#the fact that the customization was at the start of the game was a godsend

[i-never-forgot]

So…I know I said I would finish the comic page next, but hEAR ME OUT—

I finally bought Violet :) I’ve got Gatito the Sprigatito (original, I know), Fresa the Tarountula, and Gawain the Ralts so far as I explore the zone on the way to the academy!

[alecmagnuslwb]

As the World Falls Down

Read on AO3

They’re holding hands when the world starts to fall.

One moment they’re happy twining their fingers together leaning against the bar and the next Traci behind the bar is screaming ripping her hands into the flesh of a costumer a few seats away. The other customers start to scramble while John and Zee jump into action.

It doesn’t take long for them to realize it’s the screens. They get Traci under control trapped in the back room when a costumer walks in unknowing of what’s just happened, he takes one look up at the tv behind them and he’s gone. Zatanna destroys their phones and the set before he’s even begun leaping over the bar at them.

They move fast portaling to anywhere they can, picking up survivors and trying desperately to get them somewhere safe. Weeks, months pass. Beloved heroes fall, unexpected heroes rise. Safe places become unsafe at a rate faster than they can keep up with.

Hearing about the garden in Gotham is a godsend. Poison Ivy becomes their biggest ally welcoming in everyone they find who’s just trying to survive.

They’re holding hands when Doctor Fate finds them and gives them a way out, a safe haven just for people like them. The strongest magic must survive he reasons with them, but they stay strong a united front. They’re not leaving, they’re not running away. This is their fight.

They’re holding hands when they hear the news about Diana, and then again when they hear the news about Clark. Losing Clark feels like the end of hope, like maybe there is no winning a war like this.

So they just hold each other’s hands a little tighter trying to seem strong, trying to seem like they both still see a future in this world.

The more people they save though, the more they believe the lie they tell themselves.

“Are you certain you don’t wish to stay for a few days?” Ivy says handing off the latest survivors John and Zatanna have brought to her to Harley for the tour.

Zatanna sighs fixing her ponytail and looking over her shoulder at John trading a box of thin mints he managed to find out there for a carton of cigarettes. She smiles, some things never change. She doesn’t even try to slyly comment about his smoking habit anymore, every day they step outside is a risk of death anymore, a few cigarettes are pretty much guaranteed not going to be the thing that kills him.

“Not tonight,” she says with a shake of her head grateful and a little sad. Ivy looks at her sadly, but holds her arms open, Zatanna stepping forward into the embrace easily. She never expected they’d be such good friends.

“Be safe out there my friend,” she says before pulling back. She opens her palm producing a small carnation plucking it from her hand and slipping it behind Zatanna’s ear.

“Buying my girl flowers?” John says as he walks over slipping the carton of cigarettes into his inner pocket. “Flirting with my girl yet again, Ive’s.”

Ivy shakes her head fondly producing another flower and pinning it to John’s lapel.

“There, even now,” she says. She steps back grabbing one of each of their hands squeezing them once before dropping them. “Gaia knows I’m not flirting with you, John.”

John and Zatanna chuckle as she glides away, far in the distance Harley waves shouting out a goodbye to them. John takes her hand.

“Ready luv?” he asks and she nods, bringing up a hand and drawing a portal in front of them. They step through hand in hand into the study of the House of Mystery.

The house isn’t what it once was.

No longer does it travel from place to place and its size has at least been cut in half, more like down to a third. They’re not sure if it’s the lack of magicians left, the general weariness of the world or the fact that it no longer has to accompany a host of their friends, but this is all there is now. A study, a bedroom and a kitchen are all that remains. It’s the closest to a physical standing home they’ll probably ever have again.

John presses a kiss to her head and slips away tossing his jacket onto the back of the elaborate deep red couch. He falls down onto it wearily rubbing at the back of his neck. It’s quiet in here, too quiet because they can hear the sounds of the anti-lifers groaning outside. The magical barrier they’re combined strengths set up a few hundred yards away from the house never falls, but the sound barrier Zatanna placed on it only lasts so long.

She closes her eyes focusing her energy on the barrier outside. “Teiuq eht esion,” she says and silence falls around them. She can’t do anything about the view, well she could but it feels like magic wasted when they’ve got curtains that work just fine, but the noise she can do something about.

She takes off her own jacket throwing it on top of John’s as she rounds the couch and settles beside him, his hand still rubbing at the back of his neck. She moves to her knees shooing his hand away and replacing it with her own her fingers working slowly into the muscles there.

John groans pleased as her fingers continue to move.

“Better?” she whispers and he nods turning his head and smiling at her. Her hand slips from his neck and she settles down close to him.

“We should do another sweep of San Francisco tomorrow, check in on Bobo, see if he’s found anyone else,” he sighs falling back into the couch pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. The action draws her attention to a long cut sliding up the length of his outer forearm the blood dried around it.

Zatanna’s heart stops for a moment. She grabs his arm inspecting it closer her eyes going a little wide. No, it can’t be. She can’t lose him. The touch has him tilting his head back her way and he notices the look in her eyes immediately.

“It was the fence,” he says reaching out his other arm, bringing his hand to the side of her face holding her gently. “It was just the fence when I was pulling those last two kids through earlier, that’s all.”

Zatanna starts to breathe again. She touches the end of the of the cut and drags her finger along it a spark of magic trailing along with her finger healing the cut and cleaning the blood away as she goes.

She strokes at the clean unmarred skin. One day a close call scratch isn’t going to be easily healed.

“I’m okay,” he says softly pulling her in close wrapping his arms around her. “We’re okay.”

Saving people gives her back some of that lost hope. The garden and the way Ivy and Harley, especially the usually exuberant Harley, always welcome her in gives her back some of that hope. And being here in the remnants of the house that her silly ass boyfriend won in a poker game that’s still standing despite everything that’s tried to take it down with his arms wrapped around her gives her hope.

And hope, even if it’s only in little flashes, is a hard thing to come by in their new world, so they hold hands as the world outside tries to make something more out of what little remains.  

[itsclydebitches]

I've never played WOW, but my friends into it. I might as well try. Any advice for someone who's never touched a MMO?

Oh, fun question! It’s actually hard for me to think of things I’d have wanted to know when starting out because I started playing MMOs around age... 9? So in some respects I grew up alongside the genre, rather than trying to learn it after the fact, but some things I’d highlight about WoW now is:

Don’t worry about your race/class. There is SO MUCH about the “right” and “wrong” way to create a character, but at the end of the day you should choose whatever interests and appeals to you most. The caveat to that is that picking a tank or a healer class will put a bit more responsibility on your shoulders  — whether you like it or not at times  — so just be aware of that. Some people like taking on a specific role, others (me) do not. There are also classes that are better suited to soloing as much of the game as possible, if that’s something you’re interested in. 

Regardless, you will have to play with others eventually. If your friends are already into WoW it sounds like you have a good community/potential guild to turn to, but I’d recommend waiting until you feel confident in playing your character before entering groups with strangers. Frankly, the WoW community can be pretty damn toxic. I’m no expert, but I’ve played it long enough to feel confident in my abilities and I’m still cursed out by pissed off dungeon groups if we wipe. Raids will expect you to have learned the fights via youtube prior to coming in and when many inevitably haven’t (because it’s a game and homework shouldn’t be required lol) they’ll start yelling too. PvP is just a mess of accusations and slurs, depending on how badly it’s going... so yeah. I don’t want to make it sound like WoW is made up of nothing but assholes, but there are enough to make an impression. It’s something to avoid if you’re not feeling up to it, but given how much of the later content requires working with others, wait until you’re geared, have a good handle on your class, and are in a good head space before diving in. Or stick to playing with friends. 

Speaking of friends, if you do want to play with them I’d recommend picking their faction (Horde or Alliance). That will allow you to visit each other in major cities, help with the same quests, queue up for activities together, etc. Though the story has moved away from the Horde vs. Alliance rivalry recently, the gameplay still very much divides them. 

Check out everything you can (without getting too overwhelmed!) WoW has a LOT going on and while very little is required, much of it is beneficial while also being easy to miss, just by virtue of there being so much to do. Pick up any quests you find, explore as much of the world as you can, talk to NPCs, save the loot you get, etc. You can always get rid of something  — drop a quest, destroy/sell an item  — but it’s a bummer if you just go and sell everything only to realize you actually needed all that stuff for something else. So go slow and check out your options before making decisions. 

To help with that, I recommend WoWhead and Icy Veins for info, or just good old-fashioned plugging the thing into google with “wow” next to it. How often do I look stuff up? Constantly. MMOs don’t have cheating culture the way a single-player game might (I mean, there’s absolutely cheating, just not in the same way), so don’t be afraid to just google anything and everything you want. The comment sections of a page are your best friend. Whereas the official description may give you an overwhelming amount of information you don’t actually need, player comments tend to focus on what others really want to know: here’s where to find this NPC, yes this quest is bugged, make sure you do X before Y, etc. WoW has become a lot more accessible over the years in terms of helping players figure things out, but it’s still confusing at times, so make use of any resource you please. 

Another “cheat” is to use addons. I’d recommend grabbing WoWMatrix which will allow you to (safely) download addons without any of the hassle of putting it in the correct folders. I’d recommend Bagnon (makes all your bags open as a single window so you can see all your loot at once), Bartender (allows you to customize your action bar), Coordinates (puts a tiny, movable coordinates button on your screen which is basically necessary at this point to find things. Players will almost always provide coordinates when giving locations), HandyNotes (provides lots of info on your map, like how you go about summoning a rare mob), Pawn (helps you compare gear to see what’s best for your class/specialization), and if you do any PvP, Healers Have to Die, or HHTD, which marks all healers with a cross so they’re easy to spot in battle (always kill healers first! :D). WoWMatrix is SUPER easy to use  — just search for the addons you want via the application, download them, delete if you don’t like ‘em, and open it once in a while to “Update All” — and the various addons you can use are an absolute godsend. They make playing the base game that much better. 

If you’re someone invested in the story side of games, lore is going to be very weird here, just because WoW is 16 years old and you’ll be entering into the 8th expansion. I’ve played WoW since it came out and I don’t know wtf is going on a lot of the time lol. So just roll with it, or if you’re interested, make use of wikis, the novels, etc. But it’s not the sort of game where you’re in trouble if you have no idea who this person is or what battle they’re talking about. Just accept whatever they want you to do and pick up the story wherever you came in. 

You’re going to die a lot. A lot, a lot. That’s fine, everyone does. Again, not the sort of game where that’s a problem. Just know that you can either return to your corpse (flying there as a ghost) or rez at the graveyard you appear in if you’re willing to deal with a bad debuff for like 10 minutes. Also, all armor has durability that goes down over time, but it goes down faster the more you die, so you’ll want to repair (finding an NPC with the anvil icon) soon afterwards. 

There’s lots of little things to learn like that: a brown bag icon means you can sell to this person, blue exclamation marks are quests that will reappear daily, items with a gray name (as opposed to white, green, blue, or purple) are pretty much just junk and you can always sell them... there’s a lot. Pick things up as you go, keeping in mind that you’ll be given SO MUCH INFORMATION and no, you’re not going to learn it all at once. Part of the fun is figuring stuff out and seeing yourself improve. Feel free to ask questions too (there’s a chat box and you can speak to an entire zone at once), though frankly it’s a 50/50 chance whether someone will give an actual answer, or just roast you lol 

If you ever want to play “seriously,” I’d kinda recommend learning WoW with keybinding early on  — AKA, creating button shortcuts for various spells/skills so your mouse is only used for camera movement and targeting, rather than wasting time looking for the action you want to click on. I say “kinda” because I don’t do that. At this point my click method is too ingrained in my muscle memory for anything else, but I recognize that I’m in the minority for saying that’s an “okay” way to play. 

Anything is okay though. Do whatever. I mean, the above aside, literally my best advice is to just throw yourself headfirst into the game, accept that you’re going to mess so much up, shrug, and have fun with it. I spent an hour of my life running a Tourghast floor today... and then wasn’t able to beat the final boss. So I “wasted” that time since I didn’t get the loot, but who cares? It was fun! Literally do whatever and don’t let any of the assholes get to you. Someone sends a message you don’t like? Block them (right click their name in the chat box to get the option). Group is making you uncomfortable? Leave. Don’t know how to do something? Google it! The best thing about an MMO is also the most overwhelming: it’s a whole world with (almost) endless options, so though that freedom is exciting, it also means you have to curate your own experience. It’s a bit like being here on tumblr. Figure out all the nuances at you own pace, lurk as long as you’d like, and if someone is being annoying, google how to keep them out of your inbox. 

Idk how helpful any of these tips are, but I hope you enjoy it!! 😊

[sage-nebula]

how do you like sword/shield so far? i'm a little leery of the whole reduced pokedex thing, but then again, they did this with black/white but worse. mostly, i'm intrigued by the rivals :D

The lack of a National Dex was not done with Black/White, and certainly not worse than it is here. While it’s true that only Unova pokémon were able to be found and caught in the wild in Black/White during the main story, once the main story was completed and the National Dex was obtained, players could transfer in any pokémon from Gen I to Gen IV. The ‘dex was never limited, and in fact in an interview given around that time, Masuda said that they would never limit the ‘dex because they didn’t want to cut people off from pokémon they loved the way they almost had to between Gen II and Gen III (before finding a way around it with FireRed/LeafGreen and the Colosseum/XD games). So no, the limited ‘dex that we have in Sword/Shield---and that we’re going to have in the foreseeable future---is not something they already did in Gen V. It’s brand new, and is unfortunately never going away.

That said, a brief rundown of my thoughts on Gen VIII so far, keeping in mind that I only have Sword and that I’m only just past the first gym (because I’m trying to get a Galar Ponyta through Surprise Trade and it’s not going well):

Pros: 

The trainer customization is already much better than it was in Sun/Moon, and I like that you have a clothes shop right in the first (real) town, so that you don’t have to be stuck with an ugly outfit for too long if you don’t want to be. I do wish that there was a genuinely purple color option for hair, but the fact that my trainer is at least wearing good clothes soothes the wound for me.

Being able to skip (some of) the tutorials was a GODSEND. I must’ve missed the way to skip the “how to catch a pokémon” tutorial with Leon, unfortunately, but I was able to tell the others to fuck off when it came to learning what a Pokémon Center is and whatnot, and that was just so great. Honestly, I’ve been playing these games since before these characters were even conceptualized, I do not need them to tell me a goddamn thing.

