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yournewapartment · 4 years

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Wedding Planning

It is impossible to write an entire post on all of the intricacies of wedding planning, because it would just be too long and frankly exhausting. But here are some of the highlights that I think will help people in need! There are also extensive sources on the internet that are way more in-depth, but here’s an overview for you…

The Venue

The first thing you should do when planning a wedding is to pick your venue. Picking your venue will likely inform what date you set to be your wedding date. Most venues have limited availability, and if you want a specific venue for your dream wedding, best get that locked down ASAP. You may already have something in mind! If you don’t, my recommendation is to look for venues that host weddings year-round.

Choosing your venue will determine how “hands on” you’ll have to be in regards to planning your wedding. Venues that specialize in weddings and similar events will come with an entire staff of vendors ready to go for your wedding. If you’re doing a DIY wedding (like I did) you’ll have to find your own vendors. On that note- choosing a reliable and trustworthy vendor is SUPER important. There are so many options, it can be overwhelming to choose which will be right for your wedding.

If you choose a venue that is specifically used for weddings throughout the year, you will have the EASIEST time planning the resources part of your wedding. The venue will provide contact information for trusted vendors including (but not limited to): caterers they trust (or they may even have an in-house chef), photographers, make up artists, flower arrangers, DJs or musicians, etc. Simply choose which vendors you would like at your wedding, and of course, if you find a different vendor you like better, you’ll be able to use them. The venue will also assign you a key person who will manage all of the comings and goings of vendors and employees at your wedding itself. This is different than a wedding planner who you hire, this is just specifically a point person for you to go to with any issues during the wedding planning process.

If you choose a venue that may not specifically be made for weddings but is allowing you to get married there, they may or may not have contact numbers of trusted vendors. You may or may not have a point person, and I recommend that you at least consult with a wedding planner to make sure that you have everything under control.

If you’re creating your own venue (that’s what I did) you’re completely on your own and will have to find vendors your own way! See “DIY Vendors”.

Wedding Planning

Setting the right deadlines and expectations for your wedding will help the process be as smooth as possible. The easiest way to do this is to use an app specifically made for wedding planning. There are many good options out there, but I personally used The Knot.

These apps will create timelines for you based on when your wedding needs. They’re easy to personalize and disregard tasks and plans that are not relevant to your wedding. For example, I didn’t have bridesmaids, so I removed all the bridesmaid-related notifications from my timeline so I wouldn’t get notifications about those tasks.

You’ll receive notifications on your phone, reminding you to accomplish specific tasks. You’ll know which tasks are overdue and the order of which you should accomplish specific things. You’ll also learn how much contact you’ll have with specific vendors before locking them down.

My favorite part of using The Knot was the fact that it gave me a realistic expectation of when I should accomplish specific tasks. Which things would take more time, how many meetings I would need to set with specific vendors, etc. As a newbie, having all of these deadlines already created for me was wonderful.

The Knot doesn’t just stop there. It helps you set up your honeymoon, rehearsals dinner, as well as writing thank-you cards.

DIY Vendors

Because my husband manages a restaurant that also does catering, he had lots of networking connections he used to secure reputable vendors for us. While you may not have that direct of a connection, someone you know does have that connection! I recommend reaching out to friends, families, co-workers for recommendations. People LOVE giving recommendations.

If you went to a friend or family member’s wedding that was local, ask them for any recommendations. Ask them what worked and what didn’t work.

If a friend or family member has a wedding-related side hustle, consider working out a deal with them. For example, my parents own a garden, and one of their workers moonlights as a wedding photographer. We hired her, and she turned out to be AMAZING. Of course, always verify someone is legit before hiring them by checking their references and/or website.

If you find a trustworthy vendor, ask them for recommendations on other vendors. For example, our caterer recommended an ice cream truck company that we ended up using.

Use your network! You can always make a post on social media if no one in your immediate circle can help.

Creating “Save the Dates”, “RSVPs”, announcements … etc

We used Vistaprint for all of our paper goods. But there are SO many websites out there to explore! These websites have many different formatting options and always allow you to create your own formats. Make sure you have high quality photos saved on your computer that you can use to create cute mailings.

If you use a website like Vistaprint to create your mailings, they’ll have templates specifically labeled for weddings.

Also simply searching “wedding RSVP” on Google will give you millions of ideas.

Shop around on all the sites and create a dummy program and or mailing to see which site is the cheapest.

Search online for discount codes! A lot of websites will give you a discount for signing up for their email list

ALWAYS order more copies than you think you need. You’ll find yourself adding people to the guest list last minute and will be glad you’ll have extra. You also want to have extra copies of everything for your wedding scrapbook.

RSVPs

Shocking thing that I learned about weddings- most people DO NOT RSVP! If they’re coming, they’ll assume that you know that they’re coming. Even if you haven’t talked to them in two years. They may even be insulted that you’re asking them to RSVP. It’s bananas. I invited just under two hundred people to my wedding, and only fifty five RSVP’d. I’m not kidding.

There are lots of ways to track the mail you send to your guests, but from my experience, none are foolproof. In all likelihood you’ll find yourself contacting friends and family and asking them outright. This wasn’t an issue for me, because I didn’t have a formal dinner. If you do have a formal dinner planned and need people to make reservations for food, you may have to send out multiple reminders to RSVP and set a firm deadline.

There are ways to track the mail you send using an app, such as The Knot. But they only work if you have every single person’s email address. That may work if you have a smaller wedding, but asking two hundred people for their email is a time waste and not something I was willing to do. However, my friend got married, and communicated with people exclusively using Knot emails. The Knot even offers to bug people who haven’t RSVP’d for you, which is a nice feature. The Knot also allows you to go on and RSVP for people, which they can later go back in and edit, which is what I used.

There’s always the old fashioned way of tracking RSVPs… track of who responds via a spreadsheet or written document. Utter madness.

Registries

Online registries are so common, that most major retailors or stores have their own. For example- Amazon, Target, Etsy, all have their own registries. You can set these registries up so that the items are shipped directly to an address of your choosing. There are also apps that allow you to make “wedding fund” registries where people can send you money that is then deposited directly into your bank account.

If you don’t want to use The Knot for anything else, consider using them for your registry. The Knot registry is easy to use and connects to literally every website. You can literally find something obscure on some weird corner of the internet, and link it to your registry on The Knot for people to buy for you.

ALL of these registries keep track of who bought what for you, which is super helpful for after the wedding when you’re feverishly trying to complete your hundreds of thank you notes.

“Wedding fund” registries are great. Usually you’re asked to set a goaled monetary amount and to explain what you’re using the money for. People who donate are charged a small amount for sending you money, but that is something they pay on top of what they’re sending you.

Make sure to include items from a variety of different price points!

Don’t put an overwhelming amount of things on your registry. I don’t recommend putting more than forty things. You can always replenish if needed (I did that once).

Many people won’t buy anything from your registry until the week before your wedding. It sucks.

People with either buy you exactly what you want from your registry, will give you cash or a check at your wedding (make sure you have a box for these), or will just give you something random that you don’t want. We had a beautiful set of bowls and dinner ware on Etsy requested on our registry, most of which was purchased for us. And my husband’s one aunt went on to the artist’s profile on Etsy, and ordered us something random that did not fit our color scheme AT ALL. So now everything matches, except these random ugly bowls that she bought us.

General Tips/Tricks

The “wedding surcharge” is real fam! Vendors will charge you more for your wedding then they will for a regular party. Avoid using wedding terminology when speaking to specific vendors, if you can.

Some people will simply not give you anything for your wedding. It’s mind boggling and never who you would expect. Try not to take it personally.

If you do not grant every single guest a “plus one”, it’s likely that at least a few people will text you angrily and demand that you give them a plus one. So may even just show up with a “plus one” without talking to you.

Your family WILL get super offended that you didn’t invite an obscure person you haven’t spoken to in over a decade. Deal with it in the way you feel is best.

Speaking of your family, wedding guests will likely reach out to your parents before reaching out to you. So make sure to keep your close family updated on all of the wedding details.

People are OPINIONATED and it SUCKS. Bless her heart, but my Bubbie spent the months leading up to my wedding predicting every choice we made would blow up in our faces. She helped bankroll the wedding, so we had to sit there and take it. Nothing blew up in our faces, the wedding literally went off without a single hitch, and Bubbie even apologized afterwards and said it was the best wedding she ever went to. That hoe was trying to tell us that an ice cream truck instead of a cake was a bad idea! What nonsense.

In conclusion- You do YOU! Weddings are super stressful and EVERYBODY is judgmental and has an opinion, even if they aren’t married. Even if they have no direct relation to you and haven’t spoken to you since you were a child. Be willing to hear other suggestions, but stick to your guns. LIE LIE LIE if you have to. It’s your wedding! Your friends and family may seem upset in the moment, even though that’s dumb because it isn’t their wedding, but in the end they will love your wedding for what it is, and will forget they ever complained.

#wedding #wedding planning #how to plan a wedding

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imagine-your-party-hosts · 4 years

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Salty Tea

Word Count: 2,146

Notes: This was my old piece for the @domesticbnhazine! I previously just had it in a google doc and wanted it to have a proper place on my blog.

Summary: It had been two years since the beloved and infamous class had graduated and began their long-awaited journey of pro-heroism when a wedding invite arrived in the mail, a small cat stamp in the corner. He was shocked - he had assumed it had been a messing up of addresses, though sure enough it was to his apartment, and when he opened the envelope and saw the names ‘Izuku Midoriya’ and ‘Ochaco Uraraka’ in their glittering gold he swayed on his feet and had to catch himself on the counter.

There was a lot to be said about Hero Class 1-A.

A majority of it could not be brought up, however, without the mention of Aizawa Shouta. After all, how could this group of students manage to tame the beast that had previously expelled all his students? What demon had they sold their soul too exactly to survive all their years at U.A.

Maybe the question should be asked of who exactly Aizawa had offered his soul to.

It was quite obvious - he’d laid it bare to the students of 1-A time and time again. He had sacrificed himself plenty of times for the good of his students and - as much as it pained him to admit it - he’d do it all over again if need be.

“You’re pretty soft on these kids!” Yamada had attempted to whisper in his ear sometime not long after these students had come to him - however, whispering had never been Yamada’s strong suit, and several heads suddenly popped up from the ten-paged essay they were supposed to be writing.

“I am not. Eleven pages,” Aizawa had said in response, knocking Yamada away from his desk and telling him to go bother Nemuri instead, and the heads suddenly sank back down to their papers.

“You’ve been pretty soft on these kids,” Yamada had said once in the teacher’s lounge. It was relaxed around the school - final exams had just ended, and graduation was nearing faster than Aizawa or his classroom had been prepared for.

“I have not,” Aizawa responded, stirring honey into the peppermint tea he was brewing that his class had bought him, the spoon knocking against the cat mug that his class had also gifted him. The kittens that stared up to him were all hand-painted little creatures, different for each of his student: a long-haired green Scottish fold, its tail too fluffy for its own good, constantly getting tripped on, curled around its little paws; a hissing abyssinian with bright red eyes that watched his every move of the spoon; a siamese with a scar trailing across his left eye, his ear a little mangled though a bright blue bow tied around his neck all the same. Aizawa’s vision blurred suddenly and briefly and he had to glance away so his tea wouldn’t be salty.

It had been two years since the beloved and infamous class had graduated and began their long-awaited journey of pro-heroism when a wedding invite arrived in the mail, a small cat stamp in the corner. He was shocked - he had assumed it had been a messing up of addresses, though sure enough it was to his apartment, and when he opened the envelope and saw the names ‘Izuku Midoriya’ and ‘Ochaco Uraraka’ in their glittering gold he swayed on his feet and had to catch himself on the counter.

They’re just kids, Aizawa thought to himself, ripping the invitation further from its hold, and he started with a revelation.

They’re adults.

A meow sounded from Aizawa’s ankles, and he hesitated, glancing down to the wide-eyed burmese that was watching him, making sure he wasn’t going to topple over. Aizawa could remember the day he got this cat - remember the day Kirishima had seen it outside in the rain from the school window and had promptly bounded from his seat regardless of Aizawa trying to stop him. “It’s raining, she can’t stay outside!” Kirishima had said when he’d came back in, his uniform sopping wet and dripping a puddle on the classroom floor. Aizawa’s lecture was immediately forgotten, as all the students suddenly hopped up to go look at the kitten curled up in Kirishima’s arms.

“She looks dopey,” Bakugou said, rolling his eyes, stepping away from it, though the cat’s wide yellow eyes just followed his figure. She meowed, loud enough for the students to all let out a simultaneous squeal.

“We can’t leave her out in the cold!” Kirishima repeated, and that was how Aizawa had ended up with a wide-eyed cat in his bag on the way home that chewed on his pens.

Aizawa would give Bakugou that she did look dopey.

He glanced back to the invitation in his hands, which was heavy and cold and held a thousand of his thoughts, ranging from the first time he saw little Midoriya and little Uraraka, terrified in his class, to the day of their graduation, much taller and much wiser than Aizawa had ever expected their little babbling forms to be. There was a brief moment that he faltered in the gold hue of the letters on the paper, before he suddenly sighed much louder than needed and went to get a pen to put in his RSVP.

These kids would be the death of him, and he knew that, and he did not mind one bit.

And so, six months later, Aizawa found himself sat in the pews beside Yamada, in a pressed suit that he’d let Yamada pick the tie for. They were matching, both such a bright and obnoxious yellow that Aizawa was blinded every time he glanced down to straighten it, but he supposed it wasn’t the worst thing Yamada could have picked out. It could be decorated with brightly colored birds, or it could make noise, so Aizawa would just consider the canary colored tie a blessing for now.

