us all a bunch of debt slaves like everyone elseeducation isnt inherently valuable, its admirable for sure, but quite simply it should exist for those who actively desire to seek itmost people want stability, and they get stability by learning something they can do for that stability. Now, do you want it to be some uncaring giant corporation, or would a family trade be better?employment isnt normal, people should be fiercely independent

Fip industries-Today at 8:30 PM

im not 100% sure giving education to only those who ask for it is a good idea

Anonymous at 8:30 PM

I'm no commie, I think capitalism is great, I just think people moaning about it are doing it wrongI mean this isnt to say equal opportunity shouldnt be therebut thats it, its opportunity, not equity

Fip industries-Today at 8:31 PM

seems like a way to fall into a vicious cycle where people who are not interested in doing the effort to learn get kids who the wont be raised with a desire to learn either

Anonymous at 8:31 PM

bringing along everyone else just brings down the people who are actually serious about it

Fip industries-Today at 8:31 PM

i thinks that is more a failure of the teachers

Anonymous at 8:31 PM

well, there's a reason family names were synonimous with job description for a long time

Fip industries-Today at 8:32 PM

also how would you get out of the family trade if that is not what is interesting to you?

Anonymous at 8:33 PM

sustain it until you have kids old enough to take it, or extend your family. Leave your affairs in order and go to a private institution to learn something you want to learn. return and assimilate your new education into the family business, and get apprentices and other interested family members into this. Ideally your family should be huge, instead of just a bunch of catsalso this is how it'd be done a hundred years ago, we're ignoring accredited online schools, modern communication methods that pretty much let anyone figure out shit on their own, I meaneven thirty years ago you'd have to go to the library and hope they had the right book if you wanted to learn about somethingnow?fuck, bruh, I have the ability to just pirate a bunch of engineering books, day trade earnings into stocks to buy a bunch of raw material, and build machinery for virtually nothing at allliterally fucking anyone can do thatyou can learn how to do shit in a few months what wouldve taken people lifetimes to learn ages pastif someone cant make it with that in their hands, fuck it, they were never gonna make it at all

Fip industries-Today at 8:38 PM

problem is i see this leading to strongly tribalistic clans where the will of the individual is subsumed into the will of the family, where familes become a sort of cult and if you step out of line then peer pressure or sheer extortion through denial of substenance  will make you toe the line

Anonymous at 8:38 PM

well yeah, not disagreeing. those jane eyre arranged marriage dramas didnt come from nowhere

Fip industries-Today at 8:38 PM

and by the point you could achieve any kind of indepence you were so worn down and brainwashed by the family that getting out becomes impossible

Anonymous at 8:39 PM

if it isnt your family, its your community, if it isnt your community, its your state, if it isnt your state, its society, if it isnt society, its the world, if it isnt the world, its goda strong individual is one who knows when its time to say "fuck off"no excuses, man, people told me all the time I'd only be able to get a decent art education if I was rich and went to schoolso I gave up my education and then stood up late at night after work to learn how to fucking do itand hey, I'm not davinci, but I think I've done better than most in my positionI very strongly believe that blaming other things for your own failure is a spook, you either get what you want out of life, or you don'tso like, I'll stop being preachy, my point for the hypothetical scenario isif a person wants to learn something outside of this, they'll do it, they'll make it work somehow, they'll hire a tutor when they arent managing the family business, they'll self teach, if they really want it, they'll do it

Fip industries-Today at 8:43 PM

you should read the merchant princess, it has a lot of these same ideas

Anonymous at 8:43 PM

if they're responsible, they'll take care that anyone depending on him doesnt get fucked over and can go their own path, but after a certain pointeither you do it or you dont, either way you're gonna get old and croaksuffer with purpose, you know?

Fip industries-Today at 8:45 PM

yeah, i get you

[lumsel]

TF2 is a cutting parody of Overwatch and I can prove it

And when I say parody, I don’t mean it as in one of those “Minecraft Parodies” you see on the youtubes where they switch some lyrics around and call it a day without really commenting on the source material, I mean it as in TF2 is a biting deconstruction of Overwatch and everything it represents. Now I’m sure you have all sorts of questions involving release dates and, I dunno, logic, but bear with me here for a moment because this shit runs deep:

Overwatch’s characters have a diverse range of origins and personalities, presented as the best of the best from all over the world. Artists, Innovators, Heroes, Overwatch lets you play as great people who fight for great causes. Granted, there’s a bit of some weird dissonance between how they act and how they play, we’ve all made jokes about how weirdly cheerful Mei is about killing people, but overall they’re just a bunch of lovable goofs. Hell, even the so-called bad guys are impossible to hate, because they just have so much personality baked into them.

TF2′s cast is comprised of foolish, incompetent mercenaries, who are explicitly not the best of the best but rather a bunch of idiots the Administrator got to fight her pointless battles without any motivations beyond the money they earn. They aren’t lovable; entertaining to be sure, but they aren’t exactly the kinds of folks you’d sit down and have a beer with. Examining them at an individual level reveals further criticisms:

The Soldier’s name is a clear reference to the Overwatch hero Soldier 76, and further comparisons can be made from there. Soldier 76 is a disgraced war vet who takes the world into his own hands, travelling the world to fight evils and save people. The Soldier amps it up to 11; a mentally ill civilian who becomes convinced he is fighting Nazis in a war that ended years ago, and is in actuality blowing up innocents. No one man can understand the complexities of worldly conflicts enough to actively fight for the “right side” without screwing everything up, and the Soldier personifies this notion to an extreme, portrayed as not only insane but also highly jingoistic, alluding to an undercurrent of american exceptionalism that exists in 76′s All-American Hero stylings.

Pyro is a take on Bastion. They’re both unintelligible and gender-indeterminate cuties who retain their innocence in a cruel and brutal environment. Of course, Bastion’s dissonance between its purpose and its personality is played for drama, for how tragic it is that this adorable robot is built only to kill. The Pyro, by contrast, portrays innocence in spite of violence as twisted. Compare their promotional shorts: Bastion’s ends with it deciding against its original purpose (and the purpose it serves in gameplay) and exiling itself to the forest to care for a cute bird, while the Pyro’s portrays the violence and innocence as a symbiotic relationship, showing that they hallucinate the carnage they cause as spreading love and cheer. TF2 tells us that the innocence of a DPS character in a shooter is not endearing but terrifying, because the two aspects cannot coexist without extreme cognitive dissonance. The Pyro can delight in violence because, in their limited understanding of the world, they see violence as delightful.

The Medic lampoons Mercy and to a lesser extent every support character in Overwatch. There is something faintly hypocritical about a character claiming to want to help people as they serve as an accomplice to a violent, bloody war effort. Mercy may rarely score any kills herself, but she enables the continued destruction caused by every combatant she heals. The Medic puts up no such pretense of being a good person, he loves the pain and violence perhaps more than his compatriots who actively dole it out. He is no harmless doctor, he is as great a threat as the men with guns, if not even more dangerous - and he doesn’t even have a damage boost on his medigun. The Medic's habit of experimenting on his teammates for shits and giggles is, too, a joke about Mercy, this time referring to her canon involvement in turning Genji and Reaper into killing machines. 

The Sniper is, like Roadhog, an Australian who is actually a New Zealander who sounds like nothing like either. I don’t have anything insightful to say here, I just think it’s funny.

But the one thing that binds them - the one thing they have in common? They are all sadistic assholes. Every character has a cackling, evil laugh they let out when they’re on a kill streak, they all bask in the glory of slaughter unashamedly and unabashedly - they are guns for hire, after all. In a way, they aren’t so different to the Overwatch cast in this respect; even the bright and peppy tracer has a host of voicelines cheerily mocking the people she has just murdered with her twin pistols. But what TF2 does differently is make this obvious. The nine classes have no purpose in gameplay beyond causing and enabling murder, and rather than distract you from this fact with charming personalities, it lets you pity them as the mean, cruel bastards that they are. These are no “heroes” to be looked up to, they are the waste product of a world better than them.

Overwatch’s map design is beautiful, to be sure, with a clean, futuristic aesthetic and a wide diversity of metropolitan locales to explore. But when you think about it, the levels don’t make a whole lot of sense. The payload maps are all cities that tend to have only one road in them, they’re peppered with hazardous falls despite being mostly innocuous metropolitan areas, and the architecture is often questionable at best. While some maps have a clear goal that the two teams are fighting over, i.e. Volskaya’s factory, some are just places where a fight is happening for no reason. Illios is the perfect example, you go to a well, a lighthouse and an excavation site but there’s nothing to be won in any of the areas. Of course, asking “why are we fighting here” was a mug’s game to begin with - the gameplay in is non-canon, after all.

TF2′s map design is specifically engineered to draw attention to its own senselessness.  The payload tracks aren’t roads, they’re literal tracks, on the ground, which just happen to lead directly to the enemy team’s giant stockpile of explosive barrels. Control points aren’t just game abstractions, they’re giant metal discs on the ground, marked out with hazard tape and set up to display a giant holographic team emblem. One place where they differ is TF2 is not content to allow a map to have no valuable resource in it to be fighting over, even when said dedication raises more questions than it answers. That granary isn’t just a granary, it’s actually concealing a secret spy base. The lumberyard? Secret spy base. Hydroelectric plant, which actually might be tactically advantageous to own? ALSO A SECRET SPY BASE! “Secret spy base” is the punchline to every map’s visual narrative, and serves as a challenge to the philosophy of Overwatch’s design, by implying that those innocuous locales you visit, all those wells and lighthouses, they were actually just secret spy bases this whole time.

Even the art direction in OW’s fascination with a vaguely utopic golden age is reflected in TF2′s usage of idealised 60′s-ea illustration as a clear inspiration. The visual language utilised by a people who were proud of the world that they shaped, despite the festering problems lurking deep within it, is perfect for the ugliness of the TF2 universe. The painterly, illustrative style isn’t used for white picket fences and well-kept lawns, but ramshackle shacks, industrial monstrosities and machines of war. This is no better time nor a better place, it is a war. It is blood and gore and fire and pain and all the worst parts of humanity condensed into bite sized 10 minute matches.