I like seeing pokémon in the overworld, because it makes it not only easier to know what you’re about to do battle with, but also more realistic (in the sense that it doesn’t make sense to have a huge bear just attack you out of nowhere in tall grass; there’s no way you shouldn’t be able to see it coming).

The game is so BRITISH that I find it really charming and amusing. I like that even in the US version they kept all the English slang and terminology, and even worked it into some accents (like you can tell that Marnie is supposed to have a working class London accent, and I like that).

I like most of the characters so far, and am especially thrilled that we finally have a jerkass rival again. It’s been three thousand years . . .

I like several of the new pokémon so far. My team is only four ‘mon at the moment (would be five if I could get someone to TRADE ME A PONYTA), but they’re all good.

While there are some graphical areas that don’t look so hot (those Ocarina of Time trees . . .) other aspects, like the water, look pretty nice.

Cons:

The music, by and large, is so generic and doesn’t have a Galar feel. This has been an increasing problem with the past two gens, although admittedly there were certain themes in the Gen VII games that tried to spin a Hawaiian sound for Alola (e.g. the PokéCenter theme). In earlier gens, the wild battle and trainer battle themes were all distinctive, sometimes to the point of leaning heavily on certain instruments (e.g. Hoenn’s famous trumpets, and I remember Sinnoh having quite a bit of percussion). But in recent times the themes all kind of sound alike, to the point where the main overture can be heard in standard Galar trainer battles. As someone who always loves OSTs, that’s pretty disappointing to me.

THE STUPID Y-COMM BADGES ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE SCREEN HOLY SHIT. The fact that you cannot turn these notifications off naturally is maddening. I keep having to turn wireless communication on and off to clear the notifications because that’s the only way I can figure out how to do it (because even in Local Communication you get notifications for shit you just did like?? I know what I did, leave me alone??). Y-Comm is definitely better than RotomDex, don’t get me wrong, but oh my god that thing is bloody annoying. If they could patch in a way to turn off Y-Comm notifications that would be real swell.

It’s not as bad in the spot where I am at right now, but in the beginning of the game for sure I was being stopped by either Hop or Sonia every ten seconds and that was really annoying. The writing was a bit repetitive at times now (e.g. I don’t need to be reminded every two seconds that Leon gets lost easily, I got that the first time you told me).

If you have wireless communications on in the wild area, the lag is pretty noticeable. Aside from the Y-Comm notifications, this is another reason I prefer to keep it off.

I spent $18,000 on a Gym Challenge uniform and my trainer still wears the ugly default one in challenges and I see no way to change this. I feel like I was personally victimized. (Speaking of, the Arcanine shirt is $30,000 while all other shirts are $980 hello?? Considering Arcanine is one of my signature ‘mon I feel personally attacked by this.)

The weather effects in the wild area seem random and don’t really make sense, haha. Like I get it, there are phenomena in real life where you can be in a place that’s raining and then drive through it, but how is the sunlight harsh in one spot, but two steps later it’s snowing . . . like I live in a place where we experience every time of weather phenomena there is to experience throughout the year (we have summers over 100 F easily, and then winters -10 F easily), sometimes on a day to day basis, but even then, this is kind of ridiculous lol.

I’m starting to think none of the big pokémon in the wild area will be catchable until after I beat the game considering how they’re all mysteriously still too strong after I got my first badge, but we’ll see I guess lol.

There are probably more things I could say for each, but this is where I’m at right now. I am enjoying it more than I thought I would, but my expectations going in were also rock bottom, so that’s not really saying much in terms of kudos to Game Freak, haha. We’ll see how things shake out for the rest of the game.

[papa-rhys]

Rivals: Part 2 (AU Jacob Seed X f!Deputy)

Note: Here’s part two to the diner AU by @marymay-fairgrave !! I have one more part of this left after this one (bc this AU is a Godsend). Enjoy!

Summary: After a hard day’s work in their respective establishments, Rook and Jacob go on their date to the Spread Eagle for a chance to unwind.

Word count: 1681

Warnings: None that I can think of!

| Part 1 |  | Find more of my stuff here! |  | Spare any change? |

Rook throws her apron over the hook on the back of the storeroom door before flipping the light switch off and pulling the door shut. It’s closing time and any minute now, Jacob will show up in the doorway to whisk her away on a romantic date. Well, maybe Rook is getting a little ahead of herself. It’s only a few drinks at the Spread Eagle – hardly a candle-lit dinner at the Ritz. But she’d had chemistry with Jacob for a long time, now, so she’ll be glad of the company, no matter where they go.

She grabs her keys from behind the counter just as Jacob enters the shop. “You ready to go, darlin’?” he asks, standing in the middle of the shop floor with his hands stuffed to the bottom of his jacket pockets.

“Yeah,” Rook smiles, looking around the room. “I think I remembered everythin’.”

“Great,” Jacob beams. “We can take my truck.”

Rook watches out the passenger window as the truck nears Fall’s End; her favourite place in the entire county, filled with happy people and good beer – just the way a small town should be.

“Looks like some folks had the same idea,” Jacob says, looking at the 10+ parked cars that sit outside the bar as he pulls up.

“You still wanna go in?” Rook asks, watching Jacob as he nervously surveys the cluster of vehicles. “I know you ain’t too good with crowds. We can go somewhere else if you want?”

He keeps looking out the window at the cars. “Nah, I’m good. I said I’d take you out for a drink, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Besides, my shrink says I gotta practice uncomfortable situations.”

“There’s other bars –“

“But you like this one,” he says, recalling a conversation she’d had with him months ago, in which she’d cooed over the fairy lights that hang over the porch of the bar and praised the Fairgrave family for being so inviting and hospitable.

Slightly shocked, but equally pleased that he remembered that conversation, Rook smiles. “Okay, but if you wanna leave at any point, then just let me know, alright?”

Jacob pulls his gaze away from the parked cars to look at Rook, finding her looking back at him with a concerned look across her face. Her features are beautifully lit up by the fairy lights that she loves oh-so-much and a warmth floods into Jacob’s chest as he looks at her. He looks at her until the concerned look is replaced with a smile – a smile that he returns for a moment before opening his door and hopping out of the truck. Rook does the same, planting her feet firmly onto the asphalt and shoving the truck door shut.

Inside the bar, the air is warm from the number of bodies that fill the space. The lights are dim and the bar is filled with smoke that rises to the ceiling and swims around the light fixtures. People are everywhere; all drinking various brands of beer and laughing with their friends and colleagues, and even Rook is a little overwhelmed by the lack of breathing room.

“I ain’t seen this place so busy since Mrs Fairgrave had her baby shower back when she was expectin’ Drew,” Rook remarks to Jacob as the two of them inch their way through the bustling crowd. “And that was fuckin’ years ago,” she adds.

They reach the bar and are greeted by Mary May – the oldest child of the Fairgrave family; although Rook doesn’t see much of a child in front of her anymore. “Hey, Mary,” Rook smiles, watching Mary May pop the cap off a beer bottle and hand it over the bar to a customer. “Where’s your pops?”

“Howdy, Rook. Daddy’s out pickin’ up some extra beer glasses. We had no idea it was gonna get so busy. I’m coverin’ for him until he gets back.”

“Well you look like a natural,” Rook says. “I’ll have a bottle of Beaver whenever you get the chance, doll.” She looks to Jacob and it takes him a few moments to realise that they’re waiting for his order. He’s blatantly struggling, but Rook thinks he seemed pretty adamant on drinking here, so she decides not to bother bringing the subject up again.

“Oh, right,” he says, jolting forward with the force of the realisation. “I’ll have a shot of McHelen.” Mary May nods and reaches up to the top shelf for a bottle of scotch. Jacob looks around the room, nervously; a bead of sweat forming on his brow. “Actually, darlin’, I’ll just take the whole bottle.”

“Are you – are you sure?” Mary May asks. Jacob nods and she places the bottle on the bar.

“You doin’ okay?” Rook asks Jacob, placing her hand on his back.

“Yeah,” he says – although he flinches at her touch. “But maybe we should sit outside?”

“Yeah, sure,” Rook agrees as Jacob pulls out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. “You got find us a table and I’ll bring the drinks out. We’ll take those to go, Mary,” she says as Jacob hands her a handful of bills and begins pushing his way towards the exit.

Mary May pulls up a tray from behind the bar and begins loading the bottles onto it, accompanied by two glasses. “I don’t think he’ll be usin’ a glass with the state he’s in, but I’ll give him one anyway,” she says, pushing the tray towards Rook.

“He’s just havin’ a rough time with the crowds,” Rook tells her, handing over the bills. “You keep the change for yourself, sweetheart. Don’t let your pops see a single penny of it.” She picks up the tray as Mary May looks down at the notes with a smile. “And you tell him from me that he better be payin’ you a fair wage if he’s gonna be workin’ you to the bone like this,” Rook adds with a smile.

Mary May grins. “Thanks, Rook,” she says, turning to the cash register as Rook squeezes through the crowd with the tray of drinks.

Outside, the night air is cool and the only sound – other than the muffled music and voices from inside – is the sound of the crickets chirping away in the nearby field. Rook finds Jacob sat at a table for two at the end of the porch and wanders over, setting the tray of drinks down on the table.

“You’re a star,” Jacob tells her as he pulls the stop out of the bottle of scotch and swigs it straight from the bottle.

“You best go easy on that stuff,” she chuckles. “That’s a big-ass bottle and now the Fairgraves think I hang around with alcoholics.”

Jacob swallows a gulp and sets the bottle down on the table again, resting his arm on the table and keeping his hand wrapped around the bottom of the bottle. “Wasn’t your pops an alcoholic?” he asks. Rook looks down at her beer bottle. “Ah shit, I’m sorry,” Jacob says, raising a hand to his face. “Scotch makes me stupid.”

“You’ve only just taken a swig of it,” Rook chuckles.

“Yeah you’re right. I’m plenty stupid without it.”

“I think you’re a lot of things, but I don’t reckon you’re stupid.”

The two look at each other for a moment, caught up in each other’s smile.

“So,” Rook starts, shaking her head and freeing herself from her trance. “Does your family know about our little out of hours meet-up?”

“John knows. He figured it out after he watched us through the diner window when I stopped by for the ketchup. You know what he’s like; always starin’ at someone.”

“Oh, he’s gonna tell everyone,” Rook smiles.

“Yup, most likely,” Jacob agrees, smiling into his bottle of scotch as he takes a sip.

“I’ll look forward to the whole town knowin’ about it by tomorrow mornin’.”

“You might not have to wait that long,” Jacob says, nodding towards Nick and Kim Rye, who walk towards the bar hand-in-hand; Nick’s coat draped over Kim’s shoulders to protect her from the evening chill.

“There’s the county’s new power couple,” Nick bellows happily as they approach the table.

“Hey, Kim,” Rook nods.

“What’s goin’ on?” Kim asks, a puzzled look on her face. “Am I missing something?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Jacob smiles. “Me ‘n’ Rook are gunnin’ for your place as the county’s newest newly-weds.”

Nick looks back and forth between Rook and Jacob; rendered speechless for a full 10 seconds before Rook puts him out of his misery. “He’s joking,” she says. “Oh God, Nick, he’s joking.”

Nick breathes a sigh of relief as the others share a chuckle at his expense, but although it’s all fun and games, Rook can’t help but like the sound of Jacob referring to the two of them as a pair – two halves of a whole, so to speak. And the fact that a relationship between the two of them has crossed his mind sends her gut fluttering.

“We should head inside,” Kim says, tugging at Nick’s arm. “We could only get a babysitter for two hours, so we best make the most of it.”

The two couples say their goodbyes and wish each other a nice evening before the Ryes head inside, leaving Jacob and Rook in peace.

“They’re a nice couple,” Jacob says, raising his bottle to his lips. “Even if Nick doesn’t know good mac ‘n’ cheese when he sees it.”

“Actually, I’ve seen your mac ‘n’ cheese first hand and I think Nick was being pretty generous with that review.”

“Oh, really? When have you ever been in my kitchen?”

“I get around,” Rook shrugs. “I wouldn’t be a very good rival if I didn’t spy on you guys from time-to-time.”

“And you think you could do better?”

“Better than a bowl of undercooked pasta vegetatin’ in luke-warm water? Hell yeah, I could.”

“You wanna make a wager?” Jacob asks, leaning forward in his seat.

“Sure thing.”

“Alright,” Jacob says, rising to his feet.

“What’re you doin’” Rook asks as Jacob grabs hold of her hand and pulls her out of her chair.

“We’re gonna see if you can cook.”

“That’s rich comin’ from someone who grills salad,” she giggles, stepping off the porch and following him to the truck; her hand still held in his. 

[smashmusicideas]

June 7: Going through the Smash E3 Trailers

Well, the title says it all. How to best predict or understand what we might see on Tuesday? Look at the history. I should note I’ll be ignoring Melee, as the nature of how information on it came out (and how people reliably accessed it) makes it more of an outlier.

E3 2005: A new Super Smash Bros. game for the Wii, then-called Revolution, is announced.

E3 2006: The first trailer for what is now named Super Smash Bros. Brawl releases.

Veterans: Mario, Link, Pikachu, and Kirby - four of the five main Smash fighters. Samus is also shown, albeit in a way that doesn’t confirm her inclusion in her classic form.

Meta Knight (Newcomer): One of the most popular characters requested, Meta Knight follows Peach as the first newcomer revealed and part of a franchise already represented. You can also argue his placement references his (and the Halberd‘s) involvement in “The Subspace Emissary.”

Pit (Newcomer): Another highly requested character, filling the Ice Climbers’ role as an iconic retro hero. Notably, he also sports a drastic redesign.

Zero Suit Samus (Newcomer): ZSS was probably never anyone’s most wanted character. However, her inclusion is necessary; she obliquely represents the new Final Smash mechanic.

Wario (Newcomer): Outside of Sonic, Wario probably was the most wanted character - but fans assumed he would use his classic costume. This shows he will be fighting as a wildly new fighter, one who represents a sub-series that started after the release of Melee.

Snake (Newcomer): Shocking everyone, the last reveal is of, for the first time ever, a third party character into the battle, and one no one would have rightly expected. Snake’s inclusion sparks a change in the Smash community where previously laughable, mocked suggestions can “potentially” be plausible.

