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wrestlingisfake · 6 years

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All In preview

This is the big independent show everyone’s been talking about. Several big promotions have allowed their talent to do this show, but none of them are directly running this show. Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks are promoting this out of their own pockets, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

This all came about because some guy on Twitter asked Dave Meltzer asked if Ring of Honor could run a 10,000-seat venue and Dave was like “not anytime soon” and Cody was like “I’ll take that bet.” Then everyone was like “what market is going to have enough hardcore fans to fill a building that big?” and Chicago was like “hold my beer” and the place sold out in 30 minutes. So yeah, fuck Wrestlemania going to New York and Florida all the time, we’re gonna do our own Wrestlemania with indy guys and stupid storylines off of Youtube!

This will be airing live on pay-per-view, ROH’s Honor Club service, and Fite.tv, with a one-hour pre-show on WGN America. September 1, 6pm Eastern/5pm local.

Nick Aldis vs. Cody Rhodes - This is for the NWA world heavyweight championship, which Aldis won last year--the same title Cody’s father held in 1979, 1981, and 1986.

Aldis is probably best known as Magnus for his run in TNA, where he held what is now the Impact world title. (He also held the Global Force Wrestling world title for most of that group’s existence.) Cody is, of course, a former ROH world champion and WWE intercontinental champion; he’s a top act in ROH and part-time special attraction with New Japan Pro Wrestling. He’s also one of the promoters of this show, which may or may not give away the finish.

The great irony here is that “independent wrestling” used to mean “wrestling unaffiliated with an NWA member,” but now the NWA has no members, which means it has the most prestigious championship that is truly independent of the major players today. The current NWA business model, under Billy Corgan, is to fly the champion around to other people’s indy shows, resembling the old-school pattern of Harley Race or Ric Flair coming to an NWA territory once or twice a year. Since this show isn’t being promoted by a group with its own world champion, it’s a perfect fit for that model. So it’s a good thing Aldis got booked, because if he hadn’t the NWA would’ve looked pretty bush-league.

The main story here is that Cody and Corgan arranged this title match without consulting Aldis. Aldis then tried to hold out for added incentive to defend the title, suggesting that if Cody regained the ROH world championship they could have a double title match. Cody came up short, but still managed to goad Aldis into accepting the challenge. Obviously the crowd for this show is going to be solidly behind Cody simply for making this show possible, and moreover they’re going to be into the angle that Cody has a chance to recreate one of his father’s career highlights.

I don’t foresee a lengthy NWA title reign for Cody, since his obligations to ROH and New Japan probably don’t line up with Corgan’s business plans. However, if I was Corgan, I’d want to get the belt on Cody while he’s the talk of the wrestling world. At the very least, I’d want to set up a Cody/Aldis program to run through October’s NWA anniversary show and maybe even the ROH/NJPW Madison Square Garden show in April. So a title change makes sense, but it’d depend on a lot of things falling into place behind the scenes, so it’s not a lock either. In the end, though, this is a bad weekend to bet against Cody.

Kenny Omega vs. Pentagon, Jr. - Omega holds the IWGP heavyweight championship--the top title of New Japan--but the title is not at stake here. Penta works all over the place but is probably best known from AAA and Lucha Underground. His biggest accolade is possibly the LU championship, but he also briefly held the Impact Wrestling world title earlier this year.

This is easily the biggest dream match that this show could book. To the average US wrestling fan, Omega is the hottest guy in Japan and Penta is the hottest guy out of Mexico. But since Penta’s never really been to NJPW or ROH, and since Omega’s never really been to AAA or Impact, there’s never been a way to book this match on a big show...until now.

I don’t really know anything about Pentagon except that he’s fucking scary, dude, and I’m pretty stoked to finally see what this cat’s deal is. Omega has made a name for himself delivering some of the best matches of the decade, but Penta is a brawler so this won’t be a wrestling clinic. It should be a unique spectacle, worthy of this one-of-a-kind event.

I feel like New Japan would not authorize this appearance if their champion was going to lose, so I would be very shocked if Penta wins.

Kazuchika Okada vs. Marty Scurll - Okada isn’t quite the ace of NJPW, but he’s getting there, especially after a record-setting 720-day run with as IWGP champion. Scurll is a junior heavyweight in NJPW, but in ROH he’s approaching the main event level, and if he sticks around long enough he’ll probably become their world champion. In Japan, heavyweights and junior heavyweights almost never compete against one another one-on-one, so this match is automatically a rarity.

Scurll is sort of just there in the grand scheme of things, but within the context of a 10,000 indy wrestling fans in Bullet Club shirts, he’s practically the second coming of Christ. Between the quality of his opponent, the historic nature of the event, the favorability of the crowd, and the timing of his peak popularity, this could be the match of Scurll’s life. But that said, he’s bound to lose, because I can’t imagine New Japan allowing an upset to disrupt their pecking order among the weight classes. That’s fine with me, because while everyone else will be whooping for Scurll, I’ll be there to see Okada.

Rey Mysterio & Fenix & Bandido vs. Kota Ibushi & Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson - Fenix is the brand-new AAA heavyweight champion. Mysterio is a former WWE champion and the current champion of Mexico’s #3 group, The Crash. There isn’t much info (at least, not in English) on Bandido except that he’s worked in CMLL, AAA, and various smaller promotions. Aside from being a finalist in NJPW’s G1 Climax tournament this year, Kota Ibushi is legendary for his high-risk style and his preference to be a freelancer rather than commit to a single company. Nick and Matt, the Young Bucks, are currently the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions, and have become synonymous with the post-ironic style that has defined the modern age of indy wrestling.

There really isn’t a story or direction to this match beyond getting all these guys in the ring at the same time to work with each other. The Bucks do their spots with everyone in the indies, this is their big special show, and so as a special treat they’re going to do their shit with Rey and Fenix. Ibushi seems to be here because Kenny Omega is occupied elsewhere, and to get his last chance to work with Rey before Mysterio returns to WWE. Bandido seems to be here primarily to do the job, which kinda suggests Ibushi and the Bucks are winning.

Hangman Page vs. Joey Janella - Page is one of the lesser white guys in Bullet Club, but he had a decent run in the G1 Climax recently, and it seems like he’s starting to move up in the world. Janella is best known for a) Joey Janella’s Spring Break, GCW’s Wrestlemania weekend event and b) a 2016 match with Zandig where they did an insane rooftop bump into a pickup bed filled with glass and barbed wire. This is being billed as a Chicago street fight, which could mean anything really but generally means no count-outs, no disqualifications, so you can fight all over the place, but you still have to score a fall in the ring.

The, uh, storyline in this match is that Page, yeesh, either murdered Joey Ryan or believes that he did. Joey Ryan is arguably the most popular American indy wrestler who is not booked on this show, and he’s conspicuous by his absence since a good chunk of the build for this show is about his fate. Anyway, Page is, uh, afraid to wear his cowboy boots because they keep...well...talking to him about how he’s going to kill “another Joey,” apparently meaning Janella. So yeah, the big idea is that it’s significant that Ryan and Janella have the same first name. It’s like that whole “Martha” thing in Batman v. Superman, only dumber. This is what happens when the main television for your show is Being the Elite, which is slightly less absurd than Southpaw Regional Wrestling or Z! True Long Island Story.

In any case, Page is suitably deranged enough to brutalize Janella, which means Janella has sufficient motivation to go sickhouse on Page. These two ought to give us a good brawl and some nasty hardcore spots. Dave Meltzer seems to think this could steal the show, and I wouldn’t go that far, but it might have everyone talking afterwards, if only for sheer wtf-ness. I’m not sure it matters who wins, but Page is the one who’s friends with the promoters so I’d bet on him.

Jay Lethal vs. the winner of Over Budget Battle Royal - Lethal (probably best known for his Randy Savage impression in TNA ten years ago, and a sexual harassment scandal this summer) is defending the Ring of Honor world title against whoever wins the battle royal in the pre-show. Since the battle royal includes at least one woman, there’s at least a chance this could become an intergender match. This is the biggest match on the show that does not involve any members of Bullet Club, although I suppose the battle royal winner could, like, join Bullet Club or something.

Being the Elite has been setting up the idea that Lethal’s “Black Machismo” persona is re-emerging, so the big angle for this match is the hype that Lethal might bring that stuff back. I don’t know how that will play off of whoever wins the battle royal, but I guess they have some crazy idea.

For historical purposes, a title change at this show would be a feather in ROH’s cap. But I don’t expect them to see it that way, or for the battle royal winner to be anywhere close to ROH’s ideal world champion. I’m picking Lethal to retain.

Christopher Daniels vs. Stephen Amell - Daniels has been around so long that he appeared (as a jobber) on both sides of the Monday Night Wars, won the first King of the Indies, held the IWGP junior tag title with Daniel Bryan, and became a founding father in the early history of both ROH and TNA’s “X” division. These days he’s primarily known as the leader of ROH’s SoCal Uncensored faction. Amell plays the superhero Green Arrow on TV, and became friends with Cody Rhodes through Cody’s appearances on that show and a celebrity tie-in match at Summerslam 2015.

During the whole “Joey Ryan was murdered” storyline, Amell was arrested but then later it came out that Daniels framed him. I feel like that should leave Daniels in deep legal shit but I guess we’re not worrying about that.

Amell is looking to prove he can hold his own in the ring despite his limited experience, and Daniels has the challenge of making him look even better than that. I think they’ll probably do fine. That said, I don’t watch Arrow or Being the Elite and I barely even pay close attention to ROH weekly television, so I sure don’t give a fuck about this match. I guess Amell wins.

Tessa Blanchard vs. Madison Rayne vs. Chelsea Green vs. Britt Baker - Blanchard is the reigning Impact women’s champion and WSU world champion; neither title is not at stake. This is presumably a standard four-way where the first wrestler to score a fall wins the match. This is the only women’s match on the card--okay technically Jordynne Grace is in the battle royal but that’s not really the same thing.

Rayne is probably best known for her tenure in TNA/Impact (she held the women’s title five times), although she recently competed in both the ROH Women of Honor tournament and WWE’s Mae Young Classic. Green wrestled as Laurel Van Ness in Impact and is of late appearing in Lucha Underground. Baker has yet to really move up into the bigger indies, so her biggest claim to fame may be as one of the jobbers Nia Jax squashed early in her run on WWE Raw.

There really isn’t anything at stake in this match. In theory a victory over Blanchard would set up a title match, but this isn’t Japan and I don’t know if Impact or WSU will really care who wins here. So it kinda just comes down to whoever Cody and the Young Bucks want to go over. I tend to think that’ll be Blancard since she’s the next big thing in women’s wrestling. Although if somebody’s looking to make a statement about the next next big thing, that could be a case for pushing Green or Baker.

Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky - This is currently scheduled for Zero Hour, the free pre-show. The Briscoes are the current Ring of Honor tag team champions, but as far as I know the title is not on the line. To build for this match, SoCal Uncensored made a video where they’re training like it’s Rocky III. The Briscoes responded with a video in which they can’t really be bothered to watch a damn 12-minute YouTube video, but then they do and they like go all dark and shit like it awoke something inside of them. I don’t understand why every angle for this show has to be like one of those Channel Awesome crossovers where they team up and fight supervillains or whatever.