Midoriya was already standing at the front, though Aizawa had thought that for once he shouldn’t have been so early. He was completely red, freckles hidden in the crimson, his scarred hands shaking just barely. Aizawa could see the Scottish fold, its too-long and too-fluffy tail getting caught in his paws and making him tumble down, when suddenly music started playing from and Yamada nudged Aizawa’s shoulder to glance behind him.

It started with Mina and Bakugou, and he was surprised that their arms were linked together without a large argument, regardless of Mina’s bright, teasing grin and nudging of Bakugou’s tensed shoulder. The hissing and snapping Abyssinian was for once silent, its red eyes only staring straight ahead, while the Sphynx beside him was only flicking her tail back and forth playfully.

Then there was Tsuyu and Kirishima, Kirishima grinning brightly and marching down the aisle, Tsuyu being dragged behind him. Neither had wanted to be painted as a cat on Aizawa’s mug - Tsuyu had wanted to be a frog, naturally, and while she’d settled on being a hopping Munchkin kitten Kirishima was not content until he was proud German Shepherd, chasing after Sero’s much too long tail. Next was Jiro and Kaminari, Kaminari a rigid Bengal that the Manx beside him had to roll her eyes at and calm down. Iida walked down the aisle with Hagakure as his side; Iida was a Siberian that sat tall and regal, and Hagakure had said she wanted to be a Persian with their smushed-in faces that she adored, only seen for the bright pink collar it wore with its jingling bell.

Lastly came Todoroki and Momo, both smiling comfortably, seemingly at something shared a moment before the doors open - perhaps about Bakugou’s for once uncomfortable stance. Aizawa thought of the Siamese, with its torn ear and bright blue bow that was too big for its little frame, and when he saw Momo with her long hair down he had a remembrance of the Russian blue on his mug, pristine and beautiful with its perfectly groomed coat. He almost forgot what he was truly here for, wondering if he’d just came to check up on his students, who, yes, thank you, thank you, were alive and well, when Yamada shoved him once more and his breath caught in his throat.

Uraraka suddenly stepped out into the aisle, her father by her side. Aizawa had not thought he’d ever seen her in a long dress, and he’d never truly expected it, though here she was, in a long white wedding gown that flared out at her hips. She was grinning, tears already in her eyes, and Aizawa could not remember when exactly he’d felt tears pricking at the back of his own eyes. Uraraka still had her red, round cheeks, and Aizawa was suddenly overcome with the idea that he didn’t want Yamada to see him cry here when he saw that Yamada was already bawling. Uraraka was a small little ragdoll on his mug, fur a little pink at its cheeks, sitting beside the Scottish fold and trying to help it walk a little further without tripping on its tail, and when Aizawa turned some in his seat he saw the little Scottish fold crying as well.

Aizawa did not bother to stop the tear that fell down his cheek for once.

Yamada suddenly clapped Aizawa much too forcefully on his shoulder, jostling several more tears down his cheeks that he did reach up to hurriedly brush away. “It’s amazing that they’ve come this far, y’know?” he said in-between choked sobs.

Aizawa paused for a moment, before he slowly nodded his head, turning to watch Uraraka once more as her father led her down the aisle.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, underneath his breath, “Amazing.”

Throughout the whole ceremony the two teachers continued their tears; Yamada, loud and choking, Aizawa silent and almost serene. Aizawa however had managed to calm his crying by the time of the reception, while Yamada was still a sniffling mess beside him.

“Stop crying. It’s going to make your soup salty,” Aizawa told him once they’d sat down at a table with several of the other teachers, Nemuri teasingly nudging his elbow.

“Maybe I like it that way,” Yamada responded wetly, nudging Nemuri back.

At one point throughout the ceremony Kirishima made his way over to the reminiscing teachers’ table, pulling up a chair beside Aizawa.

“How’s that kitten?” he asked, still with the bright, sharp-toothed grin that he’d had since the first day he’d stepped foot in class 1-A.

Bakugou was not far behind. “Still look as dopey?” he asked, still with the sharp and smart gleam to his eyes.

Had they really aged, or was this just another day in the classroom, just another day of pretend?

Uraraka came up behind Yamada in her beautiful long dress, glittery and sparkling and Aizawa knew this was in no way and every way the same class that had left his care all those years ago.

“Yeah, still dopey,” Aizawa responded, and Uraraka laughed, Yamada giving a start when he realized she was behind him, suddenly starting his sobbing full force again.

“Aizawa-sensei!” Midoriya began as he came up beside his wife, reaching to place a hand to her side as he neared. It was such a strange sight, Aizawa thought, that he wasn’t stammering, that his hands weren’t shaking.

“You don’t have to call me that anymore,” Aizawa started to say, waving that off, however Kirishima pounced, clapping a hand down on his shoulder.

“Really, Shoto-san-“

“Never mind,” Aizawa said in response, while Yamada laughed loudly beside him.

“Speaking of that. I guess your last name is Midoriya, hmm, Ochaco-chan?” he asked, still shamelessly with the tears trailing down his cheeks, turning in his chair to the newlyweds behind him.

“You’re right! It’ll be something to get used to,” she said, grinning as she glanced over to her husband, and Yamada dabbed at his eyes, sighing over-dramatically about young love.

“Aizawa-sensei!” came another voice, Hagakure bounding up to join the table. “We all need a picture together!”

“Is that necessary-“ Aizawa began to say, though there was a sudden uproar cheer for a photo, Yamada the loudest of them all.

“Okay, okay!” Aizawa agreed, effectively settling them all down as Kirishima gathered the rest of the wedding party, his students grinning so brightly at him that Aizawa was almost blinded.

“Come on!” he was tugged from his chair by Kaminari and Kirishima, while Nemuri giggled and Yamada offered to take the photo. Ochaco grinned as he joined them, wrapping an arm around him and Midoriya while on the other side of him Kirishima hooked an arm around his shoulders.

“Everyone! You too, Bakugou!” Kirishima hooted, and, though he rolled his eyes, he still joined in, until everyone had their arms wrapped around someone.

“Smile!” Yamada said, and, apparently not satisfied, he repeated it louder. “SMILE!”

Aizawa was suddenly overcome with a feeling he could not place, surrounded by his old students at an event he’d never fathomed taking place, in a bright yellow tie that did not fit him. He could not believe he’d watched these children grow from students to heroes, from best friends to husband and wife, from children to adults. He felt the same uncomfortable pricking behind his eyes that had been following him all day, and he could not stop the tears that unexpectedly came down his cheeks.

Yamada only grinned a bright grin himself and snapped the photo.

#bnha #my hero academia #domesticbnhazine #aizawa shouta #midoriya izuku #uraraka ochako #katsuki bakugou #zine #my writing #todoroki shouto #kirishima eijirou #yamada hizashi #kayama nemuri #Kaminari Denki

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ahtohallan-calling · 4 years

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chapter 14 of don’t read the last page is here!

masterpost

[kristanna / m / multichap / modern au with actress!anna and vetstudent!kristoff]

t-rated version of this chapter on tumblr, m-rated version on ao3

There was confetti in his hair, big silver flakes of it, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead he leaned down to press his forehead against hers.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice husky as his breath ghosted over her lips. “Seriously, it’s still yesterday in Alaska.”

chapter 14: confetti

On the nights Anna fell asleep before he did-- which was most of them, really, considering how hard she was working on the movie-- sometimes he just watched for a little while, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the flicker of her eyelids as she tumbled into dreams, the way her hands would instinctively reach for him across the sheets if he pulled away. And he would marvel for a moment at the fact that he had almost said no to this, that he had entertained the idea that it was somehow wrong, that somehow the way they loved each other wasn’t enough to make this work.

And then, inevitably, he would have to lean over and kiss whatever part of her face wasn't hidden by her masses of tangled red hair, and she would smile without waking, and he would fall a little deeper in love with her each time.

He wouldn't have minded doing just that as the year rolled over into the next; he couldn't think of a better note to end an old era and start a new one on anyway.

But Hans Westergaard had invited Anna to some huge party at his massive, hidden mansion, and the invite said she could bring a plus one.

"And it's important, baby, otherwise I would say let's just do our own thing," she called from the bathroom. "To spend time with everyone else doing the movie outside of work, so we get along better at work."

"I know, I know," he sighed, fiddling with his tie. "I just…"

He trailed off, but her voice, reassuring and gentle, came down the hall anyway. "I know. But it means a lot to me that you're coming. And I'm serious, the RSVPs all had small print on them saying 'no photos posted online' and these people take any kind of NDA shit seriously. So we're good on that front, too."

"But tomorrow…"

"Tomorrow we're staying in bed all day and ignoring the whole rest of the world. I promise."

He sighed and looked at his reflection again, wondering why the hell a grown man had decided to throw a theme party. At least it was "decades", and Anna had assured him she had no intention of showing up in bell-bottoms or a godawful windbreaker, either. "We'll do the fifties," she had reassured him. "Or, uh, forties or whatever. Old Hollywood shit, mainly because this is the best opportunity I have to see you in a tux."

Because he had already been thinking about another day-- hopefully sooner rather than later-- when she'd have a chance to see that, he had gracefully acquiesced. And it was worth it, really, to see the way she had beamed up at him in gratitude.

Still, parties weren’t really his thing, all the small talk and crowds and trying to decide the best place to stand or sit or whatever, especially when he often stood at least half a head taller than everyone else in the room. He knew they weren’t Anna’s favorite, either, that she loved to spend time with people but only in smaller settings.

But this was important. And so they would both put on a brave face and get through it-- or at least they would, if he could figure out what the hell he was doing wrong with his hair.

It was overlong right now, but Anna insisted she liked the way it hung down over his eyebrows. He had a feeling it really had more to do with how it was just long enough for her to tangle her fingers in it when they kissed, but he’d been forgoing a trim for couple of weeks now for her sake. It definitely didn’t scream “Old Hollywood”, though, and so Anna had helped him pick out pomade at the drugstore, which he had applied as best he could based on the tutorial Google pulled up for him. Something about it didn’t look quite right, though, the way it revealed too much of his forehead. Frowning, he removed his contacts and put his glasses on, hoping that would help to hide at least part of the vast expanse of his face that had suddenly been revealed. Anna liked it when he wore these, at least, but what about the rest of the world? Especially all these famous, gorgeous people; what would they think when they saw him wearing, as Ellie so kindly called them, “old man frames”?

(“Okay, so they are a bit...old-fashioned,” Anna had finally admitted one day. “But they look perfect on you, really. Very handsome.” He hadn’t believed her, so she’d gone on to prove it-- now he knew for certain that she at least really did like them.)

As he was about to switch them out for his contacts again, he heard the bathroom door swing open and Anna come darting down the hall. “Don’t look yet! I’m not dressed!”

Of course he turned to look, and when he did for a moment he could have worn his heart stopped. Anna was in just a skimpy bra and panties, but her long, coppery hair fell in deep, even waves; her makeup was simple, but it brought out her eyes, and she was wearing a bright red lipstick he had never seen on her before, and she was so incredibly gorgeous for a moment he couldn’t quite believe this was real.

He blinked, and to his surprise, she didn’t disappear. Even more shocking was the fact that the way he felt was mirrored in the expression on her face. “Kris,” she said finally, stepping forward to press her hands against his chest. “You look amazing.”

“Have you looked at yourself lately?” he said, and she blushed. God, he wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to ruin all of her hard work. Luckily, she seemed to realize what he wanted, and so she turned her face and tapped her cheek. Grinning, he leaned down and pressed his lips there.

“Did I do alright? Seriously, be honest,” he said.

She stepped back, surveying him. “Lean down a little,” she instructed, and he did.

She ran her fingers through the front of his hair, just enough to loosen the pomade’s grip a little, and then beamed up at him. “Perfect. God, how’d I get so lucky, huh?”

He kissed her cheek again. “You look gorgeous, baby. Wish I could keep you here all to myself all night.”

“I’m not even dressed yet!”

“Exactly.”

Anna laughed and held up the silver dress she’d laid out on the bed. “Well, the sooner we go, the sooner we can leave, yeah? So help me get dressed.”

“We can’t leave before midnight no matter what, so why not aim to get there around eleven thirty, eh?”

“People have to see me there and know I don’t think I’m above it all,” she explained as she stepped into the dress.

Kristoff helped pull it over her shoulders and began tugging up the short zipper. The dress fell to the floor, but it clung to the curves of her body and left most of her upper back exposed. She turned to face him, looking almost nervous. “Do I look okay?”

“Anna, baby, you look so gorgeous I seriously, seriously do not have words for it.”

She laced her fingers behind his neck, rising up on her toes. “Will you kiss me? Just one time won’t fuck up my lipstick. Probably.”

He did, as gently as he could at first, but then she pressed closer against him, deepening the kiss as his hands fisted in the back of her dress. He was tempted to keep on kissing her like this, party be damned; they could call Hans and tell her she had food poisoning or something-- but then her phone buzzed, and she pulled away with a regretful sigh.

“That’s our ride,” she said. “At least I requested a car with the little divider thing, hey? So we can sit in the back and keep doing this.”

He carefully reached down to wipe off a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. “You worked so hard on your makeup, though.”

“That’s what makeup wipes are for. I’ll take it off and put it back on in the car,” she said cheerfully, putting one hand on his shoulder to keep her balance as she tugged on a spindly-heeled shoe. “I mean, if you want to kiss me, that is, otherwise I can sit up front or something.”

“When do I ever not want to kiss you?”

He proved his point in the back of the car, immensely grateful that the driver had “the little divider thing” and was playing music at a pointedly high volume. When the car began to slow as it mounted a long, winding driveway, Anna was still on his lap, her dress rucked up around her thighs as he pressed kiss after kiss on the long, graceful line of her throat.

“I gotta-- put it back on--” she panted. “And you--”

“Yeah, you gotta get off my lap if I’m not going to go in making a fool of myself,” he said with a laugh, pressing one final peck to the corner of her jaw.