Alongside characters, we also see new, unnamed stages: Battlefield, Halberd, Castle Siege, Pokémon Stadium 2, Skyworld, Mario Circuit (Brawl), and Yoshi's Island (Brawl) (Shadow Moses Island would be revealed in accompanying screenshots). A Nintendog hints at the new Assist Trophy item. And we see incredibly “super attacks,” later dubbed Final Smashes, which fighters can acquire by collecting a ball with the Smash logo.

E for All, 2007: While not part of E3, this is the period in which the public is allowed to play a demo for Brawl, featuring Sonic the Hedgehog - who had been revealed only eleven days prior. As for E3 itself, 2007 has a fifteen second video revealing only Donkey Kong. I’m not going to highlight it here for space.

E3 2011: A new Smash Bros. game is announced, which will appear on both Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

E3 2013: The first trailer and sizable accompanying information for what is now named the collective Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS & Wii U are released during a Nintendo Direct.

Veterans: Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, Fox, Pit, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Bowser.

Villager (Newcomer): while Villager’s chances and popularity were debated and debatable, Animal Crossing is a huge franchise for Nintendo. Using him to almost literally lead off the cast makes sense.

Mega Man (Newcomer): A new precedent is set: unlike with Brawl, newcomers to Smash For (excluding clones) were given individual trailers. Having Mega Man’s be the first makes sense; he was possibly the most requested guest fighter after Sonic.

Wii Fit Trainer (Newcomer): Unlike the other newcomers, Wii Fit Trainer - the game’s new surprising, out of nowhere fighter - is now revealed in the Direct itself but on the show after the fact. Her reveal comes at a demonstration in which Sakurai plays a match, and before a video of him discussing the game’s ideas is released.

Altogether, we see extensive information from those trailers. New stages are later revealed to be Battlefield, 3D Land, Gerudo Valley, Spirit Train, Skyloft, Arena Ferox, Living Room, Boxing Ring, Town and City, Wii Fit Studio, and Wily Castle. Of noteworthy shots, one is of a jungle-esque stage, and the other is a platform-less version of Battlefield; in an April 2014 Smash-centered Direct these would be revealed as part of Smash Run and an Omega Form, respectively. Finally, one CGI scene shows Mario followed by five other fighters on Battlefield, arguably hinting at the Wii U version’s Eight-Player Smash mode.

E3 2014: Attention ahoy. You’ll note that this isn’t a trailer; instead of taking up one part of the Direct, Smash bookends Nintendo’s (rather good) showing.

Mii Fighter (Newcomer): The Miis were no one’s favorite choice for a character, but they excite because they introduce to the series the ability to actually customize your own fighters - a godsend in a series beloved and notorious for how wide its breadth of inspiration reaches. This also dovetails with the end of the show, in which Palutena, the newcomer and only other fighter whose special attacks vary wildly like them, closes out the event.

Pac-Man (Newcomer): Pac-Man is unveiled at a private showroom after a massive Smash Bros. invitational tournament, one in which sixteen competitive fighters play on a build which would later be available to E3 attendees. The invitational itself provides some information that had been revealed and clarifies other points, from how certain Assist Trophies function to the utility of different items.

E3 2015: While Nintendo does not feature Smash in any capacity during its Direct and only minimally during its post-show “Treehouse Live at E3″ segments, they announce and release a wealth of downloadable content for Smash For. Lucas, announced months prior, is released alongside fellow veteran Roy and newcomer Ryu, from Street Fighter.

So...what can we take from this?

Well, I think it says a few things. Mostly, the newcomers shown off will be fairly big in terms of fame and popularity. I know that seems insultingly obvious, but it’s true. A third party fighter especially seems likely; if the game really is coming out this year, it makes sense to show any and all they can. Like, I feel like if Ridley is coming to Smash, showing him off here seems the smartest, given his colossal popularity, instead of on the side or as an unlockable fighter.

I think it’s also interesting how some are chosen. Of all the newcomers, only three - Meta Knight, Zero Suit Samus, and Palutena - came from prior series. And of those, Meta Knight’s the only one whose entire design isn’t tied to a mechanic introduced in that game. This isn’t to say they’re not going to appear here at all, just that most likely we may see new series represented.

Those two fighters lead me to something else: there will very likely be mechanics, items, powers, or modes the trailers will obliquely show or reference without explicitly saying. I do suspect that those 2005 and 2013 trailers deliberately hinted at the story mode and Eight-Player Smash, respectively. So while most crazy theorizing will be just that, maybe you will stumble upon or uncover something that’ll turn out huge.

However, this also says we should not put all our stock in only this showing. In an interview today with the Hollywood Reporter, Bill Trinen admitted that they will be keeping some Smash surprises for after the event. It shouldn’t surprise anyone; this series has never been one to show all its cards. So be excited, hope for more stuff, but also remember that this won’t be the be-all and end-all of this new iteration. All of these videos only prove how no matter how much information we get, so much can, and will, be hidden.

Also, as a minor point, it’s likely that Smash may not be relegated to just one section of the event. I suspect it’ll both start and end it, the way it was in 2014. As important as this game is for Nintendo, they have other stuff to show. Pokémon Let’s Go is a big deal, there’s potentially Fire Emblem for Switch (and other announced games in development), there’s the increasingly inevitable announcement of Fortnite; they may have a lot on their plate (one rumor says it might be upwards of forty-five minutes - which is apparently about twice as long as the fairly packed one last year).

But finally, just remember that all of these are nothing more than precedents and commonalities. A lot of Sakurai’s general directions here make sense, but we don’t know if he’ll be using the same kind of character trailers the last game(s) did or going back to the Brawl “general stuff” kind of trailer, or something entirely different.

(Link to my writings on Smash Bros for Nintendo Switch)

[sicklylittlesnowflake]

Hi! I was wondering if you could do a riverdale fic for me where jughead has a really bad migraine and has to be looked after by Kevin, Betty and Veronica as Archie is away at a football game? Thanks x

(Anon I feel like u can secretly read minds..bc I love writing the gang in a caretaking scenario!! Writing B, V and K are my soft spots bc they’re all too precious??This was hella fun!! Thanks for the prompt!)

Sometimes it was all a bit too much for Jughead.

Stress often lead to splitting migraines, and any sort of sensation seemed to be too much for him. A sensory overload, if you will. He couldn’t quite hang out with the gang by Sweetwater River because noise, and social interaction, and he couldn’t go back to the Andrews because Fred Andrews was watching a soccer game which Archie informed him before leaving was intense. Again, noise.

So Pops was the only other option he had. Jughead knew the schedule and the influx of customers by heart. It was always quiet on a Tuesday, 2pm.

Normally, Jughead would hide any ailments of course, but if he had to tell anyone, it was Archie. Who was away on a three day Away game for some of spring break. So Jughead opted to tell no one.

Sometimes he hated himself for it, because in a sense he was doing it to himself. He had friends who cared and valued him, but there was always that stupid part of himself when everything was just fine that told him otherwise. Perhaps it was the crippling fear of rejection, or perhaps despite priding himself in the fact that he was different, he secretly longed to be just like everyone else. Perhaps it was a part of him that thought he couldn’t be loved, that he didn’t deserve it.

However, despite all the bullshit in his life, so much so that Jughead was teetering close to completely giving up, there was always a small inkling of hope.

Whether that was a small smile, an invite to whatever, or the ever so generous Pop Tate.

“Headache, Jug?” Pop asked softly, an absolute godsend, knowing not to further agitate his ever growing migraine.

Jughead snapped back into reality, realising his slumped position over his very dim laptop, hands clutching his head protectively. He managed a very slight smile.

“Just a little bit,” Jughead managed to croak out.

The older man slid , as well as a nice cold glass of water.

“Here you go bud,” He said quietly, offering him a small smile.

“It must be that wonderful brain of yours, a  minor setback to all the wonderful things it can do,” he cooed, hoping his kind words could somehow alleviate the pain he was sure the younger was feeling.

He didn’t even know how he grew fond of this kid–perhaps it started when he was only about 10 years old, bringing his much younger sister without any parents. He hadn’t said anything initially, just expecting they thought they were being cool kids by being there without parents, but when it kept happening Pop understood his diner was an escape. His sister was always happy–while her older brother just kept looking sadder as the time went on. Soon enough her older brother wasn’t a kid anymore, losing that childhood innocence far too soon. Perhaps it was the fact that Jughead had grown up too soon that made Pop slightly protective.

His concern grew further when Jughead started coming alone–no sister or no Archie Andrews, and then he started staying later, as long as he could before he would leave. On a few occasions, Pop would let him stay the night despite the protests. He couldn’t find the heart to kick him out, when he had the same kind of thing happen to him in his youth. He’d only hoped he could be there for the kid.

Jughead cracked a grin despite the pain, “You’re a godsend, Pop, really. Thank you so much.”

As he made his way back to behind the counter, he brought up his records and began making a phone call to the Keller household.

Kevin finished up with the last of the folding, making his way up to his room and putting his own clothes to their respective drawers, hanging up what had to be hung up in the closet. He then carried his father’s carefully folded clothes to his father’s bedroom, leaving the pile on the bed when the phone rang.

Kevin jumped slightly, running down the stairs to answer the mint coloured telephone.

“Hello, Keller household–”

“Hello Kevin? It’s Pop. I’ve got Jughead here who seems to be sick.”

Kevin let out a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. Of course he wouldn’t tell them and he’d get to the point of Pop having to call them over.

“I’m on my way, thanks for letting me know,” Kevin said brightly, and said his goodbyes before putting down the phone. He pulled on his rubber shoes and pulled his phone out of pocket, shooting both Betty and Veronica a text.

Betty looked up from the book she was reading as her phone buzzed. She smiled, expecting some sort of weird meme from Veronica only to see it was a text from Kevin.

Kevin: pop told me that jugs sick and in need of our rescue meet up with me at pops in a bit pls?? xx

Betty jumped out of her bed and quickly stuck in a pretty pink bookmark Polly made for her in 6th grade art class and threw on a pastel purple sweater over her blue t shirt. She chucked on her converse and grabbed her keys, out of her room in seconds.

She giggled quietly to herself, this whole situation just a little bit funny because she felt as if she was some superhero ready to save the day. Like Jughead was some stupid damsel in distress who needed..tissues? head massages? throat lozenges? Kevin didn’t tell her what kind of sickness he had, but whatever he had, she was prepared for it!

Before walking down the stairs she made a short detour to the bathroom, wherein she opened one of the cupboards to pull out her signature pink caretaking bag, which was lovingly handcrafted and curated so she could care for her friends. When she got sick, her friends would all come to her house and take the same bag to take care of her. The bag was a gift given by God.

She rushed down the stairs and quickly yelled at her dad, telling him she was going to Pops with Kevin, which was no lie, and was out of her house before any sort of obligations were made.

Veronica was in the middle of testing out a new eyeshadow palette that Archie had gotten her for her birthday two weeks ago (with Betty and Kevin’s help, obviously) when she got the text. She was excited for what she presumed was a cute dorky text from Betty but was proved wrong by Kevin’s text.

Kevin: jughead’s dumb and he’s sick and we have to save him grab your weapons, the evil (germs?) is at pops

Veronica chuckled softly, and shot a response back before quickly finishing up her eyeshadow (she might as well finish it), and fluffed out her hair, before pulling on a pair of boots and her black jacket.

“Smithers? Will you tell mom if she gets back before me that I’ve gone off to save a dying friend at Pop’s if she wonders where I am??” Veronica laughed as she made her way out of the apartment.

They all arrived roughly at the same time, naturally Kevin was first with a head start, then come Betty and Veronica.

Veronica was ready to burst in and take Jughead by the ear and lightly scold him for not telling them, when Betty pulled her back.

“Wait, Veronica! We need to plan.”

“Plan?! For what?! We just gotta go in there and aggressively take care of him, beat the shit out of whatever’s wrong with him!”

Kevin smirked, “For being that tiny, you really are fuelled with rage.”

“I could end you in a second, you giant tree, and you know it,” Veronica hissed.

Betty shook her head, “No! Not like that. I meant that he’s going to try and deny it obviously, that’s going to happen, but if he’s got a headache, attacking him and being loud isn’t going to help!”

Kevin chuckled, “Sure, of course Betty, but he’s not a monster who will break if he accidentally push the wrong buttons. Let’s stop this and just help the poor guy, yeah?”

The three then made their way inside the diner, immediately spotting a grey beanie poking out from his usual booth.

Jughead was face down on the table, laptop pushed away from him, hands clutching his head protectively.

“Hey, Jughead? It’s Kevin..and uh, Betty and Veronica too,” Kevin said quietly.

Jughead tensed up immediately, sitting up, way too quickly, intensifying his already splitting migraine. He cracked a pained, forced smile as he leaned his head back against the booth cushion.

“Wow, I absolutely adore my fans. What can I do for you?” Jughead quipped, face scrunched up in pain. His voice was strained. He was completely pale, void of any colour. It made his blue eyes pop and look icy, but it also did the same for his bags which seemed even darker than they usually were.

Betty frowned, “No, what can we do for you? What’s wrong, Jug, you look awful.”

Jughead smirked, “That’s a real boost to the self esteem.”

Veronica sighed, “Jughead, you know that’s not what she meant. C'mon, enough with this edge lord emo ‘I don’t feel pain’ crap so we can get you better soon, yeah?”

Jughead shook his head, biting his lip, “Please you guys, I’m fine. Honestly, leave me be.”

The three watched in pity, not knowing how to get through to him.

Suddenly, a sudden wave of burning pain hit his head, and he couldn’t help the hiss and whimper that tore their way out of his throat, against his will. He hated looking so weak in front of his friends, but it hurt too much.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Jughead whimpered, voice cracking as eyes squeezed shut and teeth digging deep into his lip. He wasn’t really sure if he was talking to them or reassuring himself.

“Jughead, please, c'mon, what’s wrong?” Kevin pleaded quietly.

Jughead caved in, the pain too much to handle, “My head hurts so much.”

Betty frowned, “Awh, Jug..!”

Veronica smirked slightly, “Have you wrecked your brain trying to find better comebacks when I roast you?”

That little comment managed to make Jughead release a low chuckle, still strained but momentarily distracting him from the pain.

“No, it’s from trying to comprehend the fact that a human as strange and annoying as you can exist, I mean, you must be an anomaly of some sort,” Jughead replied, trying to be funny hoping it would somehow distract him.

Veronica chuckled, “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Betty tried to hide her amusement, “Okay guys, real talk, how do we fix him up?”

