#hence part of the reason of the url in itself

[crimeronan]

imo tumblr having an algorithmic for-you page for people who don't know who to follow yet is literally fine and good. you shouldn't need an in-depth tutorial to figure out where the content on the site is and even if you disagree, it's honestly inconvenient as Fuck and always has been. the most active users here rarely have tagged archives that can be easily discovered & the for-you page limits the barrier to entry for new people. unless you came here specifically FOR an artist/writer/creator who ACTUALLY POSTED THEIR TUMBLR URL over on twitter or reddit, you can't figure out who's active in your fandoms or how to talk to people or how to populate your dashboard with content very easily. i get being biased against people who specifically seek out algorithmic content but staff is NOT wrong that this site is inaccessible to get started with. and they're not wrong that that's a bad thing. let people have fun on the internet instead of forcing them to get frustrated and give up????

i'm mainly posting this because i DO disagree with a major part of staff's proposed plans, which are the plans to update their advertising techniques to mirror other social media. that does suck. they're doing it because tumblr users do not have enough money or dedication to keep the app afloat ad-free with in-app/website purchases, but it Fucking Sucks. that's a business decision that has nothing to do with attracting/retaining users or making the user experience better, and everything to do with Make Dollar Sign Go Up At All Costs.

showing new users content while they figure out who to follow is good, that's a good change, that introduces people to the different fandoms and communities on here n gives them a place to start. i know it's annoying for popular tumblr users to have their content prioritized in this way but the people who use the algorithm weren't gonna fuckin' figure the dashboard out to see your posts anyway?? it's a change that's sorely needed and will improve the user experience and it wouldn't surprise me if reasonable staff members have wanted to do it for A While, & are couching it in corporate language so that it can be prioritized. it is FINE.

please for the love of god don't get lost in the weeds here. it's important to understand why different marketing decisions matter and how they impact the userbase. tumblr updating their signup streamlining to retain more new users IS FINE AND GOOD. PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO USE THIS SITE????

eta just in case: if you have a rebuttal to this that's along the lines of "but algorithmic content will encourage advertisers to ruin the user experience with their grubby greedy little hands" : yes, that's a valid concern. hence why i'm saying i don't like the proposed advertising strategies. i just don't think that the for-you page is in and of itself a bad thing.

#head in HANDS. the hand-wringing i'm seeing. did you know other people in fandoms are mostly normal and fine #good god you don't need to assume everybody who doesn't use tumblr is a bimboified bad-faith discourse machine programmed to ruin your club #most people. are normies. you see annoying things from twitter and tiktok because those proliferate due to being inflammatory. #most people. have less than 100 social media followers. and just like looking at art and chatting with their friends. #Please. #maybe it's just because i'm a fucking idiot who struggles a LOT with navigating ANYTHING new #but it's starting to hurt my feelings a little actually. people arent stupid and vapid and Other just bc they cant figure a platform out #negative ?

[wraith-of-christmas-future]

Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come

                 To those who know me best find it to no surprise on why I consider Charlie the Ghost of Christmas Future and not the past or present( hence the play of words in the url on my role play blog ). If not probable of an Alternate Universe in which that is eventually his toll ; his transfiguration. A twisted half life of vampirism playing the evolution and biggest conduit when connecting being immortalized as this figure in question.

Or even the more canon route of his innovation. His nature in general plays a big part upon that insinuative. As well as the nature of his automobile. The entity that shapes him , influences him as much as he does her. Yes, I consider her a female spirit in possession of said vehicle at the cost of a death in the automobile. For he is the car and the car is him ; yet it has always been a game between them of quite literally possession.I think , in my personal opinion ,  Joe drops subtle hints on the car itself deliberately placing him under that mantle. He is, in fact -- the very result of bad parenting. Coming to take their fledglings away for a better future. Or at least in the eyes of his deeply seeded savior complex. Were parents to not change their ways, to cherish said child in practices and instinct a mother or father should - he shall alter their futures by stripping them from the little tyke all together. If not bringing death upon their doorstep for their negligence as penance. Depending on the severity of their crimes that is. Which leaves me to mention the Graveyard of What Might Be and the exact parallels of what the older title of said ghost use to be ; The Spirit of Christmas yet to Come. Again, insinuating what all is shown is not yet written in stone.

For that particular ghost is often depicted as

Death

in the tales of yore, the darker tales. Black robes, foreboding presence . All color faded from said world, leaving the abyssal carnage within it’s wake ; hence a black steed in place of a pale horse. Also, in my corrupted mind , that steed is known as the Rolls - Royce Wraith. Playing on the words of Wraith -- ( shade, revenant . The stereotyped as darkly robed phantoms more often than not. )

Or even the alternation of Charlie’s own apparel could interpret this.  Gone from a dark royal navy to the metaphorical soot riddled state of rising from the ashes of his own death. Hence an obsidian black “ cloak “ to match his “ steed “ . Honing in on loss ; his own soul to be exact. The loss of restraint, or therefore lack of knowledge upon restraint bridging his triggers and igniting his wrath far more easily. Which is also the reason of how prone he is to this rage induced tantrums of violent proportions more often than not after his rebirth. Or why as each death that is notched in -- he loses that much more of control that makes him less human both physically and mentally. The very monster he had joked upon when it all began.

Thank you for listening to my insane rambles. My often absurd explications. I thought it appropriate to touch up on during Christmas Eve.

Have a

wonderful

Christmas to you all !

#『 Oғ Wʀᴀɪᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ Mᴏɴsᴛᴇʀ 』 #❡ Character ● Studies #character building ; #『 𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓈 𝒾𝓂𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 』 #● Charles Talent Manx III #; His very own Christmas Carol #❡ Tʜᴇ Gʀᴀᴠᴇʏᴀʀᴅ ᴏғ Wʜᴀᴛ Mɪɢʜᴛ Bᴇ #❡ ѕᴏᴜƖ ʙᴏηɗɪηɢ ; ᴛʜє яєᴄᴋᴏηɪηɢ | ɗαяᴋєηɪηɢ ѕᴘɪяɪᴛ Sᴇᴄᴏɴᴅ Kɴɪғᴇ ● Tʜᴇ Wʀᴀɪᴛʜ

[scarawayfromfallingapart]

but The (After)life of the Party is one of THOSE songs to me that’s like… to be cliche… a kick drum beating in my chest (again) like idk. This is one of those songs where I think they succeeded in writing it better than I’ve ever felt it but here I go trying to analyze it anyway… I realize I am taking your shtick @petewentzisblack1312 … but this song NEEDS to be analyzed and I am going to try and make you like it :) I have been lurking in ur asks as an anon for a couple weeks and I HAVe to say this off anon… I’m sorry to bother u. My greatest hits include my autotune does not equal bad/talentless rant and my Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) mini-analysis 🤪 but also I learn SO MUCH from ur blog I love it. Anyway!!! Analysis of this song:

Tw : mania, depression, anxiety, substance use

To me this song is about coming down from a manic episode, maybe not even necessarily transitioning right into depression but like. Just coming down from it and kinda seeing the world as it is again, and feeling that kind of mellowed out, where your body allows itself to feel tired again. The title makes it more obvious - he’s no longer the life of the party - it’s over, everyone’s gone home, but he’s still there trying in vain to carry it on.

“I’m a stitch away from making it and a scar away from falling apart” is my FAVORITE line (hence my URL lol)… but the fact that this song opens with that and the narrator is oscillating between feeling 100% and feeling like they’re going to breakdown like THAT is what these transitions feel like to me (ok also I generally feel like this on a daily basis). But this line also gives you a hint of how well it is going… like he’s a stitch away from getting there - the cut hasn’t completely healed so he’s not getting there any time soon : but a scar away from falling apart - like a scar has already healed so it’s old hurt that is threatening to tear him apart —> “my old aches become new again”.

Then we get “blood cells pixelate” which I personally find hilarious since this song has been likened to the sims 3 soundtrack 💀 (I played the sims but I refused to have the music on so I have no idea cannot confirm or deny). Butttt this is obviously like a nod to everything being on film like even everything down to the blood coursing through his veins is made into an image, poster boys for your scene am I right? Also has to do with the scar/stitch - his breakdown is there for everyone to see, immortalized on magazine covers and interviews and E!News segments. But like only the blood cells, like no one gives a damn if he heals from this, thats not newsworthy. Eyes dilate (drugs and/or sex but maybe drugs Bc of the next line - full moon pills got him out on the street at night) butttt mania often comes with insomnia as we well know so. Maybe the pills are metaphorical idk

THEN the narrator becomes an observer - it’s no longer introspective, he’s watching someone else work the room, he’s cutting all ties to them loose, just sitting back and relaxing and watching and I always had this vision of Pete and/or patrick watching some girl flit around the room while he sat there with a lazy smile and drank a beer and leaned back in his chair. BUT on thinking on this more… I think- bear with me - maybe… just maybe… he’s watching himself outside of himself like some kind of dissociative thing (I personally experience that but it’s due to anxiety but it is common among just the general population so who knows) and it’s like you’re feeling that irritable high from the manic phase still and you’re trying to push through and just be part of this party right (or just part of life in general right, like the party is metaphorical IMO) and you separate form yourself in order to get through - your mind and body are not one. You have to watch yourself from the inside out, rely on muscle memory to get you through the party or your job or the tour or whatever it was in his case.

also tying back to I’m a stitch away - right like some part of you is cut in half and I’m a scar away - again, you were cut somewhere, something was severed, mind and body maybe… big brain hours (but also I’m probably reaching for that one)

Anyway then we have the “put love on hold” bc fuck if he’s ready for a relationship - he’s watching this girl desperate for stardom, maybe it’s the girl he’s watching work the room (if it’s not a dissociative thing, or maybe it’s both tbh). Her nose runs ruby red (cocaine is probably the cause I’m thinking, she’s doing lines at this party to be working the room). Death’s in a double bed (orgasms… nice one Pete) but really it’s a classic tale of a girl desperate for roles that she’s willing to sleep around to get there, she’s singing songs that could only catch the ear of other desperate people like her… but… Pete is writing THIS song and Patrick is singing it and they are just as desperate, right, like he’s helplessly watching someone enjoy a party and he’s verging on miserable (or he’s watching himself try to enjoy the party while he’s actually miserable) and they’re trying to catch our ears… we are the desperate… —> “I’m here to collect your hearts/it’s the only reason that I sing”

Then the bridge is where he starts to actually breakdown, the vocals get more intense and strained and chaotic, the sims 3 soundtrack music swells, and he repeats the beginning, reiterating that but adding on “kiss away young thrills and kills on the mouths of all of my friends” - to me he wants to take away all their joy and pain (kills could also = orgasm if u want to be nasty lol and tie it into the death in a double bed) and he wants to feel it for himself because right now he feels NOTHING like he’s right in the goddamn middle of feeling great and feeling like shit and again, to me that exemplifies the transition between mania and depression and we are back to square 1 (to me also thrills = mania and kills= depression but that’s just probably dumb lol).