“We can ask him to slow down a little more, give us time to take care of that,” Anna said sweetly.

“Not helping.”

She slid off his lap and pulled out her phone, quickly checking her reflection. "Okay, I'm good-- oh, shit, Kris you're covered in lipstick!"

He bolted forward and grabbed the phone. "Fuck, but you didn't-- oh, damn it, Anna, very funny."

She was laughing so hard for a moment she couldn't respond. "Sorry-- trying to help-- your face--"

After a moment he realized what she was trying to say and broke out into a fit of laughter, too. "Okay, well, nothing works better than sheer terror to kill a hard-on."

The driver pulled to a halt in front of the biggest mansion Kristoff had ever seen outside of pictures. “Jesus,” he mumbled.

Anna was too stunned for words. He reached over and squeezed her hand, and after another moment of shock she turned to meet his eyes. Suddenly she was the one who looked nervous.

“It’s gonna be good,” he said quietly. “You know this guy, you said he’s nice. And you know these people. Plus I’m here, yeah?”

She nodded. “Okay. But if I say ‘sofa’, that’s code for ‘we’re making a run for it’, okay?”

“Got it.”

He got out and jogged around to help her down; she wobbled for a moment in her heels, but he kept his hands on her waist steadying her. He grinned; as much as he worried about her tripping over herself in these torture devices, it was kind of nice that for once she was taller than his shoulder, which put her at the perfect height for him to kiss her forehead, something he immediately took full advantage of.

Anna smoothed his lapels and straightened his tie one last time. “Ready?”

“No. But let’s do it anyway.”

She had already been immeasurably grateful to Kristoff for stepping out of his comfort zone and agreeing to come with her to such a big party, but it turned out he was a physical support, too, as they made their way across the gravel-covered driveway to the front doors of Hans’s-- well, manor was the word that kept coming to her mind. It was hard to keep her eyes on where to place her stilettoes next when there were so many windows to count, so Kristoff’s steady, guiding hand on her waist was quite probably the only thing that kept her from breaking an ankle.

The shoes were already killing her, but keeping them on meant having an excuse to lean on Kristoff all night, and she was always grateful for that, too. Just as they reached the door, she squeezed his hand, wanting to thank him one last time, but then it swung open and Hans was there, wearing a perfectly-fitted suit, his green eyes glittering beneath his perfectly coiffed auburn hair.

“Anna!” he crowed. “You made it!”

“Hi!” she chirped back, relieved that at least she was being greeted by a friendly face. “Your house, it’s-- it’s amazing.”

“Thanks, but it’s a little too ostentatious for me,” he said with a dramatic grimace. “I’ve always been about the simple pleasures. Come in, hey? Everyone will be so happy you’re here.”

She had dropped Kristoff’s hand as they had been speaking, but now she wished she hadn’t as Hans set a hand on her back, though at least he was being a gentleman about it and kept his fingers over only the shimmery material and not the exposed skin of her spine. “Hans-- this is my boyfriend, Kristoff,” she said, turning and mouthing “come on” over her shoulder.

He did after a moment, still looking somewhat shell-shocked. She couldn’t blame him; it felt like they had walked into a circus with all the roiling masses of people and sounds and colors. There were Polaroid cameras scattered over every available surface, people dressed in everything from turn-of-the-century gowns to parachute pants, waiters darting in and out with impossible fancy looking drinks, and above it all what sounded like a dubstep remix of “My Way”.

“Kristoff! Nice to meet you, man,” Hans said, turning back with a proferred hand. “Haven’t heard much about you yet. Looking forward to getting to know you.”

Anna’s brow furrowed; should she have told Hans more about him? Before she could say anything, though, Kristoff took Hans’s hand and give it a firm shake. “You, too.”

There was a beat of awkward silence, and then they both turned and looked at Anna expectantly. “I need a drink,” she blurted out.

Hans immediately snagged one from a passing waiter’s tray and handed it to her with a little bow. “Your majesty,” he teased, a little inside joke they’d started in between takes.

Anna giggled. “Thanks, kitchen boy.”

“So, Kristoff,” Hans said, turning to the larger man with a smile. “What do you do?”

“Veterinary student.”

“Really? Wow! How’d you manage to meet our Anna, then?”

Kristoff looked like he wanted to protest at the word our, but he smiled anyway. He was trying, but it was clear he was straining to do it. “Grew up with her.”

“So you’ve been together for years, then? God, what a dream. I’m starting to think about turning to Tinder before I die alone,” Hans said with a laugh.

“Um...no. Since May.”

Hans raised an eyebrow. “Really? Anna told me this was a longterm thing.”

Anna chose that moment to take a long slurp of her drink. Mercifully, the actor playing Rasputin chose that moment to sweep by and engage Hans in a discussion about the canapes. The moment they both looked away, Anna pulled Kristoff aside.

“You like him, right?”

“He’s, uh. Okay?”

“Oh, god, are you upset about him saying I don’t talk about you? I mean, it’s true that I don’t, but that’s more because, y’know, kind of a habit to keep it all secret these days. It’s not ‘cause I don’t want to talk about you, because seriously I could go on for days, but--”

“It’s not that. It’s that he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio in that one movie where he gets shot in the pool. It’s about money or something.”

“The Great Gatsby?”

“Yeah! See, the way he like, waved his hair and shit. And before you say anything--”

“Sven?”

“Yeah. We had to do a whole marathon the day after he finally won the Oscar. I liked that one way better than the cocaine one.”

Anna giggled and leaned against his shoulder. “Now I can’t unsee it. Do you think he did it on purpose? I mean, it is a decades party, and you can’t get more twenties than Gatsby.”

“I think so. I mean, he’s already got the massive house and the crazy party.”

“Do you think he knows how the story ends?”

“Who knows,” Kristoff muttered, snagging a drink of his own. “Jesus, what does he do with all this space? Is he married or anything?”

“Nope. Perpetual bachelor. Not for lack of trying, though.”

“I’ve noticed,” Kristoff said drily.

Anna blinked up at him in surprise. “What does that mean?”

“He’s into you. I can tell. I mean, I can’t blame him, but--”

“We’re just friends, though, really, I promise you don’t need to--”

“I know,” he reassured her. “I trust you. Just...watch him. Guys like this are used to getting what they want. Not that he’d hurt you or something, just...I don’t know.”

Anna was quiet for a long moment, weighing his words carefully. He truly didn’t sound jealous, and not even close to angry, just genuinely concerned. She was about to ask him what he thought she should do when Hans waved her over. “Oh my god, An,” he said between laughs, “come hear what Phil just told me about his last shoot!”

She stepped forward, but Kristoff didn’t follow. She glanced back at him for a moment, worried, but he just shook his head. “Gonna stay here so I can lean against this wall and finish this drink,” he said good-naturedly. “Come back when you get a chance, hopefully by then I’ll have enough of this in me to be fun.”

“You’re always fun,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Five minutes, no more.”

Five minutes quickly turned into ten when Phil transitioned into another long story, but she glanced over her shoulder and Kristoff was still there, raising his glass with a wink, and so she let herself be sucked deeper into the conversation. Another five minutes as the director Destin joined them, and this time when she glanced back to her great relief Honey, wearing a knee-length black dress that could have counted for just about any decade, had joined Kristoff in his wallflowering. She gave them both a grin, wishing she could go over, but Destin was in the middle of a slightly tipsy explanation of how he’d built his career from the ground up, and she really was interested in it.

At last, when her drink had been drained of even the remnants of her ice, she managed to make her excuses and dart back over to the pair of far more familiar faces. “Honey!” she enthused, launching herself into the other woman’s arms. “I didn’t know if you’d be here.” “I’m surprised myself, honestly. I know this was supposed to be for the ‘important people’,” she said in a spot-on imitation of Hans’s drawl. “But apparently Hans realized you and I are friends, so that makes me important enough. And I agree with the boyfriend by the way. He’s definitely into you.”

“You know my name, shortstack,” Kristoff said, elbowing her with a laugh.

“And you know mine. But anyway-- seriously, Anna, he’s making heart eyes at you right now.”

“He is not!”

“You’re not even looking.”

“I looked at him enough. I want to hang out with you guys now.”

Honey let out a snort of laughter. “I keep forgetting you’re new. You’re gonna have to mingle with everyone whether you like it or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the star of the movie, babe. Half these people only came because they’re hoping they can make a stronger impression on you and get to be part of your next project.”

“But I--”

“And they know it worked for me. Which I’m grateful for, by the way, but now they know you’re nice enough to help your friends out. So everyone wants to be your friend now.”

Anna bit her lip. “You know it wasn’t like, to pity you or anything, I know you have plenty of job offers and besides--”

“Anna. I know. I just want you to be aware of how the night’s going to go down.”

She looked helplessly up at Kristoff; he always knew the right thing to say. Surely he would at least have a suggestion now.

But he only offered her a small smile. “Just three more hours ‘til midnight,” he said softly. “And then we’ll kiss each other when the ball drops and head straight home.”

The thought of that was all that kept her spirits up as she was dragged into conversation after conversation, more often than not with Hans grinning by her side and offering her another drink. After her college years, she was hardly a lightweight, but between the cocktails and the sheer number of people she was talking to she was starting to feel dizzy. She tried to keep her eyes on Honey and Kristoff as much as possible, even stealing a moment or two to talk to them when someone new showed up that Hans had to personally welcome, but that was proving to be more and more difficult as the night wore on and the party grew rowdier and rowdier.

At ten minutes to midnight, she hadn’t seen either of them for close to an hour. She had tried texting them both when she got a free moment, but apparently neither of them was looking at their phones. She set down her empty glass and began wandering through the crowds, wishing she’d worn even taller shoes so she could see over everyone’s perfect hair. Just as she caught sight of a familiar blond head across the room and started to make her way over, a hand closed over her wrist.

Instinctively she jerked away, but the hand only held on tighter. She turned and saw Hans grinning at her. “Just me, An,” he said reassuringly. “I was wondering if you wanted to give a speech with me?”

“I-- what? A speech? Why me?”

“Well, this is a party for the cast and crew of the movie you and I are starring in. So this is kind of your party, too, right? I thought you might want to thank everyone or let them know your hopes for the movie or whatever.”

“Oh-- oh, um, yeah. Sure.”

“Great!”

He didn’t drop her arm as he led her over to the sweeping grand staircase in the middle of the biggest room-- what the hell is this even for, Anna found herself wondering, feeling nervous laughter bubble up in her chest, just for all his big parties? Is this a weekly thing? Is this just all he--

“Everyone!” Hans called, his voice ringing out clearly over the masses; there was his Julliard training, perfect projection, and the room grew quiet as everyone turned to look at him.

Her eyebrows raised in surprise; had his bowtie been silver all night? She could have sworn when she’d first gotten here it had been burgundy, but then he was talking about how honored he was that everyone had come and how excited he was for the new year and the rest of filming, and she looked away from him to give everyone her biggest, brightest, star-in-training smile.

She had lost sight of Kristoff again; she was starting to worry she wouldn’t find him in time to give him the midnight kiss he’d promised. She had almost drowned Hans’s words out entirely as her eyes swept the crowd, but then his voice came back into focus as he squeezed her shoulder.

“And I’m so grateful for Miss Anna Arendelle!” he said, and a little cheer went up from the crowd. “Without her, there would be no Anastasia-- literally. We’re lucky to have her, aren’t we?”

He grinned and looked down at her, his eyes bright, and for a moment her blood went cold; all of a sudden it occurred to her that Kristoff and Honey were terribly, terribly right. “Um,” she said, realizing he was waiting for her to speak. “I’m-- we’re-- lucky to have you too, Hans.”

“A toast to Anna!” he cried, and then they all raised their glasses and echoed him, and she was flattered, really, but she’d finally spotted Honey’s head in the crowd, and for some reason Kristoff wasn’t there, and now her stomach was really starting to tie itself in knots.

“Anything you want to add, An?” Hans asked, giving her another fond smile.

Oh, fuck, she thought; she hadn’t expected this at all. Time to improv her ass off like she hadn’t since sophomore year.

“I’m just so grateful for all of you,” she said with another bright smile. “You’re all such amazing, gifted, talented people, but more than that you’re incredibly hard-working. Each of you is integral to the success of this movie, and I’m so glad to be on such an amazing team.”

She lifted her glass. “To...you guys! To everyone!”

Everyone laughed and raised their glasses in return. She took the brief moment of silence to search the crowd for Kristoff again, and at last she sighted him, standing at the far end of the room, raising his glass higher than anyone.

She held his gaze, and he offered her a reassuring smile. She glanced up at Hans, hoping that he was done so she could make her way down the stairs, but for once he wasn’t looking at hers.

“Thank you, Anna,” he said with a grin. “What a great way to end the year-- and great timing, too! Thirty seconds, everyone!” Another cheer rose up from the room, louder than ever. Anna bit her lip; in these heels, it would be difficult, but she was pretty sure she could make it across the room in time. Just as she started to step forward, Hans caught her wrist.

“Hey,” he said, “you gotta help me do the countdown! And leading everyone in singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, it’s not the new year without it!”

“But I--”

“Ten--” he started, and she joined in with him on nine, turning back and meeting Kristoff’s eyes once more, hoping he could see the apology in her own.

“Three-- two-- one-- happy New Year!” Hans called out, and she realized with a jolt that he was somehow standing closer to her than before, his eyes on her mouth.

Just as he leaned forward, she turned away with a bright smile, forcing herself to laugh as silvery flakes of confetti rained from somewhere. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot,” she began, thanking her lucky stars when someone at the base of the stairs joined in.

