#there's lots of similar headlines about ADULTS but you have the ability to make your own medical decisions | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedeaditeslayer · 4 years

Photo

The Cool Side of My Pillow Interview: A Trip Inside the Mind of Bruce Campbell.

When you mention the name Bruce Campbell, the first thing that readily springs to most people’s minds is the boomstick toting, chainsaw-wielding final guy of the Evil Dead franchise, Ash Williams. However, for some of his fans, he will be forever linked with the Harvard educated, resourceful bounty hunter, Brisco County, Jr. Then, of course, there will be those devotees of Burn Notice that will be quick to let you know that Sam Axe, the ex-Navy Seal with a love of Mojitos and Tommy Bahama shirts is their guy because we all know, “Chuck Finley is forever.” For those of you that have never had the pleasure of watching the inventive spy show, Chuck was Sam’s alias that he would use as a cover on certain operations. The mere fact that Bruce Campbell is a part of three vastly different fandoms says quite a bit about his ability as an actor as well as his likeability quotient.

A headliner on the convention circuit for years, the minute he is announced as a guest, tickets go flying out the door and venues sell out. Campbell understands what the people want and he is more than willing to give it to them which is why most promoters clamor to book him. His Q & A sessions are legendary and audiences love the way he sarcastically banters with them. In addition to being an accomplished actor, director and producer, Bruce is also a New York Times bestselling author with four books under his belt. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and his soon to be released, The Cool Side of My Pillow.

His latest book is a collection of essays or as he would say, “rants.” This venture is unlike any of the previous mentioned titles and perhaps his most personal effort to date. In a sense, you get to take a trip inside Campbell’s mind. He expresses his feelings and opinions on a variety of topics from current events and social media to his code of ethics. I was fortunate enough to chat with Bruce about The Cool Side of My Pillow, and his future projects. After reading his book, you come away with the knowledge of how genuine and thoughtful he is which is refreshing in this day and age.

Diabolique: What I like so much about The Cool Side of My Pillow is your honesty. Your writing style makes the reader feel as if they are having an intimate conversation with you. You don’t hold anything back. There are certain aspects in the book which made me feel a tad uncomfortable because you shared some information that was deeply personal, in my mind. I don’t know if I would have included some of the things that you did.

BC: Oh, sure. You always have to decide where you stop. Where is the line? For me, it depends on the type of book. It depends on the type of subject matter. Every project is different.

Diabolique: Were some of the subjects you tackled cathartic for you?

BC: I don’t normally do that sort of stuff. I’m happy to share if I feel something is useful. In the chapter, “What Are You On?” I’m not ragging on people who have habits. I have habits that was the point. There are very few people that just go through their daily life without jacking themselves up, knocking themselves down, knocking themselves out, you know? So, its kind of amazing. The human condition fascinates me.

Diabolique: “A Little Effort Goes a Long Way” is one of my favorite segments. A tale of hard work, ingenuity and perseverance. Which is key to succeeding in the entertainment industry. Where does your drive come from? Some people can pinpoint it to relatives, a mentor…

BC: I do attribute some of it to the Detroit metro area. A lot of my buddies worked on the line, they worked in the factories, it was a great summer job that paid really good money. In Detroit, it was weird. There weren’t a lot of discussions about hopes and dreams. But I could see things happen incrementally that encouraged us. My grandfather worked for ALCOA Aluminum for over 40 years. Would he want to do that job? Was it his favorite job? He wouldn’t even know; it was his only job. He had that job for his whole adult life. My dad wanted to be a painter. I call him a “go betweener” because he didn’t do exactly what he wanted to do but he didn’t do what he didn’t want to do. He got into advertising because it was sort of creative but it wasn’t creative enough so he got into community theater which was more creative. That filled a very strong niche for him and so he kind of straddled the line and then I came along. He allowed me to pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted to do in whatever industry I wanted. He was the first investor in Evil Dead. So, I benefited from the transition of ONLY having drive. Meaning, you just go to work, it doesn’t matter what the job is. The next generation is, “Well, the job kinda matters.” My generation is, “The job matters a hundred percent,” because it determines what you’ve decided to do with your life. So, I am grateful for having enough drive but grateful for being injected with enough freedom of thought to then do my own thing. Partly the drive is the Midwest because you put a tie on, put your sport coat on and you go to work. Get your briefcase, shine your shoes and off you go.

Diabolique: Do you think it is important if you want to be in the arts to have a benefactor? Not necessarily monetarily but someone who encourages you like your dad?

BC: Well, my mom did sort of amateur writing so she was sympathetic at least to that side of the arts. She liked that creative side. My dad was way more interested in acting. So, I saw him in plays and stuff. I definitely benefitted because I had a sensibility that was similar to my dad. My two older brothers could give a shit about acting. They never touched it. I think my dad saw, “Hey, the young guy likes acting just like me.” That was probably an advantage.

Diabolique: Another thing about that particular section that is fascinating to note is your resourcefulness. The anecdote that you recount about having to come up with a way to deliver newspapers in a horrendous snowstorm and the lengths that you went to just to do your job is inspiring. I feel like that isn’t something that would be done by the younger generation, these days.

BC: We were pre-slackers and again, this isn’t to sound like a crabby, old guy on a hill shouting down about the great old days, at that time there were no other options. Our boss dropped off these papers at the top of a hill. That was as far as his van could go. He dumped the whole thing on me and my brother. We delivered them together (the resolution involved Bruce donning hockey skates and a toboggan). So, we thought okay. There was no option of saying, “Dude, I can’t do it. They’re just not going to get their papers today.” That would be the current response. You would wait until the roads were plowed, like that night, and then you would get your damn paper the next day and you’d end up getting two papers. It wasn’t an option. There was nothing in my upbringing that said, you can tell your boss, no. Now, if I thought it would have been very dangerous or life threatening, I probably would have said, no but short of that, there was a slightly different mentality in the air. You did what you were fucking told, for the most part which is a little bit different now.

Diabolique: “The Princess Di Factor” was a thought-provoking chapter because you talk about the click-baiting, disinformation and too much information that occurs on social media. Some of your peers have their PR reps handle their feeds but you are very present in yours. Do you think someone who is interested in getting into show business has to obtain “influencer” status?

BC: I think there is certainly pressure to do it. The old actors when they were doing a film could get away with telling the local studio, “By the way, I don’t do social media.” They say, “I’ve never done it. I don’t have a Twitter feed. I’m not starting now.” They can get away with it. But a younger thespian has a website and at least two or three social media platforms. I think its important to get a distinction of what are using them for? Facebook is all mercenary. Whenever I post, its just for a link to get tickets. I just do that to keep the account warm but I won’t add to it. That one is really inflammatory. They are finally starting to take the misinformation down. It should just be illegal. The stats are mind boggling. Something like 65% of the people who refuse to do social distancing and stuff like that get their information from YouTube. Its not news sources. Its like the Wild West. I think it needs to be settled. I would introduce journalistic standards and practices where by if you tell a little white lie, you get yanked and if you get fact checked and the facts say you’re wrong, that gets yanked.

Diabolique: At the beginning of your book, you discuss the toll of COVID-19 isolation and changes to the convention and motion picture industries. After presenting the Ashland Independent Film Festival awards virtually, do you think conventions might go that route in the future? San Diego Comic Con has gone entirely online which is surprising. Galaxy Con is another.

BC: If we don’t straighten this out, yeah. Sports are going to be weird for a while. Large venues are just going to be strange. How are you going to figure out the San Diego Comic Con? How are they going to make people feel comfortable jamming 125,000 people over a four-day period into that convention center which is already elbow to elbow and unhealthy? I don’t know. I’ve talked to promoters about a bunch of different things. I’m doing a Drive-In tour. Also, some theaters have opened up again so I am going to encourage and reward that so I have added five theater dates for later this summer: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. I’m getting back out on the road. This is not a tour year at all but when I heard that drive-ins were making a comeback, I thought let me be part of that. Some of them are struggling to open and I want to help. I’m tired of being on the sidelines. I want to get back into it. Drive-ins are perfect. You’ve got your distance. I can go up to cars and hassle them and there’s no problem. I can shine my flashlight in the cars, see if people are having sex, there’s a lot of fun stuff we can do. I want to be the first guy they meet when they come into the place to park. I want to be the guy that parks everybody. It’s time. Everyone wants to feel normal again. Eat the meatloaf sandwich. Going to the drive-in is the oldest meatloaf sandwich you could ever eat. Bring the hooch. Hide it under the seat. Bring a cooler, bring your reefer…

Diabolique: In The Cool Side of My Pillow, you mentioned that you were going to attend San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con and the 2020 Electronics Expo which were all canceled due to the pandemic. Were you going to promote the Evil Dead game?

BC: That’s what I was going to do. That’s what I was going to those conventions for.

Diabolique: What’s the status on it?

BC: I have been looking at and approving a bunch of new stuff. They are full-fledged, full bore into it. I think they are talking 2021 for an actual release. Its rolling along, looking great. It got delayed because of the nightmare of video games. Platforms change and evolve. You look at somebody else’s games and go, “Shit! We have to change everything now.” We have to stay current. I have to finish doing the voice work.

Diabolique: I know you are aware of all the rumors surrounding potential work in the future. You even mentioned in your book that you had a few offers. Is there a possibility that you might show up in Doctor Strange 2 and Mall Rats 2?

BC: The Kevin Smith thing could happen if it all winds up together but we haven’t had serious conversations about it. For Dr. Strange, everyone is at the mercy of what Marvel is going to do and this backlog of movies they’re going to do now. So, I think it won’t be until 2021. Marvel has to figure this all out. They have to figure out what movies they are going to do next, what movies they are going to delay, what movies they are going to shit can, what movies they are going to advance and speed up…the marketplace is ever fluid.

Diabolique: Do you have a release date in mind for The Cool Side of My Pillow?

BC: I have to say summer. We’re blasting away. We’re finishing graphics and photos and all that. We’re doing some legal crap. I’m starting a publishing company too. Tartan Media is going to release it. It will be my Campbell clan logo. It will be just to put things out. Movies, TV shows, whatever. That’s the new shingle.

Diabolique: Is there anything else on the horizon?

BC: Because the book isn’t going through Simon & Schuster, they’ll kind of have to find it where they find it. I’ll tweet about it. It will hopefully be available later this summer through Audible. I am going to do the audio book myself within the next two weeks because I want the e-book and the audiobook to come out at the same time. That way it gives you a choice. I want this to be a summer read.

Diabolique: Any updates on Bruce vs Frankenstein?

BC: With Bruce vs Frankenstein, I talked with Mike Richardson, who is my partner on this and we’re going to start with a graphic novel. So, I am going to adapt the screenplay. We’re going to put that out first so people in the industry can get a better sense of it. Mike has been selling a lot of projects to Netflix and he said that’s kind of the way to go with his material and fantasy stuff so he suggested we do that first. We’ll get a great artist, sell it in comic book form, people can totally see it and as a director, its kind of like doing storyboards. It’s a tremendous amount of extra prep that I can do just by going through it because I actually have to think about pages, panels and descriptions. It’s a format that’s not my normal format. Screenplay format, I can fart, I got that down. This is different with the way it looks on the page so it will be a very interesting translation process.

Diabolique: Are you doing any projects outside of Tartan Media?

BC: There’s this movie, 18 ½. It’s directed by Dan Mirvish. He’s with Slamdance. The story is about the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes and what happened to those minutes. Originally, I got hired to play a character in the movie and I couldn’t do it for a number of reasons and then the guy came back and asked if I would play Nixon.

Diabolique: So, the audience will just hear you?

BC: Yes. Apparently, it’s this 18-minute-long fight scene where you will hear Nixon in the background. Ted Raimi comes into play Alexander Haig and Jon Cryer is playing Haldeman. We did all these sessions over Zoom and we each recorded them separately (saying this in Nixon’s voice) having our conversations. They will put it all together and put it in the background.

Diabolique: Anything new to report on Evil Dead?

BC: The official name is Evil Dead Rise. We’re getting a new draft in. I don’t think anything will happen until 2021. Full bore ahead, we’re very excited about it. A whole, new ballgame. No more cabin in the woods.

#Bruce Campbell #The Cool Side of my Pillow

9 notes · View notes

llor71998065075 · 3 years

Text

Article Forge Reviews - Market Your Assistance With Article Promotion - A "The Best Way To" Information

youtube

Article Forge Review, Several different varieties of organization are being successful through the use of article writing. Even if you do not do much of your business online, article marketing can still be helpful to you. If you wish to take advantage of this to aid your company, but have no idea utilizing content articles inside your marketing, make best use of the tips in this bit.

