#hashtag covid kicks.

[once-upon-a-stolas]

July 12th. And by coincidence, a Loona and Octavia double feature, two years before the one we had today.

Things kick off with Blitzo making Loona an adorable Pinterest breakfast (that she apparently enjoyed, albeit begrudgingly); Stolas pops by to compliment Blitzo on his cooking. The two have plans to go shopping and Stolas wishes Blitzo a fun time.

Meanwhile, Stolas has his own father-daughter day with Via, listening to her music and taking embarrassing pictures of the two in matching Hawaiian shirts befitting the dog days of COVID summer this was taking place during. The two go out shopping, run into Blitzo and Loona, Stolas blushes furiously at the midriff revealing outfit Blitzo is wearing or from the unexpectedness of the encounter or some combination thereof, and...that’s about it.

At least one commenter suggests Stolas was stalking Blitzo, but he maintains that he wasn’t, and they simply went into Stylish Occult because Via wanted to go. He and Blitzo exchange a couple of mutually flirtatious remarks, no one is overly forward or uncomfortable, and that’s the end of it. It’s just a sweet, simple moment that emphasizes what good fathers Blitzo and Stolas are, with a side of their growing attraction. 

But there is one thing that stands out...something that, in light of today’s episode, breaks my heart a little. In the hashtags, Stolas refers to “Blitzy and his daughter.”

Seeing Stars was an entire episode, two seasons in, devoted to Octavia, Loona, their fathers, and fatherhood. Several times in the course of this episode, Blitzo sees how important Octavia is to Stolas, and relates to it. Several times in the course of this episode, Stolas thinks about how sexually attractive Blitzo is. 

At no point does Stolas refer to Loona as Blitzo’s daughter. At no point does he take any special notice of her at all. 

Not even once. 

#Stolas #Blitzo #Loona #Helluva Boss #helluva octavia #Seeing Stars

[beardedmrbean]

An Asian woman and her daughter were caught assaulting an unhoused Black man on a video recently shared on X, the platform formally known as Twitter. The video was shared by Don Salmon on Sept. 21 and appears to show a man being assaulted on a busy New York City street.

The video of the two women featured them seemingly trying to get the man to move away from the area where he was sleeping in front of a business called “Creature World.” The daughter appears to try to get the man to move before the mother is seen hitting and kicking the man.

“All we want is a Hate crime bill,” replied one X user. “For reasons like this!”

“This is sad. It looks like they’re trying to take something from him. That man has enough to deal with,” added one.

“It amazes me to see we are so hated by everyone when they all came from us,” another X user noted.

The video has been viewed more than 133,000 times so far.

After the daughter saw that she and her mother were being filmed, she tried to stop her mother from assaulting the man further, to no avail. The mother also saw that she was being recorded but stood up and kicked the man as he sat on the concrete. A voice recording of the video advised the women that they were committing a crime by assaulting the man.

“Can’t be assaulting people,” said the man. “You call the cop.”

People were shocked by the way the women treated the man on X.

“Their body language suggests that they know what they’re doing to that man is wrong,” replied one X user.

“They don’t care…is what their body language tells me,” added another.

“Looks like a hate crime to me,” replied one.

Several more X users referenced the #StopAsianHate hashtag. President Joe Biden signed the anti-Asian Hate Crimes Act into law back in 2021 following several reports of violent attacks on Asians during the pandemic.

The bill was first introduced by Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) to make reporting hate crimes more accessible at the local and state levels by making sure reporting resources are available in multiple languages online, NBC News reports. It assigns a Justice Department official to focus on reviewing incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes and provides grants to police departments so they can establish hotlines.

“Those of Asian descent have been blamed and scapegoated for the outbreak of COVID-19, and as a result, Asian Americans have been beaten, slashed, spat on, and even set on fire and killed,” said Meng. “The Asian American community is exhausted from being forced to endure this rise in bigotry and racist attacks.”

“Hate has no place in America – and I look forward to making that clear this afternoon by signing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law,” Biden wrote on Twitter.

#nunyas news

[thisisme16]

First Contact: Ch. 1

A group of friends were playing video games like every other evening when it happened. They were laughing and playfully taunting each other.

Daniel: Bomb's away!

Jericho: Oh, come on! That's not fair!

Daniel: All's fair in Smash Bros, Jer!

Charlie: Oh? Even this?

The TV screen showed a typical Super Smash Bros Ultimate match. Charlie's Ike proceeds to smash Daniel's Samus off the ring. Daniel: Dude!

Jericho: Haha! Hashtag Justice for Kirby!

Meanwhile, a Pikachu and a Mewtwo were having their own duel.

Jessica: You want some of this?!

Matthew: No, thank you!

A white poodle laying by Jessica's feet barked happily, wanting to be included.

The match continued in the same fashion until there was only Samus and Pikachu left. Each at one life left. The showdown had begun.

Charlie: No, not Pikachu and Samus! They're supposed to be friends!

Jessica: You can be friends with someone and still kick their ass!

Daniel: I am SO glad you said that!

His Samus immediately cracked a smash ball open, giving her her ultimate smash.

Jericho: Take cover!

Jessica: Ack! Abort, Peeky! Abort!

Daniel: Nobody escapes the ULTIMATE SMASH!

And then it happened. A massive explosion a short distance from the house. The sound and aftershocks shook the building. The group were stunned into silence. The poodle began to bark loudly.

Matthew: What the hell was that?

Daniel: I swear that wasn't me.

Charlie looked out the window.

Charlie: Was that a meteor?

Jericho: It must have been. That was huge!

After Jessica calmed her dog down, she and Daniel joined Charlie at the window.

Daniel: It must have landed close by. Wanna check it out?

Matthew: Shouldn't we call someone first?

Jericho: I don't know who to call when a meteor hits.

Jessica: 911?

Charlie: It's not exactly an emergency. ...How about this? We'll go take a look. If there's a fire, then we'll call 911.

The gang agreed and gathered their spring jackets.

Jessica: Noodles, you're in charge until we get back.

The poodle woofed his affirmation. He watched through the window as the group climbed into an old pickup truck and drove toward the small forest where the explosion came from. After a short drive, they arrived at the tree line. One by one they hopped out of the vehilcle.

Jericho: If it is a meteor, I call dibs!

Jessica: Pfft. Good luck dragging it back home.

Jericho: I have my ways.

Charlie reached back into the truck and gathered some masks. Covid was winding down, but the group of friends always made sure to have a healthy supply just in case. He passed them out to the others.

Jessica: Never thought I'd use these for smoke.

Matthew: I think I see smoke from that direction.

They set off in the direction he indicated. After a few minutes of walking, the group came across a life-changing sight. There was some kind of futuristic looking pod that was broken in half, but it was the unconscious residents surrounding the pod that demanded attention. Each one more vastly different than the last. There was only one conclusion.