And the war they fight is pointless. Not pointless in the sense that it is non-canon, but that it is canon and yet it still means nothing. It’s a pitiable battle between two brothers over their ancient, useless gravel estate, with all the lasers and rockets only existing to claim more useless gravel. The fights don’t mean anything, the story isn’t important, and the resources aren’t world-changing, they’re just pointless bloodshed for pointless rewards, a hauntingly accurate summation of the philosophy of a competitive shooter.

Overwatch’s world is one like our own, but... different. Set in a fantastic and wonderful future, it portrays a world coming off of the heels of a great robot war. It is populated by robots called omnics, who are either a metaphor for all marginalised groups ever or evil badguy robots depending on the what the writers need right now. In addition, Overwatch likes to add it’s own additional spice to real world locales: South Korea is threatened by a giant badguy robot and has hired professional gamers to fight it, Australia has been devastated in a nuclear holocaust and is now a desolate wasteland, and The Moon has recently been overthrown by sentient gorillas(?) who now rule its colonies. It’s all a bit silly, to be sure, but it’s made with love, and it’s all just so earnest you can’t help but love it back.

In the TF2 community, there is some debate over whether or not Abraham Lincoln inventing stairs as an alternative to the rocket jump is canon information or not. What is definitely canon, however, is that spaceflight was invented in 1900, New Zealand is a once legendary sunken metropolis destroyed by an incompetent scientist, and Amelia Earhart was a hotdog mascot. The world isn’t just quirky, it’s gonzo, with ghosts and charismatic war profiteers and rocks that radiate pure intelligence all being mentioned in the same sentence with nary a wink. 

You can tell TF2′s lead, Robin Walker, was an Australian man angry about the nation’s treatment in Overwatch, because in TF2 Australia is a world leader inventing all of the major technologies in the setting and is the main catalyst for most of the world’s politics. Tellingly, you never actually go to Australia in-game, because the conflict that TF2 portrays is as stated earlier completely removed from anything remotely important in the setting. Of course, Australia is also said to be populated entirely by idiots who get in barfights all the time and choose their king by boxing with kangaroos because if there’s one thing that TF2 avoids like the plague it’s the genuine idealism that Overwatch so loves.

And Overwatch’s incredible technology levels, showing the world of 60 years from now being populated by megastructures, holograms and hovercars, is parodied with the setting of TF2 having all the same, but 60 years into the past. Because Australium, you see. The quaint interpretation of global politics is now extended into full-on alternate history wherein the Space Race was just the US and Russia feebly attempting to measure up to Australia’s impossible standards and Musician Tom Jones is murdered by the Soldier for being his wizard ex-roommate’s new best friend. It shows the inherent arrogance OW painting its own picture of what the world is like by painting that picture onto the past instead of the future, allowing us to immediately understand the contrast between how the authors portray the world and how it actually was - and letting us laugh at just how different the two really are.

This theory would be completely perfect with no holes in it whatsoever, were it not for one key issue: TF2 came out seven years before Overwatch was announced.

There is only one explanation for this: this is a case of analogous evolution where the Overwatch team made many of the same gameplay decisions as the TF2 team but TF2 understood the absurdity of said gameplay and decided to emphasise it whereas Overwatch elected to ignore it and justify its fiction through supplemental material, combined with TF2 actively parodying tropes that predate both games that Overwatch somewhat coincidentally indulges in due to the developers of one intending a dark satirical tone and the developers of the other trying for something more optimistic TF2 was engineered by Valve at some point in the future and sent back in time like a videogame terminator to destroy Overwatch before it was ever born in order to ensure CSGO’s dominance in the competitive PC shooter field. Valve failed to take the key moral lesson away from the first Terminator movie, however - any endeavor involving time travel is doomed to fail from the start, as whatever action you take has always been taken and the past cannot be changed. Just like Robot Arnold Schwarzenegger, TF2 not only failed to prevent Overwatch’s existence, it ultimately proved instrumental in the game’s conception when the spark of inspiration (here representing Kyle Reese) made sweet, sweet love to Jeff Kaplan’s brain before dying in a dynamite explosion. For shame, Valve. I thought you would have learned from Skynet’s mistakes.

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The Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class: Frequently Asked Questions. https://ift.tt/34DqPQZ

On Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 we’re opening registration for the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification, designed specifically for Level 1 students and graduates who realize that knowing how to coach isn’t enough.

Part master class, part grad program, part mentorship, it’s the only course in the world designed to help you master the art of nutrition coaching, meaning better results for your clients and a better business for you.

Want to achieve total confidence in your coaching skills? Get (and keep) more clients? Grow and strengthen your business? If so, the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification is definitely for you.

For more about the program, check the frequently asked questions below.

But, first, watch this short video; it provides a full breakdown of the program, including interviews with superstar coaches, physicians, and trainers like Adam Feit, Spencer Nadolsky, Adam Lloyd, Mary Kate Feit, and Will Boggs:

Precision Nutrition co-founder Dr. John Berardi gives you a sneak peek at the Level 2 Certification. (Plus, industry leaders share their thoughts on the program).

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  Q: So what's the program all about? A:

Our highest rated (and most revered) program, the Level 2 Certification provides exclusive training, mentorship, and coaching practice under the guidance of the Precision Nutrition team—resulting in a more rewarding, sustainable, and profitable business for you.

By working closely with a PN Master Coach, you’ll become truly elite, capable of solving complex coaching challenges, delivering unparalleled results to every person who comes to you for help, and standing out from the pack as a genuine client whisperer.

Level 2 also positions you to truly catapult your career with ProCoach, our cutting-edge software that makes it easy to implement and scale the nutrition coaching method you’ve mastered.

What does this mean for you and your business?

Well, aside from the deep satisfaction that comes with mastering your craft, our research also suggests that the average Level 2 coach:

gets more clients than the average Level 1 coach,

retains more clients than the average Level 1 coach,

gets better results with those clients, and

reports more fun and enjoyment in their coaching practice.

Indeed, as amazing as our Level 1 certified coaches are, recent ProCoach data with over 100,000 clients shows that Level 2 certified coaches have 10 times (!) the retention vs. Level 1 coaches.

Q: Can you tell me a little more about the program? A:

At its basic level, the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class is a hands-on, practice-based, mentored program that covers both the art and the science of nutrition coaching at the elite level.

It synthesizes everything we’ve learned over the past 15 years of coaching and research in the nutrition field.

That means:

We’ve reviewed thousands of academic and clinical studies.

We’ve used our system to help (and learn from) over 100,000 clients and patients.

We’ve trained and mentored thousands of students.

And we’ve collaborated with experts in a variety of fields from psychology to business strategy.

From there, we turned all this education and experience into the comprehensive year-long Level 2 Master Class curriculum.

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  Q: Who is the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class for? A:

We’ve designed this intensive, year-long program to meet the needs of health, fitness, medical, strength, and rehab professionals working to improve the lifestyles, nutrition, and wellbeing of clients and patients.

But you don’t have to work in, or operate, a health and fitness business to benefit from the Level 2 Master Class.

Some students complete it (

Level 1 first, followed by Level 2) as their next step to becoming an elite coach because they’re still in a job they hope to eventually leave so they can start working in health and fitness.

Others simply go through the training to be able to help family and friends… or anyone who turns to them for help.

Regardless of your goals, the Level 2 Master Class is designed around “learning relationships”—an instruction method proven to maximize knowledge transfer from mentor to student and help anyone, from any background, leverage their own unique strengths in this field.

Check out this short video to learn more about how the Master Class works, and who it’s for.

People come to Level 2 to develop mastery in (and derive more satisfaction from) their coaching. They also end up getting more clients, retaining them longer, and producing better results.

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  Q: Why offer a certification like this? A:

Health, fitness, and nutrition are growing rapidly; many people are looking here for interesting career options.

Unfortunately, most health, fitness, strength, and rehab professionals feel they’re missing one or more of the following in their practice:

A broad base of nutrition knowledge that reflects the most up-to-date research and practice in the field.

A broad base of applied psychology knowledge that helps them understand client/patient motivation and behavior (yes, even the “illogical” stuff!).

An ability to deliver and communicate all that great nutrition and psychology knowledge to actually improve people’s lives.

An understanding of specific populations (such as athletes or folks recovering from injury) or life stages (such as youth / aging or pregnancy) and how to tailor programs precisely for their needs.

The confidence and clarity that comes from having practiced foundational skills consistently, under the direction of qualified and caring mentors.

An understanding of how to position their coaching business within a competitive market, and how to run it effectively.

The Level 2 Master Class covers each of these, giving graduates new knowledge, skills, and confidence, which is why we developed the program. It’s for those coaches (or coaches-in-training) who want next-level professional development.

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  Q: Is this how you train your own coaches at Precision Nutrition? A:

Yes, this program started out as our own in-house training program for newly hired Precision Nutrition coaches.

You see, as talented as some of our applicants were, almost none had the training or skills required to coach at the highest possible level, to the Precision Nutrition standard.

So we created an intensive, year-long coaching curriculum for our new recruits and paired them up with one of our Precision Nutrition Master Coaches to form a practice-based mentorship.

We were absolutely blown away by the results. After completing the training, already great coaches were ten times better at creating connection, navigating challenges, and helping people achieve their goals.

Q: How is the Level 2 Certification different from Level 1? A:

The Level 1 Certification gave you a broad base of nutrition and coaching knowledge, a strong foundation on the science of nutrition and the art of coaching.

Now it’s time to refine this knowledge, tailor it to your needs, and apply it every day.

There are a few major differences between Level 1 and Level 2.

Level 2 is an intensive, highly structured, year-long program.

While Level 1 is a self-paced program, Level 2 is a highly structured, year-long program with daily lessons and regular assignments.

I won’t lie: Level 2 is serious stuff. You’re thinking, reflecting, researching, practicing, and/or interacting every single day. We push you to grow and develop, and challenge all your coaching skills.

When you graduate Level 2, you’ll really feel like you earned it. Anyone can do it, but it takes hard work and dedication.

Level 2 is practice-based and hands-on.

Level 1 is more like a university course, with textbooks, course materials, practice exercises, and exams. Level 2 is more like a graduate-level practicum or apprenticeship with mentoring.