Veronica and Betty sat on the seats in front of him, and took note of the aspirin and water in front of him. Betty suddenly got her bag out and pulled out a cold compress, and laid the compress on Jughead’s forehead.

“Betts, we’re in public!” Jughead said, slightly frantic.

“No ones here, Jug! Well, Dilton Doiley’s reading his zombie apocalypse comic but he’s not going to look up!” Betty protested, to which Jughead gave in to, having no energy to fight.

“Okay, you should drink more of that  water, Jughead,” Veronica cooed.

Jughead sniffled lightly, and nodded to the best of his ability, pressing the glass to his lips and sipping the liquid.

“You must be really dehydrated,” Veronica frowned.

“Is this going to turn into a soft pastel stay hydrated speech or?” Jughead joked, through teeth gritted with pain.

“Okay now, enough jokes,” Betty chuckled.

Kevin took the seat next to Jughead, “Here, I can give you a massage that my mom taught me? I give them to my dad when he gets really stressed and I think it works?”

Jughead let out a noise of relief, and great gratitude, “Kevin, you are a godsend. A gift from the lord himself.”

Kevin chuckled softly, and pressed his fingers towards Jughead’s temples, lightly and gently rubbing them in little circles.

Jughead seemed to instantly relax, his pained expression slowly fading into a more neutral one, his muscles loosening up. He stopped squeezing his hands quite as hard and stopped gritting his teeth.

Kevin smiled in satisfaction, trying hard to not be too prideful of his talent in this particular field. His dad told him time and time again how great he was at destressing, but lowkey thought it was just because he was his dad. Knowing he was helping Jughead reassured him a little bit.

Jughead’s breathing steadied, not asleep but very much relaxed and at peace, although his head still wasn’t completely pain-free. If throbbed slightly, but the gentle and therapeutic movements of Kevin’s hands on his temples soothed it.

Betty giggled very softly, “Kevin! That’s amazing!”

Veronica sighed in relief, the image of her friend in so much pain very unsettling for her. She was glad he was getting better but of course she wouldn’t admit it.

“Now Jones, I hope this is a lesson that you should stop stressing yourself out too much. Get out of that massive brain of yours for two seconds and talk to us, I promise you it’s much better than the edge lord, 2007 emo lone wolf bullshit you’ve been doing,” Veronica said sternly, but her voice soft and kind.

Before Jughead couldn’t even reply, Betty was speaking too.

“Yeah Juggy, talk to us. Stop withdrawing into yourself and internalising everything. You don’t have to tell us everything, but you don’t have to keep hiding things. We’re your friends, we’re here for you to look after you,” Betty said warmly.

Jughead didn’t reply, but his small smile that he gave was enough.

[almostdaily-doppio]

TOP 5: Best Electric Scooter 2019

Electric scooters are convenient for running errands and commuting short distances. Although I haven't given up my car yet, I can't ignore scooters' advantages. First, electric scooter ownership is definitely less expensive than automobile ownership. Because they are battery operated, electric scooters do not require trips to the gas station for costly fill-ups and have zero emissions to boot.

Also, you won't need to worry about finding or paying for a parking spot. Before we get started with our video detailing the best electric scooters on the market, we have included links in the description for each product mentioned, so make sure you check those out to see which one is in your budget range. Starting off with the best overall electric scooter we have the Glion Dolly Adult Electric Scooter.

Appealing to students, commuters, and even riders age 60 and above, the Glion Dolly Electric Scooter earns great reviews. With eight-inch-wide never-flat tires, its ride is as smooth as silk with a maximum rider weight up to 255 pounds. Topping out at 15 miles per hour, this electric scooter has versatile speeds and goes "as slow as a granny walking and as fast as a bicycle" as described by a user on Amazon, where it earned four-and-a-half out of five stars.

In fact, Amazon users attest to its good lithium-ion battery life that offers plenty of juice to power a 15-mile range. A couple of riders over 200 pounds climb hills on this model daily with little problem. With a short charge time of three-and-a-half hours, the Glion Electric Scooter is perfect for scooting to campus or the office, recharging during the class or workday if necessary, and riding back home.

And each way, you'll enjoy a quiet ride with its 250-watt engine that purrs. The Glion Electric Scooter uses anti-lock electromagnetic regenerative brakes that are steady for some but jerky and a little slow for others. Rated best overall scooter by Life wire and one of the top models by Ride Two Wheels, The City for Millennials, and ThrillAppeal, the Glion Dolly Foldable Lightweight Adult Electric Scooter has a sleek design that folds up and rolls like stand-up luggage with a pull-handle dolly.

Finally, customers praise the manufacturer's customer service highly. Next up we have the best budget electric scooter which goes to the Razor Power Core E90. When most people think of kick scooters for kids, they think of the Razor brand. Don't count it out in the electric scooter game, either. The Razor Power Core E90 Electric Scooter is a zippy and economical model. With a top speed of 10 miles per hour and a maximum ride time of up to 70 minutes, this fun and the sturdy scooter is an excellent deal.

The Razor Power Core E90 Electric Scooter is a wallet-friendly way for novices to dip their toes in the electric scooter transportation pool. Reviewers describe it as easy to assemble, ride, and maintain. In fact, Best Reviews named this model "best bang for Buck," Life wire chose it as "Best Budget" scooter, and EnvyRide selected itas one its top five "budget-friendly" models. You might not expect much power from a budget model, but the Razor Power Core E90 Electric Scooter defies expectations.

With a surprisingly long life per charge, the scooter's battery allows for up to 70 minutes of continuous use. A lot of reviewers say they simply charge the lead battery overnight. You kick-start the scooter to get it going, and then the in-wheel hub motor takes over. It also has a push-button throttle and handbrakes.

Most feedback from Amazon shoppers was from parents and grandparents about experiences of their kids and grandkids (ranging in age from five to 10 years). Nonetheless, many adults tried scooter and loved it. In fact, despite the scooter's advertised maximum rider weight of 120 pounds, several grownups over 150 pounds found it quite peppy and rideable.

We gathered from comments, however, that theRazor Power Core E90 Electric Scooter is best for kids or lighter, shorter adult riders. About 72% of the almost 400 Amazon buyers gave the Razor Power Core E90 Electric Scooter four or five out of five stars. This scooter is a great deal but many wish for a warranty longer than 90 days.

Up next we have the best electric scooter for commuting while sitting which goes to the Razor EcoSmart Metro. Perfect for commuters and riders ranging from young adults to senior citizens, the Razor EcoSmart Metro Electric Scooter is designed for stability, convenience, and good looks. Its solid bamboo deck and padded adjustable-height seat help you balance and rest your feet while traveling. A large detachable rear basket holds items for safe, accessible transport on errands.

ThrillAppeal notes how this model sports a"vintage bike vibe" with its 16-inch pneumatic tube tires on spoke wheels. Excellent for commuting, the Razor EcoSmartMetro Electric Scooter tops out at 18 miles per hour and has a ride time up to 40 minutes. Amazon shoppers report riding distances of seven to eight miles on hilly terrain and up to 12 miles on level roads on a full battery after charging it for 12 hours or overnight.

With a 36-volt lead battery and a 500-watt motor, this model carries up to 220 pounds, including the rider and cargo in the basket. The Razor EcoSmart Metro Electric Scooter has a hand-operated rear disc brake that works fine on level ground but can get hot. Many riders wish this model had a front brake as well.

Voted "Best Speed" by Life wire, "Most FunCommuting Scooter" by ThrillAppeal, "Ideal For Short Trips" by Transportation Evolved, and one of the top seven scooters for adults by Ride Two Wheels, this model earned four or five stars from 78% of almost 300 Amazon reviewers. Next, we have the best for electric scooter commuting while standing which goes to the GOTRAX GXL Commuting.

Enthusiastic feedback from students and computers make the GOTRAX GXL Commuting Electric Scooter sound like a cool replacement for your car— well, sort of. Shoppers love traveling while avoiding traffic and parking hassles as well as saving money on gas. For lengthy commutes, go green by combining this scooter with public transportation: ride the scooter to a transit station, lock it on a bike rack, and then hop on a train, bus, or subway to finish your journey.

If you do ride it all the way to your destination, the scooter folds up into a compact, portable package that is easy to stash under a desk. With eight-and-a-half-inch pneumatic tires, the GOTRAX GXL Commuting Electric Scooter delivers a smooth ride over bumpy roads. After just four hours of recharging, its 36-volt, UL-certified lithium-ion battery provides up to 12 miles of range or 12.

5 hours of ride time. The 250-watt hub motor powers up to a top speed of 15. 5 miles per hour and hauls a maximum weight of 220 pounds. The GOTRAX GXL Commuting Electric Scooter is easy to assemble and constructed of high-quality material. Reviewers feel reassured by the scooter's dual hand and foot braking system that stops the scooter well.

It also has a headlamp but no tail light. Don't be dissuaded by the relatively low number of reviews for the GOTRAX GXL Commuting Electric Scooter on Amazon — 72% awarded if five out of five stars. It earned 4. 7 out of five stars from a pool of thirty-four reviewers on Walmart's site. Plus, My Pro Scooter named it "Best electric scooter for Commuting" and Ride Two Wheels, Livewire, Best Reviews list it among their top picks for electric scooters.

And for our last pick, we have the best electric scooter for kids which goes to the Razor E100. Recommended for riders age eight and up, theRazor E100 is a scooter you can feel confident about when your kid is zooming around outdoors. Having won a Parent's Choice Award, this scooter was named "Best Electric Scooter for Kids" by The Strategist of New York Magazine and highly rated on Top Ten Select.

More than 1,400 Amazon reviewers rated it five out of five stars. With a top speed of 10 miles per hour and a kick-start feature — the scooter must be moving up to three miles per hour and the rider pushes a button before the motor engages — the Razor E100 Electric Scooter prioritizes safety.

The handlebar adjusts to different heights and houses the handbrake and twist-grip accelerator/throttle. Some people feel reassured by this scooter's slow acceleration while others think it accelerates quickly, but not too quickly for concern. After twelve hours of charging, the 24-volt lead battery can provide up to 40 minutes of continuous ride time.

Although the Razor E100 Electric Scooter has a maximum weight capacity of 120 pounds, many "big kids" weighing much more than that have tried this model for short rides with satisfactory results. This model is easy to assemble, a godsend for parents of kids eager to hop on and ride right away. You can also know about the best electric skateboard.

It has an eight-inch pneumatic front tire, a urethane rear wheel, a sturdy an all-steel frame that holds up well, and a handy kickstand. A  drawback of the frame's low clearance is that the underside and motor can scrape the ground when your kid makes sharp turns and rides over curbs.

If the Razor E100 Electric Scooter seems too small, try the highly rated Razor E300 Electric Scooter. Recommended for riders age 13 and older, this model is the next step up, with similar but some larger features: wider (nine-inch) pneumatic front and rear tires, a taller frame, and a greater maximum weight capacity of 220 pounds.

Teens will love this model that zips up to15 miles per hours and engages the motor from a standstill position. So that sums up our top electric scooters of 2019.

[storyunrelated]

Cupcake

I like the idea of the hand coming out of the bathroom wall so I've done a longer thing about it.

It's basically the same as the little flash I did, but a bit longer and with an extra thing or two added.

For those of you who are concerned about that sort of thing...

[A cupcake for someone special]

“You've been staring at the cupcakes for five minutes,” said the girl behind the counter.

I blinked. She was right. That's exactly what I'd been doing.

Whoops.

It hadn't been on purpose. There were just so many and they were all so brightly coloured and fancy looking and all so far out of my wheelhouse. It had been a long day, too. I was tired, strung-out and ill-equipped to try and decide what cupcake was the best cupcake. Especially as I was fairly sure the last time that I'd personally had a cupcake was maybe a good ten years previously. Very popular now though, it seemed.

“Sorry,” I said, grinning in what I hoped was a casual way. “This isn't my area of expertise.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. I saw that her name-tag read 'Emily'. Handy.

I lowered my eyes back to the cupcakes. They were why I was here, after all, and it wouldn't pay to be found staring at the poor girl's chest when I'd already been found gazing at the merchandise. So to speak. I tend to stare when I get tired, and I tend not to notice. Fine when it's cupcakes. Bad when it's people.

“Cupcakes aren't your area of expertise?” Emily asked. My sense of sheepishness – already pretty high after being caught staring and doing nothing for five minute straight – increased. I shrugged, pretending to browse and pretending to have a clue what I was looking for.

“Not really, no. But it felt like the thing to do. I'm getting something for someone, you see? A cupcake, specifically. I think they'll like it,” I said.

She brightened at this. For whatever reason.

“A special occasion?” She asked. I shrugged again. Truly a gesture for all occasions.

“Something like that. I've known them for a year. Year to the day, in fact,” I said. From the corner of my eye I could see Emily's expression falter briefly as she considered what she said next. I could almost see her question coming before the words left her mouth. It's the sort of thing most people would have asked.

“So is this a...special friend or just a friend? If that's okay to ask.”

An interesting question.

How best to summarise my relationship with this particular person? Were they even a person? The amount of time required – and the amount of context needed before even that – would be considerable. Best to just keep it simple for Emily, I felt. She didn't really need to know all the details.

“An acquaintance. I'm just rather fond of them.”

This did not give Emily a lot to work with I knew, but clearly this was something she'd been doing for a little while as she rolled with it. I liked to think she'd had more obtuse customers but I had a sneaking suspicion I may have ranked among the worst. But then I always think that.

“Well...what sort of thing do they like?” She asked. I assumed the insides of the cupcakes were as varied as the outsides, and it was to this they were referring. I genuinely had no idea. This had been the main reason why I'd ended up staring at them in the first place.

“I really don't know. After a year that's not very good, is it? It's just never come up. So I'm thinking rather along the lines of a generally appealing cupcake. Something that sends a strong message,” I said. Emily smiled in a way that suggested she was trying not to laugh at me. I was used to that. It was fine.

“And what sort of message would you like to send them?”

“That I'm glad they're in my life,” I said, without hesitation. Emily frowned. A serious frown.

“That's pretty heavy. I'm not sure we have a flavour for that.”

A fair concern. I decided to be proactive.

“How about that one?”

I pointed to some extravagant creation of frosting and sugar that looked reasonably impressive without being too showy. Some sort of floral design. Or so I thought. I wasn't going to stop to verify this. Flowers are always a solid bet when it comes to cakes. I think? I've seen half of a program once and they had flowers in there somewhere. They seemed to make people happy.