Free gifts are a fantastic way to generate some consideration out of your target audience. Free gifts give your consumers to seem like they've obtained a lot more for their cash and they'll be likely to purchase from you yet again. In case the giveaway also offers the name of your own firm somewhere onto it, you will definitely get totally free advertising, as well! This means you get everything you can in the campaign.

Generally require insight from the followers in virtually any e-mail marketing you need to do. Most consumers get pleasure from giving input to your enterprise. Consuming opinions from their website permit you to get their ideas. Followers similar to this and you also gain by determining what to do to assist your advertising abilities.

Publish some incredible information. Should your submissions are nevertheless relevant 6 months from now, you will be able to help keep expressing them. Your readers need to nevertheless appreciate an article even if it is a few years older. New substance will keep points refreshing, which can be a terrific way to maintain followers.

For those who have an committed online marketing strategy making use of articles, your content will probably be placed extensively all over the Internet. This is actually great - supplied the content articles keep working links which guide straight back to your site. Operating backlinks improve google search indexing and draw in new followers. Once the back links are shattered or missing out on, all of your current hard work is lost, so ensure you have functioning hyperlinks in all your content.

There are numerous article publication sites that you might elect to submit the articles you write to. Read the syndication requirements for article directory sites to improve the outcomes of your respective submitting. Submission rules change from directory site to website directory.

Experiencing an issue that catches the viewers consideration is important in article writing. An excellent knowledge of your potential audience will help you choose the most effective way to catch the eye of your readers.

Will not backup someone else. Being exclusive is the easiest way to take care of your business's marketing and advertising situation. You may be undertaking a lot more bad than good in the event you create lots of fluff or backup somebody else. Replicate-information filters are obtaining far better at detecting this type of factor, so it will meet up with you.

Try to create articles that are able to support individuals take care of their troubles. If someone locates sensible value in reading through one of the pieces, chances are they are going to hunt for even more of your projects.

Do you require new post concepts? Use an optionally available point of view while you publish. Think about using subgroups out of your market while you publish. Write some suggestions for households that traveling with kids. You might give ideas to aging adults about traveling. Should you try to fix difficulties in your own market, you will have posts that continue being popular.

Do not use countless search phrases in your head line that the concentration is misplaced. Article promotion takes a mindful equilibrium in between heading content and keywords. Head lines should be fascinating. Determine if a person may wish to read the head line and ensure it is captivating in your market.

Promote one more report in each you create. Involve back links to your earlier content articles when you're writing new ones. In case your content is informative, it will make it appealing and also helpful to your readers. Don't forget to tell individuals how fantastic your content are!

Avoid packaging your head lines with keywords and phrases. In article marketing, you must equilibrium search phrases and headlines. Head lines should bring the eye of followers. Ensure the headline is a thing an individual want to study and this your target audience locates it eye-catching.

Stay away from sounding similar to a professor inside your producing. Be sure to write conversationally. If the producing is simply too medical, it pushes folks apart. That would indicate much less targeted traffic to your site minimizing income.

Unique information is extremely important to some effective article marketing campaign. Search engines like yahoo position content articles with new information and facts greater than posts which are fundamentally reprints. Several creating professional services supply cheap excellent articles, which can be a tremendous help for your needs.

Be sure that your articles consist of a good amount of keywords and phrases. Your meta product descriptions and titles are the most crucial spots to put keywords. Make your keywords inside your copy stick out with all the striking label. It is possible to verify a site's keywords and phrases basically appropriate simply click, and click on 'View Provider.' empty

You'll discover more about how powerful an instrument marketing with articles may be on the internet. A good article promotion promotion not just improves your audience, furthermore, it reasserts the overall sincerity of your respective company. No matter whether you use professionals or you may not, there are large amounts of knowledge to study relating to this matter, and that part is an excellent location to have started.

Article Forge Reviews - Market Your Assistance With Article Promotion - A "The Best Way To" Information

article generator, article writer, article creator, ai forge, how much does a forge cost, website content generator, best article generator software, article forge review, automated article writing software, free article generator, ai writing software, articleforge, smart article generator, unique content generator, automatic article writer, content writing software, ai article writer

https://twitter.com/Vasanth79072575/status/1356183002976378880 https://t.co/pmXE2rOGNa

Article forge review

https://griffin80489272.wordpress.com/2021/02/01/article-forge-review-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-article-promotion/

#article forge #article forge review #article generator #article writer #article creator

0 notes

trcubledycuth · 6 years

Text

burning family legacies.

WHO → Daenerys Targaryen & Harry Osborn. @blacxlotus

WHAT → Modern madness tearing up their horrendous father’s legacies.

NOTES → legit from 5000 billion years ago, but the prequel to this thread.

DAENERYS:

“They say your father was just as sane as mine.” Daenerys quips calmly, tea cup held a ways down from her chin, eyes peering over at Harry. It’s been YEARS since she’s seen him, but the familiar face has her lips curling into a content smile that has some true happiness to it. The TARNISHING of the Targaryen name was not one that escaped the scrutiny of headlines around the world. Targaryen Industries suffered a definite hit when the public psychotic break happened, thus Oscorp SOARED and now years later, she was shuffled into Daddy’s footsteps, trying DESPERATELY to bring the family’s name and now HER legacy back to golden standards she was proud to uphold.

So lunch with Harry Osborn, their fathers no longer looming over them. Business, time with old friends. Things that never mixed, but Dany thought it best to get the GIANT ELEPHANT out of the room, especially when her time in New York was meant to be BRIEF. That meant getting what was necessary out of the way first. Hair curled to perfection, her smile breaks into something GENUINE as she sits back against the chair, eyes still having not left the DASHING man in front of her. “How horrified do you think they’d be to know they’re once again being mentioned within the same breath, all these years later for this?” After all the good they’d accomplished, after all the BAD they’d done? “I think the universe is having a laugh on them.” Dany admits, her emotional ties scarred and severed, it’s more a coffee table picture book than a tell all memoir.

“I’m happy to see we’ve eluded it this far.” A moment passed, her cup raising to her lips before a small laugh. “For now anyways.” Genetics could be a bitch after all.”

HARRY:

A genuine grin and a laugh coming from Harry Osborn? That was certainly new. “A polite way to put Norman Osborn lost his fucking mind, huh?” he responded, never one to play games or skirt around the truth. It didn’t suit him. At any rate, if anyone was allowed to make quips about his father, it was Dany. For all the shit she’d been through, however, here she was, looking more perfect and speaking with more confidence than he could ever remember her having before. If he were to guess, they both likely changed quite a bit from the last time they saw one another. He supposed the difference was while he was off in boarding schools taking full advantage of the perks that came with having the Osborn name, she was in a family that was trying and failing to pick up the pieces of their bat-shit leader. What were the odds that he’d be dealing with the same thing only a few years later? Now that he was back in New York, and the company was- for all rights and purposes- his, what was supposed to be competition felt more and more like camaraderie in their unusually similar paths.

Having lunch with Daenerys was a little bit like being transported back to his childhood, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a business meeting, and he was certain the rest of the corporate world was waiting with bated breath to see how this went. An amusing thought. “Knowing that they’d shit themselves is half the reason I came.” Not true. “Maybe less than half,” he added as an afterthought, sipping unashamedly at a glass of scotch. If it was inappropriate, he clearly didn’t care.

At her comment, Harry’s eyes narrowed playfully. It was a disconcerting look for most of the members of his board, as it was usually followed by a subtly snide comment, but his response took a notably different and more amiable tone when he responded to her. “Have you eluded it, though? Most people probably think you’re insane for even suggesting we meet like this.”

DAENERYS:

“I’m nothing if not polite.” Dany teases, mocking her own REPUTATION and how her name has been dragged through the mud, despite everything. Even if not following in her father’s footsteps, being a woman in a man’s world like this industry, being demeaned and scrutinized, and held to an entirely different standard… That was something in it’s own she never allowed herself to fall to. “Though I feel they both lost their minds long ago.” Dany adds on, a sad amusement pushing her opinion deeper. She’d been quite VOCAL on what she did and did not agree on and that have given her a REPUTATION she didn’t necessarily deserve. When men stated what they thought and wanted, they were being assertive, yet when she did it, she was being an immature little brat.

The world had much growing to do. But she was trying to make that change HOW she could; which lead her here. With Harry… But it didn’t FEEL like business which only added her shoulders in relaxing, her smile growing ever so slightly into a grin. A LONG and tedious eye roll silenced as she sipped quietly from her cup, trying to HIDE her amusement. “Less than half?” Dany questions, amusement now fully quirking her brow high as she lowers her cup, settling it to the table. “Most people aren’t worth my time.” Daenerys offers, a satisfied and relaxed expression that sits with POISE.

“You on the other hand. Well, I’ve always had a soft spot.” Oh if only their fathers could see what they’d ACCIDENTALLY created. All the galas and functions, dinners and meetings, two opposing companies coming together, even if only to attempt to ONE UP the other. Properly behaved children shoved together, bored out of their minds while the adults talked, and talked. Children that grew into teens that became more cynical, the veil of innocence slipping beyond the point of return. “Then again, you DID accept my invitation.” Her words are coy, the insinuation tossed back at Harry, perhaps HE was the insane one. “So perhaps that just says we’re MUCH better off than our fathers.”

HARRY:

Harry shouldn’t have been smiling so much, it felt unnatural on his face for how little he’d been doing it lately, but god had she grown fierce over the years. That paired with her always perfectly smooth words and deceivingly coy mannerisms? She was a force to be reckoned with. He didn’t know how the rest of the world didn’t love her yet. He’d been following her career closely ever since her father stepped down, and it’d been nothing short of a brilliant rise to power. Perhaps he was foolish for admiring her so much, but it’s not as if he could forget the hours they’d spent as children during countless meetings (more like petty territorial fights between their fathers) as their glorified servants watched over them, him convincing her to rebel against them so they could be free for a few hours. He didn’t have a lot of fond memories from his childhood, but those were certainly some of them.

“Less than half.” Harry asserted, more definitely this time. He didn’t bother to elaborate. She knew what he meant. He snorted into his scotch glass, narrowed eyes rolling to the side as he drank more. He wasn’t even buzzed for the tolerance he’d built up for the stuff. “Well, it’s good to know I’m at least somewhat worth your time. If only for old time’s sake.” His smile shrank into something more secretive, eyes trained on the window in the private room they reserved in some fancy ass restaurant downtown. “Every single waste of space on my board advised against me accepting, you know?” he turned back to her, expression hardening.

“They clearly don’t know shit. I think you’re right. And if I can’t be better than my father, then put a bullet through my brain now and be done with it.” Harry normally didn’t make a habit of speaking about Norman Osborn so openly, but he knew Dany more than understood. She was probably the only person who did. “He was brilliant. Once. A terrible father, but Oscorp wouldn’t be where it is without him. I can’t ignore that fact. But how the fuck are we supposed to grow when all anyone can worry about is this damn rivalry between us?” For all the faults of his father, he was one of the few who recognized Harry’s intelligence, if not only when he was insulting him for wasting it. He watched her for a moment, believing she might be one of the few who saw it too, as he saw her’s. “I get the feeling I’m not the only one who sees the potential in what we could do together.”

DAENERYS:

The smile was impossible to wipe from her perfectly painted lips. Perhaps this was the best thing she could have done. “I think we both know somewhat isn’t generous enough a term.” Daenerys corrected. Harry had always been in the back of her mind, but he’d slip in and out from time to time… This however, this fueled the looming sensation of NOSTALGIA, an old friend with a special little bond not many others could relate to. In some senses, Harry Osborn represented what could have been associated with THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. Not because there had ever been any talk of such things, but because there was ALWAYS something about ‘what if’ lingering in silence between them.

Both far too mature, too jaded to act.

Or was that it at all? “Are any of them under the age of fifty?” Daenerys questioned, amusement evident in the fact she assumed not. All sculpted by Harry’s father, to act in his absence should he ever no longer be there to lead Oscorp. Harry however, well Harry had the ability to override everything and crush whatever had once been.

“Well, I’d drink to that.” She offered, a small huff forming into a laugh at the thought. Being like her father. She knew the man, the stories, the tales. The monster. “What rivalry?” Dany questioned, already summarizing her viewpoint on THAT. There were many things that could be done to progress, but chomping at the bit to up one another when it could all be focused? Driving faster to their GOALS, offering substantial growth?

The appearance of the waiter had Dany ordering a glass of wine deciding that while BUSINESS and liquor never mixed with her as a rule, this was going far better than she could have ever hoped, completely blinded what it felt like to be in the presence of an old, unlikely friend. When they were alone once again, amethyst eyes found Harry’s a relaxed and CONFIDENT expression resting on her features. “I propose Targaryen Industries and Oscorp Industries merge.”