Mercifully, no one seemed to remember the words to the second verse, and so as soon as everyone started clapping, she gave a quick bow and hopped down the stairs, not bothering to even give Hans a parting smile. She slid through the crowd, ignoring the people who tried to stop her and give her thanks or a grin or a drink, and didn’t stop moving until at last she had reached Kristoff.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” she panted, already reaching up to loop her arms around his neck. “I-- fuck, I had no idea he would do that.”

There was confetti in his hair, big silver flakes of it, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead he leaned down to press his forehead against hers.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice husky as his breath ghosted over her lips. “Seriously, it’s still yesterday in Alaska.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” she promised, leaning up on her toes. “But I’m not waiting a whole ‘nother hour to finally kiss you.”

He was grinning when their lips met, and she couldn’t help but smile back. When at last they pulled apart, breathless, she said again, “I’m really sorry, Kris, I’ll spend the whole rest of the year making it up to you, and the next one if you’ll let me have that one too, and the next one, and--”

“You can have them all,” he promised, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You don’t even have to ask.”

“I want to remember this moment forever,” she said, giving him another quick kiss. “Even if it’s two minutes past midnight.”

“Well, that’s what all those cameras are lying around here for, right? We can just grab one and take a picture.”

“Or our phones,” she teased, but he shook his head.

“This way, we can have it printed out so we can stick it on the fridge,” he explained, pulling away from her so he could grab a camera from where someone had dropped it on a sofa. “Our first actual decoration.”

They managed to snag one of the camera operators who was all too willing to take their picture. Anna thanked him profusely, and he actually blushed before darting off. She started shaking the printed square immediately, too excited to wait, and Kristoff laughed. “I don’t think shaking them actually works.”

“Well, I gotta get this nervous energy out somehow.”

A few more moments, and it was there in their hands; both of them grinning so broadly it made something tighten in her chest to see it. Kristoff’s arm was draped around her waist, and she was leaning into his side as closely as she could, both of them with confetti everywhere.

“Perfect,” Anna breathed, and somehow suddenly all of it really, truly was.

They left the party shortly afterwards; they lingered only long enough to give Honey a goodbye hug before meeting their driver outside. Anna, exhausted by all the mingling, spent most of the ride with her legs slung over Kristoff’s lap, leaning close to his side. She sighed, and he reached with the arm that wasn’t draped over her shoulders to squeeze her hand.

“This is just...so much better than all of that,” she said softly. “I just...wow. I don’t know if that part of Hollywood is for me.”

“Me either. But I’ll do it again if you need me to.”

“Why are you so good to me?” she asked, nuzzling her head against his neck.

“Because I love you,” he said, kissing her forehead. “All of you. On nights like this and on nights where we’re home trying to program a microwave and on nights when we don’t even do anything but lay on the sofa and whine about how bored we are.”

She laughed at that. “I love you, too. I hope I’m doing an okay job of showing it.”

“You are,” he reassured her. “And it makes me love you even more.”

They were quiet the rest of the way home; he thought at first that Anna had dozed off on his lap, but then as soon as the driver made the turn onto their street she sighed and pulled away from him, reaching down to pull her shoes on. “Just a few more steps in these,” she muttered.

“You don’t have to put those back on if you don’t want to.”

“Then I’ll have to walk in barefoot, and then I’ll get dirt all over my feet and--”

“So I’ll carry you. Problem solved.”

And he did, while she draped one arm over his shoulders and let her shoes dangle from the other hand. “I seriously,” she said, punctuating each word with a kiss to the underside of his jaw, “don’t deserve you.”

“‘S’okay. You can carry me in next time,” he teased as he crossed the threshold.

#tada here is the chapter i have mentally been writing since d1 #the one most inspired by new years day for obvious reasons #the tswift song i mean #drtlp #my fics

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

Text

Pluralistic: 05 Mar 2020 (New Pinkwater, RIP Jim Tyre, Right to Repair and covid, Radicalized is a bestseller, African Whatsapp modders)

Today's links

Daniel Pinkwater wrote a new novel! Yippee for "ADVENTURES OF A DWERGISH GIRL!"

Warner Chappel discoved a new form of copyright fuckery so dense it blew a wormhole into another dimension: From the people who fraudulently claimed to own "Happy Birthday" for decades.

RIP, Jim Tyre: The free internet just lost one of its most dedicated defenders.

Decentralizing the web is a human problem: The web needs stewards, not owners.

Right to Repair is the right to resilience: Independent repair is how we keep things going during emergencies.

Keyless car fobs can be defeated with a cheap RFID cloner: Car manufacturers wontfix a showstopper bug. Again.

Bookstores, libraries, human thriving and mental health: Books are great, even if the science behind their greatness is thin.

Copyright experts' panel on fair use removed from Youtube: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Radicalized is out in paperback: Just hit every one of Canada's national bestseller lists, too!

African Whatsapp modders are outcompeting Facebook: Adversarial Interoperability is how you beat digital colonialism.

This day in history: 2015, 2019

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

I'm coming to Kelowna, BC today! I'll be at the library from 6-8PM with my book Radicalized for the CBC's Canada Reads. It's free, but you need to RSVP (and most of the seats are gone, so act quick).

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Daniel Pinkwater wrote a new novel! (permalink)

Well, this is amazing news. Daniel Pinkwater has a new middle grades novel coming out in September: ADVENTURES OF A DWERGISH GIRL!

https://tachyonpublications.com/bestselling-author-daniel-pinkwater-returns-in-classic-form-with-the-illustrated-middle-grade-adventures-of-a-dwergish-girl/

Molly O'Malley is a clever, adventurous girl. She is also a Dwerg. Dwergs are strange folks who live very quietly in the Catskill mountains, have lots of gold, and are kind of like dwarves (but also not!).

Molly isn't interested in cooking and weaving, as she is expected to be. So, she sets off to see the world for herself. Which means a new job, a trip to New York City, prowling gangsters, an adorable king, a city witch, and many historical ghosts. More importantly, it means excellent pizza, new friends, and very quick thinking.

Now someone is pursuing the Dwergs for their gold. Can Molly O'Malley save the day?

IOW: this is a book with every single thing I love about Pinkwater novels. Reading Daniel Pinkwater – as a kid and as an adult – was hugely important to my development as a writer and a human being. Meeting another Pinkwater fan is always a sign that you are among good people.

Warner Chappel discoved a new form of copyright fuckery so dense it blew a wormhole into another dimension (permalink)

I've seen some next-level copyfraud fuckery in my day, believe me, but Adam Neely's tale of Warner Chappell's copyfraud reaches a new height of absurdity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM6X2MEl7R8

This is sleazy even by Warner Chappell standards, and they're the crooks who fraudulently claimed ownership over Happy Birthday for decades.

https://vimeo.com/172715640

Buckle up for this one, as it is an onion of bizarre, bad-faith corporate behavior, with each layer peeling back to reveal another, even weirder and more terrible one. It starts with a garbage lawsuit against Katy Perry for including a piece of background music in her song Dark Horse that was similar to another very generic lick in an obscure Christian rap song called "A Joyful Noise."

No one claimed that Katy Perry lifted the brief snatch of music from Joyful Noise. Rather, the case turned on the precedent set when Martin Gaye's heirs sued Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines," arguing that the song had a similar vibe to Gaye's. Gaye's heirs should not have won that suit. But they did. And it opened the floodgates to nuisance suits targeting the likes of Perry and her publisher, Warner-Chappell. They lost the suit and got hit for $2.8m.

This isn't even the fuckery part, by the way.

Enter Adam Neely, who created a massively successful viral video defending Warner Chappell and Katy Perry, arguing that the suit was garbage. The video was so successful he went on national media to discuss the case and was even asked to sign onto an amicus brief.

Let the fuckery begin:

Warner Chappell has claimed copyright over Neely's video, claiming that a few seconds of music that he used was the "melody" of Katy Perry's song.

Further fuckery:

In the case, Warner Chappell argued that this specific musical phrase was not the melody, and was rather some incidental background sound.

Fuckery extreme:

The Warner Chappell claim was not automated. A human manually claimed this phrase of music as Warner-Chappell's, despite:

a) Them having disclaimed ownership of it in a lawsuit,

b) Losing that suit and being told by a court that it wasn't theirs.

Fuckery to the max!

But the musical phrase they claimed ownership over was from "A Joyful Noise," the song they lost two point eight million dollars over, having claimed that their song was not confusingly similar to it.

The two musical phrases – the one from "Dark Horse" and the one from "Joyful Noise" – were so similar that Warner-Chappell's own copyright enforcers mistakenly claimed copyright over the wrong one!

2020 folks. Don't forget to tip your servers, they work hard.

RIP, Jim Tyre (permalink)

My old EFF comrade Jim Tyre just died.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/rip-eff-special-counsel-jim-tyre

Jim was a tireless civil liberties litigator, a titan of First Amendment law whose entree to tech law was defending people who criticized censorware companies who wildly overblocked what schoolkids could see. He was also incredibly garrulous, funny, a born raconteur whose encylopedic memory served him well both as a storyteller and a litigator.

Jim worked on the 2600 DMCA case, he defended Ed Felten when he was threatened by the RIAA, he fought ICANN, and he was key to our longrunning suit against NSA over mass surveillance.

Jim always worked offsite. He lived in LA and had eye problems that rendered him nearly completely blind. But he kept a stash of cash at the EFF offices so he could contribute to every whip-round for a baby gift or a wedding present.

He was a true mensch.

Decentralizing the web is a human problem (permalink)

My old EFF colleague Mai Sutton just published a smashing primer on competition, interoperability, and stewardship and the world of tech:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200228/22053744006/defeating-tech-giants-with-open-protocols-interoperability-shared-stewardship.shtm

After delivering a good backgrounder on the history of the wars between shared protocols and proprietary technologies, Mai delves into the thicket of laws that have cropped up to prevent technologists from adding interoperability to existing technologies.

This has led to a new online enclosure, with "Google" becoming synonymous with "search" and "Facebook" synonymous with "social media." These businesses once competed, but today, they preside alone, over protected territory.

But some of that is changing. Between legislative proposals, new standardization efforts, the Decentralized Web movement and its protocols, and a reinvigorated threat of antitrust enforcement, there's some hope that the web will reopen and redecentralize.

Ultimately, Mai writes, this has more to do with how we view the web than how we use it. If we think of the online world as a shared space for humanity then the technologists who keep it running are stewards, not owners.

(Image: Dietrich Ayala (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/) and Open Clip Art (https://openclipart.org/)

Right to Repair is the right to resilience (permalink)

Writing in Wired, Kyle Wiens makes the crucial link between the Right To Repair and resilience, especially during moments of disruption to global supply chains.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-right-to-repair-will-help-us-endure-outbreaks/

It's no coincidence that farms and farmers have been leaders in Right to Repair: when you're isolated and you're not allowed to fix your stuff, it means that you can neither nip down to the shops for a replacement, nor easily have an authorized repair tech come to your place.

Covid can put everyone – even entire nations – into the position of that isolated farmer. As Long Beach port is denuded of shipping containers, as air- and rail-links are broken between parts of the country, the stream of parts, replacement units and technicians stops.

A key principle of resilience is to put resources at the edge, replacing hub-and-spoke models with point-to-point, peer-to-peer ones that infuse the system with redundancy. Neoliberalism hates redundancy and equates it with wastefulness.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1228326004508151808

But redundancy is the key to graceful failure-modes. Limiting repairs to authorized service centers works well (reliable, and certainly great for shareholders), but it fails very, very badly. Right to Repair is how our hospitals, schools, infrastructure maintenance, first responder and other vital services will keep the lights on if things go horribly wrong. Resiliency may be bad for shareholder value, but it's vital to human survival.

Keyless car fobs can be defeated with a cheap RFID cloner (permalink)

Toyota, Hyundai and Kia keyless ignition fobs can be cloned by attackers who get within a few inches of your pocket (say, at a conference), thanks to implementation errors that the auto-makers made with their Texas Instruments DST80 security systems.

https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-can-clone-millions-of-toyota-hyundai-kia-keys/

All you need is a Proxmark RFID scanner, which retails for about $300. That's more than the range-extenders used to steal cars from out front of targets' homes, but unlike those attackers, fob-cloners can start and stop the car as often as they like.

https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/proxmark3-rdv4-kit/

The researchers who did this work come from KU Leuven and the University of Birmingham. Their paper is great:

https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/8546/8111

The attack on its own does not let you start the cars. All it does is disable the immobilizer that stopped people from hot-wiring the ignition system with a screwdriver.

"You're downgrading the security to what it was in the '80s." -Flavio Garcia, University of Birmingham.

The implementation mistakes by the car companies are embarrassingly basic. Kia and Hyundai's implementation only has 24 bits of randomness ("a couple milliseconds with a laptop"). Toyota uses a serial number as a seed, then transmits that serial number in the clear. The companies, naturally, are saying it's no biggie. Toyota claims the attack requires "a highly specialized device that is not commonly available on the market." This just isn't true. I found it with literally one search.

None of the vendors have offered to fix the problem for drivers who bring their cars to garages.

It's depressing, but at least now you know whether you can trust your car's security.

"It's better to be in a place where we know what kind of security we're getting from our security devices. Otherwise, only the criminals know." -Flavio Garcia.

Bookstores, libraries, human thriving and mental health (permalink)

I love Lydia Smith's hymn to the mental health benefits of books, libraries and reading (even if I think the science is less than convincing)

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/how-books-and-bookshops-improve-our-mental-health-and-why-we-must-protect-them/

Reading fiction definitely stretches your empathy. For a novel to work, you have to be invested in the lives of people who don't even exist. The death of the yogurt you digested with breakfast this morning is technically more tragic than the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. The yogurt was really alive and now it's really dead. Romeo and Juliet neither lived nor died. Fiction reading is varsity-level empathy!