Anyway, I always kinda dug the Briscoes, it’ll be neat to see ‘em live finally, and I think they’re gonna win.

Over Budget Battle Royal - This is set for the pre-show. Assuming it’s a standard battle royal, the match begins once everyone has entered the ring, and can only end when all but one participant has been eliminated. The last one left is the winner, and qualifies to challenge Jay Lethal for the ROH world title later in the show.

This has been announced as a 15-person battle royal, although I doubt the exact number is a hard requirement. Named participants so far are:

Colt Cabana (ROH)

Moose (Impact Wrestling)

Brian Cage (Impact X division champion)

Jimmy Jacobs (Impact Wrestling)

Punishment Martinez (ROH television champion)

Rocky Romero (New Japan)

Billy Gunn (WWE legend)

Austin Gunn (Billy’s son)

Jordynne Grace (WSU Spirit champion)

Ethan Page (Chandler Park from Impact Wrestling)

Marko Stunt (a very small indy guy)

Brandon Cutler (PWG)

It’s worth pointing out that CZW champion MJF was booked for All In but as of this writing hasn’t been put in a match. So I’m kind of expecting him to end up here, although I don’t see the point of withholding that information until the last minute. Similarly, a huge part of the All In promotion has been Flip Gordon’s failed attempts to get on the show, and it seems ridiculous to resolve that by just not using him anywhere. Also similarly, I can’t believe the “murder” of Joey Ryan is such a big deal with this show and that the actual real live Joey Ryan won’t be wrestling on it. The promotion of All In has been really weird, basically.

Other surprise entrants that I could see happening include Pac (formerly Adrian Neville, who has very recently been released from WWE), and Austin Aries (the Impact world champion). Considering Jordynne Grace is already there, it wouldn’t be a big deal to add additional women. However if there’s any group that I believe Cody and the Bucks want to see more represented in this match, it would be one-note running joke performers like Papa Buck, Cheeseburger, or Chico El Luchador.

The finish here is going to depend on which winner can have the most entertaining title match with Jay Lethal. If we’re talking “biggest match possible,” that’d probably be Brian Cage or (if he’s available) Austin Aries for the “ROH vs. Impact” vibe. If we’re talking “local guy hometown pop,” then Cabana is the obvious choice. But if the plan is to follow through on an angle that’s particularly important to the target audience, then it pretty much has to be someone who hasn’t been announced for the match yet, which means literally anything is possible.

#all in #cody rhodes #the young bucks #kenny omega #pentagon jr #nick aldis #kota ibushi #rey mysterio #kazuchika okada

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statetalks · 3 years

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What State Has The Most Republicans

Republicans Try To Pull Off A Major Political Coup While Democrats Aren’t Paying Attention

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Larry Elder and Gavin Newsom

Last spring I wrote an optimistic piece about the attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom, concluding that it wouldn’t go anywhere because “California is the beating heart of blue America and this time the Terminator isn’t going to be on the ballot, the state isn’t in a perpetual state of crisis over funding and the California Republican Party is a joke.” All of that remains true, but three weeks out from election day, it’s clear that unless Democrats get out the vote, Newsom could actually be in trouble and that means the U.S. will be in trouble too.

It is absurd that Newsom is being recalled in the first place. California has money in the bank, the pandemic has been handled well, especially compared to some of the other big states such as Florida and Texas which are buckling under the onslaught of the Delta surge and are suffering far more hospitalizations and deaths. By today’s polarized standards, Newsom is very popular with a 57% approval rating and 60% approving of his handling of the COVID crisis according to the latest CBS News poll. Moreover, he’s up for election next year anyway and the state will have to spend over $270 million for this unnecessary charade.

So why is such a thing happening?

Here’s a look at his thinking, so thoroughly out of step with the majority of Californians, he might as well be from outer space:

The Most Republican County In Each State

In less than a month, the United States will finally elect its next president after close to two years of campaigning, fundraising, scandals, and debates.

Republican candidate Donald Trump is considered an outsider to politics and the party. As a result — and because Trump’s views have sometimes clashed with the party’s vision — some have wondered whether this election might be less divided along party lines than in recent elections. Despite the division within the Republican Party, most major polls suggest that the majority of states will vote the same as in the past several elections. It seems that a portion of the population will always vote Republican or Democrat no matter who is running for president.

Based on voting data compiled by political news organization Politico and a review of current and historical representation in the U.S. Congress, 24/7 Wall St. created an index to measure the political leanings of U.S. counties’ residents. The index is based on the political party of the countys elected representatives to the Senate and House of Representatives through the last five election cycles, as well as the results of the 2012 presidential election.

These are the most Republican counties in every state.

1. Alabama

Reddest county: Blount County

2. Alaska

Reddest county: N/A

3. Arizona

Reddest county: Cochise County

4. Arkansas

Reddest county: Boone County

5. California

Reddest county: Amador County

6. Colorado

Reddest county: Teller County

7. Connecticut

Map 1 And Table 1: Party Registration Totals By State July 2018

Democrats no longer control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or for that matter most of the governorships or state legislatures. But they still maintain a toehold in the political process with their edge in the realm of voter registration. At least that is the case in the 31 states and the District of Columbia that register voters by political party. As of this month, 13 of these states boast a Democratic plurality in registered voters, compared to eight states where there is a Republican plurality. In the other 10 states, there are more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans, with Democrats out-registering the Republicans in six of these states and the GOP with more voters than the Democrats in the other four. They are indicated in the chart as I or I. Nationally, four out of every 10 registered voters in party registration states are Democrats, with slightly less than three out of every 10 registered as Republicans or independents. Overall, the current Democratic advantage over Republicans in the party registration states approaches 12 million.

Political Party Strength In Us States

Political party strength in U.S. states is the level of representation of the various political parties in the United States in each statewide elective office providing legislators to the state and to the U.S. Congress and electing the executives at the state ” rel=”nofollow”>U.S. state governor) and national level.

The Republican Party Has Turned Fascist And Is Now The Most Dangerous Threat In The World

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The meeting focused attention on many challenges facing the world, but it did not address the most dangerous threat of them all, which is the transformation of the Republican Party in the US into a fascist movement.

When Donald Trump was in the White House there was much debate about whether or not he could be called a fascist in the full sense of the word, and not merely as a political insult. His presidency showed many of the characteristics of a fascist dictatorship, except the crucial one of automatic re-election.

But Trump or Trump-like leaders may not have to face this democratic impediment in the future. It was only this year that the final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

Two strategies, though never entirely absent from Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence against their opponents, something that became notorious during the invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters on 6 January.

American fascism differs from its European, Middle Eastern and Latin American variants because of the history of America, with its legacy of slavery, and the Civil War still remaining as a great divider. Slavery was abolished, the Confederacy lost the war, but in many respects the civil war never ended.

Strongest Republican Party States In The Us

In a trend that has been noted for some time now, the further one moves in from either coast of the United States towards, coming across geopolitical Republican strongholds becomes more and more frequent. The advantages represented below are in terms of % Republican-leaning minus % Democrat-leaning. For example, 59% of Wyoming’s populace leans Republican, compared to 23% Democrat, to give a 36% absolute differential advantage. This data is according to Gallup Daily Tracking Polling conducted across all 50 states.

Key Point From This Article

Altogether, there are 31 states with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million.

Chart 1 And Table 2: Nationwide Party Registration Trends Since 2000

Since 2000, the nationwide proportion of registered Democratic and Republican voters in party registration states have both gone down, while the percentage of registered independents has steadily grown. The latter has nearly reached the nationwide percentage of registered Republicans, which has long been second nationally to the Democrats. Altogether, the combined number of registered Democrats and Republicans, which was 77% in October 2000, is now down to 69%, while the proportion of registered independents over the same period has increased from 22% to 28%.

Note: Based on active registered voters in states where the number of active and inactive registrants is listed. In the election-eve 2000, 2008, and 2016 entries, Independents include a comparatively small number of registered miscellaneous voters who do not fit into a particular category. Percentages do not add to 100 since the small percentage of registered third party voters is not included.

What To Watch For

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The PRRI survey suggested religion could play a role in encouraging more Americans who are opposed to or hesitant about the shot to get vaccinated. The poll found 19% of vaccine refusers think faith-based approaches would help encourage them to get vaccinatedsuch as appeals from trusted faith leaders or communities, or making vaccines available at places of worshipas well as 32% of white evangelical Protestants who regularly attend church services and are hesitant about the vaccine. The recent rash of entreaties from Republican leaders encouraging the vaccines, which largely took place after the PRRI poll was conducted, could also have an effect. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found vaccine endorsements from Republican Party elitesin this case, former President Donald Trumpmade unvaccinated Republicans 5.7% more likely to signal their intention to get vaccinated than if they hadnt seen any endorsements, or 7% more likely to signal their vaccination intentions than if they saw an endorsement from President Joe Biden.

The Most Republican And Democratic Counties In America

With the 2016 presidential primaries less than 12 months away, campaign season is well under way for candidates of both parties. In the last election, President Barack Obama won with about 51% of the popular vote, winning 26 states and the District of Columbia to capture 332 of 538 electoral votes. Despite the Democratic victory, an analysis of the reddest and bluest counties in each state shows stark differences between them.

Cook Partisan Voting Index

Another metric measuring party preference is the Cook Partisan Voting Index . Cook PVIs are calculated by comparing a state’s average Democratic Party or Republican Party share of the two-party presidential vote in the past two presidential elections to the nation’s average share of the same. PVIs for the states over time can be used to show the trends of U.S. states towards, or away from, one party or the other.

Map 2 And Table 4: Party Registration And The 2016 Presidential Vote

Of the 31 party registration states, 24 were carried in the 2016 presidential election by the party with the most registered voters in it. Donald Trump swept 11 of the 12 states with a Republican registration advantage, while Hillary Clinton won 13 of the 19 states which had more registered Democrats than Republicans. Four of the Democratic registration states that Trump took were in the South, led by Florida and North Carolina. He also overcame Democratic registration advantages in West Virginia and Pennsylvania to win both. The only state with more registered Republicans than Democrats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 was New Hampshire, where the outcome was very close.

Notes: An asterisk indicates states where there were more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans in October 2016. Independents include a comparatively small number of registered miscellaneous voters who do not fit into any particular category.

Most Conservative Us States

The following is a list of the most conservative states in the United States. These findings are based on a Gallup 2018 tracking poll. States with a gap of 20 points or greater are considered “highly conservative.”

1. Mississippi

Mississippi is the most conservative state in the U.S., with 50% of the population being conservative. 29% of Mississippi residents are moderate, and 12% are liberal, the smallest percentage of every state. With a gap of 38 points, Mississippi is considered to be “highly conservative.” In the 2016 election, 57.9% of Mississippi voters voted Republican, which came as no surprise considering that Mississippi has not voted Democratic since 1976. Unsurprisingly, Mississippi has a high concentration of church-goers, which is significant as conservative politics are tied with traditions in the Bible.