Emily moved over to it.

“This one?” She asked. I nodded.

“Red Velvet?” She asked, seeking further verification. I was at a loss.

“Is this code? Are you selling me drugs? Just the cupcake, please. My life is exciting enough already.”

“It's a type of cupcake,” she said. This seemed obvious in retrospect. But then she winked at me, and suddenly I was filled with doubt again. This was something she plainly relished if her smile was anything to go by. At least someone was having a good time.

“Then box it up, good lady. I have a friend to give it to,” I said.

She proceeded to do just that, with much practised flourish. There was a little box she had to fold together and a fancy ribbon she had to tie. It was all very luxuriant, though I did wonder what the point was given that the whole idea was to open the box and eat the cake. I supposed a little pageantry never hurt anyone.

With that done I then purchased the cupcake, which was now my cupcake.

There wasn't much more after that. I left the shop and Emily's life and she left mine. I doubted I'd see her again ever. Unless the cupcake went down especially well in which case I might return. But who knows? Life is a banquet, after all.

I finished my walk home, being careful with the fancy box along the way.

My flat was as quiet as it had been when I'd left it in the morning, but this was hardly a surprise. No-one and nothing to come back. Well, beyond my associate, but they were hardly the noisy type. Shedding my coat and my bag and the various accessories a grown adult like myself needed to function when out of the home I dusted myself off, took the cupcake out of its box and opened the door to greet my acquaintance.

And there they were. The hand sticking out of the hole in the wall of my bathroom.

This would be why the nature of my relationship with this friend would have been difficult to explain to Emily back in the shop. It's not a case of where you'd start, it's more a case of how far would you get before they stopped you from explaining and asked you to go away.

Easy enough to know where to start with the story, in my opinion. It's a fairly basic beginning.

One day I was sitting around at home not really thinking or doing anything of note, when there came the most peculiar noise. On investigating it I discovered the cause to be the appearance of a perfectly round, pitch-black hole of unknown origin in the wall of my tiny bathroom.

The outside-facing wall, I should point out. A pitch-black hole of indeterminate depth. An infinite inky blackness. A portal into the abyss. Set in a wall maybe all of a foot and a half thick. If that. And no, it doesn't show on the other side. I've checked.

So there was that. And then there was the hand sticking out of it. Just there. Perfectly still.

It stuck out to about mid forearm. The gender of the arm was unclear, and could have gone either way really. Or nowhere at all. Oddly, that wasn't my primary concern at the time. My primary concern was what I should do next.

I mean, I'm not an idiot. I've seen films, I've read books, I've played games. This sort of thing never ends well, and it never ends well no matter what you do. You run away, something bad catches you. You stay. something bad gets you. Unless you're the hero you're typically hosed. And I am not a hero by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly I was doomed.

So what to do. What would you have done? Probably not what I did.

I shook the hand.

The hand shook back.

Better than whole persons whose hands I've shaken, in fact. No limp-wristed shakes here. Good and firm, as they should be. Which is the least you could expect from a disembodied hand.

After that the hand pulled into the hole and out of sight. I braced myself for something horrible. Wails of the damned, me being dragged to some hellish locale to suffer in torment for eternity – that sort of thing. Instead, the hand came back holding a note. When I did not immediately take the note they waved it about a bit until I got the hint. Opening the note up I found a message.

“Hello. How are you?” Said the note. In typed letters.

I had expected handwritten, I'll admit.

Finding a pen I flipped the paper over and quickly scribbled out on the reverse side:

“I'm alright. Been better,” before folding it up again and popping it back into the waiting hand. They disappeared again, and came back with a reply of their own.

“Want to talk about it?” Said the new note.

And so I did. Back and forth. With notes. With a hand in the wall.

They were very understanding. They commiserated with me in a way that was immediately comfortable. They were patient, too – it's a difficult way of communicating if you're new to it, as I was. Have to learn to get very concise to keep it flowing. Learn how to prioritise what to say. Acquire the habit of being laconic. The hand had it already. I did not.

I got the hang of it pretty quick though, which was good because having sudden access to such sympathetic person at the end of a draining day was a Godsend. Never was there a day when the hand told me they didn't want to hear about it. Never was there a time they were anything less than fully behind me. The wind beneath my wings, you might say.

Though, as ever, I do wonder if 'person' is how I should think of them. I do, but are they? Who knows? Who cares.

They were very non-forthcoming about themselves, but I had sort of expected that. Mysterious, unnatural hand poking through a dark hole in a wall? What were the odds it would have an open and frank discussion about why it was there or where it was from? Slim, to say the least.

They never reacted with irritation or anger the few times I asked, they just politely and pointedly avoided answering. So I stopped bothering. Wasn't like I was getting anywhere. Maybe one day it'll all come back to bite me. Bit late now anyway.

So that was why I got the cupcake. What else do you buy for a hand that you like? A glove? That seemed like a pisstake. Even the cupcake was a gamble. I just had a vague, general feeling that it might go down well. Assuming they could even eat a cupcake? Fingers crossed.

They did not see me arrive. Or hear me. I had learnt that other than being touched or receiving notes the hand had no real way of perceiving where it was. Which made sense. It wasn't like it had ears or eyes or anything like that.

Of course, the possibility remained that it was all part of some long-con and it was perfectly aware of everything that was happening in the bathroom and was just playing dumb. This seemed like a lot of work though, so it was an idea I dismissed.

I gave the hand a tug on the finger to get its attention and stood back as it disappeared into its hole, no doubt to pen a quick hello.

“Hello,” said the note when it quickly returned.

As I suspected.

Pulling the tiny notebook that existed for this very specific purpose out from my pocket I jotted down my reply:

“Hello. I got you something,” I wrote before passing it over. The note was withdrawn and a moment or so later out came the reply.

“What?” Said the note.

I took it, and very carefully placed the cupcake onto the palm of the hand. The fingers stayed splayed open momentarily then, after getting over the initial confusion of having something new and unknown introduced, closed on it. Gently, though. The hand then pulled into the hole again.

It was gone for a little longer than usual. Not long enough that I got concerned, but more than it usually took. When it reappeared the cupcake was gone and there was another note. Also at least one crumb that I could see. I delicately picked it off as I took the note and unfolded it.

“Very nice, thank you. Why did you give me that?”

My reply was brief, and was as succinct a summary as I could manage of how it had been a year since the hole had first appeared and that in that time they – the hand – had become an important part of my life. Always willing to hear my problems and lend a sympathetic ear (for lack of a better term), always supportive and always understanding. I hoped my reply conveyed my sincerity.

As odd as the situation would seem to someone on the outside – and I'm under no illusions that most people would have run a mile the instant they first saw a hole with a hand appearing in their bathroom – I really was happy they were in my life.

Maybe that says more about me, hmm?

The hand was gone for quite a while after that, and that time I did start to get a little worried. I tapped on the edge of the hole. Lightly at first, but then with a touch more urgency when nothing happened. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it reappeared. I unfurled the note.

For the first time ever I could see the slightest variance in the lines typed on the page. Not a huge amount. Barely noticeable, in fact. Anyone without a year of reading the notes probably wouldn't have seen it, but I did. Like there'd been a wobble with one or two of the letters in the words while the rest remained steady.

“That means a lot. Thank you.”

I smiled. I couldn't help myself.

[mcdonaldcarstens6-blog]

Jumping Into The Real Estate Marketplace? Just before Offering Your Home Read through These Useful Tips

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When possible buyers stroll via your home, allow them to have some area to accomplish it by itself and at their own personal pace. Trailing a prospective purchaser from space to place is uncomfortable and might make them uncomfortable as they try to picture themselves in the house. Leaving behind the purchaser by yourself allows him to create his judgment about the home. In case you have potential customers arriving to think about your home, make sure you keep your domestic pets. Not every person loves pets as much as others. You should think about this when displaying your own home. Creatures have got a way of getting underfoot, so be sure to either keep your pets outdoors during your showing, or have them in a spot where by they won't be in the way. When you established the itemizing selling price of your house, ensure that you abandon some room for negotiation. You don't want to set it too much, but as it is probably that the shopper is likely to make a proposal below the price tag, you don't wish to set it also low, either. The lowest price signifies that you will be at a problem even before you commence negotiations on terms. Advertising is important, nevertheless it doesn't need to be expensive. Don't abandon marketing entirely to the real estate professional sometimes. Place it almost everywhere, not merely in mags and classified listings. These days, the Internet is unquestionably, the most popular way to consider a fresh home. List your house on a number of sites. Ensure you article lots of higher-quality photos. As was reported initially of this article, finding a great real estate professional is important to marketing your property easily. There is absolutely no cause to obtain guess work concerned when promoting your property. If you have to market swiftly and want to get the most out of the selling, you need an experienced realtor.

[cryptswahili]

Bitcoin’s Opportunity in Woodford Equity Income Fund Implosion

It’s not a good feeling when an institution you trust with your money won’t give it back to you; it’s the sinking feeling that thousands of investors in a UK mutual fund called Woodford Equity Income are experiencing, but is this yet another opportunity for bitcoin to show its worth?.

“Not your  keys, not your bitcoin” is the mantra of crypto faithful, popularised by industry influencer Andreas Antonopoulos.

To take full custody means having full control of your private key. You are your own banker, assuming you are happy to take on the custody risk.

With that in mind, the implosion of this large mutual fund – where investors pool their money in a fund run by an “expert” manager –  has sent shockwaves through the UK investment industry, and for followers of crypto (and others) has engendered a large dollop of schadenfreude, as investors discover that their money is effectively in someone else’s hands.

The “told you so” folks, after finishing-up laughing at others’ misfortune (not a good look but tempting), are puzzled why anyone would put their money into the Woodford Equity Income fund run by star manager (fallen star manager) Neil Woodford in the first place.

The fund, which opened for business in 2015, made money in that year but has lost it in each subsequent one, with those losses widening against its FTSE All-Share benchmark to 16% so far this year, according to fund data and ratings company Morningstar.

Suffice to say it is languishing in the bottom quartile of the performance tables against its peers, yet at one stage the fund had assets of £11 billion ($14 billion) under management.

At the beginning of last week investors were stopped from taking their money out of the fund as a rising wave of redemptions of units in the fund gathered pace. Now sized at just £3.7 billion, the final straw seems to have been a request by Kent County Council to withdraw its £263 million invested in the fund.

Neil Woodford’s fund (one of three vehicles) is misnamed.

Most investors would take an equity income strategy to be one in which are fund invests in established firms, ideally highly cash-generative and paying a regular dividend income.

Indeed, Woodford had earned his stellar reputation from his time at Invesco Perpetual, where he famously shunned tech firm capital growth in favour of a “value” approach, thereby side-stepping the dotcom bubble implosion of 2000, prefering unloved stocks such as those of tobacco companies.

However, he began to believe what others were saying about him – that he had the Midas touch. So he set up his own company and the millions began to roll in – both to his funds and to his pocket.

He started to veer a way from investing in income-generating companies (although they still have a place in the Equity Income fund) and began to make large bets on early-stage and highly speculative firms.

And the mature firms he did pickwere in companies that went on to make gigantic losses, such as sub-prime lender Provident Financial and outsourcer Capita.

Brexit bet not working out – vicious circle like a bank run

His big macro idea that Brexit would be a godsend for the UK economy, which would see his UK smaller company picks shine, proved to be mistaken also.

But here is the crux of the matter – when investors starting taking their money out, the investments in small illiquid companies not quoted on any public market became a big problem.

The only way to meet the redemptions was to sell the liquid holdings. Such forced sales had the effect of increasing the proportion of the fund that was in the unlisted illiquid assets.

A vicious circle was in effect. Hedge funds noticed what was going on and they started shorting the companies they figured Woodford would have to start selling the shares of, accelerating the downward spiral – in a fashion not dissimilar to a bank run.

But the warning signs about Woodford’s flagship fund have been flashing red for months if not years.

There was a clear mismatch in an open-ended mutual fund that required instant plentiful liquidity to meet investor redemptions on the one hand and the large proportion of illiquid assets it held on the other.

There is a rule under EU securities law that prevents such funds from holding more than 10% in unlisted companies but Woodford found creative ways of getting around that by, for example, listing some of them on the Guernsey International Stock Exchange.

He also got his Woodford Patient Capital investment trust (which is a closed-ended vehicle with shares that trade on the stock exchange) to buy some of the illiquid holdings in an unusual swap in which the fund received shares in the trust.

This was all perfectly legal but many would say against the letter of the law.

FCA eye on crypto fraudsters but not investment management stars?

All this was going down while the Financial Conduct Authority was busily doing not very much at all, although it did find time to alert retail investors to the loss of £27 million to fraudulent crypto companies.

Those warnings are of course welcome, but where is the same vigour on display when it comes to the big players crypto investors might ask? The FCA is planning to run adverts in the UK warning about online trading scams in crypto but what about the investment fund governance allegedly endulging in less-then-ethical practices in plain sight?

The main UK financial regulator has belatedly issued a statement saying that it is looking at the Guernsey arrangements to check on “compliance with the relevant rules required by the Ucits Directive [EU security rules]”, while the Guernsey stock exchange says  it has “made several attempts to contact the FCA back in April 2009 but with no initial response” as the blame game mounts.

But the FCA has said nothing about what it thinks about the core problem of the mismatch in liquid liabilities and illiquid assets.

Meanwhile investors who can’t access their money are still paying fees that are reportedly  earning Woodford Investment Management £100,000 a day in fees.

Certainly, rebalancing the portfolio will cost money, but it might have been thought that a minimal good will gesture might see it meet those expenses out of its own purse.

Neil Woodford has made an apology, broadcast no YouTube, but the nervousness preformanace should probably have been subject to a retake.

But he’s the boss and he presumably knows best, which highlights another problem with investment stardom – what crypto people would call the weakness of centralisation and its necessary single point of failure.

The IDEX crypto exchange holding that wasn’t

Returning to the unlisted holdings, The Sunday Times ran a story (paywall)on precisely that issue a few months ago.  

The story in part reported: “A number of the businesses in the portfolio may surprise investors. They include Raven Property Group, a Russian developer; Sabina Estates, established to build high-end homes in Ibiza; and Idex, a cryptocurrency exchange.”