Also he’s kissing it all away - it’s gentle, it’s loving, like brushing someone’s tears away, he’s not trying to be forceful about it, but he feels like HE should be experiencing all the highs and lows not his friends… or he doesn’t want his friends to suffer… both probably and the chorus is unhinged this time, patrick gives it his all, loses it, signifying hey wait, the narrator DID lose it… but then the song ends with the music coming off that swell, slowing down, relaxing, the narrator resignedly signing off “I’m a stitch away”… giving us maybe an etch of hope, that maybe his stitches healed after all and he did make it through (with hearts and wrists intact I am so corny sorry)

ANYWAY tldr I love this song and it means so much to me and like when I was 15 and found it the first time I was always like “why does this one hurt me so bad, like I don’t get it” but like. Now that I know what bipolar disorder is and that I suffer from it I understand lol. I don’t know if this is how Pete intended this idk I feel like I got some lines right but to ME this is what it feels like. Also it is v fun to play on the violin :)

#fall out boy #infinity on high #ioh #fob #the afterlife of the party #plz don’t think this is weird ://///: I have thoughts #I recently found out I have bipolar so I am rethinking everything tbh #my depressive phases tend to be wayyyy worse like to the point I completely isolate and push people away #so that watching from the outside feeling is what I feel like a lot #not to mention the dissociative feelings from my anxiety :))) fun times #I tend to just experience hypomania so I am aware I do not feel the full extent of how destructive those feelings can be #I am not trying to glorify mania in anyway believe me #this was very long I expect approximately no one to read this and maybe that’s for the best lmao

[sybright]

My Favorite Cats Ships

Okie dokie, @whitmerule wanted to know my main ships/pairings and I knew I’d have to make a post dedicated to this at some point so here it is lol (also sorry this is so long). My “main” universe, which is what all of my main pairings are in, is based on the ‘98 film for the most part (although really all of my universes are based on the ‘98 film, just with alterations here and there). 

Edit: My preferences have changed somewhat, so I’ve edited this list to reflect my current feelings towards certain pairings. This means that I’ve deleted some pairings that I don’t like much anymore, and have added some new ones :). All of these ships are in no particular order btw.

Main Pairings:

Tuggoffelees 

-I know it’s super popular and there’s loads of content on them, but I still stan. I don’t love them AS much as I used to, but they were my first ship in this fandom, and therefore are still very important to me. 

Demebombastrap 

-In terms of individual pairings, I really like Demelurina and Bombastrap on their own, but I like them best all together. I used to be quite fond of Demestrap by itself, but I’ve gotten pretty tired of that ship over time personally (obviously nothing against people who like this pairing a lot, kudos to y’all who love Demestrap ^^), so I’m not that big a fan of them on their own anymore. In order of the individual pairings I like best: Demelurina first, Bombastrap second, and Demestrap not so much.

Skimblegus (Skimbleshanks/Asparagus Jr., NOT Gus the theatre cat, I see the two of them as separate characters in most productions).

Jellydots (Sweet lesbian grandmas <3).

Tumblejem 

-This is my self-projection asexual pairing, leave me alone lol. They give me bestie vibes and I love that for them <3.  

Platoriateazer 

-This is a bit of a rarepair, but it is one of my main ships, I see Teazer and Plato as platonic partners and Tori as their mutual gf. Alternatively, I like Victeazer and Platoria on their own as well, although I like Victeazer a bit more than Platoria, but I prefer them all together.

And that’s about it for my “main” pairings, here’s a list of my alternate pairings/rarepairs that I love too much for my own good.

Alternate Pairings/Rarepairs:

Demandra 

-No longer my main blog’s url, but they have their own blog now and therefore are still ridiculously important to me XD. This is my fave rarepair, and might also be even MORE of a self-projection asexual pairing for me than they were before. I’ll say it once, this is my ultimate comfort pairing. 

Plonzostrap (Plato/Alonzo/Munkustrap, alternatively, I like Alonzostrap and Plonzo on their own as well, although I haven’t put that much thought into Munklato on its own).

Platoricopat (Cats Zurich got me obsessed with this concept, and @whitmerule’s gifs are are just *chef’s kiss*).

George/Etcetera/Electra 

-I don’t really have a ship name for this, and also this particular pairing is very complicated and I’ll try to explain it as best I can. George and Etcetera are romantic partners, Etcetera and Electra are queer-platonic partners (I see Electra as aromantic), and George and Electra are platonic partners. This is technically a main pairing for me, but it’s sort of rare and complicated in its dynamics so I put it down here. Also, I adopted the hc that George is a Pollicle btw.

Oh and just as an aside, I also really like Elecctera and Etceorge on their own, but I probably slightly prefer Elecctera, I just love the queer-platonic besties vibes of them <3. 

Mungocavity (This is in a scenario where Macavity is less evil and more of a dumbass, but I really like this pairing. It would be one of my main pairings if my main universe Macavity wasn’t complete shit).  

Jemtoria

-One of my newer ships, I usually see Tori and Jem as being somewhat far apart in age, so this is in a scenario where Jem’s a bit aged up and Tori’s a bit aged down. I love everything about this pairing. Considering how much Jem and Tori interact with each other in the show, this ship has so much potential to me. They’re just so soft and they make me really happy <3. 

Tuggoffeleteazer

-Once upon time I didn’t think I’d ever ship Tugger or Misto with really anyone but each other, but times change. Initially, I got very interested in the idea of Rumpletugger (which I still quite like on it’s own), but then later became intrigued by the idea of Mistoteazer (and all the shenanigans they’d get up to, both being mischievous and chaotic), so of course this led to me just putting all three of them together XD. I love this trio so much, they just give “bestie vibes ONLY” type of energy, and feel like a super chaotic friend group, and that makes me really happy. 

Bombbella

-I’m not even sure how to explain what led me to becoming so attached to this ship XD. I had seen people mention it being a neat concept in passing, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually truly ships them. I basically got into this ship through my “Jellicle leader Griz” au thing, which is an au where Griz is the oldest of Deuteronomy’s children and was expected to become the next Jellicle leader. She’s much younger in this au than how I typically see her, so the newer Griz design fits well in this scenario. I just got really into the idea of Griz and Bomba being tragic ex-lovers. 

They dated for a long time in their teens, broke up for a few years, and then got back together again when they had matured, and then Griz went and abandoned the tribe (as well as Bomba) to see the world and pursue her dream of being a star. Griz returned eventually, but the damage had been done, and Bomba was far from ready to forgive her. In the end though, she does forgive Griz, as does everyone else, but then Griz goes on to be reborn, and they miss their chance at happily being together. It’s just all in all a really fun concept for me to play around with, and has so much angst potential. 

Jellycass

-Not a new ship, quite the opposite actually. This is a ship that I usually don’t think much about (hence why it wasn’t here when I first made this list), but whenever I do, I always feel at peace inside lol. I can’t for the life of me find the post that got me into this ship (trust me, I have searched ALL over tumblr for it, I looked through both Jellylorum’s and Cassandra’s ENTIRE tags and still couldn’t find it), but I saw a post when I was first getting into the Cats fandom that talked about how Jelly and Cass would be this sort of “odd couple” that the tribe didn’t really understand, but clicked super well with each other for some reason. 

Even though I only ever saw that one post on them for a long time, I grew really attached to the ideas it presented for Jellycass. I like the age gap concept in particular, with my personal idea of it being Cass in her late twenties to early thirties, and Jelly being in her late thirties to early forties. It really heightens the “odd couple” energy of them, and I can see Cass getting along really well with someone older. Troika provides me all the rights for this ship <3. 

Some Extra Stuff:

Even though I like Platoria as an individual ship, and ship them to a degree, I’m not super interested in them. They’re a bit bland for me if I’m being honest. I like seeing them on my dash, but I won’t actively seek out content of them, so please don’t tag me in stuff surrounding them if you don’t mind (obviously this doesn’t apply to their poly equivalent). I used to include Demestrap in this section, but now I’m really not all that fond of them, I really only like them together in a poly scenario, like Demebombastrap or even Demelonzostrap. 

There’s a bunch of ships that I categorize as “I like it, but I don’t ship it,” and that’s where ships like Munkujerrie and Alonzoffelees fall. They’re ships that I enjoy as concepts, and that I would probably read fanfic about if given the opportunity (and like fanart of), but I don’t necessarily ship them. So you don’t need to tag me for them. 

The only ships that I just straight up don’t like, although I have nothing against people who like them, are Tuggerlurina, Mistoria, Skimbledots, and Jellygus, Tuggerlurina being the one I dislike the most. I just scroll past content of them if I see it on my dash, I thought I should probably list them here cause idk, might be useful to @whitmerule to know which ships I really don’t like. 

Note: I don’t see any of the characters I listed here as being biologically related, some people hc Deme and Bomba as sisters, or Etcetera and Electra as being twins, I don’t see this personally (In fact I have a whole bunch of family hcs that I’ll probably save for another post, if anyone even wants to read that lol). 

And now for my favorite 2019 movie pairings (which I also don’t see any of them as being biologically related), because they’re sort of relevant since I’m listing pairings and stuff so I feel like putting them here too:

2019 Movie Main Pairings

Mistoriastraps 

-This is the ONLY scenario where I like Misto and Tori together. I only like it when it’s in the 2019 movie, and only if it’s with Munk, those are my two requirements lol. I think Munktoria and Munkoffelees are really cute too, but I don’t care for them that much, I like them best all together.

Demandra (I see their relationship very differently in the movie, and I prefer their stage-show relationship, but as always, I love them). 

Tantojerrie 

-I know they don’t really interact in the movie, but I saw people talking about them as a ship on here, and I just think they’d be really cute. Technically Tanto is implied to be kitten age in the movie, but I imagine this as a post-movie, next Jellicle Ball type scenario. I see Tanto as being on the cusp of adulthood, where she’ll probably be an adult at the next Jellicle Ball, and I see Jerrie as being a very young adult, so they’re not far apart in my mind (plus I see Jellicles, being cats and all, aging differently than humans, so this isn’t as odd to me as it might be to other people).