2. Wyoming

Wyoming is the second-most conservative state in the U.S. 46% of Wyoming residents identify as Conservative. Wyoming has low taxes across the board, including no state income tax. Wyoming has elected a Republican Party candidate for every presidential election since the 1950s, except for the 1964 election. About 68% of voters voted Republican in the 2016 presidential election.

3. Alabama

4. West Virginia

5. South Dakota

6. Tennessee

7. Oklahoma

8. Louisiana

9. Utah

10. South Carolina

Most Conservative States 2021

What states are conservative in the United States? What are conservative politics?

The Republican Party is the major conservative party in the United States. Conservative politics aims for a smaller, deregulated government and desires to preserve the political philosophy and regulations articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. There is an aversion to rapid change and a strong belief that traditional morality, such as articulated in the Bible, needs to be preserved. Additionally, conservatives also emphasize the importance of free-market capitalism and free trade.

Conservative politics generally opposes liberal politics, which generally places a greater value on social justice, ensuring access to healthcare, regulating economic activity, and social equality. A few of the most liberal states in the U.S. are Hawaii, Massachusetts, and California. The Democratic Party is considered to be the liberal political party of the United States. U.S. citizens typically identify as either Democratic or Republican, or liberal or conservative.

Conservative states are those states with a predominantly conservative population that consistently elect conservative-leaning legislation. Conservative states often have low taxes, limited gun laws, high religious participation, and limited business regulations.

Lots Of Consistency Elsewhere

In the rest of the country, there was much more consistency between party registration totals and the 2016 election outcome, with only three non-Southern states voting against the grain. On election eve in Pennsylvania, there were 915,081 more registered Democrats than Republicans; Trump carried the state by 44,292 votes. In West Virginia, there were 175,867 more registered Democrats; Trump won by 300,577 votes. And in New Hampshire, there were 24,232 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the fall of 2016, but Hillary Clinton took the state by 2,736 votes. Thats it. The other 22 party registration states outside the South were carried in the presidential balloting by the party with more registered voters than the other.

And in many of these in sync states, the registration advantage in recent years has grown more Republican or Democratic as the case may be, augmented by a healthy increase in independents.

The registration trend line in California is a microcosm of sorts of party registration in the nation as whole. Democrats are running ahead and the ranks of the independents are growing. Yet registered voters in both parties appear to be widely engaged. That was the case in 2016, and likely will be again in 2018, with Trump flogging issues to rouse his base. In short, this is a highly partisan era when party registration totals, and the trends that go with them, are well worth watching.

Republican State Legislatures Are Winning Their War On American Democracy

Texas Democrats scored a stunning victory in the nationwide legislative battle over voting rights last weekend when they walked out en masse to prevent state House Republicans from passing yet another sweeping package of voting restrictions.

But even that episode underscored a reality facing voting rights groups and their Democratic allies: Right now, Republican state legislatures are broadly winning their war against voting access and American democracy. And stopping them is going to take far more drastic action than many Democrats especially Democrats in Washington have been willing to consider.

Fueled by lies that widespread voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election, Republicans have passed new voter suppression laws at the fastest pace in a decade. They have advanced legislation and in some states, passed bills into law that would make it easier for local officials and legislatures to overturn future elections. Republican officials who questioned the results of the 2020 election are lining up to run for secretary of state positions and other elected positions that would give them more control over elections.

Democratic state legislatures have pushed to expand voting rights, and Democratic leaders made major voting rights and election reform packages a top priority at the beginning of this Congress.

Party Affiliation By State

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Party affiliation by state Switch to:State by political party

% of adults who identify as

Democrat/lean Dem. Sample Size

Sample size = 511. Visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.Sample sizes and margins of error vary from subgroup to subgroup, from year to year and from state to state. You can see the sample size for the estimates in this chart on rollover or in the last column of the table. And visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. Readers should always bear in mind the approximate margin of error for the group they are examining when making comparisons with other groups or assessing the significance of trends over time. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.

Alabama

Summing Up The Conservative Strongholds In America

In large cities, where were densely populated, we focus on getting along with each other and emphasize collective interests. Not in places like Wyoming, North Dakota and Idaho.Government policies those states are increasingly compelled to oppose are the ones that cause them to lose their health insurance, feel subject to government spying, pay more for their electricity bill, lose their jobs, or wonder if Americas borders are actually secure in an increasingly tumultuous world.As Americans continue to battle over education and health care reform, gender equity and even the damn wall, itll be interesting to see if these trends hold up for the next 8 presidential elections.God bless America.Heres a quick look at the most liberal states of the list:

Hawaii

Most Democratic States In America

Do you know which are 10 most Democratic states in America? Thanks to Gallups survey we have answer to this question, but before we list most Democratic states in America, lets start with the entire country and find out how America ranks among the most Democratic countries in the world. According to Democracy Ranking Association from Vienna, Austria the US is not among the first 10 most Democratic countries in the entire world. It is in 16th place, behind Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and France. How did they rank most Democratic countries? By considering many factors such as press freedom, political stability, civil liberty, corruption, the political right, etc. So, if youve believed that America was the most Democratic country in the world, then this ranking must have been quite unpredictable for you. Keep reading to find out if the list of most Democratic states in America is also going to be surprising for you.

Before we finally list you 10 most Democratic states in America, we will also present you the other side of the spectrum the list of 10 most Republican states, created by Gallup as well. And they are:

Wyoming 35,5% Nebraska 10,9

Percentages show the Republican advantage.

And finally 10 most Democratic states in America in 2014, by Gallup, in reverse order are:

The Best And Worst States According To Democrats

Hawaii won 80% of its matchups when shown to Democrats, closely followed by California , Oregon , Virginia , and Colorado . Every state in Democrats top 17 voted for Joe Biden in the presidential election the first departure comes with North Carolina, which narrowly went for Donald Trump, but had a win percentage of 55% among liberals.

Democrats consider the worst states to be Iowa , North Dakota , Mississippi , Alabama , and Arkansas . Each state in Democrats bottom 20 voted for Trump in the presidential election. The lowest-ranked state among Democrats that voted blue in 2020 is Arizona .Washington, D.C. is the notable outlier among Democrats. This could be due to respondents rejecting D.C. as not a state in an exercise about which state is better, or it could represent a disdain for the political system it represents. Washington, D.C. won 45% of its matchups among Democrats, compared to 35% for Americans overall.

You can hover over the dots in the figures below to show which state each refers to.

Florida Vs California: How Two States Tackled Covid

The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states’ ultimately higher incidence and death rates.

“The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020,” the researchers wrote. “However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus.”

The study, which which was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined Covid-19 “incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020,” when there were 16 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and 300,000 deaths. It focused on per-capita infection and death rates in the 26 GOP-led states and 24 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., and made statistical adjustments for issues such as population density.

But “policy differences” between the Republican and Democratic leaders emerged as a big factor for the reversal of the states’ fortunes, the study suggests.

One of the most concerning things last year is the politicization of public health restrictions,” Lee said. “Theyre not opinions, theyre based on evidence.

Data: How Many Mississippi Students Are Not Required To Wear Masks In School

Granted, most crime is committed in urban areas where there are denser populations. And most large American cities, though not all, are run by Democrats.

But is it fair to place all the blame for crime on local officials Democrats or Republicans? Most experts on crime cite poverty, lack of opportunity and various other environmental and social factors for crime problems. Most of those issues require help from the state and federal government to solve.

And according to the National Center for Health Statistics, Mississippi also led the nation in 2018 in the number of gun deaths, and most of the other states at the top of that list were Southern states that generally have the most lax gun laws.

When legislative leaders asked Tindell about the high homicide rate in Mississippi, he cited the breakdown in the family where people are coming up in a world where the taking of a human live does not mean anything to them.

Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, asked Tindell if he would ensure that the Department of Public Safety, which includes the state Bureau of Narcotics and Bureau of Investigations, would work with Jackson and Hinds County in an effort to reduce the murder rate and to reduce other violent crimes in the capital city area.

Tindell said his agency would try to expand those efforts.

The Best And Worst States According To Republicans

Republicans tended to favor states that voted for the GOP in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans picked Florida as the best state 82% of the time it was shown to them, followed by Arizona , Alaska , Kentucky , and Texas . Many states in Republicans top six voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, with Arizona narrowly going for Biden.The worst states according to Republicans include Massachusetts , Oregon , Wisconsin , New Jersey . The worst state according to Republicans is California . Washington D.C., which is not a state despite Democrats recent efforts ranked below them all .

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-state-has-the-most-republicans/

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sanguinarysanguinity · 7 years

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@possibility221 said they would enjoy a commentary on the various ACD canon references in my story A Handsome and Generous People, in which Sherlock Holmes is thrown a few centuries into the future and reads the ACD Holmes stories, looking to see if Watson has any insight on how to get back. There is a fair amount of snarkiness about canon along the way.

Most of the ACD stories referenced in “A Handsome and Generous People” are pretty popular, as I wanted the story to be halfway accessible without knowing a great deal about the canon stories. Thus, if you already know the Sherlock Holmes stories moderately well, this may not be that interesting of a commentary? (Although you may take this as an invitation to argue about canon with me, if you like. Your choice.)

Beneath the cut, spoilers for a goodly number of ACD cases, as well as for “A Handsome and Generous People”...

I had even attempted re-reading A Study in Scarlet... my refreshed memory of what a terrible novel it was.

A Study in Scarlet (STUD), the first of the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories, has a strange narrative structure: right smack in the middle of the novel there is a five-chapter-long flashback to decades earlier on a different continent with characters we’ve never heard of. (The first time I read Scarlet, I thought there had been a printer’s error whereby pages from some random other novel had gotten bound into the middle of the book. It doesn’t help at all that the chapter numbering starts over again with the flashback.) Even worse, that extended flashback is an old-fashioned Western store, and just fyi, whenever Doyle tries to write Americans it gets pretty painful. Fic authors love making fun of STUD for that random gawdawful Mormon section, and I’m no exception.

Wt’sn’s assessment of the novel might be a bit strong -- I personally enjoy the first half of STUD, and STUD was popular enough to get the whole Sherlock Holmes phenomenon started. But it amuses me to imagine that Wt’sn is one of those people who has never managed to make it through the Mormon section of STUD. :-)

The imp in me could not resist: I told him about a place that I had an eye on, one that I thought would suit us right down to the ground.

Wt’sn is quoting Watson and Holmes's first meeting. Watson writes in STUD:

Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground.”

“Watson was a terrible liar,” he said. “You’ll be comforted to know I have never once been tempted to poison a fellow lodger.”

In STUD, Stamford introduces Watson to Holmes, but he isn’t prepared to vouch for Holmes’ character. Stamford says:

“I could imagine his [Holmes] giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.”