Every day we ask you to practice a Level 2 coaching skill and figure out how to apply what you’re learning in real life.

You also work through real coaching scenarios, step by step; this is real-world problem solving and consists of on-the-ground challenges.

In essence, this isn’t a learning program. It’s a doing program.

As you already know: Clients and patients don’t get healthy by learning about nutrition and exercise. They get healthy by practicing good nutrition and exercise, consistently. (And, often, by seeking out guidance from a skilled coach).

Likewise, you don’t become an expert coach by learning about coaching. You become an expert coach by practicing excellent coaching, consistently (under the guidance of your own coach).

Level 2 goes deeper into the art and science of coaching.

It’s not just a big pile of nutrition science (though we give you plenty of that too).

Fundamentally, Level 2 helps you master the art of nutrition coaching.

(And anything else you might want to coach. The skills are nicely transferable.)

Here’s a quick comparison.

Level 1 Certification Level 2 Certification Duration Self-paced 1 year, with daily lessons and oversight Difficulty level Equivalent to upper-level university undergraduate program Equivalent to master’s or Ph.D. program Ideal for People in the field of health, fitness, nutrition and rehab who want to offer nutrition coaching

People who are not (yet) in the field but who are considering (or making) a career change

Anyone with an interest in nutrition coaching generally

People in the field of health, fitness, nutrition and rehab who want to become elite professional coaches

People who are either working in the field or ready to make the jump immediately

Professionals focused on increasing client/patient retention and results

Structured curriculum Yes Yes Coaching / mentorship No; self-directed Yes Evaluated by Exams Completion of lessons

Completion of daily practices

Case studies

Quizzes

Course covers See here for L1 table of contents See here for full L2 syllabus Textbook / print materials? Yes No; all online Time commitment Self-paced About 5 hours per week

And, as mentioned above, the average Precision Nutrition Level 2 coach:

gets more clients than the average Level 1 coach,

retains more clients than the average Level 1 coach,

gets better results with those clients, and

reports more fun and enjoyment in their coaching practice.

Indeed, as amazing as our Level 1 certified coaches are, recent ProCoach data with over 100,000 clients shows that Level 2 certified coaches have 10 times (!) the retention vs. Level 1 coaches.

Q: What topics does the Level 2 Certification cover? A:

See here for our

course overview and detailed syllabus, week by week.

Like our Level 1 Certification, you can think of the Level 2 Master Class as “half nutrition, half coaching”.

Many of our students are already highly trained nutrition or health professionals (such as physicians, rehab specialists, movement coaches). Many are already working in fitness or health care, and already have professional qualifications.

Yet these highly educated professionals are still finding it very challenging (and in some cases anxiety-provoking) to develop effective intervention programs and keep clients and patients engaged, motivated, and on track.

Coaching is the missing piece that links what you know and what your clients can and will do.

So the Level 2 Certification covers things like:

Assessing research quality and reviewing clinical studies

Body composition

Psychoneuroimmunology / psychoneuroendocrinology and the biology of stress

GI structure, function, and health (including microbiome)

Differences by age; sex/gender; ethnicity/genetic ancestry; sociocultural and demographic variation

Male and female fertility / hormonal health

Chronic illnesses and disabilities

Performance / athletic nutrition

Disordered eating and cognitive dietary restraint

Appetite, hunger, and environmental cueing of eating behaviors

Meal planning and food prep strategies

Intermittent fasting

Supplementation and medication interactions

Sleep and recovery

Q: What if I already know all this stuff? A:

Then you must run a fantastically successful nutrition coaching business!

Seriously…

The truth is that you may “know” many of the skills we teach, but don’t implement them as well or as consistently as you would like.

And that’s OK.

That’s why we practice, every day.

We only ask that you have a growth mindset. Be open to learning, challenge, experimentation, development and feedback.

Be coachable. Learn what it’s like to be in the client’s shoes.

Show up with an open mind, be receptive, and entertain the possibility that you may not be a rockstar just yet. (Or that you are a rockstar but, that rockstars still have room for improvement too).

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  Q: What qualifies you to teach a course / offer a certification like this? A:

Well, for one, I have pretty vast exposure to almost every aspect of fitness and nutrition. I’ve been:

A student of nutrition, going on to complete my Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario.

A teacher of nutrition at the University of Texas, Eastern Michigan University, and the University of Western Ontario.

A competitive physique athlete, winning the Mr. Jr. USA title in 1995.

A personal trainer, running a successful training business in Miami.

A researcher with studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

An author of over half a dozen nutrition books and hundreds of articles in magazines like Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and more.

A consultant to companies like Nike, Equinox and Titleist.

A nutrition coach to thousands of everyday people and quite a few pro athletes and Olympic gold medalists.

So apart from being qualified academically, I think I have a pretty unique perspective—one that’s very well-suited to teaching this material, especially to coaches.

I’ve seen the field of nutrition from more angles, both personally and professionally, than almost anyone else teaching nutrition today.

In addition, I’ve written chapters for other nutrition textbooks, I’ve created Masters-level university courses on sport nutrition, and I’ve created nutrition certification material for other certifying bodies.

So I have quite a bit of experience creating academic course material.

And I’m just one person. Our Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification program was created by a team of experts, including:

Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon, a specialist in adult education / curriculum design and creator of our Precision Nutrition Coaching program.

Brian St. Pierre, RD, MSc, a specialist in performance nutrition and consultant to pro athletes.

Most of all, we’re qualified to teach this because we’ve used and tested this very system extensively with our own clients and coaches here at Precision Nutrition.

Remember: Precision Nutrition isn’t just a certification company.

Over the past 15 years, through our Precision Nutrition Coaching system, we’ve been quietly conducting the largest body transformation research project in the world.

We’ve had over 100,000 clients go through our nutrition coaching curriculum, doing what is essentially a total exercise, nutrition and lifestyle intervention.

The purpose of this coaching is simple: to help people lose fat, gain lean mass where needed, and completely transform their bodies, health, and lives.

Now, here’s the thing: Since the entire program is online, we’re able to collect data on everything. And I mean everything.

Because we don’t see clients in person, we can’t “eyeball” things. We need data. So we have detailed psychometric (personality) profiles on our clients. We track compliance and every measurable and relevant behavior. And, of course, we regularly collect photos and monitor body composition and performance outcomes.

And as a result of this rigorous data collection, I’m guessing that we know, better than almost anyone else in the world, what makes great coaches, and what helps clients change their bodies and lives.

Now, remember, I’m not talking about what we think is correlated to success. I’m talking about what we absolutely know is correlated with success. Success here meaning our clients know and understand what to do. And they do it. Consistently. They improve their body composition, health, performance, and quality of life.

Success here also means our coaches perform at a high level. It means they’re continually training themselves, developing professionally, and refining their coaching skills.

Q: Why is coaching psychology such a big deal to you guys? A:

Quite simply: The body follows what the mind and emotions do.

Imagine a client who feels:

motivated

empowered and inspired

action-oriented and able to keep moving forward

clear on next steps

relaxed and confident

committed to and fully aligned with the goals of the program

flexible, creative, and problem-solving

open and receptive to growth and development

self-compassionate and self-encouraging

proactive and strategic

focused and able to prioritize

calm, trusting and relaxed

positive

Heck, imagine being a coach who feels that way!

This is what sports psychologists have sometimes called “the inner game”.

Change the mind and emotions, change the body.

Coaching psychology gives us specific tools and techniques for helping our clients change… and feel great about it.

This isn’t your Freud or lab-rat-running-mazes psychology though. It’s real-world stuff.

No matter who or what you encounter in your coaching practice, wouldn’t it be nice to feel like you have a clear plan and a system for working with it?

(And ideally, that you yourself feel calm and confident in the process?)

That’s the power of practicing coaching psychology.

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  Q: Do I need to have a university degree to become certified? A:

No. We assume no prior knowledge of biology, chemistry, psychology etc., and so we don’t require a university degree.

Now, if you struggled in school, expect this certification to be challenging.

We ask that you be willing to work on your basic skills of reading, writing, communication, self-organization, and time management.

We’ll also ask you to stretch your learning comfort zone. You’ll probably feel a bit challenged at some point in this program.

However, we offer mentorship and guidance. If you’re willing to show up and give it your best shot and work hard, then we’re here to help.

Q: What's the time commitment? A:

We ask that students consistently set aside about 5 hours per week for Level 2 coursework.

You won’t always use that much time, and to some degree the schedule is flexible (i.e. you don’t have to show up for class at 9am), but you definitely won’t want to rush through your daily lessons and practices.

Plus, you’ll be working through some complex case studies, doing research, studying for quizzes, and reflecting on feedback from your coach.

These things take focus, cognitive work, and mental presence.

We suggest you give them the time, energy, and attention they—and you—deserve.

And we suggest you think of this time as an investment in you and your professional development, rather than a “cost”.

Q: What results can I expect when applying what I learn in the Master Class? A:

For more on the kinds of results you can expect, check out this video:

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  Q: What advice will someone be able to offer clients after completing the course? A:

That’s a great question and one we cover in depth in the course.

Health and fitness professionals are allowed to make nutrition recommendations to otherwise healthy clients. So even without the Precision Nutrition Level 1 or Level 2 Certification, you can make nutrition recommendations.

What we’re offering is a much better system for making those recommendations.

At the same time, while Level 2 explores many topics related to health and physiology, it doesn’t give you the credentials to give nutrition advice to treat or cure disease. That’s Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT—and you have to be a registered dietitian or medical doctor to offer it.

Q: Will you also give me business advice? A:

This is not a business development course.

We won’t talk about specifics like which software is best for managing clients, how to resolve employee disputes, or how to do your bookkeeping.

However, we do help you explore how to tailor your professional services and business so that they match your unique coaching superpowers, values, and priorities.

We also give you access to a group of other Level 2 students who are going through the program with you. This is unprecedented access to a network of engaged, like-minded elite coaches from all over the world.

No matter how clever you are at marketing or accounting, fundamentally you have to offer a great product: your coaching services.

And of course, you’ll continue to be listed on Precision Nutrition’s Certified Professionals directory page.