ONE WEEK LATER.

HARRY:

Harry knew better than to try and predict what Dany might've been thinking when she requested they meet, but nothing could've prepared him for what she proposed. Years of tense competition and unstable meetings where their father's drew capricious territory lines had been leading to what many thought would eventually be a takeover of one company over the other. First Dany's father lost his mind, leaving Norman Osborn to reap in their misfortune. Before he could begin to think about buying them out, however, he got sick, and his mental state deteriorated as well. Some kind of sick fucking joke, as much as he might've deserved it.

The fact that each respective company now rest in the hands of their children, both of whom had gotten along despite the odds in their youth, might've been a gift more than a joke though. Targaryen and Oscorp Industries merge... what an idea. He'd been stricken silent when she said the words, but the mere memory still made him smile for her boldness. It left a lot up in the air, and it amused him to think that even considering her proposal would likely make his father put out a pricey contract on his life (if he didn't simply kill him himself), but he needed to think about it. He was often reckless, even careless, but he couldn’t be about this.

Realistically, Harry knew this might be the solution he’d been looking for, albeit not the one he’d been hoping for. Having just stepped out of the shower, he stared at himself in the mirror, eyes landing on the ugly mark along the side of his neck sporting a sickly green hue. He poked at it, and felt a tremor of pain throughout his body. Retro viral hyperplasia. I never told you that it's genetic. The words his father spoke before he died with unsettling amusement. He hadn’t told anyone, never even stepped foot into a doctor’s office when he already knew the truth. He was going to die, it was only a matter of time. He’d never have kids. Someone was going to have to take this over. Who better than the person who actually earned it?

Harry didn’t trust anyone with the information, for the most part too afraid to even admit it to himself, but tonight would be the last night Dany was in town and he had finally made up his mind. He couldn’t go out to some swanky New York restaurant this time, though. He needed something without pretenses, something that felt like it could be them. The way it used to be, or at least some semblance of what they used to have. He spent a lot of time building up his persona as Harry Osborn, the heir who could do as he pleased, but he needed to let go of that at least a little if he was going to do this.

When he changed, it wasn’t in his usual designer wear. A black t-shirt and matching jeans paired with a leather jacket- worn. He hadn’t put any sort of dress code on the occasion, but he assumed she would be the complete opposite, stunning as usual. He had asked Dany to meet him at his place for drinks that night, something easy before her flight home. He rarely got nervous, but his skin was crawling with it now, and by the time her arrival was announced via a speaker by his front door, he was instinctively building that barrier back up. Maybe he needed some of it. Vulnerability never came naturally to him.

Already on his third glass of scotch, Harry prepared a glass of what he knew to be Dany’s favorite wine so that the moment she was settled politely in his overly extravagant condo overlooking the city lights, he was properly astute. Handing her the glass silently after exchanging pleasantries, he sat across from her and spoke. “I know you want to know what I’m thinking about your proposal. But I think I should get something important out of the way first. Something I haven’t told anyone yet- but if we’re going to move forward with this, you should know,” he smirked, and continued, “that I’m dying.”

cont here. x

#c: daenereys targaryen #f: game of thrones #blacxlotus #ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀʟᴇʀᴛ! { burning family legacies }

2 notes · View notes

changachino-blog · 4 years

Text

28 february 2018

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45364/the-lotos-eaters

Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters: A Dichotomy Between Life and Living

In two poems, Lord Alfred Tennyson depicts two outlooks of life: the Romanticist view in “The Song of the Lotus Eaters”, and the Victorian ideals in “Ulysses”. More specifically, their views regarding a pause, a lull, in living are in stark contrast with each other. Using imagery, repetition, and simile, Tennyson proves the virtue of the Victorian ideals of his era using both perspectives.

The Lotus eaters and Ulysses are both set in stagnance. The island upon which the Lotus Eaters lay is representative of their sloth, even the air that they breathe is “languid...swoon[ing]”, in a state of perpetual afternoon. This builds on the image of stagnance, with the afternoon representing the transitional state of travel that the Lotus Eaters were mired in; between sun and moon, Troy and home. Afternoon on a tropic island brings to mind stifling heat, adding on to the day’s sun and toil that would wear on these mariners. However, the mariners rejoiced upon this piece of sand, “they sang, ‘Our island home is far beyond the wave...”, celebrating their freedom from weary travel. Using a repeating rhyme scheme at the end of the first choric verse, with the words “deep, creep, weep, and sleep”, he pulls the reader into some sort of a loop, resembling the loop, the trance, the travelers are bound in.

On the contrary, Ulysses has been filled with a dread for his life, as an “idle king, / By this still hearth, among these barren crags…”. Using the words idle, still, and barren, Tennyson establishes the king’s existential malaise within the first two lines of his poem. Ulysses’ life no longer has much of a purpose, after peaking many years before, “Far on the ringing plains of Troy”. This begs the question of whether life is worth living after a definitive peak. Ulysses answers with a resounding YES, exclaiming “How dull it is.../ to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”. Stagnancy is death to Ulysses, a dishonorable degradation, a sword not dulled by use, but by its scabbard, betrayed by the respite of his home.

The Lotus Eaters expose the flawed nature of the Romantics, the dreamers and consumers too occupied by the “watch[ing] (of) the crisping ripples on the beach” to advance, to trailblaze, and return home in a wash of glory. They try to rationalize their sloth, preemptively alienating themselves to their homes, wives, children and slaves, figuring that “...all hath suffer’d change..”, but that is a lazy alternative to the truth Tennyson presents through Ulysses. Ulysses has a fervor for life, a chance at another adventure and expanding the self. Tennyson shows us the difference between merely living and having a life, and while the Lotus Eaters indulge themselves in material comforts and absorbing the nature around them, Ulysses delights in burning a legacy in the annals of history, in spite of all of he has already accomplished. Tennyson urges us to expand our horizons, both internally and externally, to fight for another peak in life.

***

11 June 2020

Two years later, this essay is helping fend off the evils that come with stagnancy. As long as one is breathing, one has potential, and it’s a waste of energy and life to live a day in which you don’t try to get better at something.

A paraphrased quote from my AP English Literature teacher at the time, Ryan Miller:

“If you’re on your phone, you’re basically asleep.”

This really redefined the way I view the information age, because it really is a perfect analogy for my experience with content aggregators and sleep. Dreams flit through my mind in little flashes, and only some truly carry any feeling that carries through to the morning, and therefore any memories I have of those dreams are unreliable. In a very similar way, content aggregators (in my case, mainly reddit) flood my eyes with a veritable onslaught of information. Most of the time, I don’t remember what I don’t save to my account or device.

What even is the worth of information without any ability to recollect it?

I typically want to use reddit to distract myself and find fun content that I can share with my friends, but in many cases it seems to become a timesink that gives me loads of impressions, and headlines, and little easily consumable nuggets of information, like well-made gifs, or innovative infographics, which are all tailored to my tastes. It’s a buffet of knowledge, but the problem is simple: you can’t eat like you’re at a buffet for your whole life.

Just like food, information needs proper digestion, reflection, to truly permeate into your memory and become a part of yourself that you can rely on for the rest of your life. In every minute of everyday, we have the opportunity to learn about what is happening to people all around the world, all around our nation, and all around our community. Social media is designed to be addictive, and it works, because it is a very human tendency to want to learn more about the world and connect to more people.

Our brains are not designed to operate on this level of social involvement.

Let’s talk about dunbar’s number.

“According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.” -linked article

The idea of a hard limit to mental capacity is not novel, and it explains a lot of how the information age has adversely affected the mental health of millions of people. Being a “good citizen” in the age of the internet entails many tiers of communication and information processing as a result of globalization and the current ease of communication:

At the most personal tier would be your loved ones, your immediate family, your closest friends. With distance, the pressure to stay connected is kind of immense, given that it’s so easy to do so, but when life gets busy, people get overwhelmed and need time to charge. Our connectivity adds an unnecessary level of guilt in mild cases of estrangement. As a contrast, my mother’s relationships with her closest friends are built over years, and they personally check in month to month.

The importance of this tier is on par with that of the next, but I think that there is a lot of tacit pressure to catch up with older family members and record their wisdom. The whole point of family and reproduction is to make each generation better, but if this knowledge isn’t captured, it slips away with each death.

The next most personal tier would be your involvement in your community, whether it’s through your protests, sports, college friends/clubs, local charities, or churches. These are your tribes, and as social creatures, we tend to become a blend of whoever we surround ourselves with. The information age already pressures us to be as connected as possible, and I find myself straining to maintain involved in my current communities as I try my best to stay connected with my loved ones.

As I mature more, I’m becoming more aware of my responsibility to get involved with community legislation, and local government. I guess this would fall between community involvement and legislative participation.

As we start to zoom out, the next tier would be our involvement in state legislature, voting on bills and representatives in our counties and states. This is where my citizenship fails, I consider myself a patriot but I haven’t prioritized my right to a vote as a citizen in a democratic republic.

Performing as a national citizen in the United States is also fraught with disappointment and disillusionment in your voice, and bipartisanship has led to rampant tribalism and polarization. Conversations about the administration, especially across people of opposite parties, are rarely nuanced and productive. Mass media on both sides tends to twist words and fails to truly inform. Fear-mongering has always made more money, and gets more awareness, so spreading a more negative depiction of the world is how many media outlets have found their success.

Learning more about international human rights issues, climate justice, and staying informed about our world and affairs is another burden on the mind

I find humor in the irony of privileged internet users reading about unprivileged people’s plights and hurting in sympathy for them, to no net good in the world. The adage that ignorance is bliss is based in reality

We get more and more jaded as we learn about how the world really doesn’t make sense, and as we learn more about how bad humans can be and have been to each other.

Six tiers of investing yourself, your mental faculties, your resources, and your time fall beyond your actual person.

So much of our presence and identity is invested outside of us, that it’s easy to be overwhelmed and forget to love and nurture ourselves. Every piece of trash information that we have to process stands as an obstacle in our path to a better self. Striking the balance between awareness of the world and mental health has been such a complicated task that we all have to juggle. While a quarantine during the information has posed serious implications for mental health, I’m jazzed about the ramifications of this quarantine.

For many people whose lives have been uprooted and tossed around by this pandemic, this is a time of introspection, discovery, and a re-evaluation of what we want to live for. The potential for the my generation is staggering.

As a contrast, I truly felt like I was mired in a time of stagnancy during my depressive spells for the past few months. I felt like I was wasting my valuable time as a young adult, and the added guilt became a positive feedback loop that glued me to my bed for far too long. Writing out and processing my thoughts about what has led to these depressive spells gives me more answers and insights, and I’m excited that this is the first of many essays that seek to alleviate my headspace and free my mind for greater pursuits.

To link my two essays together, here is the main theme I would like to impart to whoever wants to carve their own hope for their future:

A quote from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses:

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

It’s far too easy for me to grow comfortable in a non-growth-centered way of life, and it’s up to me to leverage the privilege that I have: a loving, financially secure family that feeds me. I must take ownership of my life and make the most of what has been given to me. I owe it to my parents, the universe, and the people I love to lead a life of growth.

“Stagnancy is death to Ulysses, a dishonorable degradation: a sword not dulled by use, but by its scabbard, betrayed by the respite of his home.”

#alfred lord tennyson #ulysses #the lotos eaters #ap lit #information age

0 notes

adpr5990-lgomes-blog · 4 years

Text

Yeti Project Template

YETI Project Template

History

- While on Yeti’s Instagram page, they had a highlight called Wild Stories which is about different people and the adventures they’ve had. Each story is really unique and in different parts of the world, so I think it will be interesting to talk more about adventure by using specific stories. I think the target market will be interested in their stories, and they listen to podcasts. Plus, the hashtag is #BuiltFortheWild and I think that’ll be easy to use while talking about wild stories.

Brand Voice

- Instagram: their Instagram is full of great photography with different adventures or concepts for each one. This is great for a wide range of interests because it’s about any sort of outdoor adventure as a whole not just one specifically. They have photos, videos, and posts to shop directly from.

- Twitter: their twitter uses the same or similar pictures and videos when posting, however the captions are longer and include more information than Instagram’s (which makes sense because Twitter is more words-based). I think the Twitter and Instagram have the same type of aesthetic.

- YouTube: their YouTube has many different types of videos. Some are shorter and informative, some are story-telling, they have Yeti Presents videos, and also longer videos which are their podcasts.

Similar photography, graphics, and aesthetic are used for each of their platforms.