Aliens.

~~~

Finally got around to setting up the first part of one of my Mass Effect AUs! The beginning is a little clunky in my opinion but I think the story picks up quickly afterward. OCD was really kicking my ass today so getting this update done was a real struggle. But the important thing is that I did it anyway!

#fanfiction #mass effect #mass effect AU #OCs #mass effect domestic life AU #first contact AU #a poodle named Noodles

[sakuraiadam1704]

WEEK 5: What is Digital Citizenship? Hashtag Publics, Political Engagement and Activism

How have digital platforms changed political and civic participation? Let me answer.

Many democratic countries have expressed worry about an increasing gap between political elites and their citizens. A more deliberative type of democracy, supported by technology improvements, might help address this problem. Digital democracy can revolutionize how citizens engage with their government and start a movement toward increased political involvement by bridging the gap between institutions and people and bringing choices closer to those they influence.

The Covid-19 epidemic may precipitate a dramatic move toward online parliaments and online voting throughout the world, kicking off a transformation to digital democracy. Day-to-day government functions have already shifted online, and as the internet becomes more widely accepted in modern life, the transition to digital democracy becomes increasingly feasible.

Digital democracy may increase the quality and credibility of political decision-making. Most modern governments' political systems depend on the notion that public engagement in political decision-making is limited due to enormous population populations. However, in many locations, mass assembly of ideas is no longer a possibility, but rather a fact. Digital democracy approaches have the potential to boost trust in the government while bringing citizens to the source of democratic choices.

There are undeniable disadvantages to utilizing digital involvement. Large-scale sourcing of ideas may overload governments, reducing their ability to analyze proposals objectively and critically. To avoid this, the process's requirements must be explicitly communicated and implemented by the institutions involved. Furthermore, as elections grow increasingly electronic, the relative power of particular citizens' political voices may weaken. For example, older persons and those with limited internet connection may be able to take part.

In numerous instances, technology has helped government organizations improve diversity and participation. However, digital technologies have yet to address a critical question: how can democratic processes be "safely" digitalized? Efforts to digitally alter democracy face organizational opposition to digital innovation in the public sector. Government agencies have additional obstacles such as the danger of fraudulent exploitation of public input, privacy issues, and digital literacy gaps.

References:

Kemp-Welch, M., & Kemp-Welch, M. (2022, December 13). Digital democracy: a new life for political participation? The New Federalist. https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/digital-democracy-a-new-life-for-political-participation?lang=fr

Gianluca. S, (2020), ''Digital democracy: Is the future of civic engagement online?'', European Parliamentary Research Service, pp. 3-8

#mda20009

[slashtakemylife]

I think I'm just realizing I've been so deeply shellshocked by Endgame... It has literally taken me 4 years to finally, finally start mourning it

I just... Please if there's anyone out there willing to talk to me because how can I tell anyone in my close circle I'm mourning a MOVIE

And not just that, I'm mourning it 4 years later

I guess it really is the stages of grief and I've lived in denial for 4 years because I simply just couldn't bring myself to believe a franchise that I have absolutely adored and poured all my love and trust... Kicked me back like that... And after giving me a movie that was everything I could've asked like... I just don't know how to say it and I'm sorry I'm using tumblr as a personal journal but I simply have to put it down for words.

Endgame for me was everything.

It reunited storylines, characters and even made dumb internet jokes canon

That's America's ass

I can still cry of joy and laugh at so many scenes I still remember softly so to admit it's actually garbage... Would mean I'd have to admit nearly 10 years of dedication have gone down the drain and everything I loved is now gone and my trust was severely used.

I'm broken

And for me personally it really just boils down to one fcking character

Sure I've seen talk about other characters but my main favorite, my all time beloved my just everything

Steve

Steve steve oh god I can't take it, I can see why they did what they did, they do have real life restrictions like the actors' contracts and the fact is a movie and just their plain open "white male writers" but... It's my Steve, I've been rooting for him and emotionally attached myself to him so bad

I still remember the fxking joy I had watching every movie, the absolute sheer glee when I was gifted an avengers vase because it had been everything to me

Steve's ending broke me and not just as a stucky shipper but a steve fan and a bucky fan and yes I absolutely knew stucky WOULD NEVER be canon like trust me I knew, never asked for it to be true, didn't even engage with the hashtag GiveCapABoyfriend but I at least expected them to end together as in friendship as in finally journeying together this new world after the main threat was finally over, their fight for each other finally welding results.

Now I have to live with Steve's BULLSHIT ending that not only breaks their own premise on time travel, it also breaks the foundation that is Steve, breaks everything that's been building up straight up from his introduction and literally the third fxking movie in this mega cinematic universe

And ofc since this is a connected cinematic universe of fcking course they have to rub it in my face.

I see you the falcon and the winter soldier and partially loki since he is directly from their disastrous time heist.

I'm starting to understand why I can't enjoy this anymore and only marginally have with production that have minimal contact with the source

Aka Eternals, Black Panther (although this mostly because of Namor and maya cultura and I am mexican so) and Shang Shi, I do get a punch in the gut like in Eternals and Shang Shi like everything goes back to normal as if fcking half the population did not just left and magically all went back and just everything was back to normal and just occasionally mentioned?

Bitch we couldn't stop talking about covid and has been the main topic for as long as it happened and it took years for it to truly just be a passing topic and these mf be like oh shame well carrying on

There's not a single movie I look forward to watching and I'm still debating on seeing the marvels and if I did it would just be out of curiosity but honestly now that I'm letting out my tears... I don't want to, i never liked how Carol has been handled, mind you, not her, I love her but her character has been severely butchered since her introduction and also at this point I don't even know what they are building and also now I'm not even sure I care.

I dread the next cap movie and thunderbolts because I know I'm going to see them wh0re out Bucky until his last breath as if he hadn't just being dumped by his best friend and only connection to the past, sure he can make new friends, Sam is but it's not the same you know?

I don't know what to do with myself and I have to keep it together and pretend I'm a functioning adult just doing their 9 to 6 as if my head isn't splitting in half

#rant #anti endgame

[iconixdigital]

Excellent Digital Media Campaigns Starting In 2023 || IconixDigital

Studying the most effective digital marketing initiatives from well-known companies can inspire ideas for your own initiatives. The best digital marketing campaigns from 2023 are listed below. Social justice, celebrity endorsements, tailored products, competitions and games, augmented reality apps, and the metaverse is all featured in the advertisements.

As people could not be physically present for the outbreak, the Cadbury Global Hide campaign was developed to allow them to engage with loved ones by hiding Easter eggs. With the virtual experience, users could buy a genuine Cadbury Easter Egg, virtually conceal it using Google Maps in a special spot, and then send the receiver a customized hint to discover the egg. After the receivers located the egg, a real, tangible chocolate egg was sent to their house.

The #ThinkBeforeYouLike campaign was launched by National Geographic to draw attention to the illegal pet trade in critically endangered cheetahs. Nowadays, cheetah owners primarily remove their pets from the wild, where there are only 7,000 adult cheetahs left, and display them on Instagram and TikTok. Followers were encouraged to pause for a moment and consider the morals and legalities of what was being depicted before they liked or shared any social media posts with cheetahs. The warning about how social media promotes the illicit wildlife trade was shared using the hashtag #ThinkBeforeYouLike.

As restaurants started to reopen, Anheuser Busch created the #LetsGrabABeer campaign to promote Covid-19 vaccination efforts and encourage customers to interact safely. Adults who could provide proof of immunization received a free round of beer. The brewery then sponsored a national campaign with the White House during the summer to support President Biden's initiative to encourage as many Americans as possible to be immunized, offering free drinks when the country met the White House's vaccination target. Adults only needed to share a photo of themselves in their preferred location to qualify for a drink.

McDonald's "Famous Orders" campaign debuted in 2023 with customized orders from reggaeton artist J Balvin and rapper Travis Scott. Custom requests from South Korean pop group BTS, Mariah Carey, and Saweetie were added to the program in 2022. Celebrity order preferences shown in a humorous way reinforce key menu items.

The Dove Self-Esteem Project was started in 2004 with the goal of fostering healthy body confidence and self-esteem in young people so they can reach their full potential. With the Crown Coalition, Dove collaborated with Grammy Award-winning musician Lizzo in 2022 to promote the development of girls' and women's self-esteem and combat hair discrimination. Dove's "The Selfie Talk" campaign, which addresses the ongoing digital ads distortion girls are exposed to on social media, was unveiled to kick off the collaboration.

#digital ads

[bellsliturgy]

sry for the lack of activity on my part here it’s been v stressful wrt the crimis season i’m dealing with a lot of small things and a couple really big things and it makes me want to eat my own hands more details under the cut if ur interested (tw mention of a horrible certain swamp scum transphobe author; fellow transpersons beware)