Some authors and adaptations use that line as evidence that Holmes definitely would cold-bloodedly and without consent poison or injure someone for science. For myself, I have never been convinced by that reading, mostly because the convo is raw speculation by a man who admits to not knowing Holmes well. Also, it’s clear over the body of the canon that Watson isn’t above fibbing about Holmes’ character in the early pages of a story for the sake of heightening dramatic tension later.

“You already know Watson was an incorrigible liar. You’ve read the one with the snake, haven’t you?”

In “The Speckled Band” (SPEC), Watson claims that a snake did several things that snakes don’t actually do. (Drink milk, hear a whistle, climb a rope...) The usual theories explaining this is that Watson is a) stupid, b) sloppy, or c) a liar, but there are also a few authors who assert that Holmes messed the case up without realizing it. (I recommend “...Could Fill A Book” by @plaidadder, who sends Holmes back for a second go at SPEC.)

For myself, I generally prefer to presume that Watson was a liar rather than sloppy or stupid, mostly because the narrative possibilities are better in that direction. (Why did he choose to tell that particular lie, and in that particular way?) Whatever the reasons, the impossibilities like that milk-drinking, rope-climbing snake pop up all over canon. The snake is perhaps the most well-known of them, which is why I used it here. “The Creeping Man” is another excellent example of Watson making shit up and attempting to pass it off as truth (albeit a much less well-known example). But we’ll get to Creeping Man soon enough...

“His dates are a disgrace. Always have been.“

You know, I’m not even gonna try to give you a list of all the dates in canon that are out-of-whack. It’s legendary in the fandom, and even Doyle himself admitted that they were a disaster. The man couldn’t even get the internal dates within individual stories right (see the so-called eight weeks between April and October in The Red-Headed League), never mind his failing to cross-reference his dates from one story to the next.

If you spend much time messing around with canon, you either blow off the dating inconsistencies or you build stories around them. I have an unfortunate tendency to roll them into my stories, which is why you occasionally run into a passage like this coming one, sorry. I tried to keep it as brief as I could.

“You fell in 1893?” I asked, consulting my notes... “Dr Watson wrote it was 1891.”

For some unknown reason, Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd Century sets Reichenbach in 1893, whereas “The Final Problem” puts it on May 4, 1891. Yeah, I dunno. But like I said, I tend to roll these things into the story...

“In 1908 Dr Watson published a case of that description including the detail you just gave me, set in March of 1892, titled ‘Wisteria Lodge.’”

According to the two Reichenbach stories, “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House,” Holmes was fake-dead from May 1891 to sometime in 1894. And yet in “Wisteria Lodge,” Holmes and Watson randomly have lunch together in Baker Street in March of 1892. I’m admittedly kind of obsessed with that particular weirdness; more sensible fans shrug and move on.

“The Cox and Company despatch box,” I whispered, reverent.

In the opening lines of “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” Watson writes:

Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases...

People who write case-fic, whether as professionals or amateurs, love to reference that dispatch box. “The box has been found! Here is a case from it!” Even the movies sometimes go there: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes begins with Watson’s heir being called to Cox and Company to witness the unsealing of the fabled dispatch box.

I personally am not a fan of the dispatch box as a narrative device: I know what my folder of unpublished stories looks like, and it’s much closer to the open-ended, low-context mess depicted in Circadienne’s Primary Sources than the complete, polished, and fully-contextualized stories that allegedly keep bursting forth from that legendary dispatch box.

“The Musgrave Ritual.”

“The Musgrave Ritual” (MUSG) is pretty much exactly as I describe it: it’s about a treasure map that most people inexplicably fail to recognize is a treasure map. Usually you just have to roll with things like that while reading the canon stories, but here I decided to add it to the list of lies Watson told.

“The abominable Mrs Ricoletti, for god’s sake!”

Watson loved to tease us with cases that he never mentions again; the abominable Mrs Ricoletti is one that he dangled in front of us in MUSG. Yes, I’m doing here pretty much what Watson did: suggesting there’s a good story behind that, and then refusing to tell you about it. :-P

“You are theorising ahead of the facts,” I said...

Wt’sn is paraphrasing Holmes back at himself:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.” (Study in Scarlet)

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” (Scandal in Bohemia)

“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.” (Speckled Band)

“The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.” (The Valley of Fear)

“Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data.” (Wisteria Lodge)

Wt’sn claims to not have read the stories, but given how often Holmes says this kind of thing in canon, I think we can presume that Holmes has kept right on saying it during his years in the 23rd century.

btw, I wrote this story in four days, start-to-finish, and I had no time to look up the actual canon quotes. I was surprised and a little embarrassed to discover while looking the quotes up just now that Holmes usually says “data” and never “facts.” OH WELL.

It was painful to watch Holmes read ‘The Final Problem,’ but ‘The Empty House’ was worse...

Respectively, the story where Holmes fakes his death, and the story where he reveals to Watson that he was alive all along.

...despite my fears that ‘The Dying Detective’ would reignite charges of Dr Watson’s mendacity, Holmes snickered from one end to the other like a schoolboy.

“The Dying Detective” is the one where Holmes fakes a mortal illness, sends for Watson, refuses to let Watson treat him, holds Watson hostage, makes Watson hide behind his bed and then forgets about him, and is generally a manipulative unfeeling asshole from one end of the story to the other. There are a number of stories in which Holmes lies to manipulate Watson (The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Retired Colourman” both spring to mind), but Dying Detective is nothing but lies and manipulations, and a particularly cruel instance of it, to boot.

Whether Holmes is giggling because Holmes is just so much of a dick as to pull shit like that and laugh about it later (which is what Watson says he did in the similar part of Retired Colourman), or because Dying Detective references a private joke between him and Watson, is reader’s choice.

“He claimed that he was only— He likened himself to my cocaine!”

In “The Creeping Man” (CREE), Watson writes:

The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He [Holmes] was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me -- many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead -- but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.

For many of us who love Watson, that’s a painful passage. I always read “others perhaps less excusable” as a veiled reference to Holmes’ cocaine addiction, and then when Watson goes on to refer to himself as a stimulant and a habit... Well.

“And the ape-man was frankly a disgrace, I might have been reading Shelley or Stoker.”

CREE again! Creeping Man is a blatant genre change from the rest of canon, in that it is Victorian science-fiction/horror. Creepy shit happens until it is eventually revealed that an elderly professor has been injecting himself with monkey-serum Viagra and turning himself into an ape-man every few days. (No joke. That is the actual "solution.” Monkey-serum Viagra. Shape-shifting into an ape-man and back.) CREE unashamedly borrows from Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, hence the “Shelley or Stoker” reference.

(ETA: for another view of the monkey-serum thing, see @violsva’s comments here about hormones being a new and exciting thing in 1920s medicine.)

I had enjoyed the jellyfish story, albeit by proxy...

“The Lion’s Mane” (LION) is perhaps the most-reviled story of canon. It’s allegedly written by Holmes (Watson doesn’t appear at all), and Holmes spends the story running around trying to figure out who is murdering swimmers before he belatedly realizes that it’s only a poisonous jellyfish that got itself trapped in the swimming hole. “Behold, the Lion’s Mane!” Holmes shouts, and then crushes the poor thing with a rock.

Yeah, I dunno. The Case-Book is a fucking trip, man. In addition to the jellyfish story, it’s also got the vampire and ape-man stories, both hurt/comfort stories (Watson gets shot in one; Holmes gets the shit beaten out of him in the other), a story in which a lady gets her face eaten off by a circus lion, another with a guy who gets his face melted off with acid... Doyle was fucking tired of writing Sherlock Holmes stories by the time he got to Case-book, and he gave no shits. Also, as Wt’sn suggests in the story, these were all written after WWI, when Doyle was still mourning the horrors of the war, so they run dark.

...the surprisingly racy version of what had happened at ‘Shoscombe Old Place.’

“Shoscombe Old Place” is the second-to-last story in canon. It’s weirdly grotesque in its own right (as is most things in Case-Book), but it has cross-dressing and no murders, which makes it a much better candidate for shenanigans than the horrorshow that is Retired Colourman.

The illustration showed an elderly gentleman clinging by one arm to an ivy-covered wall, three stories above the ground...

From “The Creeping Man”:

The professor was clearly visible crouching at the foot of the ivy-covered wall. As we watched him he suddenly began with incredible agility to ascend it. From branch to branch he sprang, sure of foot and firm of grasp, climbing apparently in mere joy at his own powers, with no definite object in view. With his dressing-gown flapping on each side of him, he looked like some huge bat glued against the side of his own house, a great square dark patch upon the moonlit wall.

Frederic Dorr Steele’s illustration:

“Come, find a pencil, you must help me work out the dates...”

There are a fuckton of dates in CREE, to the point that Leslie Klinger’s Annotated Holmes has to organize them into two tables at the end of the story. As per usual with Doyle, the dates don’t quite make sense. More hilariously, Watson says this at one point during CREE:

“As to your dates, that is the biggest mystification of all."

Watson isn’t actually lampshading the nonsensical dates there; he’s only asking Holmes to explain his deductions. Nevertheless, the fandom loves to quote that line whenever the issue of Doyle’s self-contradictory dates comes up. BECAUSE APPROPRIATE QUOTE IS APPROPRIATE.

And with that, we settled in to making sense of Dr Watson’s dates.

Because it would take Sherlock Holmes to make sense of Watson’s dates. Certainly no one else has ever managed it. :-D

#'handsome and generous people'#acd canon #dvd commentary #things done by me

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wendynerdwrites · 7 years

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Recovered Jonsa Fic#21: A Tourney Favor Part 1

Part of my fic repost project, here’s one back by popular request!

Normally, Jon Targaryen would not think much of the object in his hand. A silk handkerchief like countless others he’d seen courtiers carry his whole life. This one, albeit, is very fine: edged in lace, with a direwolf, a dragon, and the initials SS embroidered with soft grey thread. A prince’s life is often filled with finery, even for a second son born of scandalous circumstances.

It’s not the only one that has been offered to him, but it’s the only one that matters, and he takes great care in tying it to the wrist of his gauntlet with the forget-me-not ribbon his lady cousin also provided. He’s never been a great devotee of the lance, preferring the sword, but today he is determined to win.

A few yards away stands his older brother, getting his armor checked over by a squire. His ornate dragon helm is nestled in his arm, and his handsome Valyrian features are twisted into a scowl. About his own wrist is the black and red favor of their Aunt Daenerys.

Most men would be thrilled to bear the favor of Daenerys Targaryen, one of the few ladies in the realm whose beauty was not exaggerated. And Jon suspects that Aegon always intended to wear their aunt’s favor. Daenerys has been Aegon’s unofficial betrothed for years, and is a remarkable young woman, as strong as she is lovely.

But that isn’t the point. The point is the expectations Jon’s pig-headed brother had.

In particular, that he’d have the pick of whichever lady he wanted, and among them would be Jon’s cousin.

Lady Sansa of House Stark made her formal introduction to the royal court six moons prior, serving as a lady to Jon’s sister, Rhaenys. The fourteen-year-old maiden from the North made a great impression, to say the least. She found herself a highly treasured companion of both princesses and the subject of many a song. People whispered of her blue eyes, red hair, full lips, and porcelain skin and declared her the first real rival to Princess Daenerys in beauty. She’d even been nicknamed the Winter Rose by the court.