Main Messaging

- One of the messages that I see a lot of it “built for the wild” meaning their products are built for the wild. However, they don’t put a label on what wild is exactly. They want their products to perform when it matters most, whether you’re fishing or camping or just in the backyard. The headline is: Your Wild Stories. The tagline is: A podcast for all ages, thrill-seekers, and adventurers.

Target Audience

- Typically, Yeti’s target market is middle-aged white men ages 30-40, who are middle-to-upper class that enjoy being outdoors and gear junkies. However, recently, they’ve started reaching people who care about lifestyle, so women and men who want to spend more time out of the office. In our project, we want to reach a younger audience. It’s important to take a different approach, such as youthful adventure, and that Yeti will perform well during your adventure. The target market are 15-25 year old, teenagers and young adults who are in high school, college or are in entry-level positions that crave adventure and realize that challenge and adventure are a privilege and need to take initiative.

Proposal

I have decided to make a podcast for this assignment because I believe it’ll reach the target audience and it is something I enjoy making. I am inspired by the wild stories highlight on their Instagram and think it would be interesting to make a podcast that is full of adventurous stories that inspire younger men and women to get outdoors and accomplish any adventure they want and not just write it down on a bucket list for later. In this podcast, I interview one of my best friends about her experience climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. You don’t need to have thousands of dollars to do an adventure you want to do just a few essential items, such as Yeti Ramblers, to make sure you have an easy and enjoyable experience. After a weird time like this quarantine I think for the rest of younger people’s lives they will know that adventure is a privilege and can sometimes be taken away from you. I think this will change the way the younger generations live from now on and know they won’t always have an ability to do what they want. My inspiration or influence is the concept that “don’t just write it down on your bucket list, but achieve it now” for the podcast, and also explain the cost effectiveness of purchasing a Yeti Rambler while you’re young to use forever and how Yeti Ramblers can make your experience better and proving it can make an adventure amazing without having to spend so much money.

Schedule:

April 6-11: Research

- Look at all social medias, watch wild stories highlights and videos on YouTube

- Listen to Yeti’s podcasts posted on YouTube and see what they’re missing for the younger audience.

- Research ambassadors and find similarities and differences

April 12-17: Mapping out podcast

- Decide exactly what the content will be about

- Choose a story to write about or a person to interview

- Write out the podcast and do a trial recording to begin editing to see what it’s missing or needs to be removed

- Continue to research and edit writing

April 18-24: Edit

- Make the podcast

- Edit the podcast over a few days

- Have other people listen to the podcast and see if there is enough storytelling, enough information, or keeps their attention

- April 24: Finish the podcast completely

April 25: Final Listen

- Listen to the podcast one last time to make sure everything is perfect.

0 notes

thesolidolivinephenomenon · 5 years

Note

I saw that post you made about the gen z and your willingness to help us with questions. My question is this: How do you do it? How do you guys stay alive? You started being shat on when you were teenagers, and we had the same experience since the moment we hit middle school. Global warming is making all of us so unenthusiastic... What did you do when you felt all hope was but a dwindling ember left to die on a frigid day?

Hey anon! I’m sorry about the wait time on this response. I kept going to answer it, and then feeling like my answer wasn’t quite what I meant.

You have a lot of questions in here, and I’m going to do my best to address each individually. There’s also that one big question though. That “how do you keep going?” “How do you stay hopeful?” “How do you find hope?” kind of question— that “How do I exist as a person during this current time while all of these very upsetting things keep happening?” kind of question.

And I’m not quite sure I know the answer to that one, anon. But I do know that sharing these anxieties and talking to other people about them, tends to help us figure out what we need to hear. So maybe something I’ll say with you (which is also to say— this is going to be a long answer, because I’m trying to work my way to an answer as well. So I’m putting the rest under a read more cut.)

How do you do it? How do you guys stay alive?

I think this might be as simple (and as difficult) as this: you just keep doing it.

Physically, you do the things that maintain your mental and physical health. You try to eat as well as you can, exercise when you can, go into nature when you can, shower when you can, go to doctors and therapists and dentists when you can, and you try to keep your brain and body running the best that you can.

I know that sometimes this maintenance sort of work seems boring or useless, especially when you feel like you should be doing Important™ things. But keeping yourself healthy is what will allow you to have the energy and strength to do the Important things that you might want to do in the future.

Staying alive, I think, is also about finding those pricks of starlight in the dark, and holding close to those dear things. Maybe that’s a show with a happy ending that makes you feel good. Maybe its a playlist of songs that make you nostalgic. Maybe it’s the plants or books or whatever in your bedroom that makes you smile when you see them. You find those bits of light and you surround yourself with them so that, when things feel dark, they can never get too dark.

You started being shat on when you were teenagers, and we had the same experience since the moment we hit middle school.

Here’s the thing, anon, older people will always be upset by the things that younger people do. I don’t know why. I think, in a lot cases, the people who shit on other people have either lost their ability to empathize with others or have decided to trade away that empathy for a laugh or a headline.

And, personally, I don’t trust a person who is that quick to disregard kindness, and I certainly don’t care about the opinions of someone who hasn’t taken the time to learn and understand people different than themselves.

So don’t pay it mind, anon. People will shit on you and your peers, but it’s not your responsibility to pick up that shit and carry it with you. You can try to learn their viewpoints, but mostly you can ignore them, knowing that these opinions are not really based in the reality or experience of what it’s like to grow up during the times you’ve grown up.

But, if it does bother you, then learn how to pick apart their arguments. Find the faults in their arguments, and the data to back up yours. And know that older people are often trying to find ways to discredit younger people as a way of quieting those voices (especially when those voices disagree with them). Know that your opinions, thoughts, and experiences are just as valid as any one else’s and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is wrong. Plain and simple. Learn how to speak for yourself, and learn how to do it in a way where others will be forced to listen to you. Stand up for yourself and your peers. Be kind and thoughtful, and advocate like hell for yourself, your friends, and your community.

Global warming is making all of us so unenthusiastic…

Oh don’t I know it, anon. I’m in an environmental studies program right now, and it’s overwhelming to look at what’s happening.

So my advice isn’t much, but it’s the best way that I’ve found to manage the impeding sense of doom: try to find communities and be an active part in them. You can apply this advice in a lot of different ways, but I find it particularly helpful when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis.

And here’s why: communities are really important. Western culture loves the myth of the individual: that we need to solve our problems on our own. And the stories we tell each other usually focus on a hero who saves the world. But that’s not actually how it works. You aren’t going to mitigate climate change alone, and neither am I. Neither is the president of any indivudal country.

But when people get together and work toward positive change together things start to get done. You can keep it small. Work on your personal carbon footprint and try to decrease it. Get your friends to do the same thing. Or get your friends together every Friday afternoon, and set up a representative calling party, and let your elected reps know how you feel. (If calling your rep seems scary, look around for websites that give you scripts.) And do this on the local level too. Let your elected town officials know that you support environmental policies. Create an environmental club at your school, or, better yet, join ones that already exist (in your school or in the wider community) and become an active member.

Mostly, remember that working toward solutions to this problem must be a collective effort. Let all of this care that you have for the planet and the people on it drive you to action.

What did you do when you felt all hope was but a dwindling ember left to die on a frigid day?”

This one is hard. I think— I don’t know. I wonder sometimes if hope is like kindness and care and courage, in that it’s something you can actively choose to pursue. Like, you actively choose not to leave that ember of hope to die.

It’s not really the easiest option. (I think the easiest option is apathy? maybe?), but choosing to be hopeful about something that feels hopeless means that you’re choosing to dedicate yourself to making that thing better. If climate change is making you feel hopeless, then choosing to be hopeful might mean that you’re dedicating yourself to being environmentally friendly and helping the environmental movement. If you have an anxiety disorder (like me!) and that makes you feel hopeless, then maybe you dedicate yourself to writing comics that can connect you with other people who feel the same way. If adults not listening to you makes you feel hopeless, then dedicate yourself to finding the adults who will listen, or dedicate yourself to growing into an adult who will listen.

Whatever it is that’s making you feel hopeless, connecting with people and taking action can help you feel more hopeful. But it’s also something that takes some practice, so don’t get too down if takes a while for your ember of hope to grow. If you keep feeding it reasons to be hopeful, it will grow, regardless of any frigid days. I promise.

So I know that this is already terribly long, but I wanted to circle back to that general “How do I exist as a person during this current time while all of these very upsetting things keep happening?” kind of question that I felt like you were indirectly asking.

Here’s what I think, anon, for people who are in Gen Z, but also for the people my age and older who find themselves wondering the same questions as you:

You deal with being a person during this time by:

taking care of yourself (mentally, physically, but also emotionally and spiritually)

connecting with a community

being empathetic

learning to pick apart bad arguments

knowing what you stand for and why you stand for it

actively choosing to make the world better (if only because it helps you feel more hopeful)

being kind

listening to others

connecting with people who are feeling the same or similar anxieties as you

listening to others

advocating for yourself, your friends, your peers, and your community

finding the bits of light that you can hold onto when everything feels dark (i.e. finding things that help you feel happy, relaxed, etc.)

searching out stories and perspectives that can allow you to be empathetic and caring toward people who have different lived experiences that you

being curious enough to ask difficult questions and then being even more curious to try to find an answer

reaching out to others

and by being persistent as fuck in your pursuit of all the above things (and likely in the things that I neglected to list as well but that you and others will think of doing).

I hope this helps, anon.

Sending a lot of love your way xx

#ask #anonymous ask

0 notes

laughriotgrrrl · 7 years

Photo

Iliza is wrong. But it’s not her fault (kinda).

By Bobbie Oliver On Twitter: @TheBobbieOliver

Iliza Shlesinger begins her interview in Deadline Hollywood ok, “a big part of my comedy is wanting to speak to women and people that are my age in a funny and relatable way. I think the landscape of what’s available out there for women is not as extensive as it could be.” So far, so good (except the limiting it to people her age). But, then she goes on to say:

“I’m so glad you asked that [the way she portrays female comedy in her new project] because I put in those sketches and no one’s ever asked me about it because I think people were too busy laughing in agreement. As a comedian, I have a set of morals. I have a specific point of view. I think a lot of what I see out there, out in comedy clubs, watching contests, watching TV, watching movies—gathering data from these different matrixes…

When you’re a woman in comedy and you get a break, people get so excited about it, but while we have to work hard to get that attention, I do think many women think, “Oh if I just act like a guy, if I go for that low hanging fruit…” Everything’s about sex, or how weird I am. It all just kind of runs together.

I could walk into The Improv, close my eyes, and I can’t tell one girl’s act apart from another. That’s not saying that 30-something white guys don’t all sound the same sometimes, but I’m banging my head against the wall because women want to be treated as equals, and we want feminism to be a thing, but it’s really difficult when every woman makes the same point about her vagina, over and over. I think I’m the only woman out there that has a joke about World War II in my set. I think shock value works well for women, but beyond that, there’s no substance. I want to see what else there is with such complex, smart creatures.”

I included the quote so no one could say I misrepresented her words. Those were her exact words. Since this was released, Iliza has been bombarded with responses from female comics (myself included) because it turns out people weren’t just “laughing in agreement” and that she did not succeed at talking to women “in a relatable way.” Did Iliza look at those comments, think ‘hmm maybe I am missing something and should listen to these women’s collective experiences?’ Spoiler! Um, no. She doubled down; she attacked; she ranted and raved and blamed women with (since deleted) tweets to the effect of ‘women shouldn’t complain about what I said; women just need to get better; my experience is more valid than yours; I worked TEN WHOLE YEARS and nobody gave anything to me; everyone is just jealous; if it doesn’t fit you, don’t be offended...’

There is SO MUCH to unpack there, and I may be all over the place cause I’m pissed I have to sit down and blog about this shit AGAIN. I just got finished producing the 3rd Annual Laugh Riot Grrrl Festival, which features over 100 female comedians each year in a week’s worth of shows and activities. I was feeling pretty good about the state of women in comedy (rare for me) and thinking we just smashed the Patriarchy, even if it were just a little. And then, I turn on my computer to see yet another dick dissing women in comedy, setting us back instead of propelling us forward- and this time that dick was a fellow female comic. I am angry, yes, but mostly I am disappointed. But, Iliza said this is her experience and we have to take that as gold. Well, here is my experience...

I started doing comedy in college at 19 years old in 1988 (a little longer than TEN WHOLE YEARS). As a elder in the comedy community (I am 49, been doing comedy for 29 years, teaching comedy for 13 years, wrote a critically acclaimed book about comedy, own a comedy school, was on the road for years on the East Coast and moved to LA 20 years ago, etc), I feel like it is my OBLIGATION not only to create as many opportunities for women in comedy as possible (in addition to my women’s comedy fest, I produce women-only open mics, feminist comedy shows, etc), but to elevate other women as often as I can ESPECIALLY IN PUBLIC INTERVIEWS. No, I am not rich or famous. Probably never will be. But, I have made my entire living off comedy most of my adult life and my experience matters, too.