I agree that the traditional fiction arc – adversity met and overcome – can lighten a dark day. I turn to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Pacific Edge" whenever I'm blue for that reason. I even played a small role in getting adapted for DRM-free audio.

https://boingboing.net/2015/01/15/audio-edition-of-pacific-edge.html

(Pacific Edge was just reissued as a "Tor Essential" in an omnibus with the other two "Californias" novels, sporting a fabulous intro by Francis Spufford. Run, don't walk!)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250307569

It's also utterly true that books are a path to resilience and self-reliance, filled as they can be with how-tos, analysis and technical knowledge. As the Whole Earth Catalogues used to have it, "Access to tools and ideas."

(It must be said that the net is infinitely better at this than print books, provided you can get online. The use of a time-transported town library to jumpstart post-industrial civilization during the 30 Years War in Eric Flint's 1632 is delightful)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_(novel)

Libraries, of course, are the last place in our civilization where you are welcomed because you are a human being, not because you are an ambulatory wallet. Librarians, resist the urge to call people "customers." They're "patrons." That's far more dignified (and accurate).

And working in a bookstore is certainly therapeutic, for certain values of therapy. It can be a grind, but OMG is it ever great connecting people with books that you love and watching them fall in love, too. Generally I'm in accord with the essay. I just don't think the studies cited are of very high quality and/or recency.

It's OK to say, "I love bookstores and libraries because they're fabulous" without having to provide evidence for that fabulousness.

NYU law school's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy held a symposium on copyright and the net with a panel on "when one song infringes the copyright of another and to prove if the accused song is 'substantially similar' enough to be illegal."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVQTz65Bq70

The video of the panel was taken down from Youtube after multiple copyright complaints from rightsholders who claimed that the brief clips, chosen by America's leading copyright experts as being fair use, were infringing.

https://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/engelberg/news/2020-03-04-youtube-takedown

These clips weren't just fair use; they'd been chosen by top legal scholars to illustrate what fair use was.

The rightsholder reps who issued the takedown claims for these videos did so manually – that is, these complaints were not automatically generated.

In the grand tradition of copyfraud fuckery, when the law professors appealed, the rights enforcement dimbulbs (trained on xeroxed procedures in three-ring binders) reasserted their claims, putting the law school at risk of losing its Youtube account.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/05/warner-chappell-copyfraud#warnerchappell

The law profs knew they had the law on their side, but they weren't ready to appeal, because if they lost their appeal, they'd get a Youtube "copystrike," which could also cost them their accounts. And since there were multiple claims, they weren't sure if they'd get multiple strikes by appealing. Youtube's docs don't make this clear, and going through Youtube channels yielded nothing but radio silence.

Now, these are eminent law professors at a top university, so they were able to make some insider calls to Youtube, who lifted the complaints altogether and reinstated the video. But no one ever clarified the multiple-claims/multiple copystrike procedure.

Moral: When it comes to Youtube, it doesn't matter if you're a nationally recognized copyright expert. You can't argue with anonymous, hamfisted rights-enforcer assholes to assert your speech rights. The only way to guarantee those rights is to know someone on the inside.

Radicalized is out in paperback (permalink)

My book Radicalized, a collection of four science fiction novellas, just came out in paperback!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250229250

It's quite a week for the book! It's a finalist for Canada Reads, one of Canada's national book prizes, and the paperback immediately hit all of Canada's national bestseller lists!

I'm especially delighted to make the indie stores' bestseller list:

https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-bestselling-canadian-books-for-the-week-of-feb-23-29-2020-1.5484366

It's headlining the Toronto Star's list:

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2020/03/04/toronto-star-bestsellers-for-the-week-ending-march-4-2020.html

And there's one more national bestseller list that it's hit, but I can't name it until later this week, when it's published. But yeah, it's a hell of a week!

African Whatsapp modders are outcompeting Facebook (permalink)

Whatsapp is more popular than Facebook in Africa – but unauthorized, souped-up, third-party mods of Whatsapp are more popular still.

https://qz.com/africa/1804859/fake-whatsapp-app-more-popular-than-facebook-instagram-in-africa/

African software developers have modified the Whatsapp app to make it suitable to local users. The mods are transmitted from person to person, and sideloaded onto mobile devices.

The king of mods is GB Whatsapp, which allows for multiple accounts on a single device, ups file-transmissions from 16MB to 50MB, and includes privacy features like masking when you're online. GB Whatapp alone has more African users than the Facebook app.

All these mods communicate with users of the stock Whatapp system and with each other. They're tremendous examples of #AdversarialInteroperability, where hackers give users better, situation-appropriate tools without asking an incumbent's permission.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

They really cleanly illustrate how Adversarial Interop defeats network effects by using it against incumbents. The fact that Whatsapp is the most popular app in Africa is an ADVANTAGE for Whatapp modders: they get to treat every Whatsapp user as a potential customer. These mods also show how Adversarial Interop is key to technological self-determination. Rather than meekly submitting to digital colonialism, modders ignore the choices and preferences of a massive US firm and its shareholders and deliver local solutions for local people.

Facebook's response is predictable. Mods violate our terms of service. Modders are crooks. Users caught using mods face bans.

Modders just tell their users to sign up with secondary phone numbers to avoid bans.

Colonial American industry enjoyed a huge advantage over UK rivals because it disregarded UK patents and copyrights, allowing American firms to leapfrog the former colonial masters. Now that it is a net exporter of tech, it expects foreign countries to respect its rules.

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago Justice Department issues "scorching" report on Ferguson's Police Department https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/ferguson-cops-routinely-block-public-from-filming-them-doj-says/

#5yrsago Matt Haughey retires from Metafilter https://metatalk.metafilter.com/23626/Sixteen-Years

#1yrago The NSA has reportedly stopped data-mining Americans' phone and SMS records https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/nsa-phone-records-program-shut-down.html

#1yrago Jibo the social robot announces that its VC overlords have remote-killswitched it, makes pathetic farewell address and dances a final step https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/4/18250104/jibo-social-robot-server-shutdown-offline-dead

#1yrago BATHDOOM: A Doom level based on a terrible bathroom remodel https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/eveknn/the-hot-new-doom-mod-is-a-nightmare-diy-bathroom-renovation-bathdoom

#1yrago The People's Republic of Walmart: how late-stage capitalism gives way to early-stage fully automated luxury communism https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/walmart-without-capitalism.html

#1yrago History is made: petition opposing the EU's #Article13 internet censorship plan draws more signatures than any petition in EU history https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet

#1yrago London councils plan to slash benefit payments with an "anti-fraud" system known to have a 20% failure rate https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-face-incorrect-benefit-cuts-from-automated-fraud-detector-11651031

#1yrago America is not "polarized": it's a land where a small minority tyrannize the supermajority https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/oppression-majority.html

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Carl Sondrol (https://twitter.com/sondrol), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), JWZ (https://www.jwz.org/blog/), Danny O'Brien (oblomovka.com/)

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

Upcoming appearances:

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

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

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

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

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

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

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

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

#pluralistic

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royalrampionengineer · 5 years

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Never Trust Thorne’s Money-Making Schemes-- Cresswell and Kaider Fake Marriage AU

Hello! This short chapter of a fic was inspired from this post here. Summary: Cress wants some extra cash for a new computer, so she takes up the offer of her criminal crush Thorne to send out fake wedding invitations in the hopes that celebrities will reply with money. As you can imagine, there are many, many flaws in this plan, particularly when one of the celebrities RSVPs to the fake wedding.

...

“How about babysitting?” Cress asked, tucked up onto a chair in her and Cinder’s office. “That has to be an easy way to make some extra cash, right?”

Cinder snorted, “There is nothing easy about babysitting, trust me. I grew up with two younger siblings. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, okay,” Cress said, scrolling back on her tablet. “Lawn work? Freelance coding? Grocery store bagger?”

“Look, I’m all for you getting a second job Cress, but I know we’ve been swamped at our business here, what with you doing all the software and me the hardware, and you’ve barely found the time to sleep. How are you going to find the time to add more responsibility to that?”

“I know…but it would be so nice to have a little extra cash to buy a new computer with higher processing power. Too bad there’s no simple way to get the money without putting in extra time.”

“As I’ve said before,” Thorne looked up from where he was sprawled on the ground, placing wrenches on top of one another to see how high he could get them to stack. Despite both Cress and Cinder’s efforts to get their criminal-minded friend out of their workspace, he always seemed to appear and stick around. “I am happy to include you in schemes I have that will make you twice the money in a fourth of the time. And you won’t have to see any screaming toddlers.”

Cress sighed, “Thorne, we’re not becoming criminals. I like to obtain my money the legal way.”

“Boring.” Thorne placed another wrench onto his stack, making the whole thing tilt dangerously to the side. “But if you insist, I have some semi-legal ones. Just a bit of lying, no breaking the law or any consequences.”

“Really? Excuse me if I’m a bit skeptical, since the last time you said no consequences we ended up bailing you out of jail.”

“Trust me, this one’s right up your alley Cress. It’s all over the internet and you can set it up within ten minutes, tops. I call it: the marriage scam.”

“The what?” Cinder asked, eyebrow raised. “You and marriage? Very surprising, our self-proclaimed forever-the-most-eligible bachelor.”

Thorne waved, the tower wobbling dangerously. “No, no, there’s no actual marriage. Stars, could you imagine? That’s like, the worst scam ever. Nah, it’s just something my buddies and I used to run all the time in college. See, there’s all these rich celebrities in the world, and they get invites from fans to stuff all the time—prom, funerals, birthday parties, weddings, ect. Most just trash them, but every once in a while a generous rich soul’s assistant replies and sends a wad of cash in lieu of attendance. Since weddings are the most celebratory, they make the most money. So, you take advantage of this by drafting up a fake wedding invitation, sending it to a bunch of rich people, and cross your fingers that the cash starts rolling in. It’s not a sure thing, but it is a great way to get some spare cash to have on hand.”

Cinder rolled her eyes, “If you spent half the time doing homework and attending class that you spent drafting up get-rich-quick schemes, you would have actually graduated college, you know that, right?”

Thorne winked at her, “But where’s the fun in that?”

“Hold on,” Cress looked at Thorne, her brow creased. “Don’t you run the risk of the person actually saying they’ll attend the wedding?”

“Not really. Just put the wedding in some small town no one’s ever heard of, and no way the celebrity will be bothered.”

“Still seems shady.”

“Think of it this way Cress. Who’s better off with that money? Some rich dude who’s sitting on bags of it, or a co-owner of a computer business who will use the money to better serve her community?”

Cinder tilted her head to the side, “He may have a point Cress. You need money, and this isn’t really illegal.”

“Yesss,” Thorne hissed. “Join the dark side.” Both women sent him unimpressed stares.

“Okay,” Cress drawled. “But who am I going to marry? Don’t exactly have a line of people wanting to fake marry me.”

“I’ll do it,” Thorne shrugged. He placed another wrench on his tower, and the whole thing toppled.

Cress looked away from him immediately, color rising to her face. “Oh you don’t…you don’t have to do that. I was just joking.”

“I don’t mind.” Thorne started rebuilding his tower, carefully avoiding eye contact with Cress. “It was my idea, and it’s not like we’re actually getting married since that would be super crazy and ridiculous because we’re totally just friends.”

“Yeah,” Cinder looked between her two friends, eyes narrowed. “Ridiculous.”

Cress coughed, “Yup, all the friendly feelings for you here!” She turned her face away, wincing at what she knew was the awkward-est way she could have responded to the statement. Cress focused back on her tablet, refusing to acknowledge the fact that she felt Thorne’s stare on her, because that surely didn’t lead anywhere good.

“So, is the con on?” Thorne asked, and Cress was forced to meet his gaze. It immediately caused her to blush.

“Yes,” she coughed out. “Pulling up wedding invite templates online now.”

“Great,” Thorne grinned. “Make it look real official, and don’t forget to make a fake wedding website in case they do a cursory google search. How about we set our fake wedding date about two months from now? Oh, and make sure to include a little sentence about how much you love the celebrity and wish they could be at the wedding.”

“Perfect,” Cress nodded, barely able to look at her fake fiancé without thinking things that were definitely not in the realm of friendly. But really, how could she when he was grinning at her like that with those dimples?

“This is going to be a disaster,” Cinder muttered, already feeling the headache coming on.

…

Kai was sitting by the koi ponds.

Alone. As always.

A side effect of growing up as an only child in a mansion, he supposed, and spending his adult life in boardroom meetings with people twice his age. Being an executive in the billion-dollar tech conglomerate family company really didn’t leave time for making friends, much less finding a girlfriend.

He was startled out of his thoughts by his phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon Kai,” his assistant answered. “I couldn’t seem to find you in the office, so I thought I’d call as requested to give you your daily email updates.”

“Yes, of course. Anything important?”

“Meeting request with a new potential supplier, golf invitation from one of our sponsors, a wedding invitation, and the usual board meeting updates.”

“A wedding invitation? I don’t know anyone getting married.”

“It seems to be a tech repair shop co-owner getting married who is a huge fan of what you’ve done with the family company. Thought they’d invite you on the off chance their idol could make it.”

Kai thought for a moment, staring at the koi pond. “Would they happen to me around my age?”

There was a pause, and he heard some typing. “According to their wedding page, they are very close to your age. What would you like me to do? Ignore it? Send them a monetary gift?”

Well, when life gives you wedding invitations…

“RSVP for me. And clear my schedule the week of the wedding.”

There was a long pause, enough that Kai started to wonder if he had gone truly crazy.

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you,” Kai replied, hanging up the phone and smiling.

While unconventional, Kai couldn’t help but be excited at the prospect of meeting fans and perhaps gaining some friends who didn’t have grey hair.

...

So thanks for reading! I don’t have any plans to write more of this, but I just had this idea and a burst of inspiration and couldn’t help myself. But please, if you liked it, feel free to continue the story! Just reblog this post with your next chapter, or tag me so I can read it!