1) my gma is 85 and is on her last legs idk how much longer she’s got left in her and with her being in the hospital with afib (atrial fibrillation for those who dont know, basically her heart is beating 2 fast and out of rhythm (but afib can be any kind of heart beating speed, it just means it’s Not Normal) and the winter storm she is staying with us which means my mom is more Aggressive and Demanding and Hateful towards me and dad bc idk i guess hosting ur small quiet kind grandma calls for attacking your husband and child (very important ingredient cannot skip)(btw my grandma is fine she’s just very weak and is struggling to physically move around by herself but insurance company is refusing to let her go to a physical rehab center for treatment???? lol????? hashtag AICAB (all insurance companies are bastards)

2) speaking of whom i also came out to my mom as trans after an argument abt justa kunt r*wling (mom doesnt know anything abt how nasty of a creature wizard bitch is but i’m still like mom pls there are better authors out there with fictional work that isn’t harmful) book that she bought for my cousin’s step-daughter (she’s fucking NINE) and i was so triggered i was like i need to get this out it’s weighing on me (it was every time i wanted to come out to her and didn’t it was so damaging to me mentally) so that was wild and lukewarm but she didn’t kick me out of the house and says she loves me and wouldn’t reject me no matter what (unless grandma is around??? for some reason idk) so while that is a good thing it’s still been a very hard birthday month for ya boi greg

3) i’m also on the phones at work which in itself isn’t a bad thing because the calls i get are from ladies who work at the courts across the state and they are for the most part very nice and easy to work with but i have Big Phone Anxiety thanks to my time working at the call center for the same agency (i don’t even answer the phone at home anymore and i get scared when it rings, members of public are nasty and i hate them and they belong in a zoo) so that’s causing me anxiety at night andd also at work even tho when i’m actually talking on the phone it’s not really an issue it’s just the Anticipation of a Call

4) i’m in therapy!!!! with a transgender therapist and he’s WONDERFUL but we are focusing more on cbt (cognitive behavioral therapy) which is digging up a lot of pain for me and forcing me to deal with my emotions and my past trauma so THAT’s A LOT and now i have “I came Out to my MOM” for him for next time so that will be interesting (i need to just let myself cry in front of him i have a VERY hard time crying in front of ppl bc i was horribly abused for crying at a babysitter’s house but that’s 1) very heavy and 2) neither here nor there)

5) BEACUSE OF ALL THE STRESS and cold weather my lip split open and 2 canker sores formed in the split area so that’s been cool

6) christmas is just stressful for me and also my mom has been On One this whole month because murphy’s law keeps going into effect w grandma being in the hospital and her brother my uncle suggesting we have christmas separate because of covid (he and my aunt both had covid VERY recently), grandma being sick in the hospital, and the winter storm and i also have 3 cakes i’m baking so THAT’s stressful to think about and i just want it to be over lollll

#anyway sorry if u look under the cut #it is a Lot #pls feel free to ignore what's under the cut #idm i'm just venting #my friend at work is also trying to get me to do tiktok vids #which i'd like to do but #LOL?? #not yet gurl i'm losing hair rn #ANYWAY;;; #hope yall are having a good one and my fellow Winter Storm Endurers stay safe and warm #and have a happy holiday w/e u celebrate #i'm turning to wicca to get some semblance of order and peace back in my life so i'm learning a lot abt yule rn #:D #delete later #OOC.

[sliceden3]

17 Essential Competitor Analysis Instruments And Metrics For 2020 And Past

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Smartphone site visitors exceeds desktop visitors in many international locations. To assess whether or not your website is mobile-friendly you can use Google’s mobile-friendly check. We offer an entire array of SEM services and advertising strategies. Since 2014 encryption has been a ranking issue on Google. The firm has pushed to have the online transfer towards full security with the adoption of HTTPS encryption being one of the essential components. Enhance Your B2b Programmatic Promoting Using Intent Knowledge Controlling such conversations and filtering for offensive content could be tough. Social platforms let people easily communicate and trade concepts or content material. Social recruiting has turn into a key part of worker recruitment methods. It is a fast approach to attain plenty of potential candidates, both lively job seekers and individuals who were not serious about a job change till they say the recruitment submit. Onboard groups quicklyand pace your time to value with assist from our skilled companies group. From selecting your channels to determining what to submit, fill within the blanks to think by way of how you can best use social media to satisfy your marketing goals. Social media promoting platforms are so powerful nowadays that you can specify exactly who to show your ads to. You can create goal audiences primarily based on their demographics, pursuits, behaviors, and extra. As your business and social media following develop, conversations about your brand may even improve. Cell cellphone advertising is the power for organizations and individuals to promote their product or service over mobile devices. Mobile advertising is usually carried out through text messages or applications. The obvious advantage of cell promoting for brands is that cell devices such as smartphones are normally near the proprietor all through the day. This presents a cost-effective means for manufacturers to ship focused commercials across mobile platforms every day. Technologies corresponding to location-based advertising additionally give marketers the ability to deliver ads in close proximity to the bodily location of a client. Fashion Nova relies on type training via its weblog and YouTube channel to market its clothing, which little question takes time to supply. Ask your audience a question or make a request to elicit responses, such as ‘“Tag a good friend who’s all the time late,” or answer a standard query that you simply get from prospects. Share fun stats and details or how-to posts out of your blog or YouTube channel. Within your content material mix, you need to have ideas you'll be able to plan for prematurely, reproduce, and schedule to go out on a daily basis. For example, you may feature a customer testimonial each Tuesday and share a quote graphic each Wednesday and Friday.

#seo

[woundhelmet84]

37 Competitive Analysis Instruments That Can Enhance Your Digital Advertising

It's an excellent device for entrepreneurs who need to have a glance at the general landscape of competition with a niche. Multi-site backlink analysis is one characteristic that Majestic does better than the others. This permits you to take a bunch of your opponents' URLs and pull backlink knowledge for all of them directly, which can dramatically speed up link-building efforts for a particular keyword. This contains info similar to founding date, funding sources, and any mergers or acquisitions they've been involved with. You can usually discover this info by studying the “About” part of their web site or shopping past press releases from the company. Studying how your rivals received to where they are right now provides you with a extra complete understanding of their companies. WebCEO is a strong set of web optimization tools for businesses and individuals that want to handle several tasks in a single place. WebCEO differs from the opposite instruments on this record in that it does not allow you to immediately seek for traffic statistics from another website. This would be carried out in order to acquire a backlink from a high-quality website. How A Reside Event Illustration Company Navigated Covid When you consider networking, you’re most likely picturing a crowded conference room full of people chatting over passed appetizers. But when there are tens of millions of people at a virtual session, it’s even worse. You don’t want to DM somebody random during a session to start a conversation if they’re trying to concentrate. That’s why you want to build particular networking time into your event, whether you create a selected networking group, Slack, or Facebook group. Kaltura makes it easy to create virtual or hybrid events from preset templates. You can select between interactive webinars, large-scale broadcasts, single/multi-track occasions, and flagship occasions. You don’t want your attendees to be ready around for lengthy periods of time. Provide a clear agenda with the timings clearly marked and include any relevant links, in order that members can plan ahead. Head to our Social Media Updates web site to study Facebook’s virtual buying occasion, Live Shopping Fridays. Virtual hiring events offer a good way to slender down the applicant pool and establish certified candidates without requiring employers to spend too much time or money on recruiting. Instruct attendees to post occasion photos and leverage your event’s hashtag. Here are one of the best tips and methods we might discover to assist your subsequent online event be as successful as attainable. You’ll wish to kick off your virtual event organization 1 to 2 months upfront for small occasions and at least 2 months for bigger events. But before you get to kick anything off with anyone, you want to have a transparent thought of what sort of event you wish to create, and why. Your occasion and its content material have to be related to your viewers. You have to ensure that the occasion platform has knowledge security features in order to limit some access corresponding to downloading or recording. You can host a virtual live performance as a pre-recorded or live-streamed performance. You will need an event platform to upload your content material and in addition live-stream your performance. Automate your speaker and content material choice course of with Hubb’s occasion content administration solution. 