Saying women shouldn’t be offended by her lazy answer in an interview if it doesn’t apply to them is like Trump saying Mexicans are rapists and black people are criminals but don’t be offended if you aren’t those things. Nice try. And women just need to get better?? Seriously? Do you know how tired you sound? How many racists have said, in response to being confronted on lack of diversity in their school, business, organization, ‘black people just need to earn it like the rest of us.’ Yeah, cause Obama was the first black man to ever be qualified to be President? Not even close.

Iliza, your experiences are a lot more limited than you realize. Ten years is nothing in comedy and you know that. It is a well-known adage in comedy that it takes 10 years just to find your voice. Getting to your level of success in 10 years thanks to Last Comic Standing (and yes, I and many female comics voted for you, and don’t regret it) is a fast track to the top, bypassing decades of work that other women have put in. Did you deserve that? Sure, why not? You deserve it as much as anyone. But, don’t pretend it didn’t come fast and relatively easy. Because of that, you haven’t worked in as many low level rooms as most of us, so your experience is limited mostly to comedy clubs. Comedy clubs rarely book women, even more rare to have two or more on a single show. All the years I was on the road, I was only in a comedy condo with another woman TWICE. The comedy clubs that do book women are not booking a representation of the best female comedy. Just like Justin Bieber being mega rich and famous is not a representation of the best in music. A more accurate comment would have been, ‘I walk into the Improv and they only book a few women and all the same kinds of female comics. Comedy clubs need more diversity.’

Iliza was right when she said that the “landscape of what’s available out there for women is not as extensive as it could be.” Therein lies the problem. But, you don’t begin by basing the state of female comedy on the “handful” of women you see around. For one thing, I know women who have been unbooked from shows with Iliza because her ‘people’ told them she doesn’t like to have too many women on a show (if those emails are false, she should take that up with her people). Also, most headliners, Iliza included (in my experience) don’t stay in the room and watch all the other comics. I am guilty of that, too. It’s easy to roll up in the club right before your set and leave the room right after. I mean, what comedian wants to watch every other comedian? But, that limits your ability to accurately report on the state of comedy. Because I produce so many events for female comics (and have to be in the room), I see hundreds of women perform yearly in open mics, standup shows, festivals, sketch groups, etc. By producing events like my yearly Women in Comedy Roundtable, I get to/choose to listen to women A LOT. Those women are trying to speak now, and we need to listen and really hear them.

Let’s also talk about smart comedy, low hanging fruit and using our comedy powers for good or evil. I have mutiple degrees, am extremely well-read and follow politics very closely. I don’t think I’m unusual. Most comics make it a point to have informed opinions. Iliza boasted that she’s the only female comic with a WWII joke. Well, she’s not. And, even if she were, what the fuck does that matter? I talk about politics, rape culture, feminism, homelessness, as well as marriage, kids, my Trump-supporting dad, and occasionally, will make a pussy reference if I goddamn feel like it. Men are never policed on their dirty joke subjects, on their ‘bad language’ so I will not be, either. All the hateful rape jokes men tell, and we are worried that a women said, ‘pussy,’ really?? And my pussy does not hang low, thank you very much.

Iilza, like every person you ever hear say women aren’t funny enough, is a victim of the Entertainment Industrial Complex. Art is not TV. If you see a limited number of women and those women all make similar jokes (all jokes that Iliza herself has made), you are not seeing a fair representation of women. You are seeing the ones that made it past the gatekeepers in one way or another. Perhaps they are funny, but perhaps they are also hot, don’t rock the boat, know their place or were in the right place at the right time and got lucky. I have always rocked the boat, never accepted their idea of my place and have never been hot. I do feel lucky because I make a living performing standup and writing jokes for other comics. And I can tell you that I am AMAZED by the state of female comedy. Absolutely flabbergasted at the depth and talent and wit of the incredible women I get to (because I make it a point to) work with weekly. Right after the festival, I was quoted as saying that the only way I was able to get through 14 shows in one week is because every women was not only hilarious, but SO DIFFERENT from each other. My husband, comedian Chris Oliver, said the same. We also book tons of men and, frankly, some of them run together in my mind. Sometimes I can’t remember who made which shitting my pants in traffic joke and which ones told which rape jokes. I mean, let’s face it, MOST COMEDY IS HORRIBLE. It is. It’s painful. But, a lot of those comics get better and wiser and more likeable. Some are given regular spots at the Comedy Store (by some, I mean men, of course) and have an opportunity to grow and reflect and change and improve.

Feminism is already “a thing,” and we are equal, no matter who acknowledges it. As feminists, we need to use our comedy powers for good, to help a sister out. Iliza mentioned hiring women on her show and as openers for her. That’s great. Honestly. It is. Does it make you Feminist of the Year? No. In that major public platform, Iliza was given a chance to be heard by more people than most comics, especially women, ever get. She did not widen the landscape for women, she relied on tired old easily-disproven stereotypes that will not elevate us a profession, but will serve to help keep us as second class citizens in comedy. That statement validated every person who thinks women aren’t funny enough. I mean a famous female comic said it, so it must be true.

There is nothing wrong with misspeaking. We all fuck up. But, after the shock and anger wears off, it’s time to take a real look at our own misconceptions and the role we play in the fight as a whole. And did anyone ever figure out what that “one point” about the vagina is?

22 notes · View notes

32flavasshoetique · 4 years

Text

Grounds You Need To Definitely Use Lubricant While Having Sex

Intercourse are great. So can be slide and glide. Shout-out to whichever wizard first recognized lubricant could merge the 2 for the many amazing way. “Lubricant is actually really an enjoyable topic,” Alyssa Dweck, M.D., associate medical teacher of obstetrics at Mount Sinai class of medication and co-author of V is actually for pussy, informs SELF. “I’m happy the forbidden of chatting as it used to be. about any of it isn’t because strong”

The forbidden she actually is mentioning to is caused by the stigma that often appear along side utilizing lube, as if you’re maybe maybe not literally or mentally enthusiastic about what is planning to drop. The fact is that even although you’re insanely switched on and would please prefer to have intercourse with this particular individual forever and actually amen, lubricant can make the experience still more fun. Rather than which means you’re “less of a lady” for dipping a bottom genitals into that share, it indicates you are motivated adequate to possess finest energy during sex feasible. Right right Here, reasoned explanations why you really need to please need lubricant once you desire while having sex.

“a female’s normal oiling is oftentimes a sign of arousal, the same manner erections were for males,” states Dweck. Just how your system will make it result try fairly cool. “During intimate pleasure, the blood vessels dilate so a lot a lot more flow that is blood into the vaginal region,” states Dweck. That blood dash encourages numerous glands that are vaginal mucous tissues to exude liquids which make gender convenient and much more satisfying both for public included.

Do not check this out in the event that you dislike with the time that is incredible sleep.

Parallels even though you are fired up, often it will require awhile for you to obtain from the page that is same your brain. That is entirely regular, so that it does not mean a unmarried bad most important factor of your, exactly how gorgeous you might be, or the appeal to whomever you’re sex with. “It is in contrast to a light change you become on / off,” claims Dweck. ” The nature that is physiological of ways normally it takes a while to become obviously lubricated.” That is why foreplay is oftentimes these an essential part of sex—it offers you time for you heated the engine up, as they say.

Often you are damp adequate to have time that is great you feel changing it. “Some ladies make use of a store-bought lube simply because they have actually problems with genital dryness, but some different ladies make use of lube only for a sensation that is new gender,” Sari Locker, Ph.D., sex teacher at Columbia institution and composer of The Complete Idiot’s help guide to eye-popping gender, informs PERSONAL.

That is why foreplay is normally such an part that is important of offers

There are many different the explanation why you might feel just like the pussy is not lubricating by itself sufficient. “a great amount of females has highest want, nevertheless they you shouldn’t lubricate whenever they would like for their cycle that is menstrual, or medicines,” states Locker. The capsule can reduce oiling as it alters the levels of estrogen to curb ovulation. “When that you do not ovulate, you exude reduced cervical mucous,” claims Dweck, which explains why menopausal as well as your pattern can impact lubrication nicely. She additionally notes that lots of sensitivity treatments operate by constricting the arteries, generally there’s much less of this genital that is necessary movement that issues into just exactly just how damp you can get. Luckily for us, utilizing lube tends to make like that reduced of a problem.

Fretting about their genitals are also dry to own sex that is good more or less going to backfire. ” utilizing a store-bought lube might help overcome anxiousness you’ve got about this,” states Locker. “with all the included lube, you’ll take enjoyment in the pleasure of entrance, along with your attention will soon be at convenience, also.” Plus, she contributes, your lover will end up being much less stressed about damaging you, which can be constantly great.

A good small little bit of lubricant may be adequate to enable you to get going. You will probably realize that you get more turned on, and your body handles the rest as you continue. “Thrusting could be more safe and enjoyable because of this,” says Dweck.

Once you accept the reality that lubricant can raise your own sex-life, putting it on is similar to clinging a “we have been going to use a severely fun time” signal above the figures. “Some lady get a hold of getting lubrication to their spouse or their unique companion placing it on it can raise her sexual enjoy,” states Dweck. It may be a way that is good create foreplay much more inventive, that may additionally create that area of the activity keep going longer. Win-win.

As soon as you accept the known proven fact that lubricant can enhance their love life

No reason to merely put it to use with another individual! Lubricant may be perfect for solamente gender. “Chances are you’ll desire version during self pleasure, specially if it is their just intimate socket,” states Locker. “Some girls attempt heating or tingling lubricant, and even put it to use with adult sex toys for masturbatory species,” she claims. generate like a scientist that is sexual test to your own center’s material.

Whether you are thinking about anal that is trying or currently have but desire so it can have another get, lubricant are an excellent element of which makes it profitable rather than terrifying. “The anal area will not self-lubricate how a pussy really does. For just about any rectal gamble or anal intercourse, lube is advised for satisfaction and safety,” states Locker.

In a variety of ways, he developed the video game, which confuses men and women even today. He recomguysds people to allow her people too miss them—but not much, while suggesting people to help make their own men jealous on occasion, to make sure they just do not develop lax nor idle. Into the room, Ovid details exactly exactly what type females should need, never to just optimize delight on their own, but in addition to really make it more enjoyable to your man’s look. Within one feel, he relocated from the notion of females as possession—as these people were equivalent users within the online game of love—while having said that, strengthening manipulative strategies keeping one’s fan consistently on their particular feet.

Though their words never ever smashed into vulgarity, it had been very direct within the information, and also in a question of poor time, triggered their exile by Augustus, who was simply however coping with the headlines of their daughter’s copulations.

Martial

Much like more psychological signals, surprise is based on the area between objectives and real life. Marcus Valerius Martialis, or Martial, was obviously a poet that is roman basic millennium, who was simply produced popular by their 12 e-books of epigrams. For this Martial’s epigrams are shocking due to their obscene, and oftentimes graphic, language day. If hardly anything otherwise, their unique vulgarity sheds light from the form of perform posted during the time.

Epigrams 7and 80 of publication III communicate vulgarity inside a structure that is distinct. Throughout these epigrams, insults were initially geared towards the subjects’ fictional character and are usually subsequently rerouted by insulting issues’ intimate “short-cummings.” In Epigram 79, Martial starts by announcing:

“Sertorius completes absolutely nothing, and starts every thing. As he fornicates, we don’t guess he completes.” Martial’s razor- razor- razor- sharp terms pivot this insult considerably pointedly at Sertorius’s intimate incapability. Also, Epigram 80 presents their topic with an even more common observance accompanied by a hyper-sexualized observance.

Apicius’s ability at dental sex.

“You talk of no body, Apicius, communicate sick mature porn site of no person, however rumor claims you have got a wicked language.” The latter angles the reader to the true central insult: Apicius’s skill at oral sex while the former could pose as a general remark to Apicius’s soft-spoken character. right Here, “evil” is much more most likely a phrase for “wild,” indicating that Apicius’s language trigger their partner that is sexual to regulation and tthe guyrefore he is skillful at providing mind. The direct quality for this code shows the amount of endurance classic society got during the time relating to intercourse.

Emma Marie are really a pupil, professional photographer, tourist, and licensed freediver.

from 32flavas https://ift.tt/33WuXLY via IFTTT

0 notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Nice writing but authenticity is overshawdowed when the author fails to mention he is yoked in marriage to a spouse who daily lifts up a person & administration determined to suck the very soul of this nation into a swirling drain of lies, corruption, racism for self-enrichment.