Q: Am I guaranteed to make money? What's my ROI? A:

We guarantee that the Level 2 Master Class will be one of the best coaching experiences of your life. Which is why we offer such a generous refund policy. But there’s no guarantee that the Level 2 Certification program will make you money.

Of course, many people do make more money after graduating from the Level 2 Certification, because they put what they learn into practice, every day, over and over and over.

In fact, our research has shown that the average Precision Nutrition Level 2 coach:

gets more clients vs. the average Level 1 coach,

retains more clients vs. the average Level 1 coach,

gets better results with those clients, and

reports more satisfaction in their coaching practice.

Indeed, as amazing as our Level 1 certified coaches are, recent ProCoach data with over 100,000 clients shows that Level 2 certified coaches have 10 times (!) the retention vs. Level 1 coaches.

Commit to coaching mastery and you’ll become a better coach who attracts more clients, keeps the clients you do have, and encourages those clients to refer their friends.

Q: What are other people saying about the program? A:

The feedback on the Level 2 Certification has been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s a sampling:

“I find that I am becoming equipped to coach clients from all different walks of life. This isn’t ‘surface’ coaching, it gets to the core of human nature, habits, and emotion. Best thing I’ve done for myself as a coach thus far.” —Michelle Mobley Simpson

“PN2 will teach you how to mobilize your personal strengths in ways that will place you among the elite in your field. The program’s coaches are fantastic resources, providing spot-on insights, valuable information, and just the right touch of supportive mentoring.” —Zoe Georgas Johnson

“This course has made me realize that there is no end to the skills and knowledge that can be acquired to make yourself better. These concepts are ones that you can read in the morning and use them in the afternoon.” —Keith Countess

“With 9 years under my belt as a coach, I expected to learn from this course, but not to the extent I have. I have had long-held beliefs challenged and had to reexamine some of my own priorities, making me a better coach and person through increased knowledge and a supportive system.” —Bronwyn Adams-Hooper

And, in case you missed the video above:

Precision Nutrition co-founder Dr. John Berardi gives you a sneak peek at the Level 2 Certification. (Plus, industry leaders share their thoughts on the program).

  Want to learn even more? Join the VIP List Today

  Q: When does the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class begin? A:

The next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Program begins on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019. And there won’t be another one until April 2020.

We’re using a cohort (group) model to accept registrations: The program begins on a specific day, everyone starts at the same time, and group size is limited.

Q: How do I increase my chances of getting a spot in the next Level 2 Master Class group? A:

To get an early bird chance at registration—because the program does usually sell out within 24 hours—please sign up for the

VIP list below.

We’ll send you a special link 24 hours before the general public and that’ll increase your chances of getting a spot.

Q: What's the special discount I've heard about? A:

If you’re on the

VIP list below and enroll for the program before the general registration opens, you’ll save up to 37% off the cost of the Level 2 Certification program.

The general public price is $349 USD per month for 12 months. However, if you’re on the

VIP list and sign up on the presale day, you’ll get the chance to register for only $262.50 USD per month or a one-time payment of $2,625 USD – up to 37% savings.

Q: Is there a guarantee? A:

Yes there is, and it’s simple.

This coaching program will change your business and possibly your life. If it doesn’t, it’s free.

Here’s how it works.

Show up and do your lessons/practices at least 75% of the time.

Complete at least 75% of the case studies and quizzes.

Finish out the full year of coaching.

At the end, if you don’t think it was hands down, the best coaching experience of your life, we’ll write you a check for every penny you spent and you’ll be on your way, no questions asked.

In short, do what we ask. Follow the program. And, when it’s done, you get to decide whether we did a good job. Simple as that.

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  Q: What about recertification? A:

Once you’ve finished the Level 2 Certification Master Class, you’re a PN’er for life. That means two things.

You’ll never need to re-certify for the PN Level 2 Certification.

You’ll never need to re-certify for the PN Level 1 Certification.

Q: I'm currently enrolled in L1 but haven't completed it yet. Can I still sign up for L2? A:

Yes, you can. Although, we do prefer you complete the Level 1 program before enrolling in Level 2. With that said, it’s ultimately up to you.

Q: Can I earn CEUs from my personal training organization with this program? A:

Most likely. The curriculum is pre-qualified for CEUs with the following organizations:

ACE (2.0 CECs)

ACSM (20 CECs)

AFAA (1.9 CEUs)

CDR (20 CEPUs)

CPTN (14 CECs)

NASM (1.9 CEUs)

PTA Global (24 CECs)

This means that, if you are certified by any of the groups listed above, CEUs are guaranteed upon successful completion of the course.

I should also note that a host of additional organizations accept our course on a one-off basis. For these, graduates from our program submit a summary of the course and their certificate for review.

Note: We’re also in the process of qualifying for CEUs with a select number of other international organizations.

Q: How can people find out more? A:

To learn more about the course, and to get on the Level 2 Certification

VIP list, which gives you a chance to register early, 24 hours before the general public, sign up below.

Once you’re on the list, we’ll follow up with more information about the program.

Interested? Add your name to the 

VIP list. You’ll save up to 37% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class on Wednesday, October 2nd.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following

VIP list which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to get started and ready to gain mastery in their coaching practice. So we’re offering a discount of up to 37% off the general price when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the PN Master Class twice per year. Due to high demand and a very limited number of spots, we expect it to sell out fast. But when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready to take the next step in becoming a world-class coach, we’re ready to share our knowledge and help you master the art of coaching.

The post

The Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class: Frequently Asked Questions. appeared first on Precision Nutrition. from Blog – Precision Nutrition https://ift.tt/2pnrqCP via IFTTT https://ift.tt/2u2sWgp

[alliancerecruitmentmpany]

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Riyadh Recruitment Agencies -  Common Interview Questions And Answers For Pupils

The most powerful networkers I have met learned the art of genuinely helping still others. This art is called many things; in Business Network International ("BNI") they call it "givers gain." This is a very important concept if you undoubtedly want to obtain the most from the networking and day-to-day lifestyle. While helping others is an obvious key to success, many networkers aren't very aware how well they keep the ratio between their giving and acquire. Many are downright selfish.

18. Learn about what is occurring in your industry and related industry. Even in boom economies, businesses fail regarding any multitude of reasons. Whenever a company goes broke, every employees need new employment.

Employers may wish for to be sure of a job candidate's cope with. This may be important for various reasons. Clients may be seen with little notice, and employers want answered that slowed because of smaller live past the boundary away. Once the check is done, there'll be no doubt your geographical area.

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Recruitment Companies In Riyadh -   Hire our Riyadh recruitment agencies to get best services

Believe it or not, having career skills consists of being allowed to prioritize well. You need to know what is collection of socket wrenches to do now exactly what can put off. If you are not able to prioritize your jobs, definitely will be putting things off trying determine out a person should do first, second, etc. You must be wanting to determine what's the substantial thing in regards to the list and work your journey down.

When I explain this to hiring candidate, they often ask, "What if I'm just attain a great morning character? Couldn't I come in late and stay later during the night?" My answer is "Absolutely always." Showing up early indicates . anxiety. Staying late indicates disorganization.

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Let family, friends and former colleagues know an individual are hunting for a new position. They might know a person that knows the person.Often this is the most effective way to obtain your name out right there. Knowing someone and being your past right place at the time is really a legitimate and popular to finding the most current job.

Think within the last time you changed jobs. Elements all prefer to believe that hit ground level running fast, most of us took period for assimilate into the new job, to during work gets done, from what is which explains not acceptable along having a myriad of other concerns that pop up in a new, fast growing non-profit.

Do not make blunder of using only one or two recruiting methods. Recruiting is yet another numbers game so use every recruiting method may get. Make recruiting an ongoing priority action. If you use a variety of recruiting strategies and create strong recruiting materials plus it really can attract great candidates, there is the tightest labor locations.

Many organizations need an uniform hiring process and basic. After all, teens will find out from doing something they love. Because I know this, I look for possible employees everywhere I'm going.

Job seekers for public realtions jobs are arranging to put themselves in high-profile places. Employers will want to adopt the time for do record checks on anyone they are serious about hiring. Situations take good care of that roadblock before referring up.

How can build your market? A great opportunity to introduce your 30/60/90-day sales plan, which you create out from your research from the company and the position. It is a personal "to do" list for exactly what you'll do in your first 4 months of employment to learn your job, learn your customers, and make your market to increase sales negotiation.

So notice you complete? Figure out what companies are hiring. They will have their postings prominently displayed on Monster, CareerBuilder, Hotjobs, and thus. They'll also be participating ultimately local job fairs. A person have understood the companies, be practical. Learn about the businesses on the web, specific website, press releases, and much more.

You can network Around the world. Wherever there are people, there's the ability. Don't be afraid to ask your friends, colleagues, and competitors about people who might thought of a good fit for organization. You will feel special you spent some time working.

To give you a more clear idea let's take an in payroll service called Canopy HR Strategies. This company offers a payroll solution not only covers payroll processing, but also covers HR management. They have an online program that lets employers handle everything HR related from writing job descriptions to categorizing hiring candidate and tracking them and then once hired the information can be easily uploaded in the payroll system without re-keying all information. You can create templates to standardize processes every step of the way so ANYONE works with the HR functions of the company.

People within many cases are surprised to see that I require intellect in employees at every level for the company, besides management. But don't forget that each single employee you have is an "ambassador" for you, an instantaneous reflection folks. And a few point time or another, they will speak to all of your customers, your competitors, also as your industry associates.

Make sure you create a great resume to demonstrate to. If you don't understand how to make one, ask a professor or a comedian member easiest way. You can also in order to the internet for good tips. Anyone have are still in college, see if there is a class you can take on developing a good resume. I took an Advanced Writing class where we spent a full section regarding how to create a good looking resume. Is actually usually extremely important that you create it standout off their resumes. Become a success look neat and professional.

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[earlyninja]

RE: Some thoughts (and advice) for EarlyNinja

Here is our message regarding the points highlighted by Mike Bithell (http://mikebithell.tumblr.com/post/156352150437/some-thoughts-and-advice-for-earlyninja). At this point, we believe that the last thing we can do to end this witch hunt is to be blunt and give the clearest answers possible.