2019 Movie Alternate Pairings:

These are just my alternate pairings for Misto, Tori, and Munk if Mistoriastraps doesn’t happen lol:

Tuggoffelees

-I’ve adopted the hc that they’re ex-boyfriends in the 2019 movie, and I like to imagine that they’ve sorted things out post-movie and got back together.

Victeazer

Skimblestrap

That’s about it for my ships. Thank you for reading if you got this far lol. 

#my rambles #cats the musical #cats ships #q word mention #cats ships masterpost #long post #cats 2019 #cassmeter #really happy with my current ship list #I've had time to narrow down the pairings that I REALLY like and felt it was time to update this list

[wesleybates]

Top 10 SEO Trends In 2021 That You must know

The trend of most organizations worldwide adopting the online mode of business can be seen to be accelerating. There has been a major change in buying behavior and customer preferences for ten years as this fraternity also happened online. The combination of these two conditions makes the Internet the most extensive market currently operating in the world.

There are sellers, buyers, websites, social media platforms, blog sites, and e-commerce platforms. SEO is the most widely adopted strategy to make these buyer-seller interfaces available between competitors and the vast ocean of other open-source enterprises. The most popular practice of increasing traffic for e-commerce websites and portals is search engine optimization, both qualitatively and quantitatively, providing a high brand awareness level.

With the advancement of technology and IT trends, SEO marketers’ volume and preferences are also increasing significantly. The following few figures for 2020 may demonstrate that search engine optimization has become widespread and hence, is currently one of the most reliable tools for marketers.

53.3% of site traffic came from organic search. A small proportion of 53.3% of the 4.66 billion Internet users makes an excellent foundation for any startup or even mid-size business discovery during the development phase.

This year 92.96% of the world’s web traffic came from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps. This is a trend of google for netizens, which can also be beneficial for your business.

60% of marketers said that inbound approaches like SEO are the best source of quality leads with a 14.6% close rate. This is much more than any traditional marketing approach.

28% of searches by local businesses resulted in sales.

The above numbers demonstrate that the SEO aspect dominates very effectively in the industry, and hence it will continue in the coming years.

Top SEO trends in 2021

1. Increasing dependence on artificial intelligence

The AI-powered SEO tool algorithm will improve accuracy and precision in keyword research, competitor analysis, analytics, and other aspects, helping marketers accelerate the process.

AI is changing the way people interact with online content. The Google AI algorithm deserves special attention. An algorithm, called RankBrain, was introduced a few years ago that played a significant role in Google’s ranking factors for search engine result pages (SERPs).

So the biggest question is, how do you optimize SEO for RankBrain? Although the search engine giant has not disclosed details, experts believe user interaction signals are the primary determining factor. These can be factors ranging from click-through rate to time spent on the page. You need to engage your readers with useful, well-organized content. AN on-page SEO checker can help you reduce a page’s reliability on metrics such as readability, backlinks, and more.

2. Voice search technology will lead

People will rely more on Alexa and Siri than entering text in the Google search box. As a result, it will be essential to focus on the spoken keyword and create a FAQ page.

With innovations like Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa, voice search technology has come a long way. As technology has improved, it has become more and more popular. In fact, the percentage of households predicting to own a smart speaker by 2022 is 55%.

To optimize your voice search, consider your keywords. Recognize the phrases that people use in everyday conversations. Voice search is generally preferable to longer, more natural phrases when people type; they usually shorten. For example, a person may voice the query: “What are the new SEO trends for 2021?” But enter the word “new SEO trends in 2021”.

3. Search engines would prefer mobile-oriented indexing.

Your website must be mobile-friendly or mobile as Google will use the mobile version of your content to index and rank your website. Initially, desktop content was used for indexing, but the increasing dependence and use of mobile phones and search templates have changed this practice.

In 2019, Google introduced mobile-centric indexing, meaning that a search engine primarily looks at the mobile version of a website, treating it as the “core” version, not the desktop version. This change makes sense that by 2025, approximately 73% of Internet users will be accessing the Internet from mobile devices only. Test your mobile site performance with Google’s free mobile trial. Then have a look at the Mobile Usability Report in Google Search Console.

For your page to be user friendly, you need to make sure that Google can crawl your URL, so make sure you don’t have any disapproved instructions. Also, keep in mind that Googlebot will not download content that requires user interaction, such as clicking or swiping. You have to make sure that Google can see this so-called lazy content. Finally, make sure that you use the same meta robot tag on desktop and mobile sites.

4. Content should follow the Google EAT principle.

Experience, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and reliability are the principle of Google EAT that will be tested for every content, whether on websites, blogs, or social media. If you do not follow this principle, you may not build the branding process according to your expectations.

There are many ways to provide quality content:

Create customer portraits that allow you to understand what your customers value.

Do search intent research to help you map the consumer journey.

Use this information to create content that follows the format your users prefer.

For example, if you are serving teenagers, the video may be better. If you are targeting older audiences, the video may be less appealing.

Finally, keep the EAT in mind when creating content. Support claims with statistics and facts—links to official sites such as “.edu” and “.gov” URLs. Having reciprocal links to reputable sites is another way to prove that you meet the EAT criteria.

5. Detailed content will improve search results.

Backlinks will become the preferred method in digital marketing practice and may not be sufficient to support this concise or original content. Therefore, for optimal use of backlinking practice, descriptive or lengthy content would be beneficial for ranking well in SERPs.

6. Selected parts will get prominence.

Research by HubSpot found that the CTR for their high-volume keywords rose more than 114% when the results appeared as printed snippets. The featured snippet is an annotation of a copy of the content you share that appears when the user searches for something. Instead of hyperlinks, snippets are much more attractive and can therefore gain prominence.

7. Smart Search will increase

As technology accelerates the life model, so should search options. Smart search matches search queries with the intent of the user. It is an AI implementation in which the algorithm continues to record searches performed by the device user and suggests relevant searches after the user enters a word or two.

8. Will lead image and video optimization.

Image or video search was already a trend in 2020, and it will go viral in 2021 as people will want to get more information with less typing. As a result, they can take snapshots of articles they need to feed or know to search. Therefore, your website should comply with such requests.

9. Zero – Click Search

This is known as the zero-click search but can also be called the zero-sum search, where one player wins, and all others lose.

Zero-click search is a search where Google answers appear at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) so that users no longer need to click on a website. The only site presented was that provided an official answer.

What difference does it make? Are people not being targeted to click on your site for more information? Why would Google record your content in a way that does not attract visitors to your site?

Well, this is important for two reasons. First, it has reduced search engine traffic for many websites. This is not good. Second, it opened up an opportunity for small businesses to get traffic if they were not the first search result for a given query. Even after getting the answer in SERP itself, many people will still click on the reference. They will click to read additional information from the website in a featured snippet instead of the top search results page.

Additionally, these select snippets serve as free promotion for your company. You build brand awareness, and even better, you can do it for free, creating useful content using your industry knowledge.

10. Google passage rating

Although Google announced a new conversion rate in October, it is scheduled to be released in 2021. With zero-click search, the goal here is to help users find the exact information they need.

The idea is that a page is dedicated exclusively to the topic you are looking for and is not valuable as a separate page. If you want to install a dimmer, the best instructions page may also contain instructions from an electrician for many other DIY electrical projects. Instead of deciding that this page doesn’t really matter because it covers a wide range of topics, it ranks higher in SERPs.

It is anticipated that this change will primarily target long-tail searches, so traffic may not be high. However, these can help search term conversions.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is probably one of the most significant updates we can expect in 2021. Everything that Google has told you over the years is essential to the user experience that will become the official ranking signal.

11. If you want to stay ahead of the rankings, data and analytics should be your priority.

Data science enables you to understand shoppers, visualize campaigns and create targeted messages. Analytics can help you check which URLs are being crawled, identify referral sources, check page load time, indexing, redirects, bounce rates, response errors, and more. You can also use data science to identify pages that you do not want to crawl indexing and expose unusual traffic sources such as potential spam sites (which will reduce your EAT reliability).

You have to keep an eye on SEO current trends and adjust your strategies to the new challenges, pretty much always. That’s the only way you can give valuable content to users that keep them coming back and also keep your ranking. If you need SEO experts to help you, then connect with the best SEO company in Salt Lake City, UT.

#SEO #Trends #Updates #Tips and Ideas #SEO Trends

[roychemist]

Think and Read This Before You Take Ambien Medicine!

Whenever you are going through or suffering from mental trauma, depression, anxiety or any kind of issues related to mental health then it is time that you go on and visit a professional doctor. There are times when some minor diseases can make your life very difficult such as minor cold, fever or even insomnia which is claimed to be a common disease but the consequences are quite dangerous when you are suffering from this disease

Brief info about Insomnia.

Basically, insomnia is a disease that defines the sleeplessness of a person and it’s quite considerable because not getting to sleep is a problem. The body tends to be active much more than ever and the patient gets tired eventually which is not a good sign for a healthy lifestyle.

You would probably think that some sleeping pills will do the job for the patients but it’s not the same while someone is suffering from insomnia, the patients will tend to have incomplete sleep, discontinuing their sleep by getting up suddenly at midnights which gets quite irritating for people.

When a person doesn’t sleep at night because it’s obvious that a normal people sleep at night and if they don’t they will surely get the sleep in the day time which again damages the whole schedule and daily routine, whenever you feel that you or any of your beloved ones are not getting to sleep for continuous instances then you should probably visit a doctor for a checkup.

Effects of Insomnia:

The effects of Insomnia are also quite disturbing and common too, but it gets totally annoying when it affects the body consistently for a longer period of time.

Not able to concentrate on any particular aspect.

Being irregular and lazy at the working hours i.e. the day time.

Getting sleep in the day time at any place.

Severe headache and body pain.

Blurred out visions, weak response and less interest in sexual activities.

So, these are the probable effects of insomnia for a patient.

Yes, there are medications that can cure insomnia within few weeks or within a month itself and one of the most preferred medicines is Ambien 10mg For Insomnia, this has been one of the most effective and useful medicines of all options in the market.

Considerations before you went on to Buy Generic Ambien medicine and consume it:

There are times when people ignore all the facts about visiting a doctor before consuming any kind of heavy dosed medicine and this is where they are wrong and totally on the wrong side of the thinking.