Please don't normalize #GeorgeConway. The Conways hope to come through this unscathed, but they share an agenda: lasting supremacy for conservatives. His via the stacking of the courts with hyper-partisan ideologues, hers via the obliteration of truth. They are playing us all.

Unfit for Office

Donald Trump’s narcissism makes it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.

George T. Conway III | Published October 3, 2019 5:00 AM ET | The Atlantic | Posted October 3, 2019 |

PART 1 OF 2

On a third-down play last season, the Washington Redskins quarterback Alex Smith stood in shotgun formation, five yards behind the line of scrimmage. As he called his signals, a Houston Texans cornerback, Kareem Jackson, suddenly sprinted forward from a position four yards behind the defensive line.

Jackson’s timing was perfect. The ball was snapped. The Texans’ left defensive end, J.J. Watt, sprinted to the outside, taking the Redskins’ right tackle with him. The defensive tackle on Watt’s right rushed to the inside, taking the offensive right guard with him. The result was a huge gap in the Redskins’ line, through which Jackson could run unblocked. He quickly sacked Smith, for a loss of 13 yards.

Special-teams players began taking the field for the punt. But Smith didn’t get up. He rolled flat onto his back, pulled off his helmet, and covered his face with his hands. He was clearly in excruciating pain. The slow-motion replay immediately showed the television audience why: As Smith was tackled, his right leg had buckled sharply above the ankle, with his foot rotating significantly away from any direction in which a human foot ought to point. The play-by-play announcer Greg Gumbel said grimly, “We’ll be back,” and the network abruptly cut to a break. There was nothing more to say.

Even without the benefit of medical training, and even without conducting a physical examination, viewers knew what had happened. They may not have known what the bones were called or what treatment would be required, but they knew more than enough, and they knew what really mattered: Smith had broken his leg, very badly. They knew that even if they were not orthopedists, did not have a medical degree, and had never cracked open a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. They could tell—they were certain—something was seriously wrong.

And so it is, or ought to be, with Donald Trump. You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental-health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump—particularly after nearly three years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. Questions about Trump’s psychological stability have mounted throughout his presidency. But those questions have been coming even more frequently amid a recent escalation in Trump’s bizarre behavior, as the pressures of his upcoming reelection campaign, a possibly deteriorating economy, and now a full-blown impeachment inquiry have mounted. And the questioners have included those who have worked most closely with him.

No president in recent memory—and likely no president ever—has prompted more discussion about his mental stability and connection with reality. Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly is said to have described him as “unhinged,” and “off the rails,” and to have called the White House “Crazytown” because of Trump’s unbalanced state. Trump’s former deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, once reportedly discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Constitution’s provision addressing presidential disability, including mental disability.

Rosenstein denies that claim, but it is not the only such account. A senior administration official, writing anonymously in The New York Times last September, described how, “given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment”—but “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.” And NBC News last week quoted someone familiar with current discussions in the White House warning that there is “increasing wariness that, as this impeachment inquiry drags out, the likelihood increases that the president could respond erratically and become ‘unmanageable.’” In September, a former White House official offered a similar assessment to a Business Insider reporter: “No one knows what to expect from him anymore,” because “his mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window. He’s losing his shit.”

Even a major investment bank has gotten into the mix, albeit in a roundabout way: JPMorgan Chase has created a “Volfefe Index”—named after Trump’s bizarre May 2017 “covfefe” tweet—designed to quantify the effect that Trump’s impulsive tweets have on interest-rate volatility. The bank’s press release understatedly observed that its “volatility fair value model” shows that “the president’s remarks on this social media platform [have] played a statistically significant role in elevating implied volatility.”

The president isn’t simply volatile and erratic, however—he’s also incapable of consistently telling the truth. Those who work closely with him, and who aren’t in denial, must deal with Trump’s lying about serious matters virtually every day. But as one former official put it, they “are used to the president saying things that aren’t true,” and have inured themselves to it. Trump’s own former communications director Anthony Scaramucci has on multiple occasions described Trump as a liar, once saying, “We … know he’s telling lies,” so “if you want me to say he’s a liar, I’m happy to say he’s a liar.” He went on to address Trump directly: “You should probably dial down the lying because you don’t need to … So dial that down, and you’ll be doing a lot better.”

That was good advice, but clearly wishful thinking. Trump simply can’t dial down the lying, or turn it off—even, his own attorneys suggest, when false statements may be punished as crimes. A lawyer who has represented him in business disputes once told me that Trump couldn’t sensibly be allowed to speak with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because Trump would “lie his ass off”—in effect, that Trump simply wasn’t capable of telling the truth, about anything, and that if he ever spoke to a prosecutor, he’d talk himself into jail.

Trump’s lawyers in the Russia investigation clearly agreed: As Bob Woodward recounts at length in his book Fear, members of Trump’s criminal-defense team fought both Trump and Mueller tooth and nail to keep Trump from being interviewed by the Office of Special Counsel. A practice testimonial session ended with Trump spouting wild, baseless assertions in a rage. Woodward quotes Trump’s outside counsel John Dowd as saying that Trump “just made something up” in response to one question. “That’s his nature.” Woodward also recounts Dowd’s thinking when he argued to Trump that the president was “not really capable” of answering Mueller’s questions face to face. Dowd had “to dress it up as much as possible, to say, it’s not your fault … He could not say what he knew was true: ‘You’re a fucking liar.’ That was the problem.” (Dowd disputes this account.) Which raises the question: If Trump can’t tell the truth even when it counts most, with legal jeopardy on the line and lawyers there to help prepare him, is he able to apprehend the truth at all?

Behavior like this is unusual, a point that journalists across the political spectrum have made. “This is not normal,” Megan McArdle wrote in late August. “And I don’t mean that as in, ‘Trump is violating the shibboleths of the Washington establishment.’ I mean that as in, ‘This is not normal for a functioning adult.’” James Fallows observed, also in August, that Trump is having “episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting,” and that if he “were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role.”

Trump’s erratic behavior has long been the subject of political criticism, late-night-television jokes, and even speculation about whether it’s part of some incomprehensible, multidimensional strategic game. But it’s relevant to whether he’s fit for the office he holds. Simply put, Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires. To see why first requires a look at what the Constitution demands of a president, and then an examination of how Trump’s behavioral characteristics preclude his ability to fulfill those demands.

The Framers of the Constitution expected the presidency to be occupied by special individuals, selfless people of the highest character and ability. They intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body, not the largely ceremonial institution it has become today. Because the Electoral College, unlike Congress and the state legislatures, wouldn’t be a permanent body, and because it involved diffuse selections made in the various states, they hoped it would help avoid “cabal, intrigue and corruption,” as Alexander Hamilton put it in “Federalist No. 68,” and deter interference from “these most deadly adversaries of republican government,” especially “from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”

Though the Constitution’s drafters could hardly have foreseen how the system would evolve, they certainly knew the kind of person they wanted it to produce. “The process of election affords a moral certainty,” Hamilton wrote, “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” might suffice for someone to be elected to the governorship of a state, but not the presidency. Election would “require other talents, and a different kind of merit,” to gain “the esteem and confidence of the whole Union,” or enough of it to win the presidency. As a result, there would be “a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.” This was the Framers’ goal in designing the system that would make “the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided."

Hamilton’s use of the word trust in The Federalist Papers to describe the presidency was no accident. The Framers intended that the president “be like a fiduciary, who must pursue the public interest in good faith republican fashion rather than pursuing his self-interest, and who must diligently and steadily execute Congress’s commands,” as a recent Harvard Law Review article puts it. The concept is akin to the law of private fiduciaries, which governs trustees of trusts and directors and officers of corporations, an area that has been central to my legal practice as a corporate litigator. “Indeed,” as the Harvard Law Review article explains, “one might argue that what presents to us as private fiduciary law today had some of its genesis in the law of public officeholding.” The overarching principle is that a fiduciary—say, the CEO of a corporation—when acting on behalf of a corporation, has to act in the corporation’s best interests. Likewise, a trustee of a trust must use the assets for the benefit of the beneficiary, and not himself (a fundamental rule, incidentally, that Trump apparently couldn’t adhere to with his own charitable foundation).

In providing for a national chief executive, the Framers incorporated the very similar law of public officeholding into his duties in two places in the Constitution—in Article II, Section 3 (the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”), and in Article II, Section 1, Clause 8, which requires the president to “solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.” That language—particularly the words faithfully execute—was in 1787 “very commonly associated with the performance of public and private offices,” the Harvard Law Review article points out, and “anyone experienced in law or government” at that time would have recognized what it meant, “because it was so basic to … the law of executive officeholding.” In a nutshell, while carrying out his official duties, a president has to put the country, not himself, first; he must faithfully follow and enforce the law; and he must act with the utmost care in doing all that.

But can Trump do all that? Does his personality allow him to? Answering those questions doesn’t require mental-health expertise, nor does it really require a diagnosis. You can make the argument for Trump’s unfitness without assessing his mental health: Like James Fallows, for example, you could just ask whether Trump would have been allowed to retain any other job in light of his bizarre conduct. At the same time, the presence of a mental disorder or disturbance doesn’t necessarily translate to incapacity; to suggest otherwise would unfairly stigmatize tens of millions of Americans. Someone battling a serious psychological ailment can unquestionably function well, and even nobly, in high public office—including as president. The country, in fact, has seen it: Abraham Lincoln endured “no mere case of the blues”; he suffered such “terrible melancholly,” said one of his contemporaries, that “he never dare[d] carry a knife in his pocket.” Many historians speculate that he suffered from what we would now diagnose as clinical depression. Yet Lincoln’s mechanisms for coping with his lifelong affliction may have supplied him with the vision, the creativity, and the moral fortitude to save the nation, to achieve for it a new birth of freedom. As a writer in this magazine once put it: Lincoln’s “political vision drew power from personal experience … Prepared for defeat, and even for humiliation, he insisted on seeing the truth of both his personal circumstances and the national condition. And where the optimists of his time would fail, he would succeed, envisioning and articulating a durable idea of free society.”

More than a diagnosis, what truly matters, as Lincoln’s case shows, is the president’s behavioral characteristics and personality traits. And understanding how people behave and think is not the sole province of professionals; we all do it every day, with family members, co-workers, and others. Nevertheless, how the mental-health community goes about categorizing those characteristics and traits can provide helpful guidance to laypeople by structuring our thinking about them.

And that’s where the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders comes into play. The DSM, now in its fifth edition, “contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders,” and serves as the country’s “authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders.” What’s useful for nonprofessionals is that, for the most part, it’s written in plain English, and its criteria consist largely of observable behaviors—words and actions.

That’s especially true of its criteria for personality disorders—they don’t require a person to lie on a couch and confess his or her innermost thoughts. They turn on how a person behaves in the wild, so to speak. If anything, a patient’s confessions in an office may disadvantage a clinician, because patients can and do conceal from clinicians central aspects of their true selves. If you can observe people going about their everyday business, you’ll know a lot more about how they act and behave.

And Donald Trump, as president of the United States, is probably the most observable and observed person in the world. I’ve personally met and spoken with him only a few times, but anyone who knows him will tell you that Trump, in a way, has no facade: What you see of him publicly is what you get all the time, although you may get more of it in private. Any intelligent person who watches Trump closely on television, and pays careful attention to his words on Twitter and in the press, should be able to tell you as much about his behavior as a mental-health professional could.

One scholarly paper has suggested that accounts of a person’s behavior from laypeople who observe him might be more accurate than information from a clinical interview, and that this is especially true when considering two personality disorders in particular—what the DSM calls narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. These two disorders just happen to be the ones that have most commonly been ascribed to Trump by mental-health professionals over the past four years. Of these two disorders, the more commonly discussed when it comes to Trump is narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD—pathological narcissism. It’s also more important in considering Trump’s fitness for office, because it touches directly upon whether Trump has the capacity to put anyone’s interests—including the country’s and the Constitution’s—above his own.

Narcissus, the Greek mythological figure, was a boy who fell so in love with his own reflection in a pool of water that, according to one version of the story, he jumped in and drowned. Psychiatrists and psychologists now use the term narcissism to describe feelings of self-importance and self-love. As Craig Malkin, a clinical psychologist who has written extensively on the subject, has explained, narcissism is a trait that, to some extent, all human beings have: “the drive to feel special, to stand out from … other[s] … to feel exceptional or unique.”

A certain amount of narcissism is healthy, and helpful—it brings with it confidence, optimism, and boldness. Someone with more than an average amount of narcissism may be called a narcissist. Many politicians, and many celebrities, could be considered narcissists; presidents seem especially likely to “rank high in extroverted narcissism,” Malkin writes, although they have varied greatly in the degree of their narcissism. But extreme narcissism can be pathological, an illness—and potentially a danger, as it was for Narcissus. “Pathological narcissism begins when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them,” Malkin says.