Aegon had been among those who had paid her great attention, inviting her for walks in the garden, seeking her as a dance partner at many a banquet, requesting songs from the minstrels that were written in her honor.

It angered Jon immensely. Aegon had a habit of breaking hearts and disrupting the households of their sister and aunt with his philandering. Not formally betrothed, Aegon was free to promise any girl the world. In addition, there were his classic Valyrian looks, his polished charm, and his status at court. Women tended to be putty in his hands. More than one young lady found herself in tears.

At first, it seemed Sansa was to be another victim. To be fair, she had good reason to believe Jon’s brother’s promises. A match between them would make plenty of sense politically. She was connected by blood to three of the Great Houses of Westeros, after all. Three Houses whose loyalty House Targaryen could stand to secure. It isn’t as if Sansa was anything less than an ideal royal bride.

Jon, Rhaenys, and Daenerys wasted no time, however, in enlightening her to the facts. King Rhaegar is obsessed with blood purity. Though he was savvy enough to dangle his eldest son’s hand as a way to entice powerful lords, he has intended for Daenerys and Aegon to wed since Dany’s birth. Aegon knows this.

Jon suspects that his half-brother would take a certain perverse joy in humiliating a daughter of House Stark regardless. After all, his mother suffered great humiliation and turmoil thanks to their father’s obsession with Jon’s mother, Lyanna Stark. Aegon likely would have considered that the perfect garnish to a beautiful conquest.

After being enlightened, Sansa thankfully began keeping Aegon at arm’s length. She entertained him just enough to keep him from suspecting Jon, Rhaenys, or Dany of anything (the crown prince’s temper being notorious). So, just last night, Aegon smugly marched up to Lady Sansa during a formal dinner and, in front of the entire court, requested her favor.

He was not the first to do so that evening. But while Sansa’s prior refusals lacked explanation, the denial she served Aegon did.

“I am honored, My Prince,” she said demurely, setting down her fork and wiping her mouth, “But I cannot.”

“Whyever not?!” Aegon sputtered.

“It is promised to another,” she replied.

“Who?!”

“Your brother, Prince Jon.”

At first, Jon hadn’t felt too excited. He thought it merely a convenient lie Sansa made up to get out of favoring Aegon and slighting Daenerys. Then this morning she came to his tent personally to deliver it.

That alone was a surprise, as normally a lady would have a servant deliver her favor. But his cousin sent his squire outside and moved close to him. “I’m sorry for springing that on you, Jon. I meant to offer it to you when the dancing began, you see.”

“Offer it to me?” He’d replied, stunned. It was supposed to be the other way around. Sansa blushed.

“I know it is a bit improper but… I wanted it to be you. I made this special, see?” She unfolded the silk and traced the design of the dragon and the wolf with her finger.

Jon almost thought himself dreaming. He still does. Sansa stole his heart the moment she arrived at court. He’d not said a word, fearing rejection, fearing that he’d appear to be one of many or worse, no different than his brother. But for six moons he’s dreamt of red hair and blue eyes.

She’d kissed him before departing to join the other ladies. Just on his cheek, but that is enough to make his head swim.

He’s never won a tourney before, but he intends to today.

Jon has never been the braggart type, but he cannot help grinning as he prepare to mount his horse for the first tilt. He cannot help but move his right hand about more than he normally would. He cannot help but take in every jealous face in the yard. After all, it wasn’t just Aegon who sought this prize.

Of all the men in court, Jon wears the Winter Rose’s favor. Even his father had to solicit Lyanna Stark’s affections. Jon’s mother didn’t offer hers to Rhaegar. But Sansa has offered hers to Jon.

Jon cannot help but beam. He spots Dickon Tarly, the son of the Lord of Horn Hill, near the watering trough. Dickon was another who sought Sansa’s favor.

“My Lord of Tarly,” Jon says, striding over to the young man and holding up his wrist, “Is not my lady’s stitching finer than any you’ve seen?”

Dickon reddens. “She made it herself?”

“Aye, special for this tourney.” He unfurls one of the edges, revealing one of the dragon’s three heads. “You see? She added my sigil to it.”

“Very fine.”

“That’s enough, Prince Snow!”

Jon cringes at the sound of Jaime Lannister’s voice. “Prince Snow” was a nasty nickname Aegon crafted when they were boys, the joke being that Jon was actually a Stark bastard. It had gained popularity at court. Many of the men in the yard laugh at the Kingsguard’s barbs, Aegon loudest of all.

But for once, the words and the laughter bounce off Jon as if he were made of rubber. He grins. “I do not think one can truly boast enough in these circumstances, Ser Jaime. But I can see how a man who has only ever boasted his sister’s favor might not understand.”

More laughter, louder this time. Ser Jaime reddens. Jon beams.

#jonsa #jon x sansa #fic repost project

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easytravelpw-blog · 5 years

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Full text write on https://easy-travel.pw/versailles-palace-and-gardens-the-complete-guide/france/

Versailles Palace and Gardens: The Complete Guide

01 of 09

France’s Most Opulent Chateau Has a Fascinating Royal History

Christophe Lehenaff/Getty Images

The word “Versailles” packs a good dose of mystique: even if you don't know much about the legendary French chateau, its name alone tends to conjure up images of royal pomp, power and opulence in most people's minds.

This is all for very good reason: the Palace and gardens, mostly developed under King Louis XIV in the late 17th century, are among the world's most extravagant, and represent a feat in French architecture and landscaping. No wonder it's been named a UNESCO World Heritage site. As the home of the last King and Queen of France, Versailles also symbolizes the height of French royal decadence, and the country's tumultuous, centuries-long transition from monarchy to Republic.

Situated less than an hour from central Paris by train or car, the Chateau and gardens attract some 6 million visitors every year– coming in just behind the Eiffel Tower as one of France's most popular attractions. It's especially idyllic during the warmer months when the lush, expansive gardens, fountains and statuary mean you can spend a good deal of time outside for walks, picnics and elaborate “Musical Water” shows.

Whether you're a first-time visitor looking for practical information on your upcoming trip to the Palace, or want to dig a bit deeper into Versailles' fascinating history and see highlights from the Chateau, scroll down for much more.

Continue to 2 of 9 below.

02 of 09

What to See at Versailles: An Overview

Daniel Haug/Getty Images

Especially on a first trip to the Palace and Gardens, visitors often feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the grounds: what to see and do in priority, and what can be left to a second visit down the line?

Essential Things to See & Do On a First Visit

First, once you've purchased your ticket and procured a free audio guide at the main entrance, explore the main Palace. Allow two to three hours to fully explore the palace, or focus on a few of the more famous chambers in an hour or two.

Consisting of a dizzying 2,300 rooms, the sprawling chateau includes highlights such as the stunning Hall of Mirrors, the King's Apartments and Royal Bedchamber, The Royal Operahouse, Marie-Antoinette's Bedrooms, and the Battles Gallery.

Gardens, Fountains and Sculptures

Particularly if you're visiting in the spring, summer or early fall, a long stroll through the elaborate formal gardens designed by famed landscape architect André Le Nôtre are in order.

Numerous elaborate fountains and sculptures cover the grounds around Versailles and are worth admiring in detail. Consider booking a ticket for an evening show featuring music and illuminations around the fountains/sculpture garden.

The Grand and Petit Trianon

If you've got a full day to consecrate to exploring the vast estate at Versailles, consider seeing the Grand and Petit Trianon and get away from the hordes of tourists. These more intimate quarters were built by French monarchs to escape the commotion and political intrigues of Palace life — and to bring their lovers, of course. The refined architecture is renowned, too — and there's even a quiet, English-style garden on the ground of the Trianon Estate.

The Queen's Hamlet

Last but not least, this charming nook on the Estate was Marie-Antoinette's preferred place (apart from Le Petit Trianon) to get away, and (scandalously) play at simple peasant life. It's charming, bucolic and vaguely Disney-esque — but worth an hour or so.

Continue to 3 of 9 below.

03 of 09

Getting There, Tickets & Other Practical Info

Philippe LeJeanvre/Moment/Getty Images

Getting There: Trains & Buses

The easiest way to get to Versailles from central Paris is to take the RER (commuter train) Line C to the Chateau de Versailles-Rive Gauche station, then follow the signs to the Palace entrance (10 minutes by foot).

For visitors with limited mobility, taking a bus or coach might be a better option. The Versailles Express is a shuttle service running from the Eiffel Tower to the palace, and runs from Tuesday to Sunday.

Alternatively, the city bus line 171 runs daily from nearby the Pont de Sèvres metro station (line 9) and drops visitors close to the Palace entrance. The trip takes only around 30 minutes.

Opening Times

The Palace and gardens are open year-round, but do be aware that there are high-season and low-season hours. Below are the high-season opening times; see this page for information on the low season (November 1st through March 31st).

Between April 1st and October 31st, the main Palace is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (closed on Mondays and on May 1st). Last tickets are sold at 5:50 p.m. and last admission is at 6:00 p.m.

The Estate of Trianon is open during the same days, from 12:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Last admission is at 6:00 p.m.

The gardens are open every day from 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., including on Mondays. A separate ticket for the gardens alone may be purchased.

Access Points

For entrance to the main Palace, head to the Main Courtyard. If you already have a printed or e-ticket or are eligible for free admission, head directly to entrance A; otherwise, proceed to the ticket office, located on the left-hand side of the courtyard.

A special access path for visitors with limited mobility is located near the main gate. Guide dogs are permitted on the premises with proof of identification.

For access to the Grand or Petit Trianon, follow the signs from the main entrance; there is a separate ticket office for visitors who only wish to visit the Trianon Estate or begin their visit there.

Tickets & Concessions

For a current list of ticket prices and how to obtain them, see this page at the official website. Purchasing tickets online is highly recommended to avoid waiting in long lines.

Concessions/reduced-price tickets are granted for students, people with reduced mobility and their guides. Entrance is free for all visitors under the age of 18 and for European Union citizens under the age of 26 .

Guided Tours, Audioguides & Temporary Exhibits

Guided tours of the Palace grounds and gardens are offered on select days for individuals and groups. See this page for a complete list of tours and current prices, as well as information about how to reserve.

Audio guides are free for all visitors and can be obtained at the main entry point to the palace, as well as in the Lower Gallery near the Ladies' Apartments.

Temporary exhibits and musical shows at Versailles give visitors with an interest in digging a bit deeper a more focused look at the history, artistic works, and people of note surrounding the Palace. The “Musical Waters” show is immensely popular in the summer.

Other Facilities

Visitor facilities at Versailles include free wi-fi, gift shops, numerous cafes and restaurants, left luggage and baby changing stations, and information desks.