You’re overestimating your service’s value to a dev. 15%. Really? You advertise this as half of competitor platforms. Let’s put aside that these platforms provide clients and hardware (your roadmap lists Q4 2017 as a hopeful date for a client, which seems optimistic, and will presumably not be as feature rich as GOG or Steam at launch). On a purely marketing level, do you honestly think you can bring a game on your service even 1% of the eyeballs of such a competitor?

Steam is not a competitor. Perhaps this wasn’t clear in the Kickstater campaign page. Developers will have both (or even more) streams of revenue, as we do not impose exclusivity. Do you really think that we’re arrogant enough to come up and stand against a giant like Steam? Steam is not our competitor, it is instead a driving force to strive for better. In this light, us charging 15% for the service is not an overestimation. Why would a developer discard an additional stream of revenue (with higher overall income) when they can also prove to the gaming community that they can abide to their own milestones? There is no need for us to mention developers that have not followed their own milestones... and it’s the consumer who pay that price. 

I know, the sensei are where your value lies this is where, and I don’t wish to be rude, I worry that your team is unfamiliar with the existing games business. You’re describing someone who looks after a project and gives feedback to the team on how things are going externally. So a publisher side producer meets community manager. There’s a number of issues with that. First, experience. If I work with a publisher, I expect my producer to have experience and wisdom, having shipped a number of products. That’s an expensive person for you to hire (spoilers, you might get two for a year on this kickstarter amount, if you pay them very badly). Second, That producer is not someone I pay for, they are the publisher’s insurance on their investment in my game, and part of their running costs. Selling a producer to a game company as added value is like charging me for the plate in a restaurant: I accept that at least part of my bill goes towards crockery maintenance, but I sort of expect a plate regardless of if its being used as a selling point. 

Senseis are not figures that replace a publisher. They have never been that. They are consultants that report information, mediate the conversation between EarlyNinja and the dev and provide project management consultancy when needed. Their formation is not covered in the Kickstarter and will not be until (if) successful funding, but rest assured that Senseis will be individuals highly proficient in project management and communication (there are people that actually hire people of this sort, we include this in our “absurd” 15%). 

You’re using copyrighted materials and other people’s stuff to promote yourselves without permission you have grabbed a bunch of art from games you don’t own, and are using it in an attempt to get paid. I’d think you were being nefarious and picking on defenseless indies if I didn’t see Ubisoft IP on your mockups. That shows a lack of understanding on your part. No amount of caveats and small print about voting is going to make that legally or creatively ok. Stop it. I’ve seen devs tweeting you requests to stop using their stuff, your business will require good, trusting relationships with devs, this isn’t a good start.

We already released a blog post on this and we have nothing else to state in this regard. The only thing we can say is that all we wanted to do was to gather feedback from gamers, that’s it.

Ditto on youtubers you’re citing some pretty big names there… did you get permission? It’s considered a little rude to even use review quotes to sell a game without an OK first, but here you’re grabbing soundbites from two or three years back which on the surface look like endorsements. Youtubers are going to be a big part of your business, hell, they’re a big part of all our businesses now. Using their likenesses / avatars and logos without permission might not be a great idea.

We reported the quotes from YouTubers because they served as insipration for EarlyNinja's model. As above, we never wanted to hint that they endorse our model, rather the fact that early access is broken. 

Holding milestone payments is one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense to a fan of games who’s never made one, and I suspect is the idea this was built around. Except it doesn’t achieve the outcomes you state. Crucially, milestone payments are front loaded, because in real game dev, the most important thing in the world (besides making something awesome) is steady cash flow. Even a month with no cash coming in can kill a team *gestures to every story about a studio shut down ever*.

Here is a passage from our internal documentation:

If a developer misses the delivery of a milestone that is equal to the double of the time set for the delivery of the same or if a developer does not meet two milestones (from the previous one, taking into account time shift requests), then players will be eligible for a refund.

The communication between developer and platform (Sensei): Our Sensei will periodically try to communicate with the developers to monitor their progress with the development. If developers are unavailable to communicate and do not reach back to the Sensei in a brief period of time (we are not talking about days…but not months either), then the Sensei can choose to put the game into “Zombie” 

Games in Zombie Mode will be refundable and will be highlighted in the store for the inactivity of their developers.  The refundable state is not reversible. The refundable state is therefore not automatically triggered and users can choose to keep the game in their library even it is in refundable state.

We did not think this level of detail was necessary in the Kickstarter page (which is long enough as it is), but apparently it is. This is not ransom. This is a system build to protect the consumer in case something goes wrong with the development, and we all know that gamers were scammed by early access developers. Sorry if a few messed up the whole. This simply prevents it and the same time allows a hard-working developer to stand out from the clutter of the market (can you do this in greenlight without any marketing activity?).

The point is that an individual developing a game is also an entrepreneur. It is true that EarlyNinja’s team does not have specific background in game development, but we can boast great successes in digital and media marketing (and a very vast knowledge as gamers). For this reason, we believe one of the reasons why EA has its issues is because there is great coding knowledge but limited resources and time. And this is where management skills can come in hand.

Milestones work pre-release and in private because there is room for both parties to work together, adjusting plans, so that a game actually comes out the other end. Publishers don’t generally use milestones as ransoms, because it’s in their best interest to get a game out at the budget planned for. Your system doesn’t encourage that, you are genuinely asking a studio to hand you the power to shut down their production immediately.

We are no publishers, but we aim to work closely to developers to ensure that their product has the maximum potential at launch. How do we do this? Through the Sensei.

Have you spoken to a lawyer about the contracts? No really, this is a big one. Your milestones are going to have to be maddeningly specific if you want to cut a project off from their cash, or you’re going to have to make the contract favor you so much as to be genuinely predatory. Assuming good faith and a genuine desire to treat devs well, you’re going to have to put together some massive contracts, and each dev is going to have to get quite a bit of legal aid to parse and commit to what you’re asking for. That’s going to cost them. Good news for industry lawyers though ;) … also consider the complexity of international deals.

All of our documentation is perfectly fine from the legal standpoint and we have dev contracts ready to be signed if you are interested. EDIT: to be clear, we are referring to the contracts that we would be signed from developers in case they’d want to join EN.

Is your price going up once you have a client? So, it’s 15% right now, and I give you steam keys. A bad deal for me, but let’s say I do it.. I think you’re worth that cost. I give 15% to you. Once you have your own client, your value to me goes up, because now you’re providing all those awesome services. Willing to commit to keeping at that price point?

Steam key integration is work in progress and there’s nothing to speak about, as it does not even pertain to our current funding goal. The price charged from EN will never vary in this respect. 

None of this makes early access games better. Not even a little bit. Right now, shitty early access games are caught and mocked very, very quickly. They die on the vine because the PC community is a beautifully communicative lot. That’s good for consumers, because it’s genuinely tough to buy something without knowing it’s bad (and refunds can be sought if a game sucks.. a fact you kinda don’t mention anywhere). Projects fail or succeed quickly, and everyone moves on.

Yes, trash EA games are mocked and taken care of quite quickly, but that doesn’t mean gamers won’t be throwing their money in the toilet during their selling time. About the refund policy, EN’s refund policy is explained in the reply regarding milestones. The only way a user will ever get a full refund is when he requests it during the first 15 days from purchase. Out of curiosity... what are Steam’s refund policies?

I don’t think you’re bad people, you all look lovely in your team photo, but this idea seems riddled with misunderstandings about game production, and some ill thought out choices in terms of promotion. I’d encourage you to step back, readdress some of the core ideas that got you here, and relaunch with something badass that the development community and gamers can really get behind. Those of us who work hard to make great games (and occasionally succeed) will never shy away from a service that genuinely helps us to do so :)

Thank you for your kind words. We are looking for constructive feedback to help this project come to life. We believe in it and we’ve worked hard for it and we remain open to all suggestions. Feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in conversating with us. 

[guidetoenjoy-blog]

Departing The "Exclusive" Life-style -- Regaining Farm-Family Values Inside A Substantial-Technician Planet

New Post has been published on https://entertainmentguideto.com/entertainment-news/departing-the-exclusive-life-style-regaining-farm-family-values-inside-a-substantial-technician-planet/

Departing The "Exclusive" Life-style -- Regaining Farm-Family Values Inside A Substantial-Technician Planet

Within a arena of lengthening commutes, for a longer time workweeks, and-stress, gridlocked suburban sprawl, we could frequently speculate in regards to the undeclared “ideals” that happen to be inspiring us to reside the way you do (and the way to regain on the right track).

If we get ourselves envying the gleaming new SUV in the next lane around, or even the larger residence a colleague has just bought, or the exclusive school educational costs the neighbours is able to afford, it might assist us to stand rear and get ourself about the “unique” way of life that so many of us often yearn for, and also the sacrifices in family membersjoy and togetherness, and fulfillment the “distinctive” way of life needs.

Certainly, after a little imagined about the business-offs — pollution, uncontrolled materialism, rootless surf of folks ebbing and streaming about us and our children — you may properly conclude that the “unique suburban lifestyle” everyone is pursuing is actually whatever we have come to contact the Unique suburban way of living: Double Earnings Aiming to thrill Neighborhood friends and Co-personnel but Tormented by Improving Vexation and Emptiness.

With this thought, possibly rather than looking to live the special way of living, we ought to be attempting to depart the exclusive life-style.

TELEWORK & FARM-FAMILY Principles

It’s one of the wonderful ironies of the substantial-technician entire world: We leave our modest farms and municipalities — giving up loved onesdaily life and roots, and healthier values — to resolve in sprawling suburbs close to modern technology-empowered jobs, and today technology is allowing us to go back to small farms and communities, and uncover the durability and joy of household and local community ties.

How is this happening? Digital function. With all the distributed from the Online and broadband internet telecommunications, coinciding using the solid growth and development of outsourcing work, it’s being simpler and much easier to stay home and earn a decent dwelling doing intriguing, legitimate job. No longer must both parents inside a household travel for an office. (It may help put stuff in standpoint by given that job is not a “spot,” but a task.) In fact, as far-fetched as it sounds, it’s now feasible for both parents — depending on their qualifications, needless to say — to have away from the “gerbil tire” of suburban dwelling totally, and work at home basically everywhere they select.