I dutifully reported this news in a crypto roundup and was then contacted by Woodford Investment Management’s head of corporate communications asking that I change the report, as the Sunday Times had got it wrong and the holding was in fact a different IDEX  – a Scandinavian company in the digital ID business.

I moved to get the article corrected and the headline changes as Woodford featured in it. But such was the alarm in the Woodford camp that on 7 March Farrow wrote:

“It’s 10am and it’s still up. This really isn’t very helpful. We have had to put a tweet out this am to clarify to everyone. Can you please amend or take down while you change”

Clearly the firm’s proactivity on that matter was perhaps indicative of a nervousness about an investment highlighted that, if true, would have been one of the more speculative holdings in a surprisingly speculative portfolio.

Unfortunately for the circling media today and worried investors, the comms team at Woodford is no longer quite so responsive, or not in the manner to be hoped for.

You thought crypto was risky, try cold fusion

Other investments that catch the eye include Industrial Heat, which comprises 2.3% of the fund (8.9% of the trust according to the February factsheet).

Industrial Heat claims it is researching a breakthrough in energy science around cold fusion, but most scientist thinks it is junk science. In a nutshell Industrial Heat says it is working on the impossible – getting more energy out than is put in, in contravention of all the laws of physics – and they say crypto is speculative!

Pre-empting the crowing of crypto enthusiasts comes FT Alphaville’s Izabella Kaminska piece entitled: If Neil Woodford had been operating in crypto…, to reminds us all that crypto hedge funds have been shuttering funds at a rate of knots, as they ”sneakily suspend redemptions in a bid to buy time until the market “corrects” or at least until a large vested interest can be persuaded to part with some capital to provide a floor to assets you are invested in”.

That’s true but there’s a big difference between hedge fund investors getting shit out of funds and the ordinary folks who fell for the marketing of the genius that is Woodford. And of course there’s also a marked difference between the well-established investment fund industry and the nascent unregulated world of crypto.

And then there’s the cheerleading by certain investment platforms (I will be careful here what I say as I work for an investment platform in the UK).

The largest player in the UK investment platform business, Hargreaves Lansdown, has had the Woodford Equity Income fund on its favourites list since launch, despite its increasingly dire performance. It only removed the fund on the day it barred withdrawals.

Being the largest player, Hargreaves has been able to get fee reductions from the likes of Woodford, which it passes on to platform customers. Why would Woodford make such reductions? Probably because it hopes that Hargreaves customers will be attracted to put money into its funds by the generous fee reduction. Fair enough.

But cynics might say that the Woodford inclusion on Hargreaves’s Wealth 50 was an unwritten expectation on the part of Woodford, and one which created a conflict of interest between the platform’s commercial interests and those of its customers.

Also, the fact that its head of research Mark Dampier sold shares in the company on 16 May to the of £600,000 and his wife offloading £5 million, has left a sour taste in the mouths of its customers.

Active management in the dock

Working for a competitor as I do, I should leave it there and remind the reader that nothing illegal has been done and Hargreaves’ customers have over the years remarked on its excellent customer service.

The whole sorry episode has perhaps put another nail in the coffin of active fund management.

Exchange traded funds and other passive vehicles have been growing in popularity as the realisation dawns that retail investors don’t need to be paying fat fees for underperformance.

In truth the bull market has meant it’s been easy to look good as an active fund manager, but as Warren Buffett puts it, you don’t see who’s naked until the tide goes out.

Banks have already got a poor reputation with the general public and crypto people in particular.

This latest news from the UK fund investment industry is likely to see yet more people conclude that financial independence requires running your own money.

With trackers for all major markets and the most alternative of alternative markets too – (and there are exchange traded notes trackers available for bitcoin and Ethereum)  –  it’s easy even for those with little understanding of stock markets and other asset classes to get low-cost passive access.

Warren Buffet when asked what his wife should invest in upon his parting this world, he said put it in a S&P 500 tracker. His words exactly were: “Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund.”

After his lunch with Tron’s Justin Sun, crypto believers will be hoping there might be 1% for crypto in that portfolio asset allocation.

Just as the bull market might be on its last hurrah, active management couldn’t have a worse reputation, as investors begin to suspect that star managers are really just lucky and it is better to basically stay in the market as long as possible with a tracker.

And when it comes to accessing an asset class and exercising direct control over your ownership of it, there really is no other asset that can compete with bitcoin.

Gary is the cryptocurrency analyst at UK investment platform interactive investor and this opinion piece is written in a personal capacity

The post Bitcoin’s Opportunity in Woodford Equity Income Fund Implosion appeared first on Ethereum World News.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[claracussonseo]

Learning SEO

The following post Learning SEO was originally published to: Jack Lombardi SEO Expert

Learning SEO

Search engine optimisation is the latest industry to hit the news, and is a rapidly growing sector. In depth knowledge in this area opens the door to you either sourcing out your skills to business in order to help them increase their online presence, or using them to promote your own website. Thankfully this sometimes complicated process has become a lot easier to master due to a variety of SEO Cources and information becoming available to the general public.

One such way to gain this information is through various e-books which are available all over the internet if you have the time to look for them. A quick search for seo e-books on Google will bring a large number of results, and many are distributed free of cost. The best bet is to download every one you can find and have a read through them all. Once you gain a general understanding of SEO and its various methods you can then make a more qualified decision as to whether you need to make purchases of e-books for more information or if you think you have the handle of it already. This is most definitely the place to start though as it is a low cost way of getting a feel for the industry. Once you’ve read through the available literature you’ll want to get started on actually promoting your website and moving up the rankings. The e-books will explain the various methods required to achieve better rankings, through link building and other methods. All these things can be done by hand although it will become very time consuming and tedious, if you wish to build enough links to rank well for profitable keyword terms. Therefore many internet marketers turn to SEO software to automate the process and give them more time to work on the content of their site rather than promotion. These software programs can automatically email link requests, check your back links, find out which keywords will work best for you and every other task connected to SEO. There are many different programs out there to help you optimize and promote your website and most of them offer a free trial. Therefore it’s not hard to just look around downloading the different trial programs and testing them out until you find one you like. It must be said though that a good SEO program is a must if you want to streamline your online promotion as it will cut through the grunt work, leaving you more time to use your mind creatively to build better websites and plumb new markets.

Ok you have been shown the do it yourself alternatives to taking an SEO course, and the best ways to learn SEO at your own pace. If you still want to take an SEO course, and there are many reasons to do so, such as if it was required by your place of employment or you want to have a certificate to show potential employers, then there are some good courses out there. Your typical SEO course should be up to date with current algorithm theories and make sure you get a solid guarantee so if the course doesn’t live up to expectations you won’t be out of pocket. Most SEO Cources out there are far more expensive than just getting an e-book and some software and learning for yourself, which many consider to be the best option. So it might be an idea to do a smaller course first and see if you enjoy learning that way before shelling out for the major courses. It is hoped that you find something suitable to your situation as there is a wealth of choice out there.

This has been up until now a general outline of all the different ways you can become competent in search engine optimisation and be able to handle your internet marketing yourself. Now there will be a summary of what to do if you find it hard to get a handle on the techniques involved, or if you just find it plain boring and would rather spend your time doing something else.

Out Sourcing - Depending on the keyword you have decided to optimise for, it could be extremely easy or extremely difficult to achieve high rankings. For a non-competitive keyword, relatively few back links and optimisation factors will be needed and you will probably find it quite easy to manage a successful SEO campaign all by yourself. However for the more competitive keywords, which are often the most profitable ones, ranking high will be very difficult. For the more competitive keywords, one may need to consider outside help to build your pages search engine ranking and traffic. There are a few different options to consider here, such as purchasing the SEO services of an experience practitioner, or purchasing targeted traffic for your websites niche. Moreover there are many other forms of advertising on the internet available for you to try out, as long as you’re willing to put in the effort to find them. We will go through the various options available to you to increase the traffic to your website. SEO Companies - If you find that either SEO is too technical for you, or your efforts have not born any fruit then it may be time to consider handing it over to a professional search engine optimisation firm. There are many different companies out there working with a lot of websites to achieve better rankings for their customers and you can definitely benefit from their resources. They achieve better rankings for your website through the same techniques you could implement yourself, but at greater efficiency and with far less time invested on your part. There are many companies offering these services and some are farm more successful than others. It is an absolute necessity that any company you choose to purchase SEO services from offers a full money back guarantee, if they don’t offer it then do not go near them. Sadly there are no free options in this category, as no one will do SEO work on your website for free as it is just too time consuming to do even to build up company image.

Targeted Traffic - Another option available to internet promoters who have not found success with search engine optimisation would be to purchase targeted traffic. This is when a company who owns a large amount of expired domains sends the traffic to your website for a fee. Depending on the quality of the traffic this can be very lucrative but this is one area which contains far more rip off merchants than honest ones. Often times you will buy a traffic package and the company will send your site X amount of bot hits which will mean your site will register a lot of visits but as none of them are actual people you will obviously receive no sales or revenue of any kind. The upside of this all is that targeted traffic is an instant solution to visitor numbers, and the relatively low cost ( $20-$60 for 5k to 10k visitors) it is not a huge outlay to experiment with a few companies and see which ones work for you. One traffic seller we most definitely do not recommend is one called BuyExpiredDomains.com. They have very attractive prices, and so we took a test run of 5000 visitors. On one of our websites known to convert visitors to sales, not one of those 5000 visitors made a purchase. So it makes you wonder whether any real human visitors were delivered to our site. As stated earlier though, the cost to test a company’s traffic is so small that it won’t hurt the bank if you do encounter a few duds. The thing about this kind of traffic is it’s never going to be as targeted as regular search engine traffic so you won’t be able to convert at 1/110 like you would normally. You might get one sale for every 500 or so visitors they send you, but that can still turn profitable depending on the items you sell.

Traffic Exchanges - As we all know, a budget is a very important thing when starting a business or trying to turn a profit. A free method of generating more traffic would obviously be a godsend to most websites out there. So it’s quite a good thing that these kinds of programs exist and are proving quite successful. Traffic exchange networks work by either you viewing ads and in doing so earning your own ads some viewing time on their networks, or getting a visitor to your site for every one sent to another site in the network. Both methods can work very well if implemented correctly and are great sources of free traffic. Though it sounds too simple this method has been working for many people for a long time. It’s also a great way to test out new products as the audience is there waiting for you. Many traffic exchanges work free of charge so you have nothing to lose by testing them out. Purchasing Ad Space - When considering purchasing ad space, so many people jump straight onto Google Adwords and start shelling out money. The fact of the matter is paying per click will always be a low margin game, meaning you have a great chance of making nothing at all or even losing money. Moreover Google’s cost per click does seem to be a little extreme at times, though that is probably because so many people advertise there that it drives the price into orbit. A better option is to purchase adverts which will be displayed for a set period of time regardless of the amount of people who click on them. As long as the price is right this can be a very profitable way of going about your internet promotion. Buying advertising space based on the length of time your ad will be displayed is by far the best method for a new business, and search engines such as ExactSeek supply exactly this. Just Google ExactSeek and check out their paid inclusion program, which is a far better option than most pay per click programs.

The above methods can all be invaluable when trying to increase your online presence and the profitability of your web business. When starting out it is often very hard to catch up to the rest of the pack with all the technical things SEO involves. Therefore outsourcing your internet marketing can be a great way of getting more revenue out of your website without having to put in the man hours learning the technical side of all the methods involved. Good luck in your internet promotion campaign.

The review Learning SEO read: CWDSC reviews

[seosavage]

Learning SEO

Learning SEO is available on: Chicago Website Design SEO Co.

Learning SEO

Search engine optimisation is the latest industry to hit the news, and is a rapidly growing sector. In depth knowledge in this area opens the door to you either sourcing out your skills to business in order to help them increase their online presence, or using them to promote your own website. Thankfully this sometimes complicated process has become a lot easier to master due to a variety of SEO Cources and information becoming available to the general public.

One such way to gain this information is through various e-books which are available all over the internet if you have the time to look for them. A quick search for seo e-books on Google will bring a large number of results, and many are distributed free of cost. The best bet is to download every one you can find and have a read through them all. Once you gain a general understanding of SEO and its various methods you can then make a more qualified decision as to whether you need to make purchases of e-books for more information or if you think you have the handle of it already. This is most definitely the place to start though as it is a low cost way of getting a feel for the industry. Once you've read through the available literature you'll want to get started on actually promoting your website and moving up the rankings. The e-books will explain the various methods required to achieve better rankings, through link building and other methods. All these things can be done by hand although it will become very time consuming and tedious, if you wish to build enough links to rank well for profitable keyword terms. Therefore many internet marketers turn to SEO software to automate the process and give them more time to work on the content of their site rather than promotion. These software programs can automatically email link requests, check your back links, find out which keywords will work best for you and every other task connected to SEO. There are many different programs out there to help you optimize and promote your website and most of them offer a free trial. Therefore it’s not hard to just look around downloading the different trial programs and testing them out until you find one you like. It must be said though that a good SEO program is a must if you want to streamline your online promotion as it will cut through the grunt work, leaving you more time to use your mind creatively to build better websites and plumb new markets.

Ok you have been shown the do it yourself alternatives to taking an SEO course, and the best ways to learn SEO at your own pace. If you still want to take an SEO course, and there are many reasons to do so, such as if it was required by your place of employment or you want to have a certificate to show potential employers, then there are some good courses out there. Your typical SEO course should be up to date with current algorithm theories and make sure you get a solid guarantee so if the course doesn’t live up to expectations you won't be out of pocket. Most SEO Cources out there are far more expensive than just getting an e-book and some software and learning for yourself, which many consider to be the best option. So it might be an idea to do a smaller course first and see if you enjoy learning that way before shelling out for the major courses. It is hoped that you find something suitable to your situation as there is a wealth of choice out there.

This has been up until now a general outline of all the different ways you can become competent in search engine optimisation and be able to handle your internet marketing yourself. Now there will be a summary of what to do if you find it hard to get a handle on the techniques involved, or if you just find it plain boring and would rather spend your time doing something else.