6 Factors To Think About When Selecting One Of The Best Marketing Video Creator App For Your Corporation We’re so accustomed to producing tv spots that broadcast to the plenty, so many marketers are nonetheless adjusting to this notion of customization. If you think of the up-front TV-buying course of, major advertisers buy most of their media at only one level each year, and commit to this traditional TV mannequin in one gulp. Like many other social media platforms, Facebook is all in on video. Read this weblog to be taught why video ought to be central piece to your social media strategy. At our animation studio, we additionally work on music movies, brand videos, and marketing videos. Our advertising director and marketing supervisor lead the staff with the sort of video that best suits your product whereas our animators leave traces in viewers minds for an extended interval. We are a data-obsessed firm that’s driven by analytics and intelligence. Create seo , add notes for your clients, and gather videos with out even leaving your office. There is no need to purchase any further gear as your clients can report and addContent high-resolution movies with simply a couple of clicks. If you need to see an increase in conversions, gathering customer testimonials and skilled reviews and sharing them across your brand’s on-line advertising channels is the definitive method to go. Once you've entered the main points and are ready to collect video footage, simply hit Send, and the NextFrame app will information the recipients via the recording course of. It is easy and has a straightforward interface that was designed keeping the most effective videography practices in mind. Better organic rankings - YouTube is the second largest search platform after Google. Top Digital Advertising Platforms For Effective Campaigns I Descript Depending upon the nature of your small business, creating your individual publication could be an efficient approach to reach clients. Your newsletter could be a mix of promoting and informational textual content that reminders your clients of your logo and identity and retains you in contact with with them. You can save postage costs, buy leveraging an email customer listing and by having the publication out there in your website. Just be certain to keep your picture consistent, wherever it is seen in print, and have it seen as frequently as you probably can. However, they should be kept separate for finest results, higher knowledge and more economical budgeting. Session Recording instruments enable you to track complete visitor classes. They allow you to play-back all of the interactions your guests took in your web site. UTM.io is a great to the other instruments since it enables you to share and sync your UTMs together with your staff, create UTM templates, and comes with a handy Google Chrome extension. The truth is you'll be able to't actually belief the data they're exhibiting you as a end result of they do not have the full picture of what happens after an advert is clicked on. Let's face it, you wish to bootstrap your corporation as much as potential, by definition your finances is tight. The promoting Ecosystem could be very wide and maintain increasing as new participant enters the business. Still, the objective just isn't that they take the specified action. But that they get to know you as a highly revered brand. Some of them will convert, in fact, but that’s not the primary aim. Indeed, you can either use show advertising to target those who left your site without buying or to target folks with related pursuits. The latter tends to be practical too, since if the audience you’ll goal has similarities with yours, they'd probably be excited about what you need to offer. Complementary to different marketing strategies, such as social media advertising, so you'll have the ability to reinforce your message. Affinity focusing on is the step you are taking after figuring out your goal audience’s pursuits and hobbies. Based on what quantity of keywords you managed to listing down when pondering of their pursuits, you presumably can cut up your audience into various affinity groups for every of your campaigns. 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They won't know they want it, however providing a price low cost, or establishing an attractive level of buy show, may make your product appear enticing to them. This time, though, the business promises a branded product bundle composed of two items for orders over €100. First Responders Acquire first responders with personalised offers that present them you care. Employment Verify employment status to examine for credit score risk or as a gatekeeper for corporate reductions. Seniors Acquire seniors with customized presents that honor their life stage. Young Adults Win young adults and nurture lifelong loyalty with personalized presents. Healthcare Win Healthcare Customers by Recognizing their Value to the Community Professions Engage millions of professionals with offers that reward their profession alternative. 6 Steps To An Efficient Pinterest Advertising Campaign It takes half as many impressions to convert somebody on Pinterest than other platforms. Download a free preview of the definitive guide on influencer marketing, The Age of Influence. Please observe that from a enterprise model perspective, both Tribes and SmartLoop are considered further “PowerUps” for Tailwind for Pinterest. Learn the way to use Pinterest Marketing for your small business with our Pinterest marketing course. Pin consistently to construct energetic enterprise relationships with new and returning guests. To help, we’ve created a straightforward 5-step Pinterest marketing technique – lets dive in. Pinterest is a strong social media platform that may enhance your web site visitors and gross sales. Yet, many small companies are unable to channelize this platform to their benefit. FlyAway BlueJay, noticed Buyable Pins drive 20 percent of their total gross sales and 28 p.c of their general traffic through the holiday period. Users are additionally encouraged to link a quantity of Pins to the same destination, so contemplate taking completely different photos of the identical merchandise to enchantment to different consumers and thus, rising your attain. The price of Instagram adverts is generally greater than on Facebook, but the good news is that organic attain can be greater. 46% of TikTok users have interaction in the app with out some other distractions. Nearly 80% of Twitter customers really feel more constructive a couple of business after they get a response to their tweet. On Page Optimization Beyond optimizing your web site for relevance and intent, on-page optimization is effective as a result of it’s entirely within your control. Google is incredibly good at understanding what customers are actually trying to find, and the forms of results that finest meet these needs. If you’re ever confused concerning the two, it helps to consider it by way of how much management you might have over your content. If it’s totally inside your management — such as updating a product page in your web site — then it’s an on-page search engine optimization motion. Adding external links to your website web page might sound counterintuitive, but it lets you establish your authority if you link it to a relevant website in your area of interest. External linking is doubtless one of the most important components of the on-page SEO strategies that we recommend. Internal Linking StructureThe optimal construction for a website ought to resemble a pyramid. It probably wouldn’t make sense for us to incorporate these identical ideas in our submit, but we can embody some distinctive ideas of our own to increase linkability. Plenty of tools exist for compressing photographs, but ShortPixelis one we like. It has a web interfacewhere you probably can compress as much as 50 pictures at a time free of charge and a WordPress pluginthat compresses photographs whenever you addContent them. Images can rank in Google image search and ship more site visitors your method. Search Engine Advertising Promote your customers by retweeting a fortunately resolved assist interaction. Respond even if the user has indirectly tweeted at you or asked for assist. When you reply model mentions or feedback it reveals you are paying attention. To publish relevant, quality content and involve your viewers – ask questions, use polls, and host events. Think of content material on your firm website, your blog, and your social media accounts. Instagram stories now let you promote your merchandise to 300 million users day by day. You may use different content material to check out or experiment with story adverts and complement your feed. Photo advertisements permit you to promote your model or product in a single picture format. Facebook has the very best variety of social media customers, you possibly can choose to take advantage of the location's greater than 1 billion users and rich database of consumer knowledge by paying for a Facebook ad. Brand Management — Brand management makes an attempt to create a bond between customer and a particular company’s brand. To achieve this, it is essential to gauge a company’s services or products as well as emblem, design, packaging and other components. Brand administration additionally assesses elements of the goal market, direct competition and existing customer relationships. WordStream’s PPC University is your go-to if you’re looking to reap the benefits of paid social media marketing. Typical tutorials and platform help articles will get you began, but what concerning the extra strategic aspects? PPC U courses are written by specialists and influencers, with the goal of delivering tips, perspectives, and data you won’t find anyplace else. But to do that, you must first perceive the difference between paid media, owned media, and earned media. Paid media, owned media, and earned media are the three channels via which a brand can achieve publicity and have interaction with the general public. Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn makes use of in-app kind fills to make the trade between businesses and LinkedIn customers who register for the event.

#seo

[socialjusticeinamerica]

By: Mary Ellen Flannery, Senior Writer

Published: 06/02/2021

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Proponents of QAnon allege that Satan-worshipping pedophiles are secretly running the country, and they also have spread false information about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, the recent election and more.

When they get elected to local offices, they endanger citizens because their potential decisions—around budget, safety, school curriculum and more—aren't grounded in reality.

Recently, retired teachers and students protested the election of a Michigan school board member who has tweeted her support for QAnon theories.

When retired teacher Patty Duffy opened TIME magazine last summer to read how members of QAnon are infiltrating and radicalizing local school boards, she was stunned to find one of her own Grand Blanc, Michigan, school board members featured.

QAnon theorists believe, among other things, that a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, including Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey, and President Joe Biden, are secretly eating white children and taking over the world. Their neo-Nazi beliefs are anti-Semitic, purporting that wealthy Jews finance these pedophiles and control the media.

Additionally, despite bans on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, QAnon’s promoters also are spreading false information online about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, the Sandy Hook mass shooting, refugees and immigrants, and the presidential election.