Whenever you are planning to take any medicine, especially a heavy and powerful medicine like Ambien you should always consider visiting a doctor first and if the professional prescribes the particular medicine then only you should go for it.

Do not plan to give the medicines to the particular person who is suffering from the same problems as yours, it could make the situations and conditions of that particular person even worse. There are experts sitting there for you and there is a reason why they are called experts.

If you are a woman and you are pregnant or your baby is an infant and you still breastfeed your child then it’s a big no for the Ambien medicine because it can directly affect the health of the particular child.

Acting childish while taking such medicines is quite silly, you should avoid mixing up the medicines with other, always swallow the medicine with water(make sure only water), prefer always a reputed and certified Ambien online pharma company which has expertized production of these kinds of medicine.

So, there is a term generic in the heading and it makes a huge difference in the costing of some of the medicines. Generic medicines are basically the cheap priced ones that tend to function the same way as the branded ones.

Side effects of consuming Ambien medicine:

It is quite obvious that every good thing has a bad effect on it when it is taken recklessly or irresponsibly so as this medicine has some bad consequences to it:

The effects of insomnia can get worse if the medicine is not consumed in a proper manner.

The patient will begin to feel confused or we can say mentally unstable up to some extent.

Suffering from headaches, body pain, and sore throat.

The sufferer can also encounter severe pain in the lower part of the body or we can say stomach.

Having consistent issues while breathing and many more nasal problems get worse with time.

In some of the worse cases, a patient can also go through short term memory loss.

Hence, the consequences are quite serious and one should consider taking these kinds of medicines under the guidance of a doctor.

Dosage of Ambien:

There are times when people are allergic to some contents in the medicine and at this time your doctor will help you a lot for sure because the doctor will have all kinds of information about your disease, allergies and so on.

When your body is not apt for some elements or contents of a particular medicine then you can easily get other substitutes for the same health problem from your doctor. If you go on to consume the medicine without any advice from your doctors then your body parts will surely function abnormally which is not at all a good sign.

When you take the medicine regularly, always keep in touch with your doctor because it is essential to keep track of the effect. You should always consider visiting the doctor because there are times when the dose works perfectly, abnormally, or doesn’t work at all. At this time you can expect your doctor to give the solutions to the effect of the dose say it decrease, increase or discontinue the dosage of the medicine.

Most of the people these days prefer to Buy Generic Ambien between 5mg to 10mg. The doctors don’t recommend Ambien medicine to be consumed more than two weeks which is obvious because the side effects are quite considerable and dangerous too.

Source URL: https://urlzs.com/pji8m

#Buy Generic Ambien #Ambien online pharma #Ambien 10mg For Insomnia

[repairmart-blog]

Repair Mart

Address:

Suite 595, 585 Little Collins Street,

Melbourne, VIC

3000

Australia

 Phone Number:

03 9111 2626

 Website URL:

https://repairmart.com.au/

 Business Email:

[email protected]

 Keywords:

Mobile Phone Parts, Mobile Phone Repair, iPhone parts supplier, DIY Mobile Phone Repair Kit

 Description:

Repair Mart registered under the name MART Australia PTY LTD was established with the sole purpose of meeting the high-quality parts need in the Australian market. We aim to provide premium quality products for Mobile phones, tablets and some select hybrid laptops at a reasonable cost. Our portfolio of parts includes repair parts for mobile devices, the kits associated with repairing them and accessories that add value to the device. We are registered with Australian company number (ACN): 637700497 and Australian Business Number (ABN) 53637700497. Repair Mart is located in Melbourne, Australia itself, unlike many other merchants who are in the same business. We know our suppliers work in Australia, how couriers operate, the technical expertise to ascertain quality in parts, as a result, this will create efficiency for the company as well as protect customers from subpart products and slow delivery schedules. We also offer DIY parts and kits. A lot of consumers already have the technical expertise to do the repairs themselves. For those tech-savvy customers, we offer premium quality parts along with every tool necessary for repair. These kits are specifically made to assist in the particular repair so there aren't errors in the tools not being enough or of different size etc. We also provide premium quality mobile accessories like screen protectors, cases, chargers, car holders, earphones etc. We only sell those accessories that add value to the customers' device whether in terms of looks, performance, protection or value-added in their daily lives. We are located at the registered address Suite 595 585 Little Collins St Melbourne VIC 3000 and ship parts Australia wide. All of the products we sell also comes with a standard 12 months Repair Mart warranty. Hence, order the required parts for your device today and we will have it tested and shipped at a reasonable time period and at a reasonable cost.

[werevulvi]

I was just googling hirsutism for some hairy female body positivity, and stumbled upon a very inspirational woman of my own age on instagram who is very hairy and makes body positivity posts about it. I screenshotted a few of her pics to have for myself and look back upon whenever I feel awry about my own hairs. Cause seeing her posts was very uplifting and made me instantly wanna go take a shower and take some good care of my hairs, and wondering how long my pubes would get if I'd just let them grow unkempt. Sorry for that TMI.

I don't have hirsutism. It's just the kinda search keyword that grants the most and best results of hairy women. I'm just detransitioned, and wasn't very hairy at all before my transition. I got very hairy from taking testosterone, and now one year off it, the hairs appear to be staying... exactly the same. I don't think I've lost a single strand of hair, or that it's thinned out at all, or gotten even half a shade lighter. Perhaps a little bit on my lower legs, but that's about it. Which... I'm actually relieved by. But at the same time I still struggle with accepting it now that I'm expressing myself as a woman again. Hence my googling of body positivity stuff about it.

I wasn't looking for or at any sort of porn. Although, admittedly seeing those aesthetic nudity shots of hairy women got me tingling a bit. They were attractive, okay! I tried, but failed to keep my lesbian brain out of it. But there's no harm in respectfully admiring female beauty and just acknowledging it made me a little excited. I guess it's just normal for a lesbian to not always be able to separate being inspired by an another woman and feeling attracted to her. Cause sometimes it's both and that's actually double good, if you think about it. That's a sidenote, however I just wanted to add in that I feel increasingly better in accepting and embracing my sexuality, and I need to cherish the moments when I feel good about being a lesbian, and remember them. I might make a separate post about that at some point. Also, that I genuinely find body hair attractive on other women also helps me feel better about my own hairs, cause that's a very certain knowledge that I don't even think it's an unattractive trait, or that I would somehow connect it to men, which I don't. I think I connect it to nature, feeling free, and being an adult. Also, it's very decorative.

I've been having more feelings about my body hair lately. A certain positive connection to it in new ways. Like I don't see it as some gross yet practical trait that could protect me from getting sexually assaulted by men again, but rather as a beautiful trait on my amazing female body. My hairs are thick and dark, ranging from medium brown to deep brown and black, but they're very soft, especially those on my chest and stomach. That is a thing I really like about them, that they're super soft and silky.

I don't feel the same about my facial hair at all. That I don't like at all and I feel gross with it. I don't think I can make peace with my facial hair, but if I can make peace with all other hairs on my body, that would still be huge, and that's what this post is about.

I'm working on growing out my chest hairs again. I've left the rest of my body hair growing free, aside from occasional trimming, for almost a year now, but I keep struggling with my chest hairs and sometimes I mow them down with my razor. Especially for when I go swimming. For swimming, it's especially difficult to leave that shower while wearing just a low cut one-piece swimsuit, with a lot of my hairs showing and sticking out from the tiny piece of clothing (I swear I can't even tell where my pubes end and my thigh hairs begin, so who knows how much of my actual pubes are sticking out... oh dear) and head towards the pool. I feel like a female werewolf stuffed into a swimsuit. I relate a lot to werewolves in a metaphorical sense, but only in a metaphorical sense. Because thinking of myself as a fantastical humanoid beast helps me feel better about my fur, but it's not like an actual belief of mine, or anything. I'm also not a furry, but even if I was, I wouldn't have needed a fursuit.

That's how I thought of the username "Werevulvi" for my Reddit profile, as I mostly only hang out in the detrans sub, and I've been thinking of changing my tumblr url to that as well.

So I know I don't have literal fur, I just like thinking of it as that. Like it's my female fur... and I want to wear it with pride. Perhaps what's grinding my gears about it a little is that I'm a femme, and I feel like I look bad in frilly dresses, lace, etc and then hairy as fuck. But at the same time I love it and I like thinking of myself as a hairy femme... until I start feeling that I look like a shaggy, male crossdresser. I know I don't generally pass as a woman now, due to the testosterone's effects in general, but I feel like if it wasn't for my facial hair, my lack of breasts, my deep voice, etc... then I'd be fine with just being very hairy neck down. And I may even come to love it. Because I think, on it's own, it wouldn't stunt my passability at all.

A while ago, I stumbled across a picture of hairy breasts, and... my heart melted a little. Well okay, it melted a lot. I wouldn't mind having that, like at all.

So perhaps the biggest reason why I'm struggling with my chest hair specifically, is because I'm uncomfortable about my chest itself being flat. Having the right kind of parts, and curves in female places, is what matters to me; not how they are decorated. I need to be fine with my body for myself; not for society. And if that means being a hairy femme, as it appears to mean, I'll embrace the fuck out of it.

#body positivity #female body hair #embracing that stuff #and struggling with it #detrans woman #coping mechanisms #and my shitty self deprecating jokes #my lesbian brain

[christinaengela]

Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 34th newsletter – and this time, I think you’ll notice right away that there’s something different about it!

In Brief:

October already? Wow! One of these days it’ll be December and Saturnalia again! 😉 Oktoberfest is on its way – and of course, our favorite festival of the year: Halloween!

In last month’s newsletter I said that this has been one of the busiest, most productive years in writing I’ve had in a long time, and it’s only right that I emphasize that!

That said, this edition of my newsletter also has to be the most intensively updated and detailed one yet! It even has a gorgeous new header image – and lots of extra information!

Let’s carry on, starting with some of the technical background stuff related to my writing!

Discontinuation of the .net website

As I told you last month, the .net website has been discontinued as of mid-September, so please don’t use the christinaengela.net url/link as the redirect to christinaengela.com isn’t expected to work much longer!

I opened the .net site in September 2018 as an experiment, and set up an array of onboard selling tools – but although I finally had just three direct sales from that website during the past year (amounting to a whopping $6 in all that time!) the cost of renewing the service just didn’t justify the expense. I have no intention of renewing the .com domain either when it expires in 2020, since the cost of that via WordPress would be actually three times the renewal cost of the .net through GoDaddy! I will nevertheless do my best to keep all my url mentions updated – hence this reminder!