Internet ASSISTANTS, Internet Experts, and JETBLUE AIRWAYS

The online function activity has come a long way because the birth from the Internet Assistant industry inside the mid-1990s. (Virtual Assistants, if you’re new to the term, are self-sufficient companies who supply business-help professional services to other small enterprises and impartial professionals via courier, cell phone, e mail and fax.) During those times, it was actually very unconventional to locate someone working from your home solely, and taking advantage of e mail along with other digital instruments to take care of work-flow from faraway clientele. It had been also unconventional to discover any person coping with apart from admin-oriented tasks.

Nowadays, nevertheless, virtual employees below many guises — Virtual Assistants, Internet Professionals, Digital Providers, Online Freelancers, and so forth. — supply well over 80 regions of skills, ranging from term finalizing and bookkeeping to great-finish business asking, psychotherapy as well as operative assistance. Even though many of these personnel are impartial building contractors, companies including JetBlue, Tourists and AIG now really require that numerous with their employees (mostly “contact middle” employees) work from your home practically on a regular basis.

WHO HIRES “Digital HELP”?

Since smaller businesses are usually a lot more prepared to embrace and innovate modify than are their larger sized, Lot of money 500 brethren (in whose processes and view come to be rigorous by way of age group and custom), virtually all Virtual Assistants assist young companies and solo professionals, like Agents, smaller sized law offices, import-export businesses, and skilled audio speakers. VAs could also offer one particular-to-one particular assist to elderly management in larger organizations (i.e., as a internet “professional administrator associate” to a Vice President).

Similarly, digital personnel with sophisticated diplomas (sometimes referred to as Virtual Professionals) often provide talking to solutions to more compact outfits and soloists (think of a marketing advisor, by way of example, informing an organization on its marketing or advertising and marketing strategies), and online employees in a professional niche market including treatment (e.g., an RN or MD) can also seek advice from to insurance companies, negligence law offices, and medical facilities.

A WIDENING Pattern

Most exciting to us is definitely the expanding we percieve in internet, genuine operate options overall, which correlates together with the distributed of broadband Internet along with the outsourcing work occurrence, when we key in our 9th year of research in this area. Now, we’re going through a larger selection of “online employee” positions (full time, house-structured function from a repaired employer), freelance job (e.g., proofreading, modifying, image art, and assist workdesk specialists, together with the traditional Web site design jobs), and internet teaching roles (group length and colleges learning institutions, for example), plus the online teaching of men and women (basic college or higher).

Equally outstanding is definitely the appearance of the Craigs list “mompreneurs,” as in depth in a article in the June 7, 2004, matter of Business Week (“The Increase of your Mompreneurs”). The article, which can be offered by the company Full week website (www.businessweek.com), provides the pursuing eyes-opening up stats:

“Today, more than 430,000 people the You.S. by itself — a lot more than are utilized globally by Common Electrical Co. (GE ) and Procter & Gamble mixed — generate an entire- or part-time dwelling on craigs list promoting anything from fashion to farm products, with the highest-vendors grossing around $1 million monthly.”

So How Exactly Does THIS AFFECT THE Family members?

These developments have substantial prospective outcomes for family, and not just in the field of homeschooling along with other choices, as you may speculate. First, ” the if at least one parent includes a expertise that may be “practically marketablen

* that mother or father may now stay at home using the young children

* the household may possibly certainly be free to go on to a far more family members-friendly spot

* the challenges of the two-commuter lifestyle — and their cost around the few and also the family — will be significantly reduced and

* the kids can understand important job-related training firsthand, from the best educator of most — a mother or father.

Exactly What Does The Near Future Keep?

Even though no one can anticipate the long run — and working from your home, be it as a freelancer or an staff, is certainly not for all — these developments do reveal that the older-style reasoning behind “telecommuting” (a staff member functioning in your own home several days each month) is progressively simply being overtaken with a significantly diverse version: full time, property-based online occupations, founded on the continuously-increasing flow of genuine digital-operate prospects. In addition, more development in interaction technologies will quickly allow genuine-time, great-definition interviews among internet workers in addition to their hirers (even mobile devices can currently obtain and transfer video clips), which can additional boost these styles.

Since digital personnel could be dependent just about anywhere, these tendencies carry apparent potential outcomes for rural regions and tiny-city lifestyle, and once again by extension, the family. The transient, anonymous suburban “residential areas” that now home over 80Percent of Us citizens (fundamentally, ghost cities by day, motels by nighttime) not any longer needed really the only option for functioning mothers and fathers as well as their family members. An online personnel can function from the village in countryside Kansas, an isle away Maine, a farm in Nebraska, or possibly a houseboat on a Minnesota lake.

In addition, along with the range of motion, the online staff member enjoys many substantial positive aspects, not the least which is price savings on automobile-connected expenditures. Maybe most essential is that he / she will not be kept in to neighborhood salary or any other financial problems. The little city in Kansas (whoever three-room houses, with emigration, have dropped to rock-base rates), can be a lovely place for a family whose boss or consumers reside in Manhattan, or London, uk, or Los Angeles, and even Kansas Area, where hourly service fees for organization solutions are far higher than they might be locally.

WHERE TO LEARN MORE

The right spot for additional details on internet possibilities is (needless to say) online. A number of Search engines lookups employing this sort of phrases as “telework,” “virtual assistant” and “free-lance” will point you from the right course. A trip to this sort of agencies as Staffcentrix (www.staffcentrix.com), the Overseas Online Assistants Relationship (the business relationship for VAs, at www.ivaa.org) and the International Telework Connection And Local authority or council (www.workingfromanywhere.org) will also assist fill the gaps.

Although it may go through like a “brave new community” at the beginning, the industry of digital effort is currently inhabited with a host of possible friends, supporters, and erstwhile innovators, who very long in the past paid out the frontier. While not without its threats, you might adequately find that it supports the keys to a lifestyle your family constantly considered may well only be a dream. But no matter the journey, we wish success to you and also to those that consider a lot of cues from the method that you live and what you decide to do — your youngsters.

[entergamingxp]

Syd Mead’s artistic legacy lives on through video games • Eurogamer.net

Having played a critical role in the production of 1982’s Blade Runner, illustrator Syd Mead was asked what title he’d like to appear as in the film’s end credits. “Visual Futurist” was his reply. Now there’s a job role you’d enjoy explaining to people at parties. Mead was a modern-day farseer, using his skills as an industrial designer and concept artist to build the worlds of tomorrow. What’s more, his visualisations have had an immeasurable impact on video games and the many artists working within the industry.

It’s often said that games draw from an awfully narrow set of cultural and artistic touchstones. Never mind seven basic plots, there are only really two: sad man fights robots and space marines shoot aliens. Blade Runner, Aliens, Blade Runner again. Syd Mead, who died just a few weeks ago on the cusp of the new year, aged 86, is the artist behind the dominating aesthetic of an entire industry. His energy, spirit, DNA, spread out across games like ashes thrown to the wind.

Syd Mead. 1933 – 2019.

In the 80s, Mead helped develop his fair share of theme parks and laser tag arenas, even a few casinos (pleasure hubs with as many flashing lights as any cyberpunk alley). It was always going to be natural for Mead to make the jump to games. He worked on a fair few: Cyber Speedway for the Sega Saturn was one of his earliest, making use of his famed vehicle-design skills. But he also returned to work on the lightcycles in Tron 2.0, designed the spaceships in Wing Commander 5, and even worked with Westwood Studios’ on their Blade Runner game. Much of this work was early concepting, sketching out hover cars and so on. Other times it was consultation. Most recently, Mead consulted on Aliens: Colonial Marines, fleshing out what he’d started all those years ago on the James Cameron film. In some respects, we’re unfortunate. An artist so talented, and willing to work in our space, who never found his ‘big’ game. But I don’t think it matters – there are so many indebted to him, shot through with his style, infected with his imagery.

Where to start with such an immense artistic legacy? Syd Mead always started with a car. His background was in industrial design, working for Ford Motor Company and later, US Steel. Mead was hired to make automobiles look desirable, to make the corporate cool. I can’t help but think of CD Project Red’s upcoming 2077, and how critical the car has been to its marketing. A lounging sportscar is the 20th Century’s addition to the romanticist image of the figure, back to the viewer, looking out to a wide horizon. There’s something fetishistic about 2077’s automobile – 80s stylishness crashing against Mead’s careful retrofitting – but it also seems necessary. The Night City needs a car the same way NeoTokyo needs its motorcycle.

Cyberpunk 2077.

Mead’s pin-up cars were sleek and cutting-edge, but aspirations always extended further. It was an era of techno-optimism, and Mead was just as apt at envisioning scenery as he was coupes. If the cars could hover and fly, then so too must the distant cities and spires silhouetted against the alien world’s setting suns. In fact, what was originally created to support the vehicles Mead designed, often overshadowed them.

Image from Syd Mead’s US Steel Series. Image credit Syd Mead.

Mead was originally hired to design just the vehicles for Blade Runner, but the automobile – his speciality – was an opportunity. It was how he opened portals to other times and places. While sketching out the film’s iconic “spinners”, Mead began to think bigger. A car was only as exciting as the surroundings mirrored in its polished surface. Only as cool as the landscape it cruised by. So important was “the flowing cascade of reflection”. “The chrome ignites with a hundred blue-white suns,” Mead once said. A rough sketch wasn’t enough. He needed a dark, rain-slicked street for the headlamps to illuminate. In the Polish cyberpunk game Observer, you begin your investigation in the cockpit of one such police car, the windscreen protection from the polluted downpour, the dashboard lit up like Times Square. It’s a prototypical Mead image.

Blade Runner 2019 Spinner interior view. Image credit Syd Mead.

With Blade Runner, Syd Mead transformed cold technical drawings into snapshots of urban night-life. A cold cityscape suddenly came to life, evoking the lonely realism of an Edward Hopper painting. The flashes of future Los Angeles we were gifted are striking: neo-noir with a Gothic tinge, abandoned apartments, streets draped with cables and wiring. Balanced against this was the bustle of the market stalls and shopfronts with their neon signs and cryptic symbols beaming out into the darkness, although only ever to make the shadows more dramatic. It’s quite a thing to invent the entire aesthetic of cyberpunk almost by accident. An entire genre brought to life because the taxi cabs looked a bit dull just sketched there on their own.