Duffy couldn’t believe these conspiracy theorists now have a voice in choosing curriculum for Grand Blanc students, buying their textbooks, hiring and training their educators, and more. “We have a wonderfully diverse district with African American students, Jewish people and more—and they’re all at risk with Amy on the board,” says Duffy.

THE RADICALIZATION OF LOCAL BOARDS

This isn’t just about Grand Blanc, a small suburb of Flint, Michigan.

In a small town in Washington State, the newly elected mayor calls QAnon, “a truth movement,” and recently fired the town’s skeptical city manager.

In coastal San Luis Obispo, California, a school board trustee’s Facebook posts include a QAnon video, misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, and promotion of the ex-gay, conversion movement. She won, says the town’s mayor, who is calling for her resignation, because “people had no idea this was going on,” and didn’t have the “bandwidth to research the school board election,” reports the local newspaper, the Tribune.

patty duffy

Retired teacher Patty Duffy is interviewed by CNN during the protest over school board member Amy Facchinello.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a newly elected county sheriff is now explaining why he posed for photos last year with a supporter in a “We are Q” t-shirt.

Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.

“The long-term impacts are really dangerous,” Jared Holt, a disinformation researcher at the Atlantic Council, told TIME this summer. “We’re supposed to have our leaders make decisions based on shared sets of facts. If we decide [it’s okay] for elected officials to believe in an outlandish byzantine conspiracy theory like QAnon, then the door is left open for that shared sense of understanding to further erode.”

“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE’RE ABOUT.”

In Grand Blanc, school board member Amy Facchinello won a 6-year term in November, with 26 percent of the vote. (There were four candidates for two seats.) Weeks later, a then-Grand Blanc High School senior, Lucas Hartwell, found her Twitter account.

“He documented her Twitter posts, brought them to a school board meeting and said, ‘This is not what we’re about!’” recalls Duffy.

In her tweets, now deleted but preserved in Hartwell’s Twitter posts, Facchinello repeatedly shares QAnon videos and hashtags, adding comments like, “Excellent work Patriot!” One post shows an image of a fiery Q and her comment: “They can delete our YouTube Channels, our Facebook groups, Twitter accounts and links, but they’ll never break our spirit or stop what is coming.” Another post says, “Healthy people do not need and do not want to be tested for Coronavirus!”

Her views "give conspiracy theorists a voice," says Duffy. "It normalizes misinformation, promotes fear, and skews reality."

Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.

During her campaign, “[Facchinello] talked a lot about ‘outside forces infiltrating our schools,’” says Duffy, including the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism project that launched in 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia.

“Nobody in Grand Blanc teaches the 1619 Project, but she’s afraid they will,” says Duffy, who taught English for 35 years and now works as an adjunct professor at Mott Community College. “She doesn’t want a fair view of American history—she wants a whitewashed one. She wants [a history] that looks like her.”

If people had known what Facchinello really stood for, “I do not believe she would have been elected,” Hartwell told local TV reporters. “What we have is a situation where someone who is completely detached from reality is making choices related to children’s lives—and that’s something that I just cannot get on board with.”

NOT A PARTISAN BATTLE

Last week, Duffy and Hartwell led more than 100 retired teachers, students and community members to protest Facchinello’s presence on the board and call for her immediate resignation. Gathered outside Grand Blanc High School, they held signs that said such things as “Keep Q Out of Schools,” or “You Already Destroyed the Capitol, Now Stay Out of the Schools!”

Michigan law requires voters to wait six months before recalling elected officials. If Facchinello doesn’t resign—and she’s said she won’t—Duffy and others will kick off a recall effort this summer, says Duffy. "We want to make voters aware. The way forward is to outvote [the conspiracy theorists]," says Duffy.

This is not a partisan battle, she adds. “Amy’s side claims we’re trying to cancel conservatives. But she’s not a conservative voice! There’s nothing wrong about conservatives, progressives, whatever—you need these different voices on a school board,” says Duffy. “We’re not worried about conservative beliefs. We’re worried about false beliefs. We need our school board to make decisions based on reality.”

[libraford]

We interrupt the feral celebration of ousting an oligarch to bring you a story about Yeehaw and his Branch of Mystery.

  It has been a while since we last had some co-worker drama, but man- has it been a weird summer. I mean... we all had a weird summer in 2020, but I don't think I was really expecting this particular... flavor of weird?

 This is a story about Yeehaw, but it starts off with a story about Aggie.

 Aggie was someone we were excited to hire and part of our excitement was that it's rare to find someone with prior floral experience and we'd concluded at this point that it does no one any good to be picky about new hires in the middle of a pandemic. So finding someone who knew the difference between a carnation and a rose was a big deal for us.

 I say that in jest, but saying that we do 'on-the-job training' means that we've had to explain that yes- the flower in my hand that looks like a carnation is a carnation and not some other flower that looks like carnation but is not a carnation. Floristry is a very straightforward practice and for the most part a rose is a rose and a daisy is a daisy and if someone asks for those things, you give it to them.

 The hard part is, as always, making them look good together.

 Which is why we were pleased with Aggie- who previously did weddings for her friends and seemed to have a basic understanding of how to do things with her hands. We were happy to have her aboard.

 ... until you gave her criticism.

 She made her vases embarrassingly short, and if you tried to tell her how to fix it, she'd snap back with "I'm not DONE yet."

 She was done until you said something.

 If you gave her an order for two dozen white roses, she would take it upon herself to mix white and yellow roses together 'because it looks better.'

 It did not.

 Hashtag: #selftaught

 When a client asks for all white roses, there is likely a reason they asked for all white. Given that 90% of our work is funerals, it stands to reason that they are asking for all white because that is a traditional color for mourning. Working with a client means doing exactly what they asked for. Doing a wedding for your friends may get you high praise from people who trust you to work in the same aesthetic as them, but in a shop setting you are being paid to follow things to the letter. Doing so shows that you can follow directions, and they may come back next time.

 You don't know customer entitlement until you've been torn another asshole for leaving out a single rose.

 This seemed to never occur to her, and so criticism was a painful realization that perhaps she wasn't perfect at an art that was exceptionally susceptible to criticism. There were plenty of opportunities to make something in her own aesthetic, it wasn't like she was being stifled. There was a considerable amount of downtime where she filled the front cooler with her own creations- enigmatically giving each of them their own names like "Autumn Walk" or "First Snowfall." (This is not something that we do, on the whole.)

 Not very many of those sold.

 But I think what bugged me the most is that she only ever designed. She didn't take out the trash, she didn't answer phones, she never helped customers. She just... did flowers. Nothing else.

 Oh... and the chatter.

 "Do you travel? Oh, you simply MUST go to Bali sometime! You've never been to Asia? Well, there's nothing like achieving inner peace at a Buddhist temple on a mountaintop in Nepal. They have temples here in Ohio, but it's nothing like the real thing! You say you've never even been off the continent? Well, what are you waiting for? You only live once, you know!"

 Ma'am... we're in the middle of a pandemic. Ma'am... I only get paid so much...

 While trying to relate, I talked about my summer in Montana and she gave me the BIGGEST stank-face. "Montana? Ew, WHY?"

 Look, lady- I lived on a mountaintop next to an active, world-destroying volcano system. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

 But thankfully, she only worked on weekends. See, this was her fun job. The job she does to stay social during a pandemic and flex her creative muscles while she makes money at her much more lucrative,but boring,HR job. So I only had to see her twice a month when I was manager on duty.

 Then she got fired from her weekday job and went full-time at the flower shop. Poor thing wasn't used to waking up at 7am every day. She was full of suggestions.

 "I think it would be easier for me if we only opened at like... 11am."

"Don't you think we should be taking proper photos of our work? All we would need is a nice camera and a soft lighting setup. Couldn't be much more than $1000."

"Oh I know! We should be doing inventory on tablets instead of writing things down!"

 Okay, you go buy those things then. It took her about a week of making those suggestions to realize that she wasn't real clear on how things worked around here and stopped. She became quiet, less enthusiastic about her 'fun' job now that she wasn't immediately the star of the show.

 Enter Yeehaw.

 We were excited about Yeehaw, too. He didn't just have experience with flowers- he had experience with a flower shop. He gave a good interview, he seemed like he knew what he was doing and was very passionate about flowers. He was definitely an entire hippie, but about 1/3 of all plant people are. Most importantly, we still had like three spots to fill left from our pre-Covid staff.

 Hired.

 There was an overlap of about a week where Aggie and Yeehaw worked at the same time. His work was... immaculate. Just... astonishingly beautiful work. You didn't even have to show him how to make anything. He just... knew.

 Well, Aggie didn't  like that much- we had only nice things to say about this new guy but all she ever got was criticism. And if we complimented him on something he made, he would give a little 'namaste' bow. And I could see her fuming with rage each time he did this.