Out Sourcing - Depending on the keyword you have decided to optimise for, it could be extremely easy or extremely difficult to achieve high rankings. For a non-competitive keyword, relatively few back links and optimisation factors will be needed and you will probably find it quite easy to manage a successful SEO campaign all by yourself. However for the more competitive keywords, which are often the most profitable ones, ranking high will be very difficult. For the more competitive keywords, one may need to consider outside help to build your pages search engine ranking and traffic. There are a few different options to consider here, such as purchasing the SEO services of an experience practitioner, or purchasing targeted traffic for your websites niche. Moreover there are many other forms of advertising on the internet available for you to try out, as long as you’re willing to put in the effort to find them. We will go through the various options available to you to increase the traffic to your website. SEO Companies - If you find that either SEO is too technical for you, or your efforts have not born any fruit then it may be time to consider handing it over to a professional search engine optimisation firm. There are many different companies out there working with a lot of websites to achieve better rankings for their customers and you can definitely benefit from their resources. They achieve better rankings for your website through the same techniques you could implement yourself, but at greater efficiency and with far less time invested on your part. There are many companies offering these services and some are farm more successful than others. It is an absolute necessity that any company you choose to purchase SEO services from offers a full money back guarantee, if they don't offer it then do not go near them. Sadly there are no free options in this category, as no one will do SEO work on your website for free as it is just too time consuming to do even to build up company image.

Targeted Traffic - Another option available to internet promoters who have not found success with search engine optimisation would be to purchase targeted traffic. This is when a company who owns a large amount of expired domains sends the traffic to your website for a fee. Depending on the quality of the traffic this can be very lucrative but this is one area which contains far more rip off merchants than honest ones. Often times you will buy a traffic package and the company will send your site X amount of bot hits which will mean your site will register a lot of visits but as none of them are actual people you will obviously receive no sales or revenue of any kind. The upside of this all is that targeted traffic is an instant solution to visitor numbers, and the relatively low cost ( $20-$60 for 5k to 10k visitors) it is not a huge outlay to experiment with a few companies and see which ones work for you. One traffic seller we most definitely do not recommend is one called BuyExpiredDomains.com. They have very attractive prices, and so we took a test run of 5000 visitors. On one of our websites known to convert visitors to sales, not one of those 5000 visitors made a purchase. So it makes you wonder whether any real human visitors were delivered to our site. As stated earlier though, the cost to test a company’s traffic is so small that it won't hurt the bank if you do encounter a few duds. The thing about this kind of traffic is it’s never going to be as targeted as regular search engine traffic so you won't be able to convert at 1/110 like you would normally. You might get one sale for every 500 or so visitors they send you, but that can still turn profitable depending on the items you sell.

Traffic Exchanges - As we all know, a budget is a very important thing when starting a business or trying to turn a profit. A free method of generating more traffic would obviously be a godsend to most websites out there. So it’s quite a good thing that these kinds of programs exist and are proving quite successful. Traffic exchange networks work by either you viewing ads and in doing so earning your own ads some viewing time on their networks, or getting a visitor to your site for every one sent to another site in the network. Both methods can work very well if implemented correctly and are great sources of free traffic. Though it sounds too simple this method has been working for many people for a long time. It’s also a great way to test out new products as the audience is there waiting for you. Many traffic exchanges work free of charge so you have nothing to lose by testing them out. Purchasing Ad Space - When considering purchasing ad space, so many people jump straight onto Google Adwords and start shelling out money. The fact of the matter is paying per click will always be a low margin game, meaning you have a great chance of making nothing at all or even losing money. Moreover Google’s cost per click does seem to be a little extreme at times, though that is probably because so many people advertise there that it drives the price into orbit. A better option is to purchase adverts which will be displayed for a set period of time regardless of the amount of people who click on them. As long as the price is right this can be a very profitable way of going about your internet promotion. Buying advertising space based on the length of time your ad will be displayed is by far the best method for a new business, and search engines such as ExactSeek supply exactly this. Just Google ExactSeek and check out their paid inclusion program, which is a far better option than most pay per click programs.

The above methods can all be invaluable when trying to increase your online presence and the profitability of your web business. When starting out it is often very hard to catch up to the rest of the pack with all the technical things SEO involves. Therefore outsourcing your internet marketing can be a great way of getting more revenue out of your website without having to put in the man hours learning the technical side of all the methods involved. Good luck in your internet promotion campaign.

Learning SEO click: SEO Company Reviews

[reviewape-blog]

Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting

https://www.reviewape.com/?p=5459 Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting - Product Name: Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting Click here to get Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting at discounted price while it’s still available… All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. Description: You can make that a reality today….Introducing: Finally: Something FUN And EASY To Follow For Kids Of All Ages… Including Yourself! This Comprehensive SUCCESS Program includes: But don’t just take our word for it… “It builds on familiar understandings, such as making wishes and imagining, by introducing children to practices that help them understand the power of their own mind. The exquisite illustrations and the message within the text will be welcomed by adults who were powerfully affected by ‘The Secret’ and would like the children they love to benefit from its powerful message.”Kathy Pryke, language and literacy educator Adelaide, Australia “It was great to be reminded of how important goal setting is – at any age! I found these books not only inspiring but a great opportunity for parents and kids to work on goal setting together. My four-year-old daughter really enjoyed compiling her collage. Becoming familiar with the well-researched material before starting helped me to make the process flow.”Julie Butler, mother and psychologist Anglesea, Australia “I enjoyed reviewing this set of books. As a parent of two children, I think it’s important for the kids to learn early on how to save their money and set goals for themselves. These books are written in a format that is easy to understand and the illustrations are wonderfully done in a way that keep the kids focused from one page to the next. It will be fun to share these books with my children”.Christi Dallaire, mother of two Washington State, U.S.A. “I am delighted with these books. ‘Go for Your Goals – for Kids’ gives children hands-on experience at setting and reaching their goals in a fun way. As children learn these techniques for visualizing and manifesting their desires, they are sure to come away with a renewed sense of confidence.”Donna Foose, grandmother Indiana, USA “This is an activity book that helps you achieve your goals. It’s excellent, clear and easy to understand. Kids will know how to set goals when they have finished it. I’d like to see a similar book for teenagers. The exercises are lots of fun.”Stephanie Limm, 13 Victoria, Australia “These books will be a godsend to parents who wish to assist in bringing out the best from within their children. This resource offers ways for children to develop their true potential and goals at any age, and an opportunity for parents to scaffold their child’s understanding of these concepts!”Cath Hall, teacher Perth, Western Australia “I believe teaching your children how to recognize what they want and how to set goals to achieve what they want is the most valuable lesson you can give them to become successful in life. These skills are not taught enough in our schools today. An absolute excellent workbook for kids, but parents also can learn from the ‘simple’ wisdom in this book! It’s a book I will definitely suggest my children read even though they now are in the teenage years.”Karin Hagberg, mother and author Torquay, Australia Get Ready for One of Your All-Time Most Memorable Times With Your Kids! The truth is, your kids may not remember more than little pieces of what they learn in school. But they WILL remember the time YOU helped them gain power and control over their lives… and what that helped them achieve over the years!So if you’d rather not take chances on your kid’s future, and give them the ultimate gift of a self-made life, keep reading… IT COMES DOWN TO THIS: WILL THEY DO WELL IN LIFE? A team of professionals collaborated to design colorful, inspiring, skill-focused e-books that will change your child’s life forever. SAMPLE THE BOOKS BEFORE YOU BUY: Click here to see 4 sample pages of: ‘The Secret of Making Wishes Come True – Goal Setting and Visualization for Younger Kids’ Click here to see 4 sample pages of: ‘How to Get the Things You Want (and Have Fun Doing It)’ Click here to see 4 sample pages of: ‘Parents’ Guide to Goal Setting and Visualization Training for Kids’ – Click Here to GET AS PRINTED COPIES – When You Order Today, You’ll ALSO Receive These10 13 Exciting Bonuses And Gifts For FREE: Extra Bonus #1 – Audio Version – Parent’s Guide to Their Kids’ Success For Busy Parent’s And Carers That Want’s To Learn On The Go! The Entire Parent’s Guide in Audio for You to Listen to While You Are Busy with Other Activities (What Parent Isn’t?). Extra Bonus #2 – 4 Videos – Success Exercises for LITTLE Kids Makes it Easy for Little Kids to Do Their Goal Setting Project With Minimal Guidance From Busy Parents. This Video Training Session is Fun for Kids, and Will be Great for Children Who Are Both Visual As Well as Auditory Learners. Extra Bonus #3 – 5 Videos – Success Exercises for OLDER Kids Makes it Easy for Older Kids to Do Their Goal Setting Project With Next to NO Guidance From Busy Parents This Video Training Session is Fun for Kids, and Will be Great for Children Who Are Both Visual As Well as Auditory Learners. Rainforest Board Game You’ll have loads of fun as you trek through the rainforest to reach your goal. Action Cards move you forward (through positive deeds like rescuing a baby monkey, or picking up trash). Challenge Cards convey a subtle message about taking care of plants and the creatures in the forest. Mind Maze Challenge Fun for a rainy day when you can’t go out to play! Ben and Lucy have a challenge; can you help them find their way? Your sharp eyes are needed here. Rainforest Word Puzzle When wandering through the rainforest, you might come across these interesting creatures and plants. Can you figure out what they are? The pictures will give you a hint. Rainforest Memory Game Play with these gorgeous cards and have fun sharpening your memory. Show Mom and Dad how smart you are at remembering where some of the surprises found in the rainforest are hidden 100 Things to Be Grateful For Be Inspired and Feel Grateful, by Global Secrets International, is a beautiful, illustrated, downloadable book to gift or to treasure. It will remind you of 100 reasons you have to be happy. As Esther Hicks in The Secret reminds us, ” is the way to bring more into your life.” 20 Tips for a Great Relationship with Your Kids Pin this poster where you can see it daily, and practice lots of these tips every day. In fact, you can print off a few copies to place around the house. The Little Book of Life Skills An invaluable resource! Brian Tracy has written this trilogy of articles – 28 pages include Success Through Goal Setting, Effective Parenting, and Forging Your Self-Confidence. Wise words and advice from a man with vast experience and success in helping people achieve their goals faster and more easily. 100 Ways to Praise a Child Do you know that you can praise children all day long, and they won’t get sick of it? They will love you for it, and if it is sincere and real, they will blossom as you watch. Extra Activity Sheets (Younger Kids Book) In case you need them, extra copies of the activity sheets from the Go for Your Goals book (younger kids version), including: • My Cherished Wishes • Strategy Ideas List • Goal Ladder • Goal Progress Chart Extra Activity Sheets (Older Kids Book) In case you need them, extra copies of the activity sheets from the Go for Your Goals book (older kids version), including: • My Wishes • Strategy Ideas List • Goal Ladder • Goal Progress Chart The first book EVER to explaingoal setting for kids and the Law of Attractionin terms your children will understand! Full 60 Day Money Back Guarantee – No Questions Asked – You really have no risk whatsoever. The information you get in this product is priceless and in fact, we are so confident it will change the lives of your kids as well as yours that… We’ll let you READ IT and USE IT, and see the results for yourself. If after all this, you are still not happy – we will gladly refund your money. We’ll only keep your money if you’re 100% satisfied. Now, get ready for the real question… YOU CAN CHANGE THE FUTURE OF YOUR CHILDREN OVERNIGHT… DON’T DELAY GET STARTED TODAY! – Click Here to GET AS PRINTED COPIES – To achieving great success with your children! Winsome Coutts and “The Happy Kids” teamP.S. Before you know it, your kids are all grown up and you can only hope for the best. Today, you still have time to Empower them for the rest of their lives! Don’t wait until it’s too late. P.P.S. This just came in from one of our wonderful customers: “My daughter (5 years) and I had just finished writing down her wish list. We had stopped at page 12 in your ebook after I said I would have to print it out so we could write the list on the special page you provided. My phone then rang and it was the mother of a school friend of hers giving me an RSVP to my daughter’s 6th birthday party next weekend. Her literal words were , “Is there anything she specially wishes for?” to which I replied, “Amazingly, we have just finished writing a list”, which I proceeded to read to her! Thanks for the great book. It was fantastic that I could show my daughter that by focusing on her goals, they could get ‘powered up’.”Little ‘coincidences’ like this can be your reality, too – starting today! To create these groundbreaking books for people just like you, was a daunting task. So we brought together experts in the fields of child education, personal development, curriculum development, children’s writing and art illustration. These professionals collaborated to design colorful, inspiring, easy-to-read, skill-focused e-books your child will treasure forever. Winsome Coutts, a grandmother and mother of two, holds a teacher’s certificate in education, taught school in Australia and Canada, and has written hundreds of articles on self-development. She personally studied with Bob Proctor and John Demartini, popular teachers featured on “The Secret” DVD. Winsome has been visualizing, goal setting for kids and applying the Law of Attraction since 1992 Jessi Hoffman, a professional writer, editor and former elementary schoolteacher, has written goal-setting courses for Trump University; educational curriculum for children; and a distance education course in visualization for Health and Harmony Colleges, Australia. She has studied and taught personal development since the 1970s and holds an M.A. in Eastern studies. Anneli Asplund, with a diploma in visual arts, was responsible for designing the children’s department for IKEA of Australia. She also owned and operated her own greeting card design business before Klara, her baby daughter, involved her in drawing stories for kids and developing her unique children’s art style in 2005. Anneli’s illustrations fill the pages of these books, and Klara, who is now older, has become an expert in goal setting. Let Us Help Your Child Have Their Wishes Come True – Starting TODAY! Your Child’s Journey to Success and Happiness has Just Begun… Ready for one of your all-time best moments with your kids? How Different Would Your Life Be Today YOU can give exactly this experience to your children or grandchildren – a life-altering gift that will last a lifetime! You don’t need to be an expert – in fact it’s probably better that you’re not. These exceptional books will help you guide ANY child through the steps to learn how to set goals and visualize (you’ll thank yourself when they’re bigger!). All you need to do is answer your child’s questions from your own experience, or learn along together with them (in case these topics are new to you). These books are written simply, using language a kid can understand and gorgeous illustrations that add wonder and motivation. But before we go any further, there’s something else… IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT GOALS, IT’S PLAIN OLD HAPPINESS! Imagine if you could do all this for your child: Isn’t that the kind of ‘natural education’ your child deserves? How Different Would You Have Felt Growing Up And Visualization… Until You ‘Got It’? That is exactly the experience your kids are blessed to have access to in this age. If you decide that they should live the blessings of this time… It is time to explore the first book ever that explains goal setting for kids and the Law of Attraction in terms they can understand! Your goal setting discovery package contains: • Two Beautifully Illustrated Books: one for younger kids and one for older kids – completely explains and walks them through the steps of goal setting, strategizing, and visualization • A Parent’s Guide shows you exactly how to use the books plus answers all your questions on visualization, goal setting and how they work for kids • Activity Sheets for the Child to help focus and enhance each stage of learning. But now, it is time to… – Click Here to GET Law of Attraction for Kids AS PRINTED COPIES – This website is Optimized by GainWebsite Click here to get Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting at discounted price while it’s still available… All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Law of Attraction for Kids | Parent and Child Goal Setting is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. - ReviewApe - https://www.reviewape.com/?p=5459

[mccartneynathxzw83]

Best Cryptocurrency Plugins for Websites Accepting Bitcoin Payments

Best Cryptocurrency Plugins for Websites Accepting Bitcoin Payments

In fact, bitcoin is now a valid payment method at millions of stores, both online and offline. The other cryptocurrencies, collectively called altcoins, are not far behind. More businesses are accepting altcoins such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and other cryptocurrencies.