Updates On Lulu AND Amazon

As you probably are aware, one of the two main service providers I publish through is Lulu.com (the other I use is Smashwords). While both have their fans and their pro’s and cons, Lulu is the only one of the two that distributes to Amazon straight-off – Smashwords wants you to sell a truck-load of a title via their own site, or Apple, or Kobo before they will even consider forwarding it to Amazon! Also, as I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, I’d updated quite a few titles incrementally on Lulu over the past few years, and noticed that inspite of everything I did, Amazon was still displaying some quite old versions of my books that were no longer available, and not updating to the newest versions!

Upon investigation, I complained to Lulu’s help department, and they clarified: it turns out that while I may have updated a project file on a particular book, those changes didn’t reach Amazon. I’m still not sure if this means the process of “revision” on Lulu is automatic and it didn’t work properly in this case, or if the process is not automatic and I’m supposed to notify them to send updated files to Amazon after making changes – they simply didn’t clarify that part – but in the meantime I found a workaround of my own! By that I mean that I undertook the gargantuan task of republishing my books on Lulu not once – but TWICE in the space of a single week!

Let it not be said that I don’t put enough effort into my books! Whew!

The process involved taking down basically ALL my books that are on Lulu, “retiring” them one by one, and then manually republishing each one again – from the beginning, getting new ISBN numbers in the process! As if that wasn’t stressful enough, a few days after completing the updates I received an email from Lulu informing me that this still wasn’t good enough and that I would have to make changes yet again! Hang on a sec – I thought Smashwords was supposed to be the pedantic nitpicking one?

I decided I’d be damned if I was going to change all the covers again to suit them – I wanted the series names on the covers as well, so – groaning and grudgingly, I took all of Galaxii and Quantum down a second time in the space of one week – and republished them again, this time with titles matching the covers EXACTLY! Fortunately, the next morning I received notice that this had done the trick and all Galaxii and Quantum titles had passed Lulu’s evaluation for distribution and had been forwarded to Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble!

I heaved a huge sigh of relief once that was done!

In the meantime, all the titles concerned were still directly available via Lulu’s own shop page, and of course, everywhere else they’re distributed to – Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, Smashwords, etc.

All that legwork is now finally behind me, and the newly updated titles that were supposed to have reached Amazon months ago arrived there by the 20th September! But at least, they’re finally there! I was finally able to claim them by clicking “This is my book!” and added them to my Amazon author page! Only then was I able to ask Amazon to link the new editions to previous editions, which will solve the knotty problem of having multiple editions showing side-by-side there!

Still, the drama isn’t quite over yet, as only once this has been done will I be able to update my GoodReads book listing, since their system allows only ISBN/AISN numbers of books being sold on Amazon, and nowhere else!

To make matters even more complicated, somehow in the publishing process over the past couple of years, a duplicate GoodReads author profile got created automatically by some system gremlin or other, and all my current titles are already listed on that site under “Ms. Christina Engela” in duplicate – as they are on Amazon itself – and I can’t claim or add or merge them with my existing GoodReads author user account either! *Head desk!* Perhaps this issue can be resolved if I create a new user account on GoodReads and claim that account… but I still have to get around to it!

I often wonder if aspiring indie authors out there actually knew the amount of work, admin, research, learning, trouble and frustration lying in wait for them, if they’d just give up and not bother! But then, this is my obsession, so it’s not as if I actually have a choice in the matter!

Reviews

“Dead Man’s Hammer” received an amazing 5 star review from UK writer and reviewer, Lee Hall on September 9! I’m not sure how other writers take it, but when I see glowing reports of something I wrote, containing statements like: “As the Quantum series unfolds, it grows more and more impressive“, “Dead Man’s Hammer is proof that Christina Engela can build an established world and insert so many genres into it along with retaining a unique style of writing that not only tributes her influences but has a way of confiding in readers” and “Throughout Engela’s writing style naturally flows and is fun to read“, I feel like breaking out the bubbly and inviting people round to celebrate!

It’s truly gratifying to realize that the reason a reviewer is saying these things, is because they took the time to read something I wrote. It’s also humbling, and I’m very grateful!

It’s probably worth mentioning though, that “Dead Man’s Hammer” has been available since 2006, and this is the very first review I’ve had of that particular title! That alone should serve as an indication of how difficult it is to get reviews as an indie or self-publishing author!

Theo & Yvonne Engela’s Books – New Covers & Formatting

As part of the revision process I told you about in the previous section, I took the opportunity to fix a few things and improve upon the presentation of my parent’s books! I know, I know, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Still, I couldn’t help myself! At any rate, what I did was create new covers for my parent’s books to make them stand out more, and also to make them look similar and part of the same series, while also reformatting the interior of the eBook into a more uptodate and modern format – the same as the one I use on all the Galaxii and Quantum books! I think they really pop, don’t you?

Poetry by Wendy K. Engela

A couple of months ago my wife and partner in all things wierd and wonderful, Wendy, published her first book – a collection of her gothic poetry! “Season’s Change“. The collection is now available as an eBook via all the expected places, Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, and all their distribution partner sites.

Sales & Downloads

Since I made a host of new free promotional items available on Lulu and Smashwords, interest towards the end of July – particularly on Smashwords has been gradually showing signs of improvement. Let’s just say that at least I can detect a pulse! Downloads of my free items are happening, and I feel a little encouraged. On the sales front however, things are still pretty dire. Hopefully they will pick up soon.

Current Writing Projects 

Book 7 in Quantum – tentatively operating under the working title “Underground Movement” – is still under way. Just slowly. At the time of last month’s newsletter I told you I’d just reached over 29000 words… and then I peeled some of those off and shifted them to the next title after that’s draft… so “Underground Movement” is currently sitting at just over 21000 words again! Still, it’s all part of the creative process, isn’t it? Right now I’m pondering whether I shouldn’t just merge the next two title’s stories? The story’s finer detail is still evolving and unfolding, so sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the path while I’m distracted by all the scenery! Anyway, when I make my mind up, I’ll let you know!

Translation

As some of you may recall, in 2016 I released Afrikaans translations of “The Thirteenth Ship” and “Wiggle Room“, which like the English originals, were made available as free downloads. These have been updated and made available once again!  I also made it a goal back in the day, to get all my fiction works translated into Afrikaans for the local market, but also into a couple of other languages – as far as that was possible! Translation work isn’t easy, as I’m sure you can imagine – translation apps can really mangle the works up, and without a native language-speaker to check these translations I’m still up the creek without a canoe!

That said, I’ve had to rely on volunteers to do it out of their own good will rather than to pay top dollar for paid translation services! All I’ve been able to offer people willing to assist me in this task, is mention of their name in the credits and perhaps to give them a free eBook copy of any one of my paid books upon completion of the job!

Now, before you accuse me of being a skint old duck, please bear in mind that the items I wanted translated were all free sample works for which I wouldn’t get paid anyway! It doesn’t make sense to spend thousands of near-worthless Souf Efikin ronts on something that gets given away for free, does it? That being said, some time ago, a few people volunteered eagerly to translate a couple of short stories, and quietly disappeared, never to be heard from again! This recently was the case as well, with several apparent eager-beavers silently vanishing into the mist! Hopefully, in the long-run I can get some of the novels translated. This is a long-term goal, so I expect progress to be slow.

Communication

I’ve also done my level best recently, to start making a post via my website blog daily and then sharing that across social media instead of posting directly to Facebook, Twitter et al. The goal I’ve kept in mind is to post informative articles about various different characters or elements of my stories – and also to come across to readers as more personable… that is to day, less businesslike and less intimidating. After all, I is human too, and I don’t bite… much! So far, that seems to be helping! Below are links to a few of my most recent posts on The Crow Bar:

The Tech Side #1: A Broad-Spectrum Approach To Sci-fi Storytelling

LGBT Heroes in Galaxii & Quantum – the “G” in LGBT

Secret Weapons of the Resistance: Time Travel, Beck the Badfeller & Cindy-Mei Winter

FAQ’s Answered #13: Who Is Sona Kilroy?

FAQ’s Answered #12: Who Is Cindy-Mei Winter?

FAQ’s Answered #11: What Is The Time Saving Agency?

Storm Area 51! Let’s See Them Aliens! Etc!

FAQ’s Answered #10: Who Is Marsha In “Dead Beckoning” to Blachart?

FAQ’s Answered #9: What Inspired “Prodigal Sun” & “High Steaks”?

Secret Weapons of the Resistance: Fred (the Arborian)

Secret Weapons of the Resistance: Bovine Torpedoes

FAQ’s Answered #8: What Inspired The Akx?

Preserve The Past… Save The Future!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #33 September 2019

FAQ’s Answered #7: What Do I Write About (& Other Questions)

Anyway, let’s move on to some more new releases!

New Releases

Some of you may recall that in 2016 I released Afrikaans translations of “The Thirteenth Ship” and “Wiggle Room“, which like the English originals, were made available as free downloads. These have been updated and made available once again!

  Currently Available Titles:

I currently have 22 unique titles available in 4 series (not including the 15 free promotional items).

Alternately, you can view Christina’s books at Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu or Payhip.

Some of Christina’s titles are available in other languages: Afrikaans.

The Galaxii Series

(Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

The Quantum Series

  (Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

Panic! Horror In Space

Space Sucks!

(Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

Other

  (Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

Non-Fiction

(Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

Edited by Christina Engela

  (Click on the cover images to view product pages for each title.)

FREE Promotional Items:

     (Click on the cover images to open free samples.)

On A Personal Note

As I related to you last month, I have opted to sell via Amazon again. Not that I like them, but there’s simply no other way to make any headway as an author – especially an indie author – without making use of their platform.

The two different earlier editions of my dad’s collection of short stories “African Assignment” I mentioned last time as listed on my Amazon author page have finally – after another round of emails, been merged. At this stage, I’m just waiting for the current version to reflect on Amazon’s database before adding it to my listing and then getting those merged with it as well.

Hopefully some headway will be made soon in this regard, and I will as always, keep you posted.

Fan Mail, Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I found the following items to display in this months issue:

Medium.com has shared my article “No LGBT Stereotypes Here!” from last year on their website.

“Dead Man’s Hammer” received an amazing 5 star review from UK writer and reviewer, Lee Hall on September 9, 2019 – the very first for this title!