#the lunar chronicles #carswell thorne #cresswell #cress darnel #kai #linh cinder #Marissa Meyer #fanfiction #kaider #fake marriage au

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Only Party Invite I Want This Summer Is via Instagram Close Friends

In the halcyon days of the mid-2010s, party planning was easy. All you had to do was log into Facebook dot com; upload a cleverly Photoshopped header onto your event page (my head + Lindsay Lohan’s body in her too-sexy house party outfit in Mean Girls = slam dunk!); and let ‘er rip. Out your invite would go, instantly, to anyone you pleased. In the latter days of the FB event, you could even see who viewed it and who might need a little nudging to check their notifs.

Now, though, Facebook is a fucking ghost town. If I wanted to gather together with everyone I went to high school with who is married now, my COVID-skeptical uncle, and a YouTuber whose videos I liked in 2008, then sure—I’d use Facebook. But as an adult with a network of friends and acquaintances who’ve long since abandoned that newsfeed, Facebook is just not an option anymore. Enter the Instagram Close Friends party invitation.

Since socializing became a safe option post-quarantine, I’ve received an uncanny number of invitations via that tantalizing lime green circle (brag!) that would previously have arrived by email, or maybe text, or maybe even Facebook. But on closer examination, Close Friends works as a party invite tool for a number of reasons: It’s the simplest way to reach out to someone you ambiently like but don’t know well enough to have exchanged actual contact information; it has a carefree party-flyer-posted-in-the-neighborhood vibe, but with a thoughtfully curated audience. There’s also a plethora of tools out there that exist solely to make social media-friendly graphics, including the ones baked in Instagram stories already. Hacking together images with PDF viewers and Google image search can't really compare.

And by design, it’s easy to tailor your Close Friends list. The selection process lends an invitation an air of exclusivity to an invite while remaining relatively casual—if it was a really closed-off party, the flyer for it wouldn’t be on a social media network with one billion active users, and if it was really important that everyone RSVP, the invitation would be an email invite with read receipts turned on. After all, that’s what the Close Friends feature is all about: exclusivity and intimacy in a cool, detached, semi-jokey way. The de facto standard for an IG Close Friend is someone you’d want to invite to a moderately-sized party.

“It conveys a certain openness, even though it's obviously not to everyone,” said Venice Ohleyer, a 22-year-old comedian who lives in New York City and attends Columbia University, used her Close Friends story to send out the invite for her first post-COVID party in late May. “How I think of it is that if someone sees this, they know that they can probably ask me to bring other people or tell us a friend about it.”

Illustration courtesy of Venice Ohleyer

Ohleyer told VICE that while she thinks part of her event’s success had to do with timing, one line of the mock infographic she posted to her Close Friends story made the invite really pop. “It had an action item, where I was like, ‘You have to send me your vaccine card before you come,’ which was totally just a safety thing,” Ohleyer told VICE. That safety precaution did double-duty as an RSVP. “If you can think of some fun thing that requires people to respond and acknowledge the invitation, that ends up being good,” she said.

Still, the invite mode has distinctive drawbacks, too, especially compared with the Facebook event of Yore. Taylor Lorenz, a 37-year-old technology reporter for the New York Times who moved from New York City to Los Angeles mid-pandemic, used her Close Friends story to gather together a tapestry of college friends, former coworkers, and friendly acquaintances together for a party on a recent trip back to NYC—but said she found the experience “chaotic and annoying,” even though the end result party was a success.

Illustration courtesy of Taylor Lorenz

“I literally spent two hours whittling my Close Friends story down to 60 people,” Lorenz told VICE. From there, she posted her flyer, but found that the algorithm made it tough to get her Close Friends story in front of enough people. On top of that, even though a few people DMed her in response to the invite, she wasn’t sure who viewed the story with intention to actually attend. “I literally was walking to the party by myself, and I was like, how many people are going to come to this? Because it also was raining and I just had no idea! I also felt bad, because the bar was like ‘How many people?’ and I was like, ‘Look, I invited 60 people, I don't think all of them are going to come, but I don't know how many people are going to be here.’” Lorenz said most of her invitees did end up making it—a mutual friend reported that it was “so packed I couldn’t move in there”—but that the entire process has made her dread planning a housewarming party for her new place in LA. “I had the best time, I got to see all my friends, it was really fun,” she said. “But the thought of doing all of this again is so annoying.”

For now, though, tinkering with your Close Friends list just feels like the best option for casual party planning. It’s enticing, but not aggressive. It’s selective, but the bar is low for entering the pool of potential selectees. At this point, email invites feel too formal, like for an engagement party; texting is for pre-games; and Facebook is for finding out which one of your high school teachers just retired. Until someone builds a better alternative, Close Friends might be the closest thing to a good party invite system we’re all gonna get.

Follow Katie Way on Twitter.

The Only Party Invite I Want This Summer Is via Instagram Close Friends syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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creativeashproductions · 7 years

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Kindred // Stiles Stilinski

Summary: Fresh out of high school in a huge accomplishment and step in life but why be that type of person when you could dive into a new challenge. Especially with your favourite person in the world. Even if it means losing people, it always means you gain more people.

Characters: Stiles Stilinski x Reader, Scott McCall, Melissa McCall, Lydia Martin, Malia Tate, Liam Dunbar, Sheriff Stilinski, Claudia Stilinski, Kira Yukimura (mentioned), Hayden Romero, Derek Hale and Peter Hale.

Words: 2585

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf or the characters. I do not own any gifs that appear in this either. The images are from google and I take NO credit for them.

Warnings: Possible swearing, mention of supernatural, estranged parents and fluff.

Author: Caitsy

A/N: A short but sweet piece of writing that’s been in my mind for weeks.

Master List

Prompt List

ASK US A QUESTION LIST

More than half the town was calling you an idiot for what you were doing with your life. For a multitude of reasons, firstly you had graduated high school yesterday and you were getting married today. Now it wasn’t college you graduated from but instead you were new flesh for the adult world.

The white dress was exactly what you wanted since you were a little girl dreaming on her bay window bench. The flowers were something you had chosen as a tribute to a lovely person that you wished you would have met.

“Are you ready?” Melissa asked from the doorway. She was dressed in a beautiful dress that you surely thought put yours in a gutter.

“I-I think I am.” You trailed off blinking, “I’m getting married.”

“You are.”

“And my parents aren’t here.” You said next. They hadn’t supported your relationship at all and had disowned you on the spot.

“You have a parent.” Melissa said brushing a tear that was escaping your eye.  “Dad told me I was dead to him. Mom said she was disappointed I was marrying from a trash family.” Your smile was watery at best.

“You have me.” Melissa said squeezing your shoulders leaning back to look at your face, “I love you.”

“Love you too.” You sniffled hugging the lady that loved you more than you could have wished for.

“Let’s get out there.” Melissa grinned guiding you out the door holding onto the train of your gown. You had gotten it at an amazing discount deal due to a rip in a seam that Melissa easily fixed. The doors came into view where you were to be married with a small circle of your closest friends.

“I’m scared.” You admitted looking at her, “What if Lydia objects to the marriage?”

“You know Lydia is over him, it was a harmless crush that developed and disappeared as fast.” Melissa soothed as the music began and you linked your arm with hers.

“Thank you for walking me down the aisle.” You lightly smiled at the older woman with years of wisdom. Melissa squeezed your arm in support as the doors opened letting the music reach your eyes in such a beautiful elevated sound.

At the end of the aisle was Stiles dressed in a sharp suit from a cheap store. Scott, Liam, and Noah were the groomsmen while Malia, and Lydia were the bridesmaids with a childhood friend also. There was a small thing though, your last bridesmaid was just a picture frame holding a face. Claudia Stilinski to be exact.

“Oh my gosh.” Hayden breathed as she turned to see you slowly making your way to Stiles. Her sister and her had made the trip out to watch you get married whereas Kira had RSVP with a no due to being with the skinwalkers and watching Scott be with Malia.

Derek sat stoic in the front row still brutally salty on not being one of the groomsmen because you wanted it to be intimate for the ceremony. Peter was with him having snuck in at the right time.

“Dearly beloved we are gathered here to watch the love of Stiles Stilinski and Y/N Y/L/N unite in a union forever. The union that is built through life is one breathtaking journeys you’ll ever make in life. Soon you’ll take the time to teach your children how to navigate the journey of life. Thank you for letting me help you start that chapter. Stiles Stilinski, do you take Y/N Y/L/N to be your lawfully wedded wife?” The Officiant asked. 

“I do.” Stiles stuttered holding your equally clammy hands.

“Y/N Y/L/N, do you take Stiles Stilinski to be your lawfully wedded husband?”  “I do.”

The officiant created a visual scenery for the ceremony until he gave it to you and Stiles to finish with the vows.

“I, Stiles Stilinski, take you to be my lawfully wedded life until my last breath and then for eternity. Our marriage won’t be easy nor will it be the hardest but it will be balanced by our love for each other. I promise to listen to your words and love you until the end of eternity.” Stiles said squeezing your hands tight in his as he slipped the ring onto your finger to sit next to the small engagement ring.

“I, Y/N Y/L/N, take you to be my lawfully wedded husband for all of our life. I promise to laugh at your dumb jokes and be half the couple that tell a joke together. I promise to never be impatient with you or our children if they take after you. I promise to never distrust our major.” You responded with a watery smile.

The officiant asked for the rings from Scott causing a small scene as he nearly dropped them in his attempt to hand them over. Malia snickered from the sound before Scott poked his tongue out to her.

“Repeat after me Stiles.” The officiant, “I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment to you, our marriage and our future together.”

“I, Stiles Stilinski, give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment to you, our marriage and our future together.”

“Y/N, please repeat after me. I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment to you, our marriage and our future together.”

“I, Y/N, give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment to you, our marriage and our future together.”.”

“By the power invested in me I pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss the bride!” The officiant called out, “Ladies and gentlemen I present Mr and Mrs. Stiles Stilinski!”

The small crowd of people stood up cheering with such excitement as you raced down the isle to your choice of transportation. The jeep that had been a part of your relationship from the start and it would be a staple in your life together.

“I love you.” Stiles smiled with his forehead pressed against yours.

“I love you.” You grinned before sharing a lovely kiss before he carefully helped you into the passenger seat. On it was a sticky note you easy recognized as Scott’s hand writing.

Y/N Stilinski, I’ll see you at your reception but I’m still staking a claim on the passenger seat. You’re probably shaking your head in disagreement but we both know that seat will forever be mine.

I’m kidding by the way. Just remember my blood has stained that seat many times and I hope you don’t have the same experience. Congratulations for taking the plunge of accepting clumsiness, sarcasm and bad jokes for the rest of your life.

Love you kid,

McCall.

It was such as Scott thing to do especially when you found the little box situated further up the floor. A box rested against the mat with a cheeky wrapping paper. You hesitantly picked it up in your hand feeling the light weight of it.

 “Uh Stiles?”

“Yeah baby?” Stiles hummed squeezing your hand. His attention was fully on the road but you knew he was dreaming about the wedding still.

“Did you drop this?”

“Drop what?” Stiles asked looking over to see the box. He quickly pulled over to lean over the box with curiosity, “I have no clue on what this is.”

You shared a look before carefully opening the box together both becoming still at the contents. Nestled in material similar to cotton balls were a few items. Two condoms in the exact style as the ones that sometimes decorated the bedroom floor of Stiles house. The other was a key resting on top of another note.

 “What the hell?!” You screeched embarrassed to see the condoms.

“We could use those.”

“How are we going to face everyone at the reception?!”  

“We’re married love. It shouldn’t bother people now.” Stiles chuckled caressing your cheek with his calloused fingers.

You grunted putting the lid back on the box deciding against the embarrassing note that would surely show. Instead you put it in the backseat and instead pulled a larger box out that you had hid from Lydia. You opened it to reveal flats that Lydia would strongly discourage but you didn’t have the years of experience wearing heels.

“Lydia’s gonna kill ya.” Stiles sung as he pulled into school parking lot. Stiles and Scott had been adamant on having the reception on the lacrosse field because that’s where your love story with Stiles began.

“I think she doesn’t want to get blood on her clothing and she wouldn’t dare expose the supernatural to everyone.” You sighed as Stiles helped you get out of the jeep to a well occupied field. Even Finstock was there.

“There they are!” Scott beamed coming over to slap Stiles on the back and hug you. Out of everyone you were pretty sure that Scott was the most emotional person at the wedding, “I still can’t believe you guys are married!”

“What the hell.” Both Stiles and you tensed when a certain pissed off girl stood with her arms folded and one hip to the side.

“Hey Lydia.” You winced at the heat the girl could aim at you in one glance.

“Where are you heels?”

“She’s wearing them.” Stiles scoffed shifting on his feet.

“I doubt her five inch heels could take her back to her natural height.” Lydia rolled her eyes at Stiles before sighing, “I’m proud you actually wore them that long.”

Your eyes caught Scott and Malia having a conversation near the borrowed long table holding the needed serving pots. In each hand they had punch while they stole glances at each other. Lydia was hiding a smile as Parrish was explaining something about work.

“Did you open the box?” Sheriff said pulling Stiles into a hug first before hugging you next.

“Uh…you put the condoms in the box?” Stiles trailed off watching his Dad’s expression change dramatically.

“Scott added to the box?” Sheriff sighed shaking his head, “Did you see the key?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you read the note?” Sheriff sighed rubbing his face.

“Not exactly.” You admitted, “I thought it was going to be something vulgar.”

“It’s a wedding gift from me.” Muttering something under his breath Stiles took off back to the jeep to grab the box.

“I want to thank you for what you did.” Sheriff smiled squeezing your shoulder in his hand.