The “fundamental life goal” of an extreme narcissist “is to promote the greatness of the self, for all to see,” the psychologist Dan P. McAdams wrote in The Atlantic. To many mental-health professionals, Donald Trump provides a perfect example of such extreme, pathological narcissism: One clinical psychologist told Vanity Fair that he considers Trump such a “classic” pathological narcissist that he is actually “archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example” of the characteristics of the disorder he displays. “Otherwise,” this clinician explained, “I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.” Another clinical psychologist said that Trump displays “textbook narcissistic personality disorder.”

Not everyone agrees that Trump meets the diagnostic criteria for NPD. Allen Frances, a psychiatrist who helped write the disorder’s entry in the DSM, has argued that a mental “disturbance” becomes a “disorder” only when, as the DSM puts it, the affliction “causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” The idea behind this threshold is to separate “mild forms” of problems from pathological ones, “in the absence of clear biological markers or clinically useful measurements of severity for many mental disorders.”

In Frances’s view, that dividing line disqualifies Trump from having a disorder, particularly NPD. Trump “may be a world-class narcissist,” he has written, “but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder. Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy.”

But from the perspective of the public at large, the debate over whether Trump meets the clinical diagnostic criteria for NPD—or whether psychiatrists can and should answer that question without directly examining him—is beside the point. The goal of a diagnosis is to help a clinician guide treatment. The question facing the public is very different: Does the president of the United States exhibit a consistent pattern of behavior that suggests he is incapable of properly discharging the duties of his office?

Even Trump’s own allies recognize the degree of his narcissism. When he launched racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, Senator Lindsey Graham explained, “That’s just the way he is. It’s more narcissism than anything else.” So, too, do skeptics of assigning a clinical diagnosis. “No one is denying,” Frances told Rolling Stone, “that he is as narcissistic an individual as one is ever likely to encounter.” The president’s exceptional narcissism is his defining characteristic—and understanding that is crucial to evaluating his fitness for office.

The DSM-5 describes its conception of pathological narcissism this way: “The essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.” The manual sets out nine diagnostic criteria that are indicative of the disorder, but only five of the nine need be present for a diagnosis of NPD to be made. Here are the nine:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration.

5. Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).

6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends)

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

These criteria are accompanied by explanatory notes that seem relevant here: “Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with narcissistic personality disorder very sensitive to ‘injury’ from criticism or defeat.” And “criticism may haunt these individuals and may leave them feeling humiliated, degraded, hollow and empty. They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack.” The manual warns, moreover, that “interpersonal relations are typically impaired because of problems derived from entitlement, the need for admiration, and the relative disregard for the sensitivities of others.” And, the DSM-5 adds, “though overweening ambition and confidence may lead to high achievement, performance may be disrupted because of intolerance of criticism or defeat.”

The diagnostic criteria offer a useful framework for understanding the most remarkable features of Donald Trump’s personality, and of his presidency. (1) Exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements? (2) Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance? (3) Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and should only associate with other special or high-status people? That’s Trump, to a T. As Trump himself might put it, he exaggerates accomplishments better than anyone. In July, he described himself in a tweet as “so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” (Exclamation point his, of course.) That “stable genius” self-description is one that Trump has repeated over and over again—even though he has trouble with spelling, doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an apostrophe, doesn’t appear to understand fractions, needs basic geography lessons, speaks at the level of a fourth grader, and engages in “serial misuse of public language” and “cannot write sentences,” and even though members of his own administration have variously considered him to be a “moron,” an “idiot,” a “dope,” “dumb as shit,” and a person with the intelligence of a “kindergartener” or a “fifth or sixth grader” or an “11-year-old child.”

Trump wants everyone to know: He’s “the super genius of all time,” one of “the smartest people anywhere in the world.” Not only that, but he considers himself a hero of sorts. He avoided military service, yet claims he would have run, unarmed, into a school during a mass shooting. Speaking to a group of emergency medical workers who had lost friends and colleagues on 9/11, he claimed, falsely, to have “spent a lot of time down there with you,” while generously allowing that “I’m not considering myself a first responder.” He has spoken, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not, about awarding himself the Medal of Honor.

Trump claims to be an expert—the world’s greatest—in anything and everything. As one video mash-up shows, Trump has at various times claimed—in all seriousness—that no one knows more than he does about: taxes, income, construction, campaign finance, drones, technology, infrastructure, work visas, the Islamic State, “things” generally, environmental-impact statements, Facebook, renewable energy, polls, courts, steelworkers, golf, banks, trade, nuclear weapons, tax law, lawsuits, currency devaluation, money, “the system,” debt, and politicians. Trump described his admission as a transfer student into Wharton’s undergraduate program as “super genius stuff,” even though he didn’t strike the admissions officer who approved his candidacy as a “genius,” let alone a “super genius”; Trump claimed to have “heard I was first in my class” at Wharton, despite the fact that his name didn’t appear on the dean’s list there, or in the commencement program’s list of graduates receiving honors. And Trump, through an invented spokesman, even lied his way onto the Forbes 400.

(4) Requires excessive admiration? Last Thanksgiving, Trump was asked what he was most thankful for. His answer: himself, of course. A number of years ago, he made a video for Forbes in which he interviewed two of his children. The interview topic: how great they thought Donald Trump was. When his own father died, in 1999, Trump gave one of the eulogies. As Alan Marcus, a former Trump adviser, recounted the story to Timothy O’Brien, he began “more or less like this: ‘I was in my Trump Tower apartment reading about how I was having the greatest year in my career in The New York Times when the security desk called to say my brother Robert was coming upstairs’”—an introductory line that provoked “‘an audible gasp’ from mourners stunned by Trump’s self-regard.” According to a Rolling Stone article, other eulogists spoke about the deceased, but Trump “used the time to talk about his own accomplishments and to make it clear that, in his mind, his father’s best achievement was producing him, Donald.” The author of a book about the Trump family described the funeral as one that “wasn’t about Fred Trump,” but rather “was an opportunity to do some brand burnishing by Donald, for Donald. Throughout his remarks, the first-person singular pronouns—I and me and mine—far outnumbered he and his. Even at his own father’s funeral, Donald Trump couldn’t cede the limelight.”

And he still can’t. Here’s a man who holds rallies with no elections in sight, so that he can bask in his supporters’ cheers; even when elections are near, and he’s supposed to be helping other candidates, he consistently keeps the focus on himself. He loves to watch replays of himself at the rallies, and “luxuriates in the moments he believes are evidence of his brilliance.” In July, after his controversial, publicly funded, campaign-style Independence Day celebration, Trump tweeted, “Our Country is the envy of the World. Thank you, Mr. President!” In February 2017, Trump was given a private tour of the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture, and paused in front of an exhibit on the Dutch role in the slave trade. He turned to the museum’s director and said, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”

(5) A sense of entitlement? (9) Arrogant, haughty behaviors? Trump is the man who, on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything you want”—including grabbing women by their genitals. He’s the man who also once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” (8) Envious of others? Here’s a man so unable to stand the praise received by a respected war hero and statesman, Senator John McCain, that he has continued to attack McCain months after McCain’s death; his jealousy led White House staff to direct the Pentagon to keep a destroyer called the USS John S. McCain out of Trump’s line of sight during a presidential visit to an American naval base in Japan. And Trump, despite being president, still seems envious of President Barack Obama. (6) Interpersonally exploitative? Just watch the Access Hollywood tape, or ask any of the hundreds of contractors and employees Trump the businessman allegedly stiffed, or speak with any of the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, or rape. (Trump has denied all their claims.)

Finally, (7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others? One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy. By empathy, psychologists and psychiatrists mean the ability to understand or relate to what someone else is experiencing—the capacity to envision someone else’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.

The notorious lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who once counseled Trump, said that “Donald pisses ice water,” and indeed, examples of Trump’s utter lack of normal human empathy abound. Trump himself has told the story of a charity ball—an “incredible ball”—he once held at Mar-a-Lago for the Red Cross. “So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died … His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.” By his own account, Trump’s concern wasn’t the poor man’s well-being or his wife’s. It was the bloody mess on his expensive floor. “You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red … I said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away.” Trump describes himself as saying, after the injured man was hauled away on a makeshift stretcher, “‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say is he okay … It’s just not my thing.”

And then there was 9/11. Trump gave an extraordinary call-in interview to a metropolitan–New York television station just hours after the Twin Towers collapsed. He was asked whether one of his downtown buildings, 40 Wall Street, had suffered any damage. Trump’s immediate response was to brag about the building’s brand-new ranking among New York skyscrapers: “40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it’s the tallest.” (This wasn’t even true—a building a block away from Trump’s, 70 Pine Street, was a little taller.)

That human empathy isn’t Trump’s thing has been demonstrated time and again during his presidency as well. In October 2017, he reportedly told the widow of a serviceman killed in action “something to the effect that ‘he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway.’” (Trump later claimed that this account was “fabricated … Sad!” and that “I have proof,” but of course he never produced any.) On a less macabre note, on Christmas Eve last year, Trump took calls on NORAD’s Santa Tracker phone line, which children call to find out where Santa Claus is as he makes his rounds. Trump asked a 7-year-old girl from South Carolina: “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?”

According to Woodward’s Fear, when Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, resigned, he found out about his replacement when he saw a tweet from Trump saying that he had appointed John Kelly as the new chief of staff—moments after Priebus and Trump had spoken about waiting to announce the news. Kelly was appalled, and that night apologetically told Priebus, “I’d never do this to you. I’d never been offered this job until the tweet came out. I would have told you.” His predecessor, though, wasn’t surprised. “It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood … ‘The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.’”

Priebus apparently isn’t the only White House staffer to have learned this; in February 2018, when Trump met with survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and their loved ones, his communications aide actually gave him a note card that made clear that “the president needed to be reminded to show compassion and understanding to traumatized survivors,” as The New York Times put it. The empathy cheat sheet contained a reminder to say such things as “I hear you.” One aide to President Obama told the Times that had she and her colleagues given their boss such a reminder card, “he would have looked at us like we were crazy people.”

Most recently, in July of this year, in a stunning scene captured on video, Trump met in the Oval Office with the human-rights activist Nadia Murad, a Yazidi Iraqi who had been captured, raped, and tortured by the Islamic State, and had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for speaking out about the plight of the Yazidis and other victims of genocide and religious persecution. Her voice breaking, she implored the president of the United States to help her people return safely to Iraq. Trump could barely look her in the eye. She told him that ISIS had murdered her mother and six brothers. Trump, apparently not paying much attention, asked, “Where are they now?” “They killed them,” she said once again. “They are in the mass grave in Sinjar, and I’m still fighting just to live in safety.” Trump, who has publicly said that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, seemed interested in the conversation only at the end, when he asked Murad about why she won the prize.

Another equally unforgettable video documents Trump visiting Puerto Rico shortly after Hurricane Maria, tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd of victims. He later responded vindictively to charges that his administration hadn’t done enough to help the island, prompting the mayor of San Juan to observe that Trump had “augmented” Puerto Rico’s “devastating human crisis … because he made it about himself, not about saving our lives,” and because “when expected to show empathy he showed disdain and lack of respect.”

In October 2018, a gunman burst into Shabbat morning services at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and sprayed worshippers with semiautomatic-rifle and pistol fire. Eleven people died. Three days later, the president and first lady visited the community, and the day after that, the first thing Trump tweeted about the visit was this: “Melania and I were treated very nicely yesterday in Pittsburgh. The Office of the President was shown great respect on a very sad & solemn day. We were treated so warmly. Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away. The Fake News stories were just the opposite—Disgraceful!” Similarly, after gunmen killed dozens in the span of a single August weekend in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, Trump went on a one-day sympathy tour that was marked by attacks on his hosts and on political enemies, and an obsessive focus on himself.

What kind of human being, let alone politician, would engage in such unempathetic, self-centered behavior while memorializing such horrible tragedies? Only the most narcissistic person imaginable—or a person whose narcissism would be difficult to imagine if we hadn’t seen it ourselves. The evidence of Trump’s narcissism is overwhelming—indeed, it would be a gargantuan task to try to marshal all of it, especially as it mounts each and every day.