My favorite reviewer also tweeted THIS about “Black Sunrise” on the 12th!

I got this review on Smashwords for “The Thirteenth Ship“: “Started average, but the ending was different. 4 Stars” – James Jenkins September 12, 2019.

I was quoted by Stephanie C. Odili on Aug 13, 2019 on an article at Medium.com “The patriarchy longs for the days ‘when men were men’ and women were oppressed, subservient — and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it — and if possible, to regain it…How can oppression and power over another person’s life ever be ‘love’?” ― Christina Engela.

A short story project I collaborated on with fellow author Alex S. Johnson “Negative Wonderland” appears on Pintrest.

CrowdCount has one of my quotes at the bottom of their website in a carousel along with quotes from Margaret Mead, Ron Siltanen and Mother Theresa. “Human rights is a numbers game. Who is going to care if only 20 people pitch for a protest?“

Poopbite (odd name, that) lists one of my quotes on a list about bonfires. “Knowledge and education are the keys to this human tragedy which is a bonfire of hate-fueled by ignorance.” – Christina Engela.

GGGMall is still quietly carrying on, selling my books via their website AND on Bid or Buy.

The Daily Ripple posted a quote of mine from “The Pink Community – The Facts” right at the top of their homepage! “The problem is, in a world where some people (even in the USA, where someone like Donald Trump was allowed to rise to the level of a serious presidential candidate in 2016) have descended to such levels of ignorance that science itself is dismissed by leaders, political and religious as ‘an agenda’, and frightening numbers of people cling to ignorance and superstition because it suits their conservative anti-human rights views and objectives.” ― Christina Engela, The Pink Community – The Facts.

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You are always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’ve had nothing in this department over the past month, other than a couple of pitiful dick pics and weak insults – surely my haters can do better?

This Levitican dickhead (who was on my Facebook friends list until then) made an effort to let me know what a hopeless transphobe he is by posting this string of abusive comments on a share of LGBT Heroes in Galaxii & Quantum – the “G” in LGBT. Yes, I write about LGBT characters in some of my books – and I’m open about being transgender and lesbian myself – so if you’re a homophobe or transphobe, why send me friend requests to begin with? #gallery-0-7 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-7 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

This next ignoramus stepped up to demonstrate what happens when you’re a hate-filled sack of shit and you miss your turn to use the family brain cell – when you open your piehole, you sound like a TERF. #gallery-0-8 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-8 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Interviews

I have nothing new to show you here this month.

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to [email protected] or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.

Another Round At The Crow Bar #34 October 2019 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 34th newsletter - and this time, I think you'll notice right away that there's something different about it!

#About #Afrikaans #amwriting #author #communication #English #Fan Mail #fictionwriting #hate mail #horror #horrorfan #indie #interaction #lgbt heroes #news #newsletter #novels #poetry #recommendedreading #sci-fi #short fiction #writer #writerslife

[jonnacowles82-blog]

OGG MP3 Converter

Want to reduce MP3 recordsdata? > You might be recording many alternative audio indicators, > they usually have totally different spectrograms of course. > > Record a sign into a wav file and create the spectrogram: > > $ rec -c 0 10 > $ sox spectrogram - Sorry: $ sox -n spectrogram - > Now convert that file to an ogg and create its spectrogram: > > $ sox > $ sox spectrogram - $ sox -n spectrogram - > Are the 2 spectrograms an identical? Yes, almost similar, > except the ogg format cuts away the very excessive frequencies. 25 Opera Mini itself does not support any video or audio, but any video or audio is passed to the device to play if it has help for that format. Opera Cell also does this with unsupported codecs. Version capabilities like alter audio channel, quantity, bitrates, merge or break up may be fulfilled with this WAV to OGG converter. The second step is to pick out the output settings. To begin, select the folder to save lots of the output file to and select the motion to be executed if the output file already exists - create a brand new file, overwrite or skip the existing file. Convert MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV, MKV, and so forth to WAV, OGG, MP3, FLAC, AIFF, WMA, convert wav to Ogg linux and so forth. WAV is a daily audio format which developed by Microsoft and IBM. WAV is the default audio format for Windows techniques. Nonetheless, WAV has a big disadvantage, it has a large file measurement. So the new MP3 format soon exchange its place.

If you import an OGG file into Audacity after which re-encode it by exporting it as an OGG, the exported file can be of lesser high quality than the unique OGG. Some high quality loss is inevitable everytime you encode to a lossy format. Users of MP3 files face precisely the identical problem when importing, editing and exporting an MP3 file. VQF is one of the "various" audio compression formats back in Nineties that was aimed to take over MP3 by providing better audio high quality than MP3 with lower bitrate. Failed miserabely due numerous reasons, most notably due to restrictive licensing. Nowadays the only severe alternate options to MP3 are probably Ogg Vorbis and Microsoft's WMA. Prior to MP3 introduction, MPEG-1 had been widely used. That format contained not solely audio data, however pictures as effectively. MP3 breaks an audio file into parts of the same size. When the processing is over, each part is packed into its personal body. It includes the know-how of spectral restrict that requires a continuous input signal to offer the use of two adjoining frames. Click "Convert" button to convert wav to ogg linux WAV to OGG format. man i'm loving this program i'm utilizing media human audio converter and i'm convertings 186 music files it has taken less than 5 minutes usually the opposite applications i use if i was doing this it would take about an hour to an hour and a half this programs is one of the best. A method for converting a waveform to a spectrum , and again.An audio file converter is one form of file converter that (shock!) is used to transform one type of audio file (like an MP3 , WAV , WMA , and many others.) into one other type of audio file. REAL AUDIO to WAV, MP3, OGG, AMR, AAC, FLAC, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP. That is one other online software to transcribe mp3 to textual content. It supports importing a file from the pc, URL and Cloud, i.e. Google Drive or Dropbox. This instrument additionally has an upper hand as it helps conversion from English, Chinese language, French and Hindi.Spotify uses the lossy Ogg Vorbis (OGG) format to stream music by its desktop and mobile apps, and you can convert a WAV file to OGG utilizing a trusted audio converter software program, as an alternative of relying on Spotify to make the conversion for you. Apple Music makes use of a format called AAC, and Amazon Music makes use of MP3. Tidal and Deezer stream music on the highest high quality utilizing the FLAC format.The number of pc bits conveyed or processed per unit of time. Usually expressed in kilobits per second (kbps). For an uncompressed , PCM file, kbps bit fee is sample fee multiplied by sample format multiplied by variety of channels, divided by a thousand, giving 1411 kbps for Purple Book WAV or AIFF Charges are a lot decrease for compressed or lossy codecs like MP3 For MP3 at constant bit price , decreasing pattern fee doesn't scale back the bit fee and hence doesn't make the MP3 smaller, aside from 11025 Hz and under.

[theartofmedia]

Kotaku and the Art of Game Leaks

(Full disclosure: this piece was commissioned by a friend. The topic has changed from the initial pitch, but still. I don’t know how that may or may not affect your view on this piece, but I still feel it’s important for me to be transparent about this.) On May 30th, 2019, Laura Kate Dale announced her departure from Kotaku UK. Dale is a controversial figure among the games journalist community for... multiple reasons (please note the latter link lacks any actual evidence and how she apparently didn’t report this Uber driver for ‘nearly kidnapping her’ despite posting it publicly on Twitter, hence the controversy around it), but that’s not what we’re talking about today. What we’re going to be discussing is what she is known for the most: video game leaks.

LKD is most known for leaking video game information prior to their release, from information about Dark Souls Remastered, to unboxing a PS4 Slim before Sony itself even announced its existence, to Switch software. It got to the point where LKD was blacklisted by Nintendo UK, most likely for leaking so much information.

Now as I was researching LKD, there was something I noticed. A lot of people supported LKD’s leaks, calling it “real journalism,” and commending her for doing her job so well. As shown by the link above, many people mocked Nintendo UK for blacklisting her for “doing her job too well.” People are always scrambling for new leaks, new information, though in many cases, this can lead to fake leaks, misinformation, and confusion among players.

And it got me to think: how do leaks really affect both the devs and the consumers of games?

The conclusion I’ve come to about it is: it does more harm than good on both sides, but especially to the devs.

Here we will be defining four categories of leaks (three of which are explained here by Griffin Vacheron of Game Revolution), though our main focus will be on two.

Accidental leaks are just like they sound: they’re accidents. Something happened, something went wrong, and people got a hold of information before they were supposed to. Like when Capcom put all the pictures of the roster of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on their website when a good portion of the roster hadn’t yet been announced, and the unannounced characters could be found via a small URL change. Or when Walmart’s Canadian site revealed around 40 unannounced titles due to a(n alleged) glitch in their system just weeks before E3 2018. Or when Bethesda accidentally streamed their E3 2015 rehearsal which ended up confirming the existence of Dishonored 2. Yeah.

The main component of accidental leaks is just that--accidental. Someone did something wrong, something in a system went wrong, someone didn’t think through the consequences of what probably seemed like a good idea at the time--it happens! Nothing is perfect, people included, and shit happens. But the key part is that it’s not intentional. Someone may (or, really, will) be reprimanded, punished, or even fired depending on the leak, but there was never any intention to reveal this information.

Company leaks are... not entirely proven, from my research. This is the idea that the developers themselves leak information in order to draw attention to their game and hype it up. Often, this will be the other determination of certain leaks--was it an accident, or a PR stunt? There’s no real definitive proof and seems to simply be rumor, but the possibility still exists, as there’s no real way to disprove it, either.

Ethic leaks are generally the exception, not the rule. These are leaks of working conditions, such as an employee from NetherRealm talking about the toxic work environment, or Rockstar employees opening up about how they were mistreated and underpaid and burned to ashes, or Blizzard’s layoff of 800 employees. (Further reading here on the abuse of game devs, as well as what can be done about it.) These are things that need to be talked about, because these relate to the treatment of actual, real people. These aren’t issues then of game content or development, it’s an issue of ethics in the workplace. Same with the leak of this document that details how AI can be used to encourage microtransactions, though that is an issue related to the consumer rather than the workers. Shady tactics and the maltreatment of workers is something that needs to be shown and discussed and talked about, because these things affect the actual workers, as well as the quality of a product and the company’s integrity in relation to the consumer. (Basically, if you intentionally make your game in such a way that players have to use microtransactions to make any significant progress, you’ve ruined your integrity as a company by trying to drain your player base of more money, regardless of the base price they paid for the game anyway. It’s a scummy business practice, and that kind of thing should be revealed to the public that you’re going to try to bleed dry.)