 One day, she rushed into the back to take a phone call and any time someone went back there for a vase she would lower her voice as if keeping a deep secret. Twenty minutes later, she called Grandpa into the back as well to discuss something. Ten minutes later, Aggie left the building with her Live, Laugh, Love bag, looking pissed.

 "Where did Aggie go," I asked Grandpa.

 "She got a new job," she said. "Doing HR somewhere."

 "She didn't even say good-bye," Blue said, appearing unsurprised.

 And so we went on with out lives without really putting much further thought into Aggie, apart from the occasional 'you simply MUST visit Bali' line thrown in for bougie emphasis.

 Which brings us to the next part of the story, and that is Yeehaw.

 There are some details to know about Yeehaw that are kind of difficult to fit into a story neatly. Here is a brief list that may come in handy to know later.

-He lives with his mother.

-He drives a Tesla.

-He can afford the Tesla because he was in a terrible wreck that had him hospitalized, and a lawsuit was won.

-Because of this, he has two screws in his head at the temples.

-Unrelated, he has hair that goes all the way down to his back.

- And...

 "Grandpa, we need to tell you something," Blue said. "In private."

 Blue and Kali pulled Grandpa aside while Yeehaw slowly put together a funeral order. "Grandpa, there's no polite way to put this: Yeehaw is drunk as fuck."

 "He smells like whiskey," Kali said.

 "He's stumbling everywhere."

 "And he won't stop... burping."

 Grandpa paused. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and she reached for a manila folder. "Yeehaw has something called... what's it called..." She leafed through the file and produced a paper, reading from it. "Auto-brewery Syndrome. His body actually produces alcohol anytime he eats bread or sugar. If he's drunk, it's because he can't help it."

 We each had a chance to go over the doctor's note, verifying that yes- that sure does look official. Everyone had questions, but it did answer the one I had about why he was sitting in the break room literally drinking peanut butter from the jar.

 So that was incredibly interesting and we no longer asked about the burping or why he was so slow.  

 However, the fact that he was so slow was extremely frustrating. Our average number of orders runs approximately 100 per-day. This can be eased somewhat when we have a full-staff with five designers- an average of 20 designs per person in an 8-hour day, 3 per hour.

 But it's a fine line some days, and if one person cannot keep up it turns into a struggle for all of us.  

 We did our best to accommodate. We gave him all the day-ahead orders so that we wouldn't be behind and he'd have all the time he'd need to make his gorgeous pieces.

 We were willing to make it work.

 A number of factors came into play one day, but most notably: Yeehaw's Tesla wouldn't start and he had to take the bus. So he was late.

 I think I saw him make one entire item in the two hours that we were in the same room. He went to lunch around 12:30, I took mine around 1:00. I saw him stumble back in from lunch, looking... out of it. Just... absolutely incomprehensible- mumbling, barely upright, his hair out of the bun, quite possibly sleepwalking- who knows?

 I saw him for that brief Sasquatch moment... and that was the last that I saw him that day. It was around 4:00 that  Grandpa asked the question:

 "Where's Yeehaw?"

 And no one had an answer. We all had places that we thought we'd seen him: cleaning the cooler, in the break room, heading to the bathroom... but no one had really... seen him since he stumbled back in around 1:30.

 We checked all these places.

 None of them.

 The person who actually managed to find him was Sarge, who noticed his feet sticking out from behind the bushes behind the building.

 "Huh," he said, presumably. He gave the feet a light kick and Yeehaw slowly sat back up. "Hey dude. You... okay, there? They're lookin' for you inside."

 Yeehaw mumbled something to Sarge and got to his feet, stumbling back into the shop without further interaction. He appeared into the workspace, holding a branch in front of his face for mysterious reasons. There were still twigs entangled in his long hair.

 "Where were you at," Grandpa asked, concerned.

 "Oh, I was in the bathroom," he lied from behind the branch of mystery. "I'm pretty tired. Is it okay if I go home?"

 Bewildered, Grandpa gave him permission to leave. It was soon after he left that Scout found his phone in the empty sink. "Who's trying to wash their phone," he asked in the loud manner that is characteristic of old white men. It rang while in his hand and one of our designers snatched it from him. It was his mother.

 "Hello," said the designer. "Yeehaw went home early, but he left his phone behind. Can you bring it home to him?" Mom agreed, she was just over at Trader Joe's anyhow.

 We thought, of course, that we were doing something smart and nice. Yeehaw's mom looks just about what you would expect the mother of a 30-year-old hippie that drives a Tesla to look. Grandpa, in a polite way, explained that he'd fallen asleep in a bush. To which Mom seemed neither surprised nor concerned about his behavior.

 "Okay. I'll be at Hallmark."

 Somewhere between the bus stop and Bexley, Yeehaw must have realized that his phone was not with him and so he came back looking for it. Despite his mother being literally in the same strip mall as we were, he seemed irritated that we'd taken the initiative to make sure his phone got to him.

 "Well, I bet if you just went down to Hallmark she'd give you your phone and probably give you a ride home."

 He mumbled something and then left.

 This seems like a decent place to pause, because him leaving the second time in the day should be the end of the story. However... at 5:00 in the evening there was still two hours left in the work day and from past experience... that is plenty of time for a lot of things to happen.

 The thing to happen was a phone call.

 "Hi, this is Jade from the main store. We've gotten... some... interesting phone calls. Is there... a... hmm... is there a dead body out in front of your store?"

 Pause.

 "We'll take care of it, bye."

 Who wants to be the one to poke the cadaver on the sidewalk? A volunteer from the audience! Ms Crowe: won't you come down?!

 I have had it planted firmly in my mind that Crowe certainly understands the concept of fear but does not recognize it. Apart from being one of our most reliable drivers, she is also a performer, a street medic, an activist, and most notably... a fire-breather.

 You have your hobbies.

 Point is- she's brave enough to check to see if the person laying on the sidewalk was dead or simply overdosed.

 As it turns out, it was Yeehaw- curled up in the fetal position with his arm covering his face.

 "Hey," Crowe said, poking him with her foot. "Heeeeeeey," she said again but more firmly this time. He moved, blinking in the evening the sun. "Buddy, you can't be laying around on the sidewalk. You gotta move on."

 Again, he slowly got to his feet. At this time, his mother emerged from Hallmark to see him talking with Crowe. A group of four people escorted him into Mom's car while he stopped every few feet to perform another 'namaste' bow.

 You think this is the end. But what have we learned?

 There's always more.

 He came in the next day as if none of this had happened. Conversation was difficult because we both desperately needed to know what the fuck happened and also did not want to trigger something. So we didn't bring it up. He apologized for leaving early: chronic fatigue syndrome, you know.

 Other places would have fired him, but we're a very forgiving workplace. Falling asleep on company time is not, in any way, the worst thing that someone has done at this location while still keeping their job. There was Sugar and her drugs, there was the dude that used the company van to pick up prostitutes (this was before my time), there was the guy that screamed at customers over the phone... it's a long list.

 The primary concern of our employers is whether or not you are a reliable person. If you routinely show up for your job and do the work, you're going to be okay at least for a little bit. And Yeehaw, for all his impeccable fuckery, at least showed up every day.

 We kept this at the back of our minds.

 One day, after the Day We Found Him In a Bush was behind us, one of the designers mentioned that they'd seen where Aggie works now. It was not in HR.

 It was our major competitor.

 Now, Grandpa knows this competitor well. She knows all her competition. It is the nature of a lot of florists to, once they've gotten sick of one place, move on to the next one and spill the beans on their operations there. So Grandpa gets the dirt on everyone.

 This particular shop was very regimented. You don't wing it- you follow the recipe as listed. He's been known to pick discarded flowers up off the floor and tell you exactly how much  money you're costing the company by letting it fall, to the cent. If you get so far as to make casket sprays, he will take your first one and chuck it across the room if it even looks like the stems are in there too loosely.

 This is what I mean about us being an easy place to work.

 Hashtag: #ohfuck.

 People come in and out of your life like that, in little ways. Sometimes you just have to have a little laugh at it. But what I thought was funny was that she felt the need to keep her new employer a secret, as though we would get jealous or tattle. Curious thing.

 Now that the glamour of Yeehaw's arrangements had worn off, we were starting to see more and more odd behaviors that didn't seem completely related to drunkenness.

 "Did you just fart?"

 "No, that was a spider barking."

 Amazing.

 Conversation with him was becoming... difficult. As I sat in the break room with my quick lunch and he drank soup out of a mayonnaise jar, he mentioned his area of study in college.

 "Cognitive Psychology and Hindu Philosophy, huh? That's an interesting combination."

 "Yeah," he said, funneling an amount of squash soup down his throat. "It'll take the rest of the world about 100 years before they catch up to where I am."

 I sat, posed in front of my beef and broccoli which I was eating with a fork, trying to process a logical reason why the rest of the world will be sleeping in a bush in one hundred years. "Uh... huh."

 This was followed by another thirty minutes of silence where I desperately wanted to know what he meant by that but didn't want to be the one to ask him.

 People will tell you that a hippie is generally an ineffective, benign kind of person who chants 'love love, peace peace' in a circle and consider that to be an action for change. But I can say with absolute certainty that I have met some downright egotistical hippies in my life. Those were lessons in bias- which I will have to save for other times.

 Eventually, Grandpa became frustrated with his slowness. We presumed that his speed of choice was a combination of his meticulous nature and his various ailments, but with the Christmas season coming upon us it was becoming much more than a series of symptoms.