“What did I do?” You questioned.

“You brought a little bit of Claudia into the wedding.” Sheriff sadly smiled, “I didn’t think it was possible but you made my love for you grow. Your my daughter now Y/N and I can’t think of anyone better for my son and for the last time call me Dad or Noah.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too.” Noah grinned just as Stiles came, tripping on his way over, with the box in hand. Searching for eyes he shoved the square foils into his pocket before pulling the note out.

Stiles and Y/N

My wedding gift for my children is something no one really knows about. You’ve come to know why we don’t visit my father but there’s one thing I kept from you all. The Stilinski family had a family house that was passed down generation to generation, it’s a well kept home in Beacon Hills that I was never able to visit. Once my father moved into the nursing home the house was passed down to Claudia and I but I didn’t want to have a family in that house. I never had the heart to sell it so I’ve kept it up in shape although it will needs some renovations. It’s my gift for you to officially wipe the violent history from the house and paint it with your love. It will be there when you come back from college and even if you only have it as a vacation home just know that you’ll always have a home of your own in Beacon Hills.

-Dad

You were shocked reading the note. Stiles froze as he read it once more before he looked up to see his dad standing there with a small smile. You lunged to hug your father in law while Stiles ran his finger over the shiny key.  “Thank you.” You whispered into his shoulder.

“I thought you newlyweds would like a place of your own before you head for Virginia.” Noah said before starting to walk off, “I’ll give you the address when you’re done here.”

“A house.” Stiles numbly said, “We had money troubles when the deadpool was going on and he could have sold the house to pay and he didn’t.”

“It sounds like it’s important.” You calmly replied rubbing his shoulder, “We have some mingling to do honey.”

After a few hours you were dead on your feet from the emotional overhaul of graduating and getting married in the same week. Something you would have never expected in your entire life but with Beacon Hills you were always waiting for the supernatural shoe to drop.

“I’m exhausted.” You groaned leaning heavily on your husband’s arm.

“Dad pulled me aside. Told me he moved our stuff to the house for essentials.” Stiles said helping you once more get into the jeep, “I’m sorry I can’t take you on a honeymoon.”

“Stiles. We’re living in our own house for the summer. We have years to take vacations to make up for it.” You smiled as he turned on the jeep easily for the first time in a long time, “Besides we should save money for another vehicle. This jeep isn’t exactly baby safe.”

“Wait! Are you..?”

“No!” You exclaimed, “I’m just saying that when we have a child we need a safe and reliable vehicle.”

Stiles brought your hand to kiss the back as he plugged the address to the house into his phone’s GPS. You swear you recognized the area that it was in but you couldn’t place it in your mind. You liked where it was situated in a short distance from the McCall house, the Stilinski house and not that far from your parents if they decided to accept your marriage.

“This is adorable.” You breathed as you pulled into the nice sized driveway near a good sized house.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know about it.” Stiles chuckled, “I thought I would have discovered it at some point.”

“I find it actually cool that your Dad gave it to us. It was a welcome surprise because I’d rather not spend our wedding night with your Dad.” You giggled as your walked up to the door that hid away the home you would make it.

Stiles grinned as he struggled to sweep you off your feet without dropping you. He did however struggle to open the door before your head hit the doorframe.

“Shit! Sorry!” Stiles winced as he stumbled his way through the dark until your hand accidentally switched the light on. The house was breathtaking with the furniture that was definitely second hand but you could see the painting would need to be redone. The carpet could be junked for hardwood or carpet again but you adored it.

“Home.” You breathed. Nothing had felt so right in your life before you stepped into your home with your husband.

“Let’s check out the bedroom!” Stiles exclaimed making a break for the staircase.

Forever Tag List

@cityofsobbingfangirls @tas898 @barbidollash @trustnobodyshootfirst @winchesterfanfiction @deanwinchesterisamazing @oh-my-hecky-padalecki @padackles2010 @msimpala67 @deangirl5509 @heyitssilverwolf @therealme13posts @petlaufeyson @professionally-crazed @winterhurricane @tearsandbloodofmyenemies @blackwidow-romanoff @crazybarnes @marvelofcourse @takemetothefictionalworld @destiel67bellarke @ohmy-sammy @fightinthepain @vivabucky @waituntilthedustsettles @daydreaming1393 @cumonbucky @inhumans-of-shield @basicwhiskeyprincesss @soulfull-ofevans @spookass @glitterintheairblog @girl-with-wild-dreams @frickin-bats @darkestgrungeuniverse @shamvictoria11 @buckyappreciationsociety @sammysgirl1997 @fly-f0rever @archer-whovian-violinist @jenn0755 @anamarieswift2194 @unicornofdanger @ifyoudie @jealousbitxh @stormin-thru-glitter @sparklyaura @stilescstilinski @curlyxtomato @katshrev @its-sanaa-k @theoismydad @im-a-light-child @tmriddler @flirtswithdanger @divide-supermarketflowers @arkhamasylumpatient-blog1 @introverted-fandom-human @jennylj16 @potterandbucky @harleenq4life @runs-with-sciss0rs @superhero-lover101 @ridingmoxley

Teen Wolf Tag List

@kitschkylo @zachmantle @30inlovewiththecoco1 @kris-nic0le @faypol

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sheminecrafts · 4 years

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IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life. It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share and chat about virtual events, from live-streamed concerts to esports tournaments to Zoom cocktail parties.

Coronavirus could make IRL relevant to a wider audience because before an event “only mattered if it was around you. But now with In Remote Life, content has no geographical limitations,” says IRL co-founder and CEO Abe Shafi. “The need is exponentially greater because everyone’s routines have been shattered.” IRL ranked No. 138 in the U.S. App Store today, making it the top calendar app, even above Google’s (No. 168).

Robinhood’s Josh Elman joins IRL

IRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition. The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhood’s VP of Product Josh Elman . The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.

“I just realized more than anything that the company needed people who had 110% to give, and it wasn’t clear that was going to be me,” Elman said of Robinhood, now valued at $7.6 billion and struggling to scale. “My first passions and all the things I’ve talked about over the years have been social and media.”

For now, IRL is a part-time gig, where he’ll be heading up a Secret Projects division. While most apps “try to suck more of our time,” he sees IRL as a chance to give this precious resource back to people. Though he insists “Robinhood’s great, I’m a very happy shareholder.”

Events without borders

“We were on a tear, hitting a stride with usaging and growth related to real life events,” says Shafi. “Then this happened,” motioning on our Zoom call to the COVID-19 reality we’re now stuck in. “We realized we had to pull all of our content because it wasn’t happening.”

Today IRL’s iOS app launches a redesign of its Discover home screen content to center on virtual events people can attend from home. There’s now tabs for gaming, podcasts, TV and EDU, as well as music, food, lifestyle and a catch-all “fun” section. Each event can be added to your calendar that syncs with Google Cal, or Liked to add it to your profile that friends and fans can follow. You also can instantly launch a group chat about the event in IRL, or share it to Instagram Stories or another messaging app.

If you can’t find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like “Let’s video chat,” “Zoom workout,” “gaming sesh” or “Netflix party.” That instantly sets up a calendar event you can invite people to. And if you’re not sure when you want to host, IRL’s “Soon” option lets you keep the schedule vague so you and friends can figure out when everyone’s available. Indeed, 50% of IRL plans start out as “Soon,” Shafi reveals, identifying a gap in rigid time/date calendars.

Beyond individual events, IRL also wants to make it easier to develop habits by letting you subscribe to workout, meditation and other schedules. With sports seasons suspended, IRL lets people sync with calendars of hip-hop album releases and more instead. Or you can subscribe to an influencer’s life and digitally accompany them to events. The goal is that IRL will be able to merge offline events back into its content recommendations as social distancing subsides.

The biggest challenge for IRL will be tuning its event recommendation algorithm. It has lost a lot of the traditional relevance signals about events, like how close they are to your home, how much they cost or if they’re even in your city. Transitioning to In Remote Life means a global range of happenings is now available to everyone, and because they’re often free to host, many lonely low-quality events have sprung up. That makes it much tougher for IRL to determine what to show.

For now, it’s basing recommendations on what you engage with most on its home screen, but I found that can make the initial experience very hit-or-miss. The top events in each category were rarely exciting. But IRL is planning to beef up its onboarding process to ask about your interests, and integrate with Spotify so it knows which musicians’ online concerts you’d want to attend.

Still, Shafi thinks IRL is already better than asocial alternatives. “Our main age range is 13 to 25, college and post-college metropolitan areas and across college campuses. Our average user has never used a calendar before, or they’ve just used a default calendar like Gcal or iCal.

A cure for loneliness

Hopefully, IRL will take a more serious swing at helping friends realize they’re free at the same time and can hang out. While Down To Lunch failed in this space, now Facebook Messenger and Instagram are exploring it with their auto-status feature, and location apps like Snap Map and Zenly could adapt to share not just where you are, but if you have the intention to hang out.

“How can we use just a little bit of nudging, transparency or suggestion to get people to just do one more thing per month?,” Shafi asks. IRL is trying to figure out how to let you passively share that “I have 2 hours free” in a way that “never makes you feel rejected if they don’t respond.”

Facebook did launch a standalone Events calendar app back in 2016, but later paired down the calendaring features, folded it in with restaurant recommendations and renamed it Local. “As big as Facebook is, it can only do so many things insanely well,” Elman says of his old employer. “They could do more [on Events], but it’s never been the juggernaut like photos.”

Shafi is happy to have the opportunity in such a foundational space. He describes the concept of the calendar as one he’s sure will outlive him, so it’s worth the effort to make it social no matter how long it takes — though I’m sure his investors like Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins and Floodgate hope it’ll find a way to monetize eventually.

Revenue could come in the form of selling access to events through the app, or letting promoters and local businesses pay for enhanced discovery. For now, though, IRL is building a deeper connection with event and content publishers with the upcoming launch of its free Add To Calendar button they can build into their sites and emails. Elman says several services charge for these buttons that integrate with Apple and Google’s calendars, but IRL hopes giving them away will help fill its app with things to do, whatever that might be.

“Our tagline is ‘live your best life.’ It’s not judgmental. If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we don’t judge you for that.”

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2R9AZE6 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

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magzoso-tech · 4 years

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IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/irl-pivots-into-virtual-event-calendar-in-remote-life/

IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

Robinhood’s Josh Elman joins IRL

IRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition. The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhood’s VP of Product Josh Elman. The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.

Events without borders

A cure for loneliness

“Our tagline is ‘live your best life.’ It’s not judgmental. If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we don’t judge you for that.”

#Miscellaneous

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tweetadvise · 6 years

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Facebook Notifications: Keeping You Caught Up and Providing Social Engagement Opportunities

Continuing in Ann's series on alerts, let's take a look at Facebook and also exactly how Facebook keeps us informed as well as prepared to involve. First, being caught up in this collection by reading these fantastic posts by Ann Smarty herself:

How To Manage Twitter Alerts with Tweetdeck

How Google Plus Notifications Job: Who You Could Get to on Google+

The Notices Disallow in Facebook

Before digging right into just the notices, allow's look at the notices town of Facebook, comprehending exactly what each of the switches do for us.

We are tipping right into Facebook 101 below, so if you are an experienced Facebook user, really feel complimentary to avoid this section.

We will certainly begin from the far left and job to the. Keep in mind that we are chatting about the Facebook 'profile' in this article. The account is the major thing when you login to Facebook as you. There are also Facebook web pages that you may manage, yet the profile is the 'web page' (not to be puzzled with Facebook Web page) that is your house on Facebook, as a Facebook user.

So, on the much left of the alerts location, you ought to see your picture and your linked name. If you click either of these, you will visit your profile web page, your Facebook 'presences,' the spot that is all concerning you.

The next 'button' is a clickable word, 'Residence' and also that takes you to your newsfeed. The newsfeed is where you being to see all that is happening with your good friends (assuming you have Facebook established to see them and they have it established up to show you). You will also see the periodic advertisement or promoted post that has actually been placed right into the feed for your viewing enjoyment. The little number that shows above the 'Home' link proves to how several new items remain in your newsfeed.

The next switch is the one that looks like a number of silhouetted individuals. That is your 'Friends Notifications' where you can see the buddy demands as well as pal recommendations. Remember that 'verify' usually suggests that somebody has asked for that you become their pal (a.k.a. good friend request) and also that 'add close friend' implies that a person has suggested he or she as a buddy. In some cases individuals obtain those puzzled and also click on 'add close friend' thinking they are confirming a buddy demand ... then question why the individual is responding as if they recognized absolutely nothing of the close friend request. Because case, that is probably the case. Watch the terminology (words) in the button on those.

The next one is the messages. This is the IM (instant message) or PM (private message) function of Facebook. your Facebook mail box. You additionally have the possibility to use this as conversation at the end of the Facebook internet application. That is an additional discussion.

There are a couple of helpful pull-downs to the far right of the notification locations, however we are now going to turn our attention to the actual Notifications button. the one that looks like a globe.

Before we do, examine out the little red number. That is the number of new alerts. It allows you know the amount of alerts have can be found in recently.

Why Should I Care?

Why should you care regarding notifications? Below are a couple of reasons:

To stay on top of the recent happenings of your good friends and household, business affiliates, etc.

Each notification gives a clickable web link to either involve or click the character and check out the account of the person stated in the alert (i.e. a Birthday welcoming).

For company functions, provides an all-natural list for interaction follow-up opportunities.

Get the idea? Currently, you can create your very own checklist of factors

A Photo of 'Exactly what Is Up' on FB

If you remain in a rush and simply intend to take a peek, click on your alerts (globe) and also you could see the most current tasks in a pull-down listing. Allow's claim you are on your means to go out for a task. This quick pop-out listing allows you see where you could want or have to involve for 30 seconds prior to you leave. This comes in handy to choose up the Happy Birthday opportunities, or RSVP possibilities for gala occasions that may be occurring in your neighborhood town that night.