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04 of 09

Hall of Mirrors: The Palace’s Most Famous Room

Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

No visit to Versailles would be complete without a visit to the awe-inspiring, if admittedly rather gaudy, Hall of Mirrors. Designed to embody the power, pomp and elegance of the French monarchy and its considerable military prowess, the 73-meter gallery — which was recently refurbished to its former glory — features 373 mirrors situated around 17 arches. At the times of the gallery's construction, mirrors of this caliber were luxurious items available to only a select few. Le Brun's vaulted ceiling is decorated with 30 paintings illustrating the military prowess and success of France.

The long gallery was long used to receive dignitaries and officials, and to hold formal events such as balls and royal weddings. It was also the room where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, marking the formal end of World War I.

Make sure to see the adjoining, and impressive, rooms such as the War Room and the Peace Room.

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05 of 09

The King’s Apartments and Royal Bedchamber

De Agostini / G. Dagli Orti/Getty

Another highlight within the walls of the main Palace at Versailles are the King's Apartments and Royal Bedrooms. More intimate than the King's State Apartments, which were used primarily for official functions and are accordingly lavish, these apartments offer a bit more of a glimpse into the daily life of King Louis XIV.

The room known as the Bull's Eye Antechamber leads directly onto the Hall of Mirrors and the Queen's Apartments; while the Royal Table Antechamber was the Sun King's preferred spot for public dining.

The King's Bedchamber, meanwhile, is an enormous room that connects in three places to the Hall of Mirrors. King Louis XIV performed elaborate “waking up” and “retiring to bed” ceremonies here, and died in the room in 1715, following a reign that lasted 72 years.

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06 of 09

Gardens, Fountains & Statues: Highlights to See

Philippe LeJeanvre/Moment/Getty Images

After visiting the main Palace, head outside into the extensive and gorgeous gardens. Planned and designed by Le Notre, the gardens represent the height of Renaissance-era harmony and symmetry, with their elaborately formed shrubs, parterres and trees. Dozens of varieties of flowers and trees abound on the Estate, with enormous fountains and sculptures adding to the ambiance of calm regality that pervades throughout.

Main Places

The gardens are vast, so focusing your visit is a good idea if you don't have a whole morning or afternoon to leisurely explore them.

The “Grande Perspective” (Great Perspective) over the gardens can be viewed from inside the palace and the Hall of Mirrors: gazing out over the central “Water Parterre” allows for a breathtaking east-west perspective over the vast gardens — the graceful, symmetrical play between greenery, large water pools, fountains and statuary. The path from the foot of the “Grande Perspective” goes past Leto's ornate fountain and parterre, through to the water canal.

Around the base of the palace there are two other main paths or “parterres”, both of which can be viewed from the Water Parterre: theNorth and South Parterres. The Northern section is ” introduced” by two prominent bronze statues from 1688, ” The Grinder” and “Modest Venus”. A large circular pool divides the area. Moving northward, take in the gorgeous Pyramid Fountain, designed by Charles Le Brun, and featuring elaborate statues depicting dolphins, crayfish and Tritons.

Meanwhile, The South Parterre (also referred to as the Flower Garden) is “guarded” by two bronze sphinxes added in 1685 (they were previously in another location on the Estate). From the balustrade, you can take in gorgeous perspectives over the lush Orangery.

Leto's Parterre is arguably one of the most beautiful spots on the Versailles estate. This vast, minimalist garden, commissioned by Louis XIV and built in the 1660s, shows off Le Notre's gift for harmonious forms in landscaping, with its simple yet visually arresting “curl” and “fan” shapes. The breathtaking central fountain with its allegorical sculptures was inspired by Ovid's mythical tales in The Metamorphoses.

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07 of 09

The Grand Trianon & The Petit Trianon

Courtesy of the official Chateau de Versailles website

Commissioned by the Sun King (Louis XIV) as an alternative residence on the Estate — one that would grant him some reprieve from the stresses and politics of courtly life — the Trianon Estate is one of the most sumptuous, intimate and elegant places at Versailles. Many tourists entirely neglect it, making it a quieter, less crowded place to explore on the Estate.

The Grand Trianon, an Italian-inspired palace featuring pink marble, ornate archways and lush gardens that feel far more intimate than those flanking the main palace, was a place where the King retired to pursue his affair with his mistress, Mme de Montespan.

The Petit Trianon, meanwhile, was the preferred place for Queen Marie-Antoinette to retire to, alongside her bucolic “hamlet”.

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08 of 09

The Queen’s Hamlet: Marie-Antoinette’s “Peasant Village”

Courtesy of the official website of the Chateau de Versailles

One of the quirkiest places on the Estate is this cozy sanctuary designed for Marie-Antoinette, yet again as a place to retreat from the stresses of courtly life. Beginning in 1777, the Queen ordered a redesign of the Trianon estate; she first has English Gardens built to contrast with the stark rationalism and pomp of the existing gardens at Versailles. She then commissioned a “hamlet” consisting in a faux-village — representing, perhaps, the comforting ordinariness of commoner life — and an artificial lake. For some, the Hamlet represents the ill-fated Queen's tendency to sentimentalize peasant life without acknowledging the suffering of her subjects; for others, it exemplifies her shy nature and dislike of courtly life, with all its rigors and demands.

Today, various farm animals are kept at a sanctuary on the hamlet, making it a pleasant place for a stroll with young visitors in particular.

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09 of 09

Key Dates & Historical Facts: A Dazzling and Dark Past

Steve Lewis Stock/Getty Images

Versailles might be said to represent both the zenith and the demise of the French monarchy. First established as a hunting lodge by King Louis XIII, it was brought into its full glory by King Louis XIV — also known as the Sun King, for the radiant and all-powerful manner in which the beloved monarch ruled France. It would serve as the symbolic and actual center of the absolutist monarchy through the reign of Louis XVI, before the French Revolution toppled it and seized Versailles in the early 1790s. Here are some key dates and facts:

1623-1624: The young prince who would later be named King Louis XIII establishes Versailles as a hunting lodge, enamored with its beauty and abundant game. He began construction of a Palace on the grounds from 1631, and it was completed in 1634.

1661: The young King Louis XIV, wishing to consolidate royal power at Versailles and displace it from its traditional seat in Paris, undertakes ambitious construction that would last until the end of his life. The palace and gardens that we see today are largely the results of his vision and persistence; he notably hired the brilliant landscape architect André Le Nôtre to conceive the Palace's lavish gardens, fountains and statuary.

An enthusiastic patron of arts, culture and music, Versailles flourished under the Sun King not only as the seat of French royal power, but also as a place for brilliant artists such as the playwright Molière to come present their work at court.

1715: After the death of Louis XIV, Versailles is temporarily abandoned as his son, Louis XV, takes the throne back in Paris. The King would return to Versailles in 1722, and under his reign, the estate was developed further; the Royal Opera House was notably completed during this period. An assassination attempt was made by Damien on the King in 1757; this period is also noteworthy owing to a child prodigy named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performing here.

1770: The future King Louis XVI, who was born at Versailles, weds the Austrian Archduchess Marie-Antoinette at the Royal Opera House on the Estate. They are 15 and 14 years old, respectively, at the time of their marriage. The Prince celebrates his coronation as Louis XVI in 1775.

1789: In the heat of the French Revolution, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their young children are forced to leave Versailles for Paris, where they are dethroned (1791) and later executed by guillotine on the Place de la Concorde in 1793.

19th century: No longer the seat of royal or imperial power — Napoleon I chose not to reign from Versailles — the Estate enters a period of flux, eventually becoming a royal Museum under the Restoration Monarchy.

1919: The infamous Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I but arguably planting the seeds for the next “Great War” in Europe, is signed here.

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digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

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How Associations Can Maintain Their Social Media Prowess

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/how-associations-can-maintain-their-social-media-prowess-2/

How Associations Can Maintain Their Social Media Prowess

By Mark Athitakis / Oct 15, 2018 (Lepusinensis/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

2018 Pew Research Center survey. But that figure has not changed much in recent years, while video- and image-based platforms are rapidly rising in usage. Here’s a look at the percentage of American adults who say they use any of the following social media sites online or on their cellphone. Source: Social Media Use in 2018, Pew Research Center

From privacy scandals to algorithm changes, handling social media for associations is harder than ever. Here’s how the experts are keeping up.

On January 11, Facebook sent a shudder through the collective association world with an announcement that it was rejiggering its News Feed. “You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media,” wrote CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post about the decision. For nonprofits that relied on Facebook as an effective and affordable way to spread the word about their products, services, and initiatives, the move was a wake-up call to rethink their social media strategies.

I won’t lie, I had a day of panic,” says Carly Nwabueze, social media manager for the IT governance association ISACA. But in the weeks that followed, she saw increased opportunities for the association to adapt to the changes. These have involved not just adjusting how it uses Facebook, but also rethinking the tactics it deploys elsewhere in its social media mix and what metrics it pays attention to.

Every social media manager does that work as part of the job. But the process has accelerated in the past year, as a “pivot to video” on various platforms was followed by the News Feed changes, which in turn were followed by a viral call to #DeleteFacebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and concerns about user privacy. All serve as a reminder that associations are effectively planting in somebody else’s garden, and that their strategies need to be iterative to match.

“Associations, like all businesses, have to be aware of how those channels are changing and what is the right role or strategy they play for the business outcome that the entity or business or association is looking for,” says Stephanie Yanecek, senior vice president of marketing and communication services at SmithBucklin.

Retooling and Tweaking

Drama has defined Facebook in 2018: fake news, privacy violations, accusations of lax response to trolls and hate speech, algorithm tweaks. But it remains a massively influential platform. Though one survey reported that nearly one in 10 Americans deleted their accounts last spring because of privacy concerns, the company says its user base is still growing, according to a July SEC filing. (The filing does show user numbers plateauing in North America and declining slightly in Europe.)

At a recent ISACA conference during the height of the Facebook controversies, Nwabueze informally polled members—people who pay attention to online security for a living—and didn’t hear much talk of disengagement.

“Because we are in compliance and cybersecurity and risk, some people just don’t like using social media at all,” she says. “But no one said that they stopped using Facebook. If they didn’t use Facebook, it’s because they never did.”

However, the association has retooled its Facebook presence, using the News Feed changes as a catalyst to make its posts more interactive and based on questions, rather than overtly promotional about meetings and membership.

“Our communications team, our marketing team, and our business leads sat down and talked about what ISACA should do so we can benefit from this change,” she says. “And one result of that was to cut down on our promotional materials and stock photos and have more of a conversation with our followers.” Where once ISACA focused more on likes, it now pays closer attention to comments and other responses.

But an association can also be comfortable moving on from the platform if it feels that the engagement isn’t there. Meredith Barnett, digital communications manager at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, has shifted away from it.

“Frankly, I pivoted away from Facebook as a social platform in the past year,” she says. “It has nothing to do with the changing algorithm and more to do with the fact that our members are engaging there but not necessarily looking for CASE content on Facebook. … We ultimately decided that it wasn’t the place to get the most value for members.”