Intentional leaks are just as they sound: they’re the intentional leak of information. This is when people outside the company hack in and reveal secrets, or when people inside the company reveal information (whether directly or indirectly via being sources for journalists) before they are to be officially announced. The information given is given with the knowledge that yes, someone is going to reveal it to the public.

So let’s talk about the ramifications of intentional leaks on game devs.

Remember Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle? The cover image had been leaked before the team had a chance to actually showcase the game. Nobody knew anything about the game other than the cover, and universal reception at the time was: “This is going to be terrible.” Because of a leaked image, the public already had a strong negative opinion about it. However, the showcase that showed off actual gameplay was well-received, and the Metacritic score is 85. So the game itself was pretty damn good, according to the critics. An unlikely crossover turned out well! But the initial reaction was incredibly demoralizing to the team. It’s one thing to have criticism given to a game based on a trailer or gameplay showcase; it’s another to get criticism based on a single image and the concept alone with no other information given. As the director and music composer explain, the dev team was very worried and stressed not just about the game reception but about the showcase, as they were afraid that the reception to the showcase was going to be bad due to the already-negative opinion on the game.

Let’s also talk about how CD Projekt Red had demo gameplay and audio of Cyberpunk 2077 leaked by a journalist (who later complained about not being credited, about how his relationship with CD Projekt Red and the PR person he was friends with) after being asked not to. The company had their trust in the journalists--someone who they had a fifteen year relationship with--used and abused, leading to secrets being leaked. The devs had politely asked the journalists not to do so, but one did, and apparently saw nothing wrong with leaking private information and posting it to the public.

Or let’s talk about how, way back in the day, the entire source code for Half-Life 2 was revealed to the public and Valve (allegedly) lost $250 million dollars. The article actually states some of the effects of the leaked source code: “Meanwhile, the team at Valve, which had been in crunch mode for months, was left reeling by the leak. The game was costing the company $1 million a month to build and the end was still far from sight. The leak had not only caused financial damage but had demotivated a tired team. One young designer asked Newell, "Is this going to destroy the company?" (found under the heading “A Red Letter Day”).

Or we can talk about the Sm4sh leaks back in 2014 and how it led to an employee (allegedly) being fired and sued due to leaking this information. Now, this can very easily be viewed as justice being served to the leaker, and I would agree. But what is the issue here can be summed up by PlatinumGames producer JP Kellams:

The people working for years and years on a project suddenly have parts of their project--that they wanted to surprise players with, this particular instance being the Sm4sh roster--given out to the public before they wanted it to be. Imagine working for years on your life on a project, and then having someone reveal your work to the internet without your knowledge or permission. I know I would feel dejected, exhausted, hopeless, hurt, regardless of any positive reception to what was revealed. You, as someone who has worked so incredibly hard--and, in many cases in the game industry, been thoroughly abused--apparently don’t have the right to reveal the thing you’ve been working on the way you want.

I want to make this clear: I am not talking about “the Big Corporation” here. I don’t care about the higher-ups who put the pressure on the workers. I care about the workers, the little people that are being trampled on and forced to work in abusive, toxic conditions in order to meet a deadline and the outrageous demands of the higher-ups. They are the ones suffering.

Case in point: the Blufever leaks for Final Fantasy XIV. The details are a bit murky, as is with most leaks, but the story as I understand it is: user Blufever is/was an employee at Square Enix who leaked massive amounts of information on upcoming expansions/patches for FFXIV. Then, their account went dark, as they apparently feared for being found out by Square Enix. Vergeben, a known reputable leaker within the Smash community, had this to say about the situation:

Now, of course, there is no way to truly verify these claims. However, due to Vergeben’s reputation as an accurate leaker (and the fact that he was right about one of the upcoming DLC characters being from Square Enix) leads me to believe him. Assuming that his claims are true, someone leaking all of this information to the public put a lot of innocent people in the line of fire--and it’s very possible that these

So, what does this have to do with Kotaku?

Here’s something interesting.

When known E3 leaker WabiSabi was given a cease & desist warning from Nintendo for leaking information, take a look at some of the top replies. (Note that a lot of them are ninja gifs, here’s a sample so I don’t have to do it for every one.)

Not all of the replies are against WabiSabi, however, though a majority seem to be:

(About the above: I can’t really find anything suggesting that LKD was leaking things for “customer advocacy,” other than confirming that the next gen console (now known as the Switch) was not using the Wii branding like its predecessor did, thus easing some fears because of the bombing of the Wii U. Other tweets about that are here, but don’t really sway me in terms of “consumer advocacy.”)

As shown, the replies seem to be pretty divisive on whether or not it was a good or bad thing that WabiSabi got hit with a cease & desist.

However, let’s have a look at some of the replies to LKD’s tweet about how she was blacklisted by Nintendo.

And again, not all are supportive of her:

I actually had to look quite a bit to find any negative comments. Many were supportive of her.

(I would like to take this moment to get unprofessional for a second and unleash my full opinion of this: NO FUCKING SHIT YOU GOT BLACKLISTED, SHERLOCK. THEY TRUST YOU WITH THEIR SECRETS AND THEN YOU DISRESPECT THEM BY REVEALING THEM BEFORE THEY DID. I DO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WOULD SAY IT’S A COMPANY BEING “SHADY” WHEN IT’S JUST INFORMATION ABOUT UPCOMING PRODUCTS. NOTHING ABOUT ETHICS OR CONSUMER TRUST OR PRODUCT QUALITY. anyway,)

Now, you can say, “But Sakra! That’s a three-year difference!” And I rebuke with: people still support her to this day in spite of this. Kotaku UK kept her on though all of this and then some. It wasn’t until a kerfuffle happened in April with the “Persona 5 OST Has A Disability Slur” thing happened, and soon after, LKD left. It seems that the immense backlash with that was what fully pushed her off. (Now whether she was forced to resign or legitimately wanted to leave, that’s something only Kotaku UK and she know for sure.) The point is, her departure from Kotaku UK seems to have been completely unrelated to her leaks.

And why would it when Kotaku themselves--not just the UK chapter--are clearly very supportive of video game leaks of this nature?

Just have a look at their recent posts. All I did was put “leaks” in the search box. You may say “they’re just reporting the news of leaks!” But they put some of the leaked information IN the articles. The one on Watch Dogs Legion even confirmed the leaks. “Kotaku can confirm that this one’s real, as we’ve heard the name from several sources plugged into the company.”

Oh, and let’s not forget this lovely fucking article from 2015 where a Kotaku writer apparently speaks for the site and basically victimizes themselves for being blacklisted by Ubisoft and Bethesda. In fact, we’re going to dissect it, just because there is so much bullshit in here from the author, who is clearly speaking for Kotaku as a whole!

Buckle up, kids, your local Sakra is about to get fucking pissed.

The author describes how the Bethesda blackout came after “we reported insiders’ accounts of the troubled development of the still unreleased fourth major Doom game. In May of that year, we reported that Arkane Austin, the Bethesda-owned studio behind Dishonored, would be working on a new version of the long missing-in-action Prey 2 and that some at the studio were not pleased about that. When top people at Bethesda started making statements casting doubt on our reporting, we published a leaked internal e-mail confirming that those statements had misled gamers and that Arkane had indeed been working on a version of Prey 2.”

However, Kotaku at that time had also posted “our December 2013 report detailing the existence of the then-secret Fallout 4.” Reporting on troubled development isn’t an issue. Leaking emails just to confirm a game when Bethesda was desperately trying to preserve their secrecy that you had broken (probably not first, but Kotaku has a lot of mainstream reach) is an issue. I don’t like Bethesda, don’t get me wrong, but they were trying to salvage the secrecy of a project. Do I think trying to lie to the audience in order to keep the existence of a project secret is okay? No, not really. But I understand what they were trying to do. And whether you agree with their choices or not--no shit you would be blacklisted, especially if you have insiders as described here! You can’t go crying victim and martyr yourselves when you do this kind of shit. Especially if you were reporting on Fallout 4, a major fucking entry in a popular franchise!

As for the Ubisoft blackout...

“The current Ubisoft blackout is actually the second in as many years. The company tried a similar approach in the spring of 2014 after we published early images of the then-unannounced Assassin’s Creed Unity—images that had been leaked to us by an independent source. That article confirmed news about the company’s extraordinary plans to release two entirely different AC games in the fall of that year, one for new consoles and one for old. Ubisoft had warmed back to Kotaku by the summer of 2014, several months after the Unity report, but has cold-shouldered us since the Victory story one year ago. It’s possible other articles angered them, too. But that Victory piece is a safe bet.”

Ubisoft actually gave Kotaku another chance after leaking Unity, and the Victory (now Syndicate) story was, guess what, more leaks. You broke Ubisoft’s trust once, then you broke it again. Frankly, it’s fucking disgusting, knowing about how these leaks really affect devs, that Kotaku would dare to turn itself into a “journalism martyr,” as it were, because they were ignored by the devs whose trust they broke.

Now, you can say that maybe they didn’t know the information of how it affects devs--but a) the Sm4sh leaks and the fallout had already happened by then (it was 2014) and the Half-Life 2 source code fiasco had happened in the previous decade. Also, if they had insiders, wouldn’t they know just how serious leaking this information was and how it puts their sources and other devs at risk? Maybe Ubisoft and Bethesda aren’t as strict on their leak policies as Square Enix and Nintendo are--we don’t know. But I can’t imagine that they like it at all.

“I’m sure some people will sympathize with Bethesda and Ubisoft. Some will cheer these companies and hope others follow suit. They will see this kind of reporting as upsetting, as ruining surprises and frustrating creative people. They will claim we are “hurting video games,” and, as so many do, mistake the job of entertainment reporting for the mandate to hype entertainment products.

“We serve our readers, not game companies, and will always do so to the best of our ability, no matter who in the gaming world is or isn’t angry with us at the moment. In some ways, the blacklist has even been instructive—cut off from press access and pre-release review copies, we have doubled down on our post-release “embedding” approach to games coverage. We’ve experienced some of the year’s biggest games from street level, at the same time and in the same way as our readers.”

No.

It isn’t just about “spoilers” and “ruining the surprise.” In some cases, yes, a lot of people don’t like or actively avoid leaks because they do want to be surprised. But that’s not the only thing.