Facebook Notices Feature as a 'To Do' List

Have you ever before had those days when you are away from your computer system, your cell phone, and also essentially far from human being (which could be a good idea!), and also questioning what you may have missed on Facebook? That is where the charm of the Facebook Notifications be available in handy.

By visiting your 'Notice Facility,' you can see what has occurred while you have actually been unplugged. The number is truly useful (above), yet you could also track it by day. To access all of the alerts in the alert center, click 'See All' below your pop-out:

So, you would click on the globe and afterwards below the pop-out, you would click on the 'See All' connect to go to a web page that has lots of just the notifications. From there, you additionally have a choice to enable message and also setups, as well as also an RSS feed of your notifications (this is handy for every one of you nerds out there who intend to function it into a custom-made social networks dashboard).

If you have a normal routine, stating inspecting it daily, then you can inspect simply the notifications on the next day. That assists to keep you organized in whatever routine jobs for you.

Now You See It ... Now You Do n't

In the previous area, we referenced that there is a spot on the Notifications page to accessibility settings. This could likewise be accessed at the very leading of the pop-out window.

With Facebook Notifications, you can regulate whether you listens to noises, what apps or pages you adhere to, and whether you get 'press notices' to your desktop application. This is all taken care of in the 'Settings' location, which is accessible from the Notifications pop-out.

Onward and Upward

So, there you have it. Facebook offers you with every one of the possibilities to keep educated, whether you wish to be kept educated real-time (promptly), by enabling things like 'push notifications' to your desktop computer application, or you wish to mesmerize at the end of the day, with a listing of all your notices, or you simply want to pop in, periodically, throughout the day, yet using the helpful pop-out list. Whichever choice you utilize, you have clickable connect to go share and involve, as a result of every one of those notices. Engage away!

#advertisement #business #marketing #search engine marketing #social media #social media news

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samuelpboswell · 4 years

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Online Marketing RFP Template With Sample Questions

It doesn’t matter if this is your first online marketing request for proposal (RFP) or your 50th — digital marketing RFPs can be complicated, time-consuming, and — depending on your company’s status — a bit precarious, too.

On top of that, improving your understanding of online marketing while looking for online firms to help bring your company to the next level is just as complicated and costly. That’s part of the reason why we’ve put together both a guide to online marketing RFPs and a digital marketing RFP template, the latter of which is available for free download.

Download Now: Free Online Marketing RFP Template

If you are vetting online marketing agencies and need an RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

Download Now

If you are human, leave this field blank.

What Is an Online Marketing RFP Exactly?

While an RFP is simply an outline of criteria that a company gives to firms to respond to, an online marketing RFP is tailored to — you guessed it — online marketing.

A digital marketing RFP will help you achieve your business goals. With an RFP, you’ll be able to offer a clear-cut proposal that prospective agencies can visualize and understand better, which is helpful for both parties. It’ll also allow you to discuss what you’re looking for within your company internally, so you can skip the “multiple revisions” stage that comes with weak RFPs.

Relying on the RFP process will also make sure the firms have a written set of criteria so they can come back with solutions that fit the selection criteria you’re looking for.

A digital marketing RFP is perfect for those looking for an outside entity — specifically a digital marketing agency — to help you bring your company to the next level through social media, Google Analytics, or other technological solutions.

Why Use an Online Marketing RFP Template?

Searching for a digital agency that aligns with your aspirations and values can be a tricky process. In fact, the online marketing RFP writing process itself is challenging.

It can be extremely time-consuming. Unless you have hours and hours of free time, it can be challenging to carve out time during the day to work on an online marketing RFP.

Sometimes, as an RFP writer, it can be hard to know precisely what you desire from a firm. A digital marketing RFP template will lay that out for you nicely so you can pinpoint exactly what you want from the agency.

Finally, writing a digital marketing RFP is risky. Imagine spending hours and hours writing what seems to be the perfect proposal only for it to go nowhere.

We’re no strangers to online marketing RFPs — we’ve seen some truly impressive proposals and a handful of laughable RFPs. But our digital marketing RFP template makes it easier for both parties: Not only will it be easier to write and organize, but that’ll make it easy for the company to review it as well.

Digital marketing RFPs don’t have to be an enigma. Our template should guide you through every part of the process. We’ll also share some helpful tips and tricks that might make the process even easier for you.

What’s Usually Included in an Online Marketing RFP

The beautiful thing about digital marketing RFPs is that they can be very versatile, depending on the company or person writing them.

Although your RFP can be whatever you envision, we’re going to cover some common areas that online marketing RFPs usually include. That being said, not all of these topics will apply to you, and even if they do, you might choose to omit some aspects — that’s all to be expected.

Your company

One of the best places to start is who you are. Unless your company already has a robust digital presence, chances are, the firms you contact won’t be familiar with your company, and that’s OK.

Here, you’ll want to share information about your company’s background, where it is now, where you’re looking to go, and any core values and missions that you’d like to include. How many employees do you have? Is there more than one location?

This might also be an appropriate place to briefly explain why you’re interested in digital marketing. You can also end with a concise summary of what you’re looking for in an agency partner. For example, you might want agencies that have years of experience in a particular area.

Your current digital presence

You’ll want to be as honest and accurate as possible in this section. Here, you’ll be describing your current digital presence and what that looks like.

I’d suggest detailing the current online marketing strategies your company uses, including what’s working, what isn’t, and what you wish could work better.

Within this sphere, you can also discuss any and all marketing challenges that come to mind when you think of your digital presence. For example, maybe you’re struggling with low retention rates, or perhaps the in-house content you have isn’t up to par for your audience.

Even if it’s painful to recall your shortcomings and what’s not working for you, this will be the best way for potential firms to know how to develop a personalized marketing strategy for you and your business. Everyone faces marketing program challenges, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of them.

Who your competitors are

Identifying at least three competitors (and their websites) will help potential firms see who you’re up against. Agencies can then know what you’re doing well compared to companies that might already be doing it better.

You might also consider sharing any of the competitors’ social media accounts and advertising campaigns that impress you, so the potential agencies can tailor their solution to hitting some of those marketing goals.

Your target audience

When you think of your ideal customer, what do they look like? In other words, who’s your target audience? When thinking of your target audience, you’ll want to include both demographic and even psychographic information to provide firms with a visual to the audience you’re attracting.

It would be worthwhile to create a few personas to show these agencies and help them better visualize the customer.

Your overall goal

This is an excellent place to introduce your specific goals concisely. I wouldn’t advise writing a lengthy goal that’s bogged down with many details, since we’ll get into the meat of your digital marketing RFP later. Pick one to three outcomes that you’d like the online marketing firm to do for you.

Your business goals

Your business goals will probably be similar to your overall goal, but we’ll dive a little deeper into this section. What do you want your future online marketing strategy to do, exactly? What would be a successful marketing strategy in your eyes?

Make sure they’re both realistic and achievable. For example, maybe you just want to increase your revenue for the next fiscal year. That’s an entirely reasonable business goal.

In this section (or in a new section), you can include the scope of the work you need, even if it’s an estimate. For example, what are your specific needs per digital channel? To make it easier, you can also include a list of deliverables that you have in mind.

Your objectives

In order to achieve your business goals, you’ve got to have objectives — written plans that will help you get to the next level. This will help visualize the project overview, too.

Although you might already know what your objectives are, you should be very granular on the exact scope of work based on what marketing services you want or think you need:

Improved search engine optimization (SEO) for your website

Effective PPC campaign

A social media strategy or campaign

An email marketing strategy

Your time frame

Some companies don’t have a specific timeline, but if you do, include it here. How soon do you want to see results? This section will also help you avoid firms that don’t have the bandwidth to finish this project based on your provided time frame.

Your budget

This section is essential. How much are you willing to pay these agencies to assist with a successful digital marketing strategy? This section, in particular, will help you steer clear of agencies that aren’t willing to meet you in the middle.

Even if you don’t have a budget, you should still include a range so the firm will have some idea of what the costs will be.

Selection timeline and requirements

To better help you stick to a rigid timeline, outline some critical dates that will affect your selection process. For example, you could include:

When the proposals are due

A timeline of the question and answer period

When you’ll select an agency

What date the project will start

On the first day, you’ll send out the digital marketing RFP, and a few days later, you might choose to cut off anyone who doesn’t RSVP. You’ll probably schedule a few calls with viable firms for about a week and answer any questions they might have. A week after that, it might be time for the firms to submit their proposals. Although this is an example, the actual timeline is entirely up to you.

In this section, you can also detail how you’ll choose an agency partner. Will you use a scoring system? What selection criteria will you include?

Standard Master Services Agreement

Your company’s legal team might suggest you use a standard Master Services Agreement, also called an MSA. If this is the case, a potential firm or agency might also include their own terms and conditions.

What you expect in return

What information would you like from potential firms? If you clearly state what sort of information you expect, the likely agencies can better cater to providing it. You might prefer to know the history of the agency, examples of case studies, what qualifications and experience it has, account management process, and pricing, among other pieces of intel.

Contact and questions

You should provide a point of contact for agencies to reach out to, whether it’s your public relations director or another trusted key stakeholder. You should include their:

Full legal name

Job title

Mailing address

Email and phone number

That way, you can direct any specific questions that might come up during the proposal period to one single contact to make it easier.

Why It’s Important to Nail Your RFP

So, you’ve got an idea of how to write an online marketing RFP — but why is it so important to get it right?

A proposal is essentially your one change to vet firms before you listen to their pitch. It’ll help you steer clear of firms that won’t be a good fit and, in turn, will prevent you from wasting time. That’s why it’s so critical to be as detailed as possible when you’re creating a digital marketing RFP.

Final Thoughts

An online marketing RFP is what you make it. There’s lots of room to be creative and have fun with it during the RFP process. Staying positive is key, as this proposal is going to be what effectively drives your digital marketing strategy and what determines which agency you might partner with within the next few weeks.

That’s where our digital marketing RFP template comes in. It’ll provide you with a meaningful way to organize your proposal so as to make it clear to both parties. With this template, the digital marketing possibilities are virtually endless. Take the first step to getting your company up to par with the rest of the digital ecosystem.

Download Now: Free Online Marketing RFP Template

If you are vetting online marketing agencies and need an RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

Download Now

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The post Online Marketing RFP Template With Sample Questions appeared first on HigherVisibility.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.highervisibility.com/blog/online-marketing-rfp/

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anthonykrierion · 4 years

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Online Marketing RFP Template With Sample Questions

Download Now: Free Online Marketing RFP Template

If you are vetting online marketing agencies and need an RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

Download Now

If you are human, leave this field blank.

What Is an Online Marketing RFP Exactly?

While an RFP is simply an outline of criteria that a company gives to firms to respond to, an online marketing RFP is tailored to — you guessed it — online marketing.

Relying on the RFP process will also make sure the firms have a written set of criteria so they can come back with solutions that fit the selection criteria you’re looking for.

Why Use an Online Marketing RFP Template?

Searching for a digital agency that aligns with your aspirations and values can be a tricky process. In fact, the online marketing RFP writing process itself is challenging.

It can be extremely time-consuming. Unless you have hours and hours of free time, it can be challenging to carve out time during the day to work on an online marketing RFP.

Finally, writing a digital marketing RFP is risky. Imagine spending hours and hours writing what seems to be the perfect proposal only for it to go nowhere.

What’s Usually Included in an Online Marketing RFP

The beautiful thing about digital marketing RFPs is that they can be very versatile, depending on the company or person writing them.

Your company

One of the best places to start is who you are. Unless your company already has a robust digital presence, chances are, the firms you contact won’t be familiar with your company, and that’s OK.

Your current digital presence

You’ll want to be as honest and accurate as possible in this section. Here, you’ll be describing your current digital presence and what that looks like.

I’d suggest detailing the current online marketing strategies your company uses, including what’s working, what isn’t, and what you wish could work better.

Who your competitors are

Your target audience

It would be worthwhile to create a few personas to show these agencies and help them better visualize the customer.

Your overall goal

Your business goals

Make sure they’re both realistic and achievable. For example, maybe you just want to increase your revenue for the next fiscal year. That’s an entirely reasonable business goal.

Your objectives

In order to achieve your business goals, you’ve got to have objectives — written plans that will help you get to the next level. This will help visualize the project overview, too.

Although you might already know what your objectives are, you should be very granular on the exact scope of work based on what marketing services you want or think you need:

Improved search engine optimization (SEO) for your website

Effective PPC campaign

A social media strategy or campaign

An email marketing strategy

Your time frame

Your budget

Even if you don’t have a budget, you should still include a range so the firm will have some idea of what the costs will be.

Selection timeline and requirements

To better help you stick to a rigid timeline, outline some critical dates that will affect your selection process. For example, you could include:

When the proposals are due

A timeline of the question and answer period

When you’ll select an agency

What date the project will start

In this section, you can also detail how you’ll choose an agency partner. Will you use a scoring system? What selection criteria will you include?

Standard Master Services Agreement

What you expect in return

Contact and questions

You should provide a point of contact for agencies to reach out to, whether it’s your public relations director or another trusted key stakeholder. You should include their:

Full legal name

Job title

Mailing address

Email and phone number

That way, you can direct any specific questions that might come up during the proposal period to one single contact to make it easier.

Why It’s Important to Nail Your RFP

So, you’ve got an idea of how to write an online marketing RFP — but why is it so important to get it right?

Final Thoughts

Download Now: Free Online Marketing RFP Template

If you are vetting online marketing agencies and need an RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

Download Now

If you are human, leave this field blank.

Online Marketing RFP Template With Sample Questions was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

#Video And Blog Marketing

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