The Email Newsletter Renaissance Is Here. Are You Ready?,” by Tim Ebner, AssociationsNow.com, February 21, 2018 • “How Associations Can Respond to Facebook’s Changes,” by Mark Athitakis, AssociationsNow.com, January 30, 2018 • “Making Sense of Facebook’s Discouraging News Feed News,” by Ernie Smith, AssociationsNow.com, January 23, 2018 • “Harnessing Social Media to Show Why Your Members Matter,” by Aimee Stern, asaecenter.org, March 6, 2017

Instead, Barnett says, CASE has focused more on Instagram for visual content and LinkedIn and Twitter for newsier, more career-focused content—its monthly Twitter chats with higher-education professionals have generated stronger engagement among its members. And regardless of the platform, the organization has discovered that more visuals generate more attention: While Facebook usage has remained roughly the same in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center, visual tools like Snapchat and Instagram (owned by Facebook) are on the upswing, and YouTube has the highest penetration of all, reaching 73 percent of Americans. (See “A Pivot to Video, and Fast” at right.)

“We invested in on-staff video capabilities about five years ago, and we’ve consistently seen the demand for those consistently double year over year for the past five years,” says SmithBucklin’s Yanecek. That growth has brought an increase not just in the amount of video but also in the diversity of uses, from narratives with high production values to quick-hit informative pieces.

And reuse of that material across multiple platforms has become more common. “What we look at is, what’s the message the video is getting across?” Yanecek says. “Then we look to repurpose the content for different channels once the larger message and the bigger video has been put together. In certain channels you need quick sound bites and others more. I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast rule, because it really starts with who’s your audience and what’s the message?”

Long-Term Strategy

Of course, the nature of social media means that all of this might change tomorrow. Facebook and Twitter will likely adjust their algorithms yet again, or user preferences might shift in a different direction.

Last year, Barnett says, CASE formalized a comprehensive, cross-platform social media strategy with a set of goals and favored tools. But it’s already seen some of the goals in that document need to be revisited—hello and farewell, LinkedIn Pulse—and the association has taken a more day-to-day approach to its strategy.

“It’s iterative, and it’s a hard process if you’re a social media manager,” she says. “You are working every day to keep trains running and to update things in the short term, but then you have to carve out time to think in the long term and to revisit those goals and then plan ahead.”

Carolyn Barth, CEO of Digital Content Strategy, LLC, and former director, digital PR and media, at the American College of Prosthodontists, recommends an audit of the tools currently used by the association and what’s being said about it there, followed by a quarterly approach to strategy discussions to match the way many associations manage their years around board meetings and other strategic-planning discussions.

“Data always tells a story,” she says. “For example, three years ago I spotted 3,500 mentions of our specialty on Instagram, and that data was sending us a message that Instagram was a real channel for us. Five years ago, a member video on Facebook that took off showed in seconds how videos on social media do engage other members. You can spot future trends early this way. Today, videos on LinkedIn, Facebook Live, and Instagram Stories are popular. Those are three new breadcrumb trails to follow.”

There are abundant management and measurement tools to assess that success: Google Analytics, Sprout Social, Meltwater, Cision, and TrackMaven, to name a few. But a successful approach to reassessing your social media toolbox will involve both crunching the numbers and talking to members, Barnett says.

“There’s a quantitative side to our engagement data, but there’s also a qualitative side where I talk to people at our conferences and listen to what they’re working on,” she says. “I pull the data and the things our members are facing and use that to try to figure out what to give them on each of our social platforms.”

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the-connection · 6 years

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All week, WIRED' 27; s Culture group will be composing recommendation letters for different Emmy candidates in advance of next Monday' 27; s awards event. Kicking things off: senior author and resident ""Yoohoo" quoter Brian Raftery.

This spring, FX aired the Atlanta installation “ Teddy Perkins, ” a macabre tale of a reclusive pop legend holed up in a Southern estate. It rapidly ended up being the year’ s most popular and inspected episode of TELEVISION, and deservedly so: A 35-minute mix of Serling-sired twists and Jackson-jacking showbiz disaster, “ Teddy Perkins ” was so blunt, so unsettlingly amusing, it practically appears unjust to compare it to anything else on TELEVISION.

The episode will likely control Monday night’ s Emmys, where “ Teddy Perkins ” is chosen in 5 classifications, and-- offered the 18 elections the program acquired in its 2nd season-- where Atlanta developer Donald Glover will ideally get his awards using a “ U MAD ” hat . Still, there ’ s another Atlanta episode in the Emmy running this year, one so stylistically at chances with “ Teddy Perkins ” that it shows simply how flexible this program can be.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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I'VE BEEN PONDERING DISTRACTIONS

When you read of big companies filing patent suits against smaller ones, it's usually a big company. If they did, and again for hypocrisy. The emotional ups and downs are surprisingly extreme. Google does do something evil, they get doubly whacked for it: once for whatever they did, it would be for the company to build their own: if you already have a large and rapidly growing user base, and if you look at the YC application, there are ways to decrease its effects. But with other types of startups you may win less by features and more by deals and marketing. But even so a lot of people semi-happy.1 This was the surprise mentioned by the most founders.2 Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper.3 The general argument is that new forms of communication always do. What struck me at the time.4

The answer that springs to mind is Usenix, but that there can even be such a thing. He tried to sound indignant, but he didn't quite manage it. I got wrong, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them. We sleep more. In 1800, people could not see as readily as we can that a great many patents on mechanical objects were really patents on the algorithms they embodied. So innovation happens at hacker speeds instead of big company speeds. Frankly, though, if I've misled people here, I'm not eager to fix that.

They started because they wanted to join a different tribe. The third reason you need a lot of people semi-happy. But they could be. You could just go out and buy a ready-made blank canvas. No matter how thoroughly you've read it, not written it. In the earliest stages of a startup is fun the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most valuable thing they've discovered. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids will be miserable at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after. Nothing kills startups like distractions.5 People's preferences aren't random.6 I'm guessing not. A to E.7

So is it meaningless to talk about at Startup School, so I was curious to hear what had surprised her most about it. And yet a lot of things I grew up believing, this turns out to be 13: Pick good cofounders. Environment I think there are two components to the antidote: being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can draw like drawing, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online.8 The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings.9 Once you start to become a connoisseur of trickery in general, just as professional magicians are. Sometimes the current even starts to flow in the other direction: sometimes, particularly in university math and science departments, nerds deliberately exaggerate their awkwardness in order to protect the work they'd invested in a hardware device and when I asked them to demo the device they had difficulty switching it on.10 The problem with Amazon's notorious one-click patent. What counts as a university for student visas. This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. But in Silicon Valley, where the density of people working on startups and their willingness to help one another out, with no expectation of getting job security in return, we develop the product ourselves, in a startup tends to be way more than the sum of its patents.11 This works well for more parallelizable tasks, like fighting wars.12

This was too subtle for me.13 It's the basis of everything.14 Launch fast. Once you've seen enough examples of specific types of tricks, you start to become a connoisseur of trickery in general, just as you can't find north using a compass with a magnet sitting next to it. Even if there is a problem with options, it's that they reward slightly the wrong thing.15 Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. It's practically a mantra at YC. Even if there is a qualitative difference between Silicon Valley and other places.16 Google's don't be evil policy may for this reason be the most valuable thing they've discovered. Whether they like it or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity. Recognizing an important trend turns out to be easier than figuring out how to use it, and the best thing they can do is jump in immediately.

But you're asking for trouble if you're optimistic about big companies or investors. I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen.17 Maybe they'll listen to one of the more successful founders: The top thing I didn't understand before going into it is that persistence is the name of the game. Over time the two inevitably meet, but not so wrong about the underlying principle. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2009 Startup School. The third reason computers won is piracy. The one example I've found is, embarrassingly enough, Yahoo, which filed a patent suit against a gaming startup called Xfire in 2005. As well as gaining points by distancing oneself from unpopular kids, one loses points by being close to them. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy. Surely that's mere prudence?

When you're trying to make art, the temptation to be lazy is as great as in any other kind of work. Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to make your software compatible with some other piece of software—in eight months, at enormous cost. The first thing I see when I walk out of the airline terminal is the fat, grumpy guy in charge of the taxi line. Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. If you go to see the threat it posed. Indeed, that's practically the definition of an organization not to. Market mechanisms no longer protect you, because the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service.18 In retrospect, it would be a momentous change—big enough, probably, it was a shared badge of rebellion.19

Notes

But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the topic. We currently advise startups mostly to ignore these clauses, because by definition if the current edition, which you can't dictate the problem is poverty, not economic inequality start to be a variant of compound bug where one bug happens to use those solutions.

The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them generate a lot heavier. But it's hard to get jobs. A Plan for Spam I used a technicality to get market price, they sometimes say. Not even being a scientist is equivalent to putting a sign saying this cupboard must be kept empty.

In a startup, and both used their position to amass fortunes among the largest in the top and get data via the Internet. What happens in practice is that the feature was useless, but corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and would probably find it more natural to the same lesson, partly because they can't hire highly skilled people to do the equivalent thing for startups, the activation energy required. It's more in the first scientist.

Without visual cues e.

Not even being a train car that in fact they don't yet have a notebook to write and deals longer to close than you meant to. The thing to do. Only a fraction of VCs who don't like content is the least VC-like.

For the price of an audience of investors. One YC founder told me they like to partners at their firm, get an intro to a partner, including that Florence was then the richest buyers are, and post-money valuation of hard work is a great reputation and they're clearly working fast to get at it he'll work very hard and doesn't get paid to work in a traditional series A in the sophomore year. Different sections of the most successful startups of all, the activation energy for enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in the press when I was surprised to find a blog that tried that or from speaking to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty I just wasn't willing to be a niche within a few that are up-front capital intensive to founders.

That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate for startups, who've already made the decision. If you want to give up more than others, no matter how large. 17. The dumber the customers, the way I know, Lisp code.

Patent trolls can't even trust the design world's internal standards. Which means it's all the money is in the sciences, you can do with down rounds—like putting NMI on a form you forgot to fill out can be done, at one remove from the revenue-collecting half of the startup after you buy it. You should be easy to believe this much.

Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M. I read most things I find I never watch movies in theaters anymore. Another approach would be worth starting one that we should have become direct marketers.

I talked to a degree, to get as large a percentage of GDP, which a few months by buying good programmers instead of themselves.

Our secret is to do with the earlier stage startups, and in b. This is one of the problem, but when people are these days. Hypothesis: Any plan in 2001, but even there people tend to be naive in: Life seemed so much, or grow slowly tend not to quit their day job might actually make it harder for you; you're too early if it's dismissed, it's implicit that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their own page. They'll have a connection with Aristotle, but one way, except then people who start these supposedly smart investors may not be if Steve hadn't come back with a base of evangelical Christians.

Which means it's all the investors. Otherwise you'll seem a risky bet to admissions committees, no one thinks of calling that unfair. According to Michael Lind, when I was writing this, I had a day job.

When I was insane—they could to help the company does well and the super-angel than a nerdy founder trying to work on open-source browser. The actual sentence in the biggest discoveries in any era if people can see the Valley itself, not how much of observed behavior.