Film director Dennis Villeneuve once described Mead’s work as being “nostalgic”, which is a strange term to describe something futuristic. But the future is never just that, is it? As an actual point in time it’s fundamentally inscrutable. Instead, Mead traded in visions, and if, when looking at his depictions, we have “the strange sensation” of having been there, of having “strolled through” before, it’s because in a way we have. I’m reminded of a quote attributed to the grandfather of cyberpunk, William Gibson (who worked with Mead on the Johnny Mnemonic film): “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” We live among high-tech pockets, elements advanced ahead of their time, glimpses of things to come. This is the raw material with which futurists extrapolate.

Blade Runner city. Image credit Syd Mead.

Syd Mead’s material may have been the two years he spent in Okinawa, Japan. Or his visits to Hong Kong. Cybeprunk as a genre has long had an odd fascination with parts of Asia. Dawning globalisation combining with a kind of “Yellow Peril” and anxieties around “Tiger Economies”. The original Deus Ex game was partially set in Hong Kong, and the later Human Revolution in Hengsha. But even with this orientalism supposedly stripped, like in Mankind Divided’s Prague, the original influence is pervasive. Its Golem City is familiar. A salvaged sprawl of slum-living, criss-crossed with wires and ventilation shafts and crowded with lights, busy flea markets, exotic signage, more lights.

Blade Runner 2019 city design 04. Image credit Syd Mead.

While much of Mead’s imagery is ubiquitous in games – cyberpunk sprawl, alien-infested spaceship, even ringworlds – his work has also influenced a whole generation of game artists in a more indirect way. He’s inspired numerous video game world-builders, including Viktor Antonov, the architect of both Half-Life 2’s City 17 and the Dishonored series’ Dunwall. Antonov shares a background in industrial design, and much of his work also begins with vehicles – the Combine APC or the Dunwall Rail Car a jumping off point to explore larger fictional metropolises. With constant, solid, technical reference, naturally. Sci-fi is always speculative, but like Mead, Antonov was specifically hired to make made-up places seem plausible and feel authentic.

Concept art for Dishonored’s rail cars, designed by Viktor Antonov.

Much of Mead’s work was dark and industrial. Think of Aliens’ USS Sulaco, which Mead meticulously designed, inside and out. “Bristling with antennae,” as director James Cameron requested, the military vessel was a far cry from other sci-fi spaceships. Instead of improbably elegant or needlessly greebled like Star Trek and Star Wars, the Sulaco was highly engineered and purposeful. Inside, the tangle of pipes and mesh of grills and hatches – now a staple of the sci-fi interior – gave the impression of spatial depth. What skulked behind those walls? In games we see in that same dead space, lurking Necromorphs, or a sleuth of demons poised to jump out from behind hidden panels.

Mead is famous for his gritty dystopias, but Dennis Villeneuve suspects his universes are actually “fuelled by the strength of the optimism of the 50s”, when, at least in the West, war was behind us and capitalism entered into a new golden age off the back of technological and scientific innovations. Jet engines, computers, and the Apollo space programme. It was out of this background that Mead’s visions sprung – not so much the future as a collective dream, now evidently unrealised. A lost future. No wonder looking at some of his artworks feels like going back home.

Image from Syd Mead’s US Steel Series. Image credit Syd Mead.

Mead knew how to paint utopias too. His style – colourful, vivid, light, clean, precise – channelled the speed and positivity of the supersonic age. The game series that probably most explicitly draws from him is Mass Effect. BioWare’s art director Derek Watts has talked about how, in their search for a visual identity, the team looked at Mead’s early, utopian, work, with its distinct geometric curves and exciting optimism. Like the aircrafts that whoosh across Mead’s blue skies, jet-trails in their wake, Mass Effect is filled with gentle curves and projections that sell the speed, propulsion and positivity of its world.

Mass Effect Citadel.

The Mako rover, the costumes and visors, the hazy clubs with their dancing holograms, the Citadel and its ring-like structure that recall those early US Steel illustrations. That sense of wonder as you land on a planet – light-years from any earthly dystopia. Instead, we get optimism radiating from distant skyscrapers set against pastel skies.

“Their sensuality and beauty offer such a magnificent contrast with the brutality of our reality,” Villeneuve says on Mead’s early work. The director believes we’re in desperate need of utopias now. It’s hard to disagree with this assessment, although I think what’s so special about Mead’s work is the range – his ability to paint in vastly different shades. It’s no wonder we see so many flashes of Mead’s brilliant influence in games. Every time we land on a new planet, or stare up at a sublime skybox or a looming megastructure. When we zoom by in a rocketship, a bike, a car. It’s hard to shake the visions of someone whose job is to see into the future.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/syd-meads-artistic-legacy-lives-on-through-video-games-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syd-meads-artistic-legacy-lives-on-through-video-games-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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Carpet Cleaning Drake, CO | Carpet Cleaner Services Company

Expert Carpet Cleaning Services in Drake, CO

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Carpets add to creating a wonderful environment inside of a family home keeping you snug. Which is precisely why they are more than a basic element of the property. We understand, a lot more than most, just how devastating a stubborn stain or several years of discoloring can be for your carpet. Longmont Carpet Cleaning is very pleased to supply outstanding and high quality in Drake packages. Our team of professionals is delighted to work on any task despite the sort and size. Helping to rehabilitate your carpets making sure that they appear as great as they did the day you had them installed.  

The Reasons why to Hire Us to Clean Your Carpets When You're Ready

Our group of cleaning professionals have been working together with residents in Drake for over two decades. And our technicians get your carpets and rugs as clean as possible each and every time. Our workers only use advanced gear, high-powered cleaning materials, and pretty much the very best cleaning options in the industry. To guarantee that the floors and carpets come across as great as they did when they were originally fitted in your family home. We're very aware that dealing with a messy carpet in your property will certainly be upsetting. So we take care and attention of your private information. If you are looking for a practical, cost effective service run by an organization who wants nothing more than to provide your carpets a good cleaning. And so they look like they have been properly refreshed – then you're in the proper place.

You can actually use our list lower down to pick the actual service which you are trying to look for across Drake.

Our Professional Services - How Our Staff Will Assist You - Carpet Cleaners in Drake

A particular thing that you'll really like is we have the most budget friendly rates in the area. Either you have chosen to make a reservation for our services online or by phone personally talking to one of our specialists. We will give you some of the most affordable rates you can possibly imagine. Reach us at (444) 444-4444. Our company don't believe in compromising our standards to offer cheap rates, instead, we have aced the art of providing both. Fantastic rates alongside high quality work! It is why our company is seen as the best cleaning service here in town. We frequently find out about just how demoralizing it is to wake-up, walk across your carpets, and find a mark that's as visibly noticeable as it really is difficult to eradicate. Have you got a nasty smear on your rug or carpet that you are coping with? And you're curious if it's possible to get rid of it? Or you could shake your head in despair as you look at your homes rugs that are tarnished and soiled. And ask yourself what the heck your neighbors might think about you. Our staff correct that! That said, it's easy to see why many people put off carpet cleaning. We're very pleased to assist you by using deep cleaning methods that you might have likely never heard of. We are delighted to help make your home's carpets look much better than they would have been in a few years. Working with commercial level cleaning chemicals plus skillful cleaning practices. This is how our people make this happen. For roughly twenty years we've offered residential carpet cleaning services for any one in the area, helping them to keep their home carpet completely clean and looking pristine. Our returning clients come back for a variety of reasons: we've got experienced techs, we use a large combination of present day strategies, and we work with the best machines available today - this allows us get rid of even the most difficult carpet grime, smells, and unhealthy bacteria, so your carpet comes back to perfect condition.

Which Packages Are On Offer for Cleaning Carpets?

We supply household clientele with several solutions for their family homes, so they will pick what will work best for their specific specifications. You can depend on our contractors to provide dirty spot treatment options, dirty stain removal services, and even complete deep steam cleaning to give your carpet that bright look that you would like them to get. The chemicals, cleaners, and tools which our team of professionals makes use of are the best inside the market. Figuring out the real specifics behind your cleaning needs is a top priority for us because we would like to exceed your expectations when our staff help you. Customers tend to assume that most carpet is similar, but there is a lot of difference in loop count, pile numbers, and size of fiber from one carpet to another. We sometimes need to change our deep cleaning approach. What works for one sort of customers carpet is not going to restore others. This is why we determine the most effective type of technique. And then use our experience and knowledge to select the most appropriate technique for your job. Longmont Carpet Cleaning is totally focused by client satisfaction. Why let your carpets remain soiled for much longer, when our business can assist you? It is good to know that our company complete the most thorough cleaning out there, but we always complete the job quite fast. Our aftercare programs will have your carpet looking refreshed and clean throughout the year. Call us right now to learn more about the programs that we supply or to arrange a no-cost quotation.

ABOUT US

Longmont Carpet Cleaning has been helping the local residents and businesses of Drake keep their carpets fresh, clean and looking perfect since 1999!

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Available 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.

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Carpet Cleaning Upholstery Cleaning Rug Cleaning Stain Removal Mattress Cleaning

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2101 Ken Pratt Blvd, Suite 206 Longmont, CO 80501 Tel: (444) 444-4444

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Original post: https://www.longmontcarpetcleaning.com/carpet-cleaning/drake/index.php

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Best Parking Lot Cleaning, Inc.