By “serving your readers” and trying to dig for this information, you’re putting devs at risk. You’re putting your “sources” at risk. Now, if you were reporting on development or shady tactics or awful work environments or specific negative incidents behind the scenes or things that should be talked about, I would absolutely agree with you that you should continue digging deeper. But that’s not it. The companies trust you not to reveal something until a certain time, and you go and do it anyway.

By claiming victim and demonizing the “big bad corporation” for blacklisting you, you minimize the actual stress and hardships it put on the smaller guys in the company that the entire company is built on. You completely brush it aside and paint the entire company as irrational. You completely neglect the plight of the actual people working on it, and disrespect them by revealing their information before they do, when they have worked for SO LONG on whatever project it is. Like JP Kellams said, devs earn the right to talk about their product because they worked on it for so long. You haven’t.

And then... this paragraph.

“Too many big game publishers cling to an irrational expectation of secrecy and are rankled when the press shows them how unrealistic they’re being. There will always be a clash between independent reporters and those seek to control information, but many of these companies appear to believe that it is actually possible in 2015 for hundreds of people to work dozens of months on a video game and for no information about the project to seep out. They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time. They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer. We make our own judgments about what information best serves the news value of a story, and what our readers would prefer not to know—which is why, for example, we omitted key plot details from the Fallout 4 scripts that were leaked to us. We keep covering these companies’ games, of course. Readers expect that. Millions of people still read our stories about them. The companies just leave themselves a little more out of the equation.”

I never thought I’d see the day when video game companies were being victim-blamed.

Frankly, by leaking information, it ruins the relationship between the companies and the journalist, because then the company will start to make generalizations about journalists and not trust them, thinking that they will reveal whatever information they give them, which makes journalists like this press harder for information, and can you see where I’m going with this? It’s a cycle of mistrust, perpetuated by journalists like these who go against the wishes of a company that just wants to keep something a surprise until a certain date.

And then this motherfucker has the audacity to frame companies blacklisting reporters that leak information as bad! “They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer.” Why are companies wrong for trusting journalists? Are you implying that all games journalists are untrustworthy, because they won’t respect the wishes of a company that gives them the information in good faith that they won’t leak it? You do say that “it is nearly unfathomable to me that a reporter would sit on true information about what’s really happening in gaming, that we would refrain from telling our readers something because it would mess with a company’s marketing plan,” so I don’t know, maybe you DO think that all games journalists should immediately report on confidential information that the game companies are going to eventually reveal anyway and while only really receiving clout in return. Oh, whoops, got a little bitter there.

“They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time.”

Maybe because people like YOU are the ones who leak it! You can just as easily, you know, not fucking do that! This feels more like an excuse to not accept responsibility/deflect criticism, because ‘the companies shouldn’t have expected us to stay quiet!!!’ This is just straight-up victim blaming. Like it’s actually kind of scary.

It’s this ideology that Kotaku seems to stand by, as LKD once stated that higher-ups look over the written articles to approve them, and to my knowledge, Kotaku hasn’t redacted any of these statements, so I’m assuming that they still stand by it. Them spreading this ideology is what perpetuates the idea of game leaks (of the non-accidental, non-ethics-related kind) being “good journalism,” and with how much reach Kotaku has, it has the power to be legitimately damaging.

“They have done so in apparent retaliation for the fact that we did our jobs as reporters and as critics. We told the truth about their games, sometimes in ways that disrupted a marketing plan, other times in ways that shone an unflattering light on their products and company practices. Both publishers’ actions demonstrate contempt for us and, by extension, the whole of the gaming press. They would hamper independent reporting in pursuit of a status quo in which video game journalists are little more than malleable, servile arms of a corporate sales apparatus. It is a state of affairs that we reject.”

And here it is: Kotaku was just the humble, underdog reporter just doing their job, and the publishers show off contempt for the entire industry (rather than just Kotaku itself, I guess blacklisting one site means you hate all of games journalism) for Kotaku simply doing their jobs!

No, you ignorant twat, you broke their trust, so they don’t want to talk to you anymore. You don’t get to play victim when YOU were the one who blew the whistle.

Now, I cannot stress this enough: I am only talking about leaks related to game announcements, content details, etc. that are deliberately leaked to the public from an inside source. I am not talking about leaks related to ethical violations or troubled development or other negative things within companies. Those are things that should be reported on. But that kind of thing isn’t primarily what Kotaku is talking about and promoting; they are promoting the reveal of information because it’s “just good journalism.”

Except, as shown above, it has some very dire, very real consequences for the people you don’t see, and maybe that’s why Kotaku is so adamant about defending themselves in this regard. Maybe they don’t see the living, breathing people who get affected by their leaks, and so they think they’re fighting against the Big Bad Corporation when, in reality, it’s much more complicated than that. It doesn’t feel real to them. Or, maybe they do and they just don’t care. I genuinely cannot say so one way or the other.

I really, truly hope that by reading this, you the reader have a new perspective on how leaks of that kind affect the industry, and the little people whose backs the companies are built on.

As for the article and Kotaku as a whole...

“Kotaku readers always deserve the truth. You deserve our best work. It doesn’t matter which company is mad at us today, or which companies get mad at us in the future. You’ll continue to get it.”

Fuck yourselves.

#kotaku #video games #games #games journalism #hooo BOY this one got angry #but!! it's done and i like it

[whizsolutions]

The Growing Popularity of AngularJS Development Services

The Angular framework, which appears to have become the top choice for web application development, is the newest in the field of software development. The ease with which this typescript-based framework lends itself to the building of Rich Single Page Apps (SPAs) and dynamic applications is the reason for its popularity. AngularJS development services were created, maintained, and launched by Google developers, and they provide the robustness and flexibility that most other frameworks lack. Let us know more about the technology before you hire AngularJS app developers.

AngularJS is developed by JavaScript and is maintained by Google. The AngularJS framework is widely utilised in the web development business, from creating Single Page Applications with a nice user experience to producing complicated eCommerce sites. Whiz Solutions have been using the AngularJS web app framework for years as the Best AngularJS app development service provider since it streamlines the process of web development and testing. The current version 2.0 of AngularJS is a complete rewrite of the entire framework, with significant performance and feature improvements.

Model view control

The AngularJS app development service provider uses the Model-View-Control (MVC) architecture, which makes it simple to handle the business logic layer, data layer, and presentation layer. The underlying logical structure of data, which is devoid of any information about the user interface, is referred to as the ‘Model.’

The ‘View’ is the application’s visual layer, which is defined in the template, which is part of the component. The ‘Control’ connects the Model and the View and serves as the link between them. The component comes with a template that makes communicating with the code defined in the component class much easier. The right AngularJS app development consultant will help you in understanding the concept better.

RESTful APIs

These make communication between the server and the client simple by allowing users to perform certain tasks. These have recently acquired popularity as a result of their capacity to communicate with the server using only one line of JavaScript. The data is returned in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format, which is then rendered using Restful services in the Angular framework, allowing for easier interaction between web pages. Hence, it is a good idea to hire AngularJS app developers.

Model-View-ViewModel

The $scope (in AngularJS) object is utilised by Model to communicate with the View Model objects. These items track the modifications made to these Models, as well as their delivery and rendering. Views are routed using the routing module. Your Views and Controllers can be grouped and deep-linked to make the URLs more navigable.

Extends HTML

Most webpages are just a jumble of tags with little semantic meaning. To represent the intent of each object in the DOM, comprehensive CSS classes are required. Angular allows you to manipulate HTML as if it were XML. This allows for a large number of tags and attributes; which AngularJS can handle thanks to the transpiler.

Dependency Injection

Rather to hard-coding dependencies, Dependency Injection proposes a design approach in which mechanisms are provided with their dependencies. In the event that the MVVM pattern changes, there is automatic communication throughout the user interface. Wrappers, class declarations, and setters/getters are all eliminated as a result of this. These are handled by AngularJS, which enables for the simple expression of data.

Data Binding in Both Directions

AngularJS has a simple two-way data binding technique that is followed by AngularJS app development consultant. This makes it easier for developers because they just have to create a few lines of code when they use this language. It’s the best example of minimalism and optimization you’ll ever see. The synchronisation between the Model and the View is made more easier as a result of this.

A sizable team of Google engineers

Because AngularJS was created by Google, it has a vast community of active AngularJS app development service provider all over the world who are always ready to answer your questions, solve your difficulties, and assist newcomers in implementing their solutions into online apps. The engineers have a lot of experience with improving open-source frameworks. They even hold regular AngularJS app development solutions company up to date on the newest advances in the technology. So, whether you need AngularJS web application development or AngularJS eCommerce application development, you’ll never be short on choices.

Rich Internet Applications

Because of the maintainability difficulties, developing the frontend of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with vanilla HTML and JavaScript is a difficult effort. The straightforward combination of HTML and JavaScript leaves no room for clean and effective frontend modularization and testing.

Data Binding in Both Directions

The AngularJS framework has excellent bi-directional data binding capabilities. Because of this feature, any modifications to the application will have an impact on the user interface and vice versa. The AngularJS framework allows user activities and module updates to happen at the same time.

Client-side efforts

AngularJS is a front-end web application framework for building user interfaces for web apps and web pages. It works well on the client side, and as a result, it performs well on both mobile and desktop platforms. It’s also a flexible framework, so AngularJS app development consultant can use it to create the front-end of any form of online application without having to change the backend.

Filters are included.

Filters in AngularJS assist in the transformation of stored data into AngularJS responsive designs. There are filters for numbers, uppercase, lowercase, order by, data, currency, and much more in the AngularJS directory. It also has the ability to register a new filter factory and design a custom filter. Filters are critical for eCommerce AngularJS app developer team, which is why AngularJS is so popular for eCommerce development services.

Features of the SPA

The Single Page Application implementation in the AngularJS framework is well-known. Because the framework has validation capabilities, if the page contains forms, the form controller may keep track of their states. AngularJS app developer team can utilise this information to alter the behaviour of HTML components in the user interface. The built-in validator in AngularJS aids in the validation of HTML components. Error handling is also aided by the framework. You can, however, make your own validator.

Conclusion

All of the preceding factors should have given you a good sense of why AngularJS is the most popular framework for web application development. AngularJS is the finest alternative for web development that uses the JavaScript framework. Whiz Solutions is a leading AngularJS app development solutions company that provides web application development, chatbot application development, eCommerce application development, and other services using Angular technology. You may rely on our AngularJS development services if you need to hire AngularJS app developers or designers to create cutting-edge applications.

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