The number of people willing to transact in cryptocurrencies is rapidly growing. People are tired of a state of near-total surveillance that the various governments have forced them into. Bank transactions, credit cards, debit cards, and even PayPal transactions are all carefully monitored by the government through IRS, NSA, and other bodies.

Privacy conscious people are left to come up with inventive ways to purchase things that they don’t want anyone else to know about. Those things are not necessarily illegal, but could be considered taboo or embarrassing, say, an adult toy. Such people find cryptocurrencies the natural next frontier.

Cryptocurrencies offer high degree of privacy, anonymity, and escape from government’s intrusive ways. Of course, even criminals find it useful to use cryptocurrencies to keep themselves safe from the eyes of the law enforcement agencies.

For all of these reasons, the number of people using cryptocurrencies for making purchases is only growing, and growing fast. More often than not, they are even ready to pay a premium for the additional privacy and anonymity that cryptocurrency transactions offer.

If you are a business and wish to give your revenues a huge boost, accepting cryptocurrencies is a great way to do it. Not all merchants in all industries accept cryptocurrency payments. Therefore, if there are privacy conscious customers in your business, then they will undoubtedly choose you over your competitor who is currently not accepting cryptocurrency payments.

If they are already accepting crypto payments, then it means that a significant number of your customers are probably shopping from them, since you do not accept the digital currencies. It makes sense for you to start accepting crypto payments too, so that you can win back some of the customers you have lost to your competitors. Either way, accepting crypto payments is surest way to improve your business.

Here are some of the top website plugins that will come handy if you intend to start accepting crypto payments on your website.

BitPay

Among all the crypto payment processing services, BitPay is easily the most popular and trusted choice among the businesses. It offers a plugin for websites that wish to accept bitcoins as payments. BitPay was launched as early as 2011, just 2 years after the first cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created.

So, it is among the oldest players in the game, and definitely the most popular crypto payments processing service. In fact, it has partnerships with the likes of NewEgg, Warner Bros. Records, TigerDirect, Microsoft, and PayPal. Clearly, it is the most trusted bitcoin payments processing service in the world.

The best thing about BitPay is that it offers integrations with more than 40 e-commerce website platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and others. So, no matter what platform you use to create your e-commerce shop, BitPay has a plugin for that. BitPay’s service is available in roughly 40 countries.

BitPay

BitPay offers a highly simplified system for executing bitcoin transactions on websites. The merchants are completely shielded from the volatile fluctuations of the bitcoin market. As soon as they receive payments in bitcoins, they are instantly exchanged into fiat currency. Thus, there is no waiting period involved, which means that the businesses can go ahead and accept payments in bitcoins, while being completely shielded from the currency fluctuations.

Digital Paybox

Digital Paybox is an advanced form of payment processing plugin that is designed for websites that sell digital products. The idea behind Digital Paybox is that you can set a fixed price for your digital product or ask the buyers to pay whatever they want. The latter payment option is gaining notoriety in the recent years. To ensure that you are getting a fair deal with your customers, you can set a minimum price to be paid for the digital product.

There are mainly two ways for adding Digital Paybox on your website – either you add the script to your website’s HTML code, or if you have a WordPress website, you can directly install the Digital Paybox plugin. The Digital Paybox can be added to any page on your website, asking the customer to purchase or donate for your digital product.

Digital Paybox – WordPress Plugin

Once the customer makes the payment, an encrypted link will be automatically generated and sent to them. Buyers can click on the link and download their digital product from the link’s page.

Digital Paybox offers integration with multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, EgoPay, Perfect Money, BitPay, Payza, and many others. This allows it to accept payments in not only bitcoins, but also with credit cards and debit cards.

Coinbase

Many of you already know Coinbase as one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. But, did you also know that it helps merchants accept Bitcoin payments?

Coinbase is used as a payment processing platform by close to 50,000 businesses worldwide. It is trusted by the likes of Dell, Wikimedia Foundation, Overstock.com, Dell, Expedia, and thousands of other businesses. It supports payments from customers located all over the world. This is pure gold for businesses that sell digital merchandise. If you sell physical merchandise, this is your opportunity to expand your business overseas as well.

Coinbase

All the bitcoin payments that you receive will be instantly converted into fiat currencies by Coinbase, thus protecting you from bitcoin price shocks. Whether you have built a website on an open-source platform like WordPress or have a custom-built website, Coinbase can be integrated on all of them.

Although Coinbase can receive transactions and process payments from almost all the countries in the world, it is available for merchants of only a limited number of countries.

GoUrl

GoUrl promotes itself as a bitcoin payment gateway/processors for websites. But, it processes a plethora of cryptocurrencies on your website, including litecoin, vericoin, paycoin, dogecoin, reddcoin, speedcoin, and many others.

The good thing about GoUrl is that it enables transactions for both digital as well as physical goods and services. It is one of the most trustworthy and valuable resources for any website looking to accept crypto payments. It is completely open source and is available for download on Github.com.

GoUrl

Its open-source status means that there is absolutely no monthly fee for using the plugin. It even comes with a very low transaction fee, which is often as low as 0%. Setting it up is incredibly easy too. It is available for a multitude of website platforms like WooCommerce, WordPress, and others. GoUrl allows the users to convert their cryptocurrencies into any of the 100+ local currencies and withdraw them.

An ingenious feature of GoUrl is that it allows websites to set up premium memberships for visitors. You could ask the visitors to pay a nominal recurring membership fee for viewing the premium content on your website. Alternatively, you can ask them to make a small, one-time payment to check out premium content on your website. GoUrl is one of the best cryptocurrency plugins ever created.

JCMW – Javascript Cryptocurrency Miner

This plugin for WordPress platform is a godsend for businesses, publishers, bloggers, and any other website owner who wants to make some additional money. This plugin is an advanced bitcoin miner, designed to use the computer resources of your website visitors to mine for coins.

You must remember the recent controversies surrounding the Piratebay, Showtime, and the likes, which were caught running mining scripts on their websites. These websites were running the minin scripts in the background, while their unsuspecting visitors had no clue that their computer resources are being utilized that way. The visitors’ computers do not suffer any kind of harm due to the mining itself.

JCMW – Javascript Cryptocurrency Miner

But, the fact that the websites did not get the consent of their visitors before running the scripts led to all the controversy. In order to prevent such an instance, JCMW displays a banner at the bottom of each of your webpages announcing to the visitors that their computer resources are being used for mining.

Using this plugin is beneficial for both the website owners and the visitors. You can offer a complete ad-free experience to your visitors, and continue to make money out of mining for cryptocurrencies. This way, everybody wins. The javascript of JCMW mines for Monero coins.

http://ift.tt/2llrjWZ

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Best Cryptocurrency Plugins for Websites Accepting Bitcoin Payments

Best Cryptocurrency Plugins for Websites Accepting Bitcoin Payments

In fact, bitcoin is now a valid payment method at millions of stores, both online and offline. The other cryptocurrencies, collectively called altcoins, are not far behind. More businesses are accepting altcoins such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and other cryptocurrencies.

The number of people willing to transact in cryptocurrencies is rapidly growing. People are tired of a state of near-total surveillance that the various governments have forced them into. Bank transactions, credit cards, debit cards, and even PayPal transactions are all carefully monitored by the government through IRS, NSA, and other bodies.

Privacy conscious people are left to come up with inventive ways to purchase things that they don’t want anyone else to know about. Those things are not necessarily illegal, but could be considered taboo or embarrassing, say, an adult toy. Such people find cryptocurrencies the natural next frontier.

Cryptocurrencies offer high degree of privacy, anonymity, and escape from government’s intrusive ways. Of course, even criminals find it useful to use cryptocurrencies to keep themselves safe from the eyes of the law enforcement agencies.

For all of these reasons, the number of people using cryptocurrencies for making purchases is only growing, and growing fast. More often than not, they are even ready to pay a premium for the additional privacy and anonymity that cryptocurrency transactions offer.

If you are a business and wish to give your revenues a huge boost, accepting cryptocurrencies is a great way to do it. Not all merchants in all industries accept cryptocurrency payments. Therefore, if there are privacy conscious customers in your business, then they will undoubtedly choose you over your competitor who is currently not accepting cryptocurrency payments.

If they are already accepting crypto payments, then it means that a significant number of your customers are probably shopping from them, since you do not accept the digital currencies. It makes sense for you to start accepting crypto payments too, so that you can win back some of the customers you have lost to your competitors. Either way, accepting crypto payments is surest way to improve your business.

Here are some of the top website plugins that will come handy if you intend to start accepting crypto payments on your website.

BitPay

Among all the crypto payment processing services, BitPay is easily the most popular and trusted choice among the businesses. It offers a plugin for websites that wish to accept bitcoins as payments. BitPay was launched as early as 2011, just 2 years after the first cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created.

So, it is among the oldest players in the game, and definitely the most popular crypto payments processing service. In fact, it has partnerships with the likes of NewEgg, Warner Bros. Records, TigerDirect, Microsoft, and PayPal. Clearly, it is the most trusted bitcoin payments processing service in the world.

The best thing about BitPay is that it offers integrations with more than 40 e-commerce website platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and others. So, no matter what platform you use to create your e-commerce shop, BitPay has a plugin for that. BitPay’s service is available in roughly 40 countries.

BitPay

BitPay offers a highly simplified system for executing bitcoin transactions on websites. The merchants are completely shielded from the volatile fluctuations of the bitcoin market. As soon as they receive payments in bitcoins, they are instantly exchanged into fiat currency. Thus, there is no waiting period involved, which means that the businesses can go ahead and accept payments in bitcoins, while being completely shielded from the currency fluctuations.

Digital Paybox

Digital Paybox is an advanced form of payment processing plugin that is designed for websites that sell digital products. The idea behind Digital Paybox is that you can set a fixed price for your digital product or ask the buyers to pay whatever they want. The latter payment option is gaining notoriety in the recent years. To ensure that you are getting a fair deal with your customers, you can set a minimum price to be paid for the digital product.

There are mainly two ways for adding Digital Paybox on your website – either you add the script to your website’s HTML code, or if you have a WordPress website, you can directly install the Digital Paybox plugin. The Digital Paybox can be added to any page on your website, asking the customer to purchase or donate for your digital product.

Digital Paybox – WordPress Plugin

Once the customer makes the payment, an encrypted link will be automatically generated and sent to them. Buyers can click on the link and download their digital product from the link’s page.

Digital Paybox offers integration with multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, EgoPay, Perfect Money, BitPay, Payza, and many others. This allows it to accept payments in not only bitcoins, but also with credit cards and debit cards.

Coinbase

Many of you already know Coinbase as one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. But, did you also know that it helps merchants accept Bitcoin payments?

Coinbase is used as a payment processing platform by close to 50,000 businesses worldwide. It is trusted by the likes of Dell, Wikimedia Foundation, Overstock.com, Dell, Expedia, and thousands of other businesses. It supports payments from customers located all over the world. This is pure gold for businesses that sell digital merchandise. If you sell physical merchandise, this is your opportunity to expand your business overseas as well.

Coinbase

All the bitcoin payments that you receive will be instantly converted into fiat currencies by Coinbase, thus protecting you from bitcoin price shocks. Whether you have built a website on an open-source platform like WordPress or have a custom-built website, Coinbase can be integrated on all of them.

Although Coinbase can receive transactions and process payments from almost all the countries in the world, it is available for merchants of only a limited number of countries.

GoUrl

GoUrl promotes itself as a bitcoin payment gateway/processors for websites. But, it processes a plethora of cryptocurrencies on your website, including litecoin, vericoin, paycoin, dogecoin, reddcoin, speedcoin, and many others.

The good thing about GoUrl is that it enables transactions for both digital as well as physical goods and services. It is one of the most trustworthy and valuable resources for any website looking to accept crypto payments. It is completely open source and is available for download on Github.com.

GoUrl

Its open-source status means that there is absolutely no monthly fee for using the plugin. It even comes with a very low transaction fee, which is often as low as 0%. Setting it up is incredibly easy too. It is available for a multitude of website platforms like WooCommerce, WordPress, and others. GoUrl allows the users to convert their cryptocurrencies into any of the 100+ local currencies and withdraw them.

An ingenious feature of GoUrl is that it allows websites to set up premium memberships for visitors. You could ask the visitors to pay a nominal recurring membership fee for viewing the premium content on your website. Alternatively, you can ask them to make a small, one-time payment to check out premium content on your website. GoUrl is one of the best cryptocurrency plugins ever created.

JCMW – Javascript Cryptocurrency Miner

This plugin for WordPress platform is a godsend for businesses, publishers, bloggers, and any other website owner who wants to make some additional money. This plugin is an advanced bitcoin miner, designed to use the computer resources of your website visitors to mine for coins.

You must remember the recent controversies surrounding the Piratebay, Showtime, and the likes, which were caught running mining scripts on their websites. These websites were running the minin scripts in the background, while their unsuspecting visitors had no clue that their computer resources are being utilized that way. The visitors’ computers do not suffer any kind of harm due to the mining itself.

JCMW – Javascript Cryptocurrency Miner

But, the fact that the websites did not get the consent of their visitors before running the scripts led to all the controversy. In order to prevent such an instance, JCMW displays a banner at the bottom of each of your webpages announcing to the visitors that their computer resources are being used for mining.

Using this plugin is beneficial for both the website owners and the visitors. You can offer a complete ad-free experience to your visitors, and continue to make money out of mining for cryptocurrencies. This way, everybody wins. The javascript of JCMW mines for Monero coins.

http://ift.tt/2llrjWZ