Seattle is famous for unique businesses that have shifted paradigmatic models in industries from technology to arts. An unassuming brother and sister team have brought that creative energy to effect transformative change in the typical business model of storm water management and an array of environmental management and maintenance services that are not typically operated in a single company. But, Seattle natives Rebecca Craig and her brother Richard Hamilton are not your average entrepreneurs in the storm sewer management industry. The track record of these young business partners is also not in the vicinity of average performance. First of all, the name isn’t even normal for the sewer industry: Best Parking Lot Cleaning, Inc. (BPLCI). It’s got nothing to do with storm drain water handling. But, it’s the business name the siblings inherited, along with their father’s business, when they were just teenagers. The business is obviously about more than its large liquid waste revenue channel. The company is also one of the premier Seattle street sweeping companies, offering a unique range of services between the two separate classes of environmental maintenance services. But, no marketer is likely to motivate the owners to change the name to anything more symbolic of the actual range of services they provide. They cheerfully shrug off that suggestion. They can afford to have a less-than flashy name, because their market position and their reputation are so well established that the name in the yellow triangle logo on their trucks means less to their network of customers and prospects at this point than the relationships that Rebecca and Richard and their professional team have built with them. The brother and sister have come a long way since the year their parents died only months apart, when Rebecca and Richard were just teenagers. They were faced with the forbidding challenge of sustaining and growing their family’s business, which had been operating since the mid-1970s. The two now stand looking back at the decades of economic and other obstacles they’ve overcome, and the unusual market demands and changes to which they’ve adapted. What a strange odyssey that journey must have been, especially in those earliest days¬—stepping into their parents’ shoes as mere youths, managing grown adults who were doing very serious and demanding work. At just 20 years of age, Rebecca was suddenly calling the shots in a predominately male industry that is prohibitively challenging and expensive for the vast majority of strong adults to even think about competing in. A couple of years later, at just 18 years of age, fresh out of high school, Richard came on board, and the two moved forward together, to beat all odds in the difficult business. The sibling management team is intensely driven. Their happy, casual demeanor is under-skirted with a clearly discernable laser focus on their business priorities. They joke that their method has been just to keep showing up and see what happens and that they’ve never exactly figured out what they’re doing. But, that humble, witty grace is actually the veritable packaging of a brand that has become a Seattle institution in a region where environmental issues from storm water to volcanic eruptions make their particular service sector a crucial one. The secret of the partnership’s almost 30-year success? It’s not a one-line answer. Let’s break it down:

Can Two Youths Make It In a World of Heavy-Equipment and Intense Responsibility? To back up a little, Richard’s and Rebecca’s dad, Randall Hamilton, opened the business over forty years ago and began running it while he continued working his regular day job. He started out sweeping and cleaning parking lots around the area, using a water truck. The business grew beyond his expectations, and some of the company’s current customers were among those Randall first served over four decades ago. In 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted, the City of Auburn made a public works contract with him. His business grew slowly to around a dozen or so service vehicles. Through the first six years or so after their parents’ deaths about 29 years ago, the kids, Richard and Rebecca, hired people to manage the business. They had seen their parents running it throughout their childhoods. They had even helped stuff some envelopes. But, they had no appreciable experience or qualifications when they decided to run it themselves. They did have more than just the blind confidence of youth driving them to take the reins. They actually expected some failures, but they reasoned that at least they could safely assume that nobody else would probably care about the success of their company than they would. So, it was off to the races. And, predictably, there was some amount of stumbling and falling here and there for a while. Now reflecting on their journey, Rebecca and Richard say that they’re kind of amazed that the company actually survived. By the time they stepped in to manage it, taxes were waiting to be paid, there was difficulty getting loan approvals, and other problems. The kids didn’t really know what to do. Richard says he had always been interested in working in the business and had always viewed it as a good opportunity for himself. Today, he says he’s glad not to have the student loan debt his friends all have. Rebecca agrees that, even with all of the pitfalls of entrepreneurship, it’s well worth it to be able to operate your own business. The business was slowly but steadily growing up to about 2010, when the recession hit. Rebecca remembers it as a dark time, “I didn’t think we were going to survive that. Sales fell 50%. But, we did survive and recover.” So, they’ve made it work. Or, at least that’s the closest thing to an expression of pride about their monumental accomplishment that you’ll pry from them. The Best organization currently has over 50 employees, including around 45 field service team members, five mechanics, and administrative staff managing scheduling and AP/AR, payroll, and other tasks. The company also employs two sales employees, an aggressive strategy for a company of its type and size. Rebecca and Richard also do sales as well as many other tasks common for small business owners in the industry. The business has a second location in Woodinville. Best’s excellent growth over the years under management by the sister and brother team bears out the soundness of their strategic operational model. The highly diversified services array offered by Best includes Storm Drain Cleaning, Catch Basin Cleaning, Pond Cleaning, Street Sweeping, Snow Plowing, and Parking Lot Cleaning. Rebecca explains some of these as extra services the company provides for customers who request them. Much of the company’s new business comes due to the team’s flexibility to offer services related to those that they’re delivering at any given site and time. The field service vehicles are equipped with cameras that detect problems inside catch basins while Best’s workers are servicing them. Those discoveries frequently indicate needs for other work to be done. Rebecca explains that there are also many kinds of service needs that are closely interrelated to those they provide, so that often some type of work must be done in order to make it possible to do other types. The Best team’s goal is always to provide customers with the help they need to get the necessary work done as conveniently and quickly as possible. About 50% of the company’s business is from storm drain cleaning (with the other half generated from street sweeping and other services). Around 75% of the company’s total revenues come from incoming calls with requests for service within 24 hours. Approximately 95% of Best’s work is within a 100-mile radius of their Seattle location. In the Seattle area, everything that washes into storm drains heads to the Puget Sound. Because those drain contents can’t be permitted to flow into the Sound, everything washing down into the storm drains must be cleared up quickly. So, a company like Best, that can provide rapid response, is in high demand in the market. In addition to providing fast response, Richard and Rebecca have always been strongly committed to fair pricing for their team’s work. This simple, but challenging combination of fast service delivery and fair prices has sustained and grown the business. The owners are proud to continue serving customers that their dad began his company with back in 1977. Rebecca attributes the company’s success simply to reputation and relationships built on basic business service consumer principles, “They know that about us. As long as we’re fair, they continue to call us.” She adds that there’s plenty of work to go around in the region, so that aggressive pricing isn’t necessary, even though she also points out that Seattle is a very competitive market.

So, What Do They Offer That’s So Special? All of the waste material collected from storm drains must be disposed of according to code. It cannot be simply dumped in a regular dumpster. One winning feature of Best’s services is that the company has its own waste disposal facility. So, the company offers customers everything necessary to ensure the smoothest possible cleanup and disposal process handled seamlessly. Best also provides waste tracking for customers. Tracking of waste is required, in order to ensure it’s being taken to an approved disposal facility. That’s something that customers are responsible for doing themselves, under the environmental requirements, as the parties generating the waste. Providing customers with tracking along with pick up and disposal is makes the entire process optimally efficient and convenient for them. The company does have another service location in Woodinville, which provides various roadwork services, but around 95% of Best’s work is done within a hundred miles of the Seattle main location. In addition to the company’s storm water clean out and street maintenance services, they’ve recently begun offering roll-off dumpster services. The owners anticipate significant growth from the dumpster revenue line. That makes Best’s diversification of services decidedly one of the most ambitious we’ve seen around the country.

How Do They Generate Business? After the forty years the business has been operating, Rebecca and Richard still find that there’s a need to stay active with sales. They say that well know it can only take one mistake to get yourself replaced with a few clicks or a phone call. However, Richard estimates that last year (2018), 90% of Best’s customers had received services from them during the year before (2017). That number, of course, speaks very well of the consistently strong quality of their team’s performance. In addition to their sales program, they also participate on some area websites where cities post jobs for contractors to bid on. (And, they use the standard logos on trucks and employees shirts and hats to make their company visible on jobsites and in the community.) Speaking of the community, Seattle is under heavy development, which is expected to continue for another eleven years (through 2030). Transportation is chaotic. Rebecca says their logistics have had to incorporate special routing to get through to customer locations, and time used for metro area travel can be so extreme that charges must be passed on to their customers to help offset costs of employees and vehicles spending so much time getting from point A to B through traffic. Yet another challenge to meeting commitments and controlling costs for their company and customers.

Overcoming Old and New Obstacles in Liquid Waste Businesses Recruiting and retaining good employees is an ongoing challenge across the liquid waste handling industry as well as in the sweeping industry, which Best also operates in. The business pays enormous amounts of overtime, due to the continual shortage of viable job candidates. The company provides a very competitive compensation package. We don’t want to be under any illusion. Our employees have to feed their families too. Offering good pay and benefits means that the company isn’t going to be the lowest bidder. But, the savvy owner/operators have a deep understanding of the long-term advantages of pricing commensurately with their service quality. They know how to avoid falling into the common perceptual trap of undercutting prices and thereby undermining their own potential for success. Best has employees who’ve been with the company for 25-30 years. Some have been running the same machinery for 20 years. Some specialize in specific services and are dedicated to specific customer accounts. Others are cross-functional staff who receive a wide range of types of training, to handle emergency response services. Rebecca also mentions that the absence of adequate, reasonably priced, industry-specific accounting software has risen up the charts of persistent problems. She notes that that’s a modern problem that seems especially weird to have in Seattle, the veritable tech innovation capital of the world. Certainly, a pesky massive ongoing employment market problem here and a nagging process-impacting tech problem there could never have been enough to stop the likes of the Rebecca and Richard, not even 30 years ago, when they were to become entrepreneurial kid superheroes. Surmounting challenges is what those two specialize in, so, no worries in Seattle. True to form, they credit their team, and they shy away from any personal accolades. They’re always for the team, always talking in terms of the team, always fixed on the care of the team. We won’t list all of the many compensation, performance incentive, team building, cultural development, employee engagement, employee satisfaction and exemplary hiring-quality processes that the company has in place. There are too many. We will have to let it be enough here to motivate us to strongly suggest to any employer in this industry who is operating with so much difficulty in employee retention that it is threatening the sustainability of the business, follow the example of this ownership pair—think team nurturing. The now seasoned business partners’ have proven that their long expressed aim toward maintaining continued slow, steady growth throughout the years was a solid strategy for long-term success in the industry. As for their entire service strategy, it appears to amount to helping people trust them and feel confident that they’re going to be provided with good service and fair billing. They’ve proven that that works to encourage people to call them again, and that retaining customers doesn’t really need to be more complicated than that.

http://www.americanliquidwaste.com/2019/04/spotlight/best-parking-lot-cleaning-inc/

from Septic Tank Pumping Pros https://septictankpumpingpros.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/best-parking-lot-cleaning-inc/