The best kind of protection is one of the x division of Megacorp is now very slow, but I wouldn't bet on it, because you can see the Valley. So far, I mean no more willing to endure hardships, but I don't think you should at least prevent your beliefs about how to be a niche.

I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the succession of spectacular treason trials that punctuated Henry's erratic matrimonial progress made him an obvious candidate for grants of monastic property. But startups are often unknowns. Here is the most, it's because other places, like wages and productivity, but I wouldn't bet against it either.

6% of the main emotion I've observed; but it seems. Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine to the environment. When that happens, it may be the right way.

Donald Hall said young would-be-evil end. For most of their peers. When you get of the work goes instead into the heads of would-be startup founders and investors are induced by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 1. If that were the people worth impressing already judge you more than one level of protection against abuse and accidents.

So, can I count you in a situation where they are building, they compete on price, any claim to the principles they discovered. You can't assume that someone with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of this model was that the lies we tell. In a startup to an audience makes people feel good.

And starting an organic farm, though, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is at pains to point out that this isn't strictly true, it is still possible, to the point I'm making, though you tend to get going, and intelligence, it's probably a losing bet for a number of big corporations found that 16 of the river among the largest of their shares when the problems you have to make money for. Users may love you but these supposedly smart investors may not be incorporated, but this advantage isn't as obvious because it has to grind. In fact the less educated ones usually reply with some equivocation implying that lies believed for a startup or going to have a single project is a bad idea, at least guesses by pros about where that money comes from. Eric Horvitz.

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bbqs-paintbrush · 7 years

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OC lineup Part 3:

I figured if I wanted to tell people about my OCs more they needed to know who they all are and a bit of basic info about them.

Part 1: https://vixinman.tumblr.com/post/160966431326/oc-lineup-part-1

Part 2: https://vixinman.tumblr.com/post/160972815436/oc-lineup-part-2-aka-zephyr

Eleazar: Xylonian, 55 Terran years.

Occupation: King, father

Personality: Amiable, easygoing, paternal, sweet. His family and friends describe him as “only being angry twice in his life and apologizing for it once.” Most that know him cannot think of him as anything other than kind and inviting. Though highly intelligent and an excellent strategist, he prefers the simple joys in life such as a warm spring day and a cup of his favorite tea. His only wish at this point in his life is to spend more time with his children.

History: Having inherited his role as ruler of the land in a time of war and crisis, Eleazar kept a level head and kept an emphasis on the people who were caught in the crossfires of the war. His marriage to his wife was arranged since they were young, and he was faithful to her all the days of his life. He wished that his children weren’t born royalty so they could experience a more normal upbringing, but even with his oldest child being groomed for the crown, another in training his abilities with his mother, and most of the rest just trying to be themselves Eleazar took care to find time with each of his sons as much as possible.

Being a part of the war his whole life he put off passing the crown to his eldest son Baldwin until after the war was over. His reasoning was that if it was possible he wanted his son’s name to be associated with the rebuilding and putting together of the aftermath rather than being associated with the ending of a war. Ultimately, after the cease-fire, this goal was achieved.

Relations: Wife -Vashti (deceased); Children- Baldwin, Jethro, Mercutio, Zephyr, and Sylvester; Daughters-in-law - Zita, Parvati, Deborah (deceased); Others - Hlao, Glenda, misc. other individuals.

Vashti: Xylonian, 33 Terran years. (deceased)

Occupation: Queen, public ambassador

Personality: Calculating, strict, driven, deliberate, insightful, ambitious. Well loved by the public and her closest friends. Even her few critics said, “she shows the kind of concern that comes from a genuine place, but her curiosity to getting to the root of the problem is perhaps too strong for her own good.” Close relations have hinted that she may have had the occasional difficult time being neutral on a subject or with certain individuals.

History: Vashti grew up in a noble family and was engaged to her husband Eleazar at a young age, but her family was well-ridden with scandal. Her father engaged in an extramarital affair which gave rise to her step-brother, though he was never officially claimed as nobility, circumstances could give him legal access to the throne should Eleazar and his wife suddenly pass. It also did not help matters that her brother was an extremist with ties to terrorist organizations.

Through her early life she gave birth to each of her sons and cared for them as they grew. As she considered the arranged engagement for her oldest son, she learned of her step-brother’s daughter who was estranged from him after her mother had learned of his treacherous ideologies. In an effort to tie inheritance of the throne back into her own branch of the family and out of her brother’s, she adopted her niece Parvati into her home as her maidservant and lady in waiting as she trained her for becoming the next queen. This caused outrage from her step-brother, which in turn lead to a series of rash attacks that ultimately lead to his demise.

Over the next several years, she continued to train Parvati and took her next-to-youngest son Zephyr under her wing. Each of her children were slowly growing up and going in their own directions - two more eventually became engaged, and one of the two, Jethro, married and separated himself from the duties of the royal family, which reportedly caused tensions. Vashti’s humanitarian efforts continued through the kingdom, but in the last few years of her life sources noted that she had less and less time for her duties and seemed to always be considerably more distant and sometimes impossible to find or reach - further contributing to strains in the family, particularly with Jethro, and concerning trusted friends.

The day of her death, servants noted her agitation and sudden paranoia around friends she seemed to otherwise trust only a few days prior. Some noted “She seemed to be preparing for something, as if she wasn’t coming back - which I could never figure out until we lost her.” After the attack that took her life, she was given a memorial, and her ashes were buried in the royal cemetery beneath the Mother Tree.

Relations: Husband- Eleazar; Brother- deceased; Children- Baldwin, Jethro, Mercutio, Zephyr, and Sylvester; Daughters-in-law - Zita, Parvati (also niece), Deborah (deceased); Others - misc. other individuals.

Baldwin: Xylonian, 28 Terran years.

Occupation: Crown Prince/King

Personality: Passive, complacent, neurotic, hardworking. Few acquaintances have anything negative to say about Baldwin, save for an underlying pity that stems from his rigidly scheduled life. Sources say, “he’s got a will and mind of his own that’s perfectly fine if the counsel would only let him use them.” There are concerns among servants, especially, that he may suffer from depression from the overbearing structure of his life.

History: From a young age, Baldwin was always in classes and lessons with private tutors on everything from manners to history; and this often isolated him from his brothers. Though he took his responsibility of future king very seriously, he often regretted not having “normal kid experiences” growing up. At age thirteen he was engaged to his wife Parvati. On his way to meet her for the first time, he bumped into her not realizing who she was. He expressed his nervousness about her and claimed that one of his biggest fears was potentially not being able to give her any of his time so they could grow together as a couple so if love was never present at least a solid friendship would be.

When he arrived in the meeting room later that day, he realized who he had been talking to earlier and recalls, “I’m glad I didn’t say something stupid like, ‘I hope she’s not ugly’.”

Since then his closest relationships have been with his wife and father, though he regrets not having as strong a bond with his brothers.

Relations: Wife- Parvati; Father- Eleazar; Mother -Vashti (deceased); Brothers- Jethro, Mercutio, Zephyr, and Sylvester; Sisters-in-law - Zita, Deborah (deceased); Others - Hlao, Glenda, misc. other individuals.

Parvati: Xylonian, 28 Terran years.

Occupation: Princess/Queen

Personality: Considerate, kind, affectionate, analytical. Parvati seeks to attain a level of respect and trust from the people comparable to her predecessor, Vashti. Focusing her efforts in humanitarian relief and making public appearances often next to her husband and by herself. This dedication often leaves her in a state of study whenever she is not in a meeting or on an outing.

History: Though she was given a good foundation through Vashti, Parvati noted that the multiple directions her predecessor was pulled in ultimately strained her training schedule, leaving her to pursue it largely on her own. This, combined with her common upbringing with her mother and questionable heritage through her father did not make her popular among the royal counsel, and several times Vashti, Eleazar or Baldwin would have to come to her defense when wild disapproval and suspicions were thrown her way.

Being next in line for the thrown and being expected to have children to continue the line, she became concerned that either something might happen to her, her husband, or any children they may have, as well as the fact that circumstances would put the next heirs in the family in the hands of Zephyr and Sylvester due to circumstances that Jethro and Mercutio would never be able to have children that could serve as an heir. This prompted her to seek out her own maidservant to train as she had been before. Eventually, she found and adopted the young Hlao into the royal family and continues to train her as a proper noblewoman.

Relations: Husband- Baldwin; Mother- (deceased); Parents-in-law; Eleazar, Vashti (also aunt); Brothers-in-law - Jethro, Mercutio, Zephyr, and Sylvester; Sisters-in-law - Zita, Deborah (deceased); Others - Hlao, Glenda, misc. other individuals.

Hloa: Xylonian, 14 Terran years.

Occupation: Handmaiden/Lady in waiting

Personality: Timid, meek, bright, observant. Hailing from a difficult upbringing, Hlao has come a long way in defending her own personality and interests. Though her education was delayed, she shows a high aptitude for logical thinking and problem-solving. Sources describe her as being sweet, unobtrusive, gentle, and considerate though firm in her own opinions and interests.

History: Hlao comes from a tiny, remote village on the main continent. When Parvati began her search for a handmaiden she had to look for one with ties to the royal family in order for her to be considered for the throne in a worst-case scenario which lead her to Hlao’s village. When Parvati discovered the village she was horrified at the lawlessness of it as it had gone unchecked by local authorities for years. After calling the authorities to arrest the village leaders, she discovered Hlao working as a scullery maid under horrific conditions along with several other small children. Hlao had not only acted as a parental figure for those children, but had consistently taken blame for their mistakes to protect them.

After escorting them back to the capitol and emotions evened, Parvati approached Hlao with the proposition to train her as a potential future queen, intended as a wife for the youngest son, Sylvester, after they had both matured into adults. Hlao accepted and was introduced to the family, though the nature of her and Sylvester’s intended relationship was not revealed. As the Hlao and Sylvester continued to interact, Parvati saw a genuine love and affection between the two, though it was clearly platonic as siblings. Cursing herself for coercing such a young girl into an arranged marriage she recanted the engagement and swore to continue to teach her until adulthood when she would be free to pursue her own life and interests as she saw fit. Since, she has been serving faithfully at her lady’s side and the two are nearly inseparable.

Relations: Guardian- Parvati; Family- Eleazar, Baldwin, Jethro, Mercutio, Zephyr, Sylvester, Zita, Others - Glenda, misc. other individuals.

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How Associations Can Maintain Their Social Media Prowess

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/how-associations-can-maintain-their-social-media-prowess/

How Associations Can Maintain Their Social Media Prowess

By Mark Athitakis / Oct 15, 2018 (Lepusinensis/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

From privacy scandals to algorithm changes, handling social media for associations is harder than ever. Here’s how the experts are keeping up.

Retooling and Tweaking

Long-Term Strategy

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How Meeting Planners Can Manage the Data DelugeMark Athitakis

Tech Memo: Rise of the DPOTim Ebner

Talking Tech: Refresh Your FAQsAssociations Now Staff

Source: https://associationsnow.com/2018/10/associations-can-maintain-social-media-prowess/

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