 Previous persons who lacked speed were chatty, would play on their phone, or get distracted. But Yeehaw... Yeehaw simply moved like a tranquilized sloth. He slowly picked off each leaf, each thorn, each guard petal and took a minute for each action. He would put in his greens and then contemplate it powerfully for ten minutes before putting any flowers in... slowly.

 In the time spent doing this, I had already made something of a similar size and was starting on the second one.

 It was during one of these times that Grandpa finally said something.

 "Yeehaw, that spray is due in thirty minutes. Is there a way you can go any faster?"

 He looked up from his greens, held one carnation to his face, and said:

 "If you wanted me to move faster, you would pay me better."

 Let me start by saying that we do not get paid well. We don't. Compared to other flower shops in our city, we are probably the lowest-paid. This is something that the company is starting to work on with benefits and raises, but any amount of change takes time. (And its still better paying than when I worked in retail. But that's another book.)

 Yeehaw had been here for exactly one month. I don't know a single workplace that gives you a raise after one month and still lets you sleep on the clock without firing you. He knew what he was getting paid when we hired him.

 So anyways, he slowly grinds down our nerves to a very fine dust- burping, farting, falling asleep on his feet, staring intensely into space, talking about how much he should be making but isn't, bragging about his enlightenment, and generally just slowing down production.

 And then Grandpa had her well-earned vacation week. Blue was in charge for the most part and the week leading up to Halloween is generally pretty slow, so it was a good week for her to have a break with few mishaps.

 Eh... hehe. Yeah.

 Yeehaw... disappeared again. We checked the cooler, we checked the break room, we checked the bushes out back, we checked the sidewalk out front.

 He was in the bathroom.

 So we left it.

 He was still in the bathroom an hour later.

 We had one of the male drivers pound on the door to check on him. When Yeehaw opened the door to the men's room, there was a wad of toilet paper on the floor that he'd been using as a pillow.

 If I may pause here to explain- our men's room is disgusting. I have deep cleaned it several times only for it to become a germ-fest once more in a matter of hours. I don't ask who is peeing all over the floor because, honestly, I have no desire to know what grown man can't aim his willy in the right direction.

 So in order to fall asleep in the bathroom, you have to be willing to sleep in pee. During a pandemic.

 He reappeared in the workroom, put his apron back on, looked around at all of us still working and said: "Wow, it must be really hard to get fired here."

 It was at this point that Blue informed Grandpa.

 "Tell him that he's fired," Grandpa said, clearly 1001% done with this.

 "I'm not going to fire him," Blue said. "I don't think I can fire anyone."

 So she had the driver that found him do it, which was confusing for all of us. He ended up calling Grandpa to clarify. And by 'clarify,' I definitely mean 'beg for his job back.' A synopsis of the 20 minute phone call went like this:

 "What do you mean, I'm fired?"

 "Just that. You're fired. I'm tired of it, Yeehaw. You don't work here anymore."

 "Why?"

 "What do you mean 'why?' You spend all day making a total of three arrangements and then you wander off somewhere and fall asleep."

 "I can't help it if I have chronic fatigue syndrome!"

 "This is a physical job. If your body can't handle an 8-hour shift without falling asleep for two hours, this isn't the job for you. Tell me: where is that fair to the girls that you do 3% of the work while they pick up the slack and you wander off to sleep on the clock?"

 "I simply do not care about them."

 "You don't care that you're shoving all the work on your coworkers, and that's why you're fired."

 "I wish you'd given me a warning."

 "Tell me, Yeehaw: how many employers can you find that will allow you to sleep on the clock for two hours and let you off with a warning?"

 End of discussion.

 Now, you're probably wondering where Aggie comes back into this. Just hold tight, I'll get there.

 The Sunday after he was fired, he came in to pick up his paycheck. I was busy handling a minor emergency where one of our funeral homes forgot to order a spray and I had to make one as fast as I could. We held a brief conversation while I made the spray in a hurry.

 "I'm here to pick up my check," he said while I greened the spray and leafed through the paychecks simultaneously.

 "Here you go," I said, handing it to him without much fanfare. I presumed that he was looking for sympathy or some kind of followup or... I don't know. Sorry you suddenly care about your job?

 "So what are your next plans," one of the designers asked, trying to coax more information out of him while I did the work of three people.

 "It's kind of funny," he said slowly... as he did all things. "I've only ever been fired from flower shops." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to go apply to the shop in Bexley that Aggie went to."

#as the world turnips

[daydreamrry]

Im afraid I'm one of the anons people think is a shipper, because I keep trying to get answers or voice my doubts, but that's only because my faith in it being a stunt is weak and I'm so desperate for someone to give me concrete proof!

I spent the last two years having a shitty time and to be honest Harry was someone I could listen to/read about and it would take me away and make me happy. And this past year I've been so heartbroken and disappointed. And I hope with everything I have that y'all are right and it is a stunt but the longer it goes on the less hope I have. I mean, fingers crossed it'll go down in a dumpster fire of glory and she'll go back to the cave she came from, but ...

So please help me out with my two biggest doubts!

1) Harry's team are meticulous with his image. If he didn't actually lose his mind and get involved in a stupid family wrecking scenario why wouldn't his team start the stunt in the spring when she was a few months clear from Jason so there was nothing shady to look at?

2) Can you give me an example of a previous stunt couple who weren't also a bit real? That were seemingly involved for this long and this publicly?

I really really look forward to the day when this ends and shows how right you are, I just need reassurance sorry 😞

i’ll let my anons answer this because they explain everything a lot better than me 😂

edit: an anon said, “Because it was an inside joke and we're seeding from the start by called the paps on set taking pics from two specific person. J didn't correct her article from the mag and they didn't anticipated he will speak out. She lied about her situation with J to harry's team. Blameless article” - i’ll elaborate on this a little bit. looking back at the set pictures we got of the cast filming DWD, olivia and harry were the main focus. literally almost every single set picture is of those two, plus a little bit of florence. their teams planted the seeds for the stunt during filming. olivia, her team, whoever it was, did lie to harry which is why harry’s team fought back with the “blameless” article which basically said that he isn’t at fault, as she was trying to make it seem like it is. many people have different thoughts about when the stunt began. i personally think that they were planning to start the stunt after they finished filming DWD, so spring of this year; however, because of the COVID shut down, i feel like that pushed back their plans. olivia couldn’t call the paps on her and harry on set as it took about a month or two for them to fully get back on track with filming, so that is why i think they were rushing with the debut and announced the “relationship” at the wedding. i mean, if we look back, we literally did not get any holivia content from after the wedding up until april, when they were both in london. also, jason and olivia were still living together in january of this year, so if this were real, and he was cheated on, i’m sure he would’ve kicked her out, no? it all seemed legit until italy and after that, everything went downhill especially since jason released that article which stated that him and olivia officially broke up in november of 2020. 

and we answered #2 in a different ask. i hope we answered your questions, but you can always look back at what was posted on this blog by going through the “holivia stunt” hashtag. 

[genshin-impact-updates]

With the Windblume Festival approaching fast, the TikTok short video event is also about to kick off!

Travelers!

With the Windblume Festival approaching fast, the TikTok short video event is also about to kick off! Send us your original short clips for a chance to obtain great cash prizes and Genshin Impact merchandise!

How to Participate

1. Create a short Genshin Impact fan video on the theme of "Windblume Festival." There are no limitations on the format, but the length must not exceed 45 seconds.

2. Put your work up on TikTok and @teyvatcurator with the hashtags #GenshinImpact and #Genshinshorts.

As long as your video adheres to the Event Rules, you simply need to follow the above two steps to participate in the event.

Event Duration

Video Submission: March 18 00:00 – April 7 23:59 (UTC+8)

Selections: March 26, April 2, April 9

Final Judging: April 8 – April 21

Results Announced: April 22 – April 28

Prizes Issued: After April 29

Event Prizes

- Final Prizes:

Gold (5 Winners)

400 USD

Silver (10 Winners)

300 USD

Bronze (15 Winners)

200 USD

Runners-Up (30 Winners)

100 USD

- Additional Prizes:

Weekly Selections (Various Winners)

Random Genshin Impact Character Acrylic Stand ×3

*During the event, the event account @teyvatcurator will select some outstanding entries from the submissions each week and put them up on the main event page on March 26, April 2, and April 9. Players who obtain the weekly selection prize can obtain additional Genshin Impact merchandise.

*Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Runner-Up winners will be decided during the Final Judging period. Consideration for final prizes is independent of being included in the weekly selection.

*5 works can be submitted per TikTok account. Each individual work is eligible for a single final prize.

*Once the final results have been announced, we will contact the winners via private message. This includes those who have won the weekly selection prizes. Please make sure that your private messaging function works, so that our staff can send you the prizes.

*Prize-winners who have not contacted us by one month after the results are announced will be deemed to have voluntarily forfeited their prizes.

*Due to differing tariff laws in different jurisdictions, shipping to some regions may incur additional charges. These costs will be borne by the prize winners.

*Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, physical delivery of prizes to certain regions may be impractical. We will discuss alternative prize formats with the affected winners.

Event Rules

1. Create a short Genshin Impact fan video on the theme of "Windblume Festival." There are no limitations on the format, but the length must not exceed 45 seconds. The work must also be submitted no earlier than March 18, 2021 at 00:00 (UTC+8).

2. Participants can post a maximum of 5 submissions. Each submission can only consist of a single video. The same work cannot be submitted more than once, and a single work is only eligible for a single final prize. However, the same creator can win more than one final prize, and the same work can win both a final prize and an additional prize.

3. The same work can win a weekly selection prize and final prize. Winning the weekly selection prize has no bearing on the chances of winning a final prize.

4. Works of the following nature will be regarded as invalid: those that plagiarize or defraud the work of other artists, those with no relation to Genshin Impact or the Windblume Festival, works that contain any form of advertising, those which seek to spread malicious rumors or discredit the game or its characters, and those that violate the platform's content policy.

5. Please follow the steps in the "How to Participate" section when taking part in this event. Works incorrectly posted on the platform, works posted without the correct event tags, or works posted in the comments section of this event post will not be considered.

6. If a participant's successful submission is flagged and found to have plagiarized or defrauded the work of another artist during the Results stage or after the event has ended, their prizes will be rescinded by the Genshin Impact Official Community Team and their right to future participation in community events will be revoked accordingly.

7. The Genshin Impact Official Community Team reserves the right of final interpretation of this event's rules.

Please Note: Travelers will submit their work as participants, and the relevant copyright for that work belongs to them. However, the organizer has the following rights to the submitted works:

● The organizer possesses non-exclusive rights to use the works submitted. Provided that the name of the creator is clearly indicated, the organizer is entitled to reasonable use of the works free-of-charge, including displaying on the website, displaying on social media platforms, use in offline exhibitions, etc.

● Participants cannot provide this work to any other third party without the prior consent of the organizer.

#genshin impact #genshin impact updates #official #genshin impact news #windblume festival #REAL LIFE MONEY? #i hate tiktok but this is making me wanna act up #i wouldn't win and it would be a huge hassle but... i'm broke... #anyway if any of you are tiktokers. have fun ig

[chimaerabutt]

I’m at a loss for how to word an incredibly uh. Mixed maelstrom of emotions and anxieties and problems. This is going to be a mess. I apologize. It’s long and rambly and at least 90% me wanting to sort my feelings in to text for myself.

I’ll start by saying my art tumblr is @chimaerasketch and I’ll reblog this there with a list of my sales locations I guess.

So, I live in Texas. This means I’m honestly incredibly screwed. It didn’t even start with Covid, but Covid kicked all of my inertia out from under me, functionally reset all the work I had to do, and in that time it’s gotten exponentially harder and slower of a climb. I’ll try to organize these thoughts below the cut ;

- algorithms ;

So, before algorithms super heavily dictated content you’d see and what would get boosted or suppressed, I had a lot of luck getting discovered organically. People found my stuff neat enough in the hashtags to click on. I was doing pretty great while I was in college getting my BFA, and sold a fair bit of the jewelry I was starting to experiment with by my last year. I didn’t really have to dedicate more time than dead time at my desk job uploading a few pictures to make posts, and I had people in person helping me network online. I had reasonable success with people finding me via keywords. It wasn’t enough to support myself, sure, but it was a slow steady gain of new folks finding me for either my illustration, mixed media, or my jewelry. It helped me coast while I was working my minwage job for the school. It was pretty reliably a good $400 extra a month. With each year, though, I guess social media platforms learned they could algorithmically skew stuff to hook people in to staying on their platforms longer, and that meant a lot of (especially small creators) getting buried. My social media traffic started to dry up, and for a period after Facebook bought out Instagram which was back in 2012? things were still ok. I think the first algorithm change that started making things really rough was back in 2016. That was when the feed was changed so that your posts weren’t actually guaranteed on followers’ dashes. I actually LOST followers on a lot of my accounts in this time, not just on Instagram.. I don’t remember when the similar change Twitter made was, but it was about as rough. Etsy also rolled out a lot of undesirable and sketchy things back to back but I’ll get to that in a moment. Lately algorithm changes have been more and more frequent. A lot of this has been a result (my thoughts, anyway) what few companies own all the pieces now fighting over the increasingly gentrified internet, and they’re all trying to copy one another. EVERYONE has to have stories. And of course, now Instagram has reels.

- Etsy;

My traffic on Etsy was dropping for a while, but once they started pushing free shipping, it functionally vanished outside of outside sales I was pushing myself and largely could have made in person.The final straw for me was when, after Etsy sent me the umpteenth email to connect Etsy to square so that I could sell my online stock in person, they then started taking a % from every single sale I made through square. Not JUST my Etsy catalogue. I lost a sizable chunk from a painting I sold from a gallery I work at, and was never able to get that back via dispute. I switched to Storenvy. Since I’d already had to pay to list I announced I was doing a closing sale on Etsy and opted to let existing listings expire or be bought out. No one bought anything. Etsy literally rolled out the google ads they were forcing on high performing users within the same month. Storenvy did pretty well for me a little while, and I was still driving about the same amount of organic traffic while paying less, plus I could just disable or retire products that sold in person with no loss of profit.The problem is that my shop traffic came from roughly two locations; what I could drive via social media, and what I could drive via in person sales. When I setup at booths, my business cards go FAST, and people do (did) check my shop out after taking them.

- Covid;

I think everyone kinda knew this was coming next. I didn’t realize to what degree in person sales were driving my online presence until there WASN’T an offline presence to feed in to my online. My sales vanished. And I mean VANISHED. I don’t mean “down to one a month,” I mean... I think I made two sales the whole year from random people asking to buy things before I’d even listed them. To date post the start of the pandemic I’ve only made a total of 3 sales on Storenvy. I applied for numerous pandemic relief grants that were out there for artists, including one specific to queer artists, and I was denied every single time. Such is life. I have to question the response that I “wasn’t showing sufficient need” though when the pandemic took my income from the $400-2k monthly range to uh... $0-50 a month, though. Unfortunately, I live in Texas. This means that Abbott the shitstain is my governor, the state is wide open, tons of people are dying, the ICU is 100% full not just in my city but in my entire service area, and... since the state isn’t “shut down” I’m no longer applicable for any pandemic relief. It’s not safe to do in person events, but I’m forced to because unfortunately the capitalist hellscape didn’t stop squeezing you dry just because a plague is also killing people. And most groups trying to make these events “safer” aren’t... doing a great job. The governor made it ILLEGAL to require masks anywhere, so even though we’re adding anywhere from 50-90 new cases a day (and they refuse to test anyone not showing symptoms outside of contact tracing,) I have to persevere with the only source of income I can get. There’s a lot of last minute alterations being made left right and center while both the plaguecarrier covid deniers and more cautious folks both scream about how shit a job is being done from their perspectives. It’s miserable. The long and short is that while the two in person events I do a month used to net me from $100-200 each, and then create online traffic after, lately I’ve been lucky to break $50. The last event I setup for, which was particularly soul crushing, I didn’t see a single sale all day and those of us vending outside felt absolutely abandoned by the gallery organizing everything. That’s an entirely different rant, however. If anyone’s curious, I can share.

SO that leaves me... trying to figure out how to beat the algorithms? I’ve started following trends aggressively, figuring out what’s being boosted, and the success from that is always both fleeting and not worth the exhaustion. Once data came out on the sort of reels Instagram was highlighting, and that daily posting would boost you more, I started caching content from my studio work to upload daily. My views suddenly dropped, and I learned it was because Instagram was now suppressing any posts they detected a logo on. Okay. Fine. I still had the raw video, even if I was frustrated having to upload the same raw content TWICE instead of being able to crosspost from Tiktok. Views rose again. ...and then my reels dropped to lower numbers than I even have followers and people that follow me told me they weren’t seeing my content at ALL on their dashes. My best guess is I tripped a spam filter? Because my reels went back to being boosted again after I didn’t post for two days. I’m exhausted. I’m tired of this. And I hate how the algorithms seem designed to suppress anyone not tailoring content to them until you have a big enough following to get engagement without caring about said algorithm. I feel like I spend more time catering to said algorithms than I actually do creating. I even tried paying for ads! Twice! Instagram guaranteed “at least 1000 views”. I got... 200ish? Both times.

Turns out Instagram still words it as “views” when what they actually measure based off of now is impressions, IE, the thumbnail for your content appearing whether or not anyone clicks on it.

Sigh. I don’t know what to do anymore.

#textpost #ayeaka shut up #rant #online sales