Yet pathological narcissism is not the only personality disorder that Trump’s behavior clearly indicates. A second disorder also frequently ascribed to Trump by professionals is sociopathy—what the DSM-5 calls antisocial personality disorder. As described by Lance Dodes, a former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, “sociopathy is among the most severe mental disturbances.” Central to sociopathy is a complete lack of empathy—along with “an absence of guilt.” Sociopaths engage in “intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification. People with sociopathic traits have a flaw in the basic nature of human beings … They are lacking an essential part of being human.” For its part, the DSM-5 states that the “essential feature of antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

The question of whether Trump can serve as a national fiduciary turns more on his narcissistic tendencies than his sociopathic ones, but Trump’s sociopathic characteristics sufficiently intertwine with his narcissistic ones that they deserve mention here. These include, to quote the DSM-5, “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others.” Trump’s deceitfulness—his lying—has become the stuff of legend; journalists track his “false and misleading claims” as president by the thousands upon thousands. Aliases? For years, Trump would call journalists while posing as imaginary PR men, “John Barron” and “John Miller,” so that he could plant false stories about being wealthy, brilliant, and sexually accomplished. Trump was, and remains, a con artist: Think of Trump University, which even Trump’s own employees described as a scam (and which sparked a lawsuit that resulted in a $25 million settlement, although with no admission of wrongdoing). There’s ACN, an alleged Ponzi scheme Trump promoted, and from which he made millions (he, his company, and his family deny the allegations of fraud); and the border wall that hasn’t been built and that Mexico’s never going to pay for. Trump is a pathological liar if ever there was one.

Other criteria for antisocial personality disorder include “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest”; “impulsivity or failure to plan ahead”; and “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.” Check, check, and check: As for social norms and lawful behaviors, there are all the accusations of sexual misconduct. Also relevant is what the Mueller report says about Trump’s efforts to derail the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election. And given what federal prosecutors in New York said about his role in directing hush money to be paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels, a strong case can be made that Trump has committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice and criminal violations of campaign-finance laws. Were he not president, and were it not for two Justice Department opinions holding that a sitting president cannot be indicted, he might well be facing criminal charges now.

As for impulsivity, that essentially describes what gets him into trouble most: It was his “impulsiveness—actually, total recklessness”—that came close to destroying him in the 1980s. In “response to his surging celebrity,” Trump, “acquisitive to the point of recklessness,” engaged in “a series of manic, ill-advised ventures” that “nearly did him in,” Politico reported. His impulsiveness has buffeted his presidency as well: Think of his first ordering, then calling off, the bombing of Iran in June, and his aborted meeting with the Taliban at Camp David just last month. And remember the racist tweets he sent in mid-July in which he told four nonwhite representatives—three of whom were born in the United States—to “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from.” Those tweets were apparently triggered by something he saw on TV.

Or consider his impetuous, unvetted personnel decisions, such as his failed selection of Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, as Veterans Affairs secretary, and his choice of Representative John Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence. It was just so on The Apprentice, where editors and producers found that “Trump was frequently unprepared” for tapings, and frequently fired strong contestants “on a whim,” which required them “to ‘reverse engineer’ the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage … in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense.” One editor remarked that he found “it strangely validating that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.” Trump sees none of this as a problem; to the contrary, he prides himself on following his instincts, once telling an interviewer: “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody’s brain can ever tell me.”

And lack of remorse? That’s a hallmark of sociopathy, and goes hand in hand with a lack of human conscience. In a narcissistic sociopath, it’s intertwined with a lack of empathy. Trump hardly ever shows remorse, or apologizes, for anything. The one exception: With his presidential candidacy on the line in early October 2016, Trump expressed regret for the Access Hollywood video. But within weeks, almost as soon as the campaign was over, Trump began claiming, to multiple people, that the video may have been doctored—a preposterous lie, especially since he had acknowledged that the voice was his, others had confirmed this as well, and there was no evidence of tampering. “We don’t think that was my voice,” he said to a senator. The “we,” no doubt, was a lie as well.

Again, as with his narcissism, all this evidence of Trump’s sociopathy only begins to tell the tale. The bottom line is that this is a man who, over and over and over again, has indifferently mused about the possibility of killing 10 million or so people in Afghanistan to end the war there, while allowing that “I’m not looking to kill 10 million people”—as though this were a realistic but merely less preferred option than, say, raising import tariffs on chewing gum. As a 1997 profile of Trump in The New Yorker put it, Trump has “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”

In a way, Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are simply an extension of his extreme narcissism. Take the pathological lying. Extreme narcissists aren’t necessarily pathological liars, but they can be, and when they are, the lying supports the narcissism. As Lance Dodes has put it, “People like Donald Trump who have severe narcissistic disturbances can’t tolerate being criticized, so the more they are challenged in this essential way, the more out of control they become.” In particular, “They change reality to suit themselves in their own mind.” Although Trump “lies because of his sociopathic tendencies,” telling falsehoods to fool others, Dodes argues, he also lies to himself, to protect himself from narcissistic injury. And so Donald Trump has lied about his net worth, the size of the crowd at his inauguration, and supposed voter fraud in the 2016 election.

The latter kind of lying, Dodes says, “is in a way more serious,” because it can indicate “a loose grip on reality”—and it may well tell us where Trump is headed in the face of impeachment hearings. Lying to prevent narcissistic injury can metastasize to a more significant loss of touch with reality. As Craig Malkin puts it, when pathological narcissists “can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special,” and they “can lose touch with reality in subtle ways that become extremely dangerous over time.” They can become “dangerously psychotic,” and “it’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”

Experts haven’t suggested that Trump is psychotic, but many have contended that his narcissism and sociopathy are so inordinate that he fits the bill for “malignant narcissism.” Malignant narcissism isn’t recognized as an official diagnosis; it’s a descriptive term coined by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and expanded upon by another psychoanalyst, Otto Kernberg, to refer to an extreme mix of narcissism and sociopathy, with a degree of paranoia and sadism mixed in. One psychoanalyst explains that “the malignant narcissist is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioural regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.” In the view of some in the mental-health community, such as John Gartner, Trump “exhibits all four” components of malignant narcissism: “narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism.”

Mental-health professionals have raised a variety of other concerns about Trump’s mental state; the last worth specifically mentioning here is the possibility that, apart from any personality disorder, he may be suffering cognitive decline. This is a serious matter: Trump seems to be continually slurring words, and recently misread teleprompters to say that the Continental Army secured airports during the American Revolutionary War, and to say that the shooting in Dayton had occurred in Toledo. His overall level of articulateness today doesn’t come close to what he exhibits in decades-old television clips. But that could be caused by ordinary age-related decline, stress, or other factors; to know whether something else is going on, according to experts, would require a full neuropsychological work-up, of the kind that Trump hasn’t yet had and, one supposes, isn’t about to agree to.

But even that doesn’t exhaust all the mental-health issues possibly indicated by Trump’s behavior. His “mental state,” according to Justin A. Frank, a former clinical professor of psychiatry and physician who wrote a book about Trump’s psychology, “include[s] so many psychic afflictions” that a “working knowledge of psychiatric disorders is essential to understanding Trump.” Indeed, as Gartner puts it: “There are a lot of things wrong with him—and, together, they are a scary witch’s brew.”

This is a lot to digest. It would take entire books to catalog all of Trump’s behavioral abnormalities and try to explain them—some of which have already been written. But when you line up what the Framers expected of a president with all that we know about Donald Trump, his unfitness becomes obvious. The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust. To borrow from the Harvard Law Review article, can he follow the “proscriptions against profit, bad faith, and self-dealing,” manifest “a strong concern about avoiding ultra vires action” (that is, action exceeding the president’s legal authority), and maintain “a duty of diligence and carefulness”? Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.

To act as a fiduciary requires you to put someone else’s interests above your own, and Trump’s personality makes it impossible for him to do that. No president before him, at least in recent memory, has ever displayed such obsessive self-regard. For Trump, Trump always comes first. He places his interests over everyone else’s—including those of the nation whose laws he swore to faithfully execute. That’s not consistent with the duties of the president, whether considered from the standpoint of constitutional law or psychology.

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

0 notes

jillmckenzie1 · 5 years

Text

Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Hearing the right song at the right moment can be life-changing. It can put the love of your life into hyper-focus, pull you back from the abyss, and give you the confidence to stand up to someone twice your size. The right song can feel like it was written just for you, yet millions of people can relate to it.

Those kinds of songs are not easy to create, much less perform in a way that feels heartfelt. Elton John has been in the business of creating precisely those kinds of songs for decades. Fine, maybe his stuff isn’t necessarily for you, but whether you like his music or not is almost irrelevant. John and his work have permeated our culture so deeply that it’s become iconic, omnipresent.

It’s not only his music, but it’s also John himself that contributed to the myth-making. The man has performed thousands of concerts in scores of countries wearing some wild-ass outfits. He’s consumed gallons of alcohol and ingested a galaxy of drugs. He’s proudly out despite having struggled with his sexuality for decades. My dude has done a lot.

That all means that, sooner or later, somebody would make an Elton John biopic. Not just because he led a technicolor life in drab, grey times, but also because movies about rock stars make frickin’ bank. Last year’s Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t very good and still made over $800 million at the box office. Should we expect Rocketman, the new film about Elton John, to be a similar financial juggernaut? Probably not, but pound for pound, it’s a better film.

There’s a somewhat clever notion of introducing us to Elton John (Taron Egerton) as he storms off the stage in a spangly devil costume, marches imperiously down a hallway…and enters an AA meeting. It’s here that he’ll regale us about his life and times.* We see the sub-optimal childhood of Reginald Dwight (Kit Connor and Matthew Illesley). His father Stanley (Steven MacIntosh) is distant and seems to have close to zero interest in him. His mother Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) isn’t much better, and she deals with the bitterness of her life through promiscuity and sarcasm.

As much as that all sucks, young Reggie has a few things going for him. The first is that he has the ability to intuitively understand music and copy it on the piano. The second is his grandmother Ivy (Gemma Jones) who believes in him. She encourages him to apply to the Royal Academy of Music. The third is, as a young man, his meeting with budding songwriter Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell).

Taupin’s lyrics are clever and emotional, and Reggie puts his nearly mystical ability to work in creating musical arrangements. Their partnership is fruitful. So much so that Reggie’s career starts to explode. Perhaps realizing that the masses aren’t going to rapturously chant, “WE WANT REGINALD DWIGHT,” Reggie changes his name to…drum roll…Elton John.

From there, we see Elton play his legendary show at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. Spinning headlines and glittery montages show us Elton sprinting up the charts. He earns gold records, buys lots of stuff, and descends further into drug use. Will his new manager John Reid (Richard Madden) provide him with the love and acceptance he craves? Oh, absolutely not. Can he pull himself out of the abyss in time? Obviously, he’s still alive!

Ready to play the Rock Star Biopic Drinking Game? Take a drink when (insert rock star) demonstrates preternatural musical skill during childhood! Take a drink when (insert rock star) has their big break! Take a drink when (insert rock star) inhales a mountain of cocaine and acts obnoxious! Take a drink when (insert rock star) is told by their friend/lover/spouse/manager/bandmate that, “Maybe you need to slow down.” On second thought, don’t play that game during Rocketman, because if you do, you’ll die.

I used to think that audiences would immediately see through the pandering checking of boxes in so many music biopics and respond with scorn. I’ve since learned two things. First, by and large, audiences don’t care, since they’re showing up to tap their feet along to the greatest hits. That’s why they call it a “jukebox musical,” right? Second, maybe that’s okay if the biopic in question is made with at least a bit of creativity.

Director Dexter Fletcher had a couple of well-played opportunities recently. The first was developing a positive professional relationship with Taron Egerton in 2015’s Eddie the Eagle. The second was saving Bohemian Rhapsody after the firing of disgraced filmmaker Bryan Singer. Together, those got Fletcher the job directing Rocketman. He’s made a great-looking film filled with eye-popping costumes and lush sets. On the one hand, Dexter wisely chose to make a good chunk of the movie a musical, and the moments where the cast spontaneously breaks into song and dance are daring. Additionally, an R-rating allows Dexter to be more open about John’s life and sexuality.**

On the other hand? For every moment where an entire fairground sings “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” we have three or four moments that seem to be playing my beloved Rock Star Biopic Drinking Game. I know that, as a critic, I’m only supposed to review what’s on the screen and not pine for what could have been. But when Fletcher makes a film that lurches between a strong union of filmmaking and music, then awkwardly downshifts to a narrative that’s annoyingly predictable, I’m gonna be a little wistful for what might have been. Could you imagine a full Elton John musical? I can, and that’s a little tragic.

Speaking of music, you’ll remember that Bohemian Rhapsody concluded with Queen’s triumphant live performance at Live Aid, and that decision served to propel the audience out on a high note. Here, the film somewhat obviously ends with “I’m Still Standing.” It’s a pretty good song, but admit it — it’s not your favorite Elton John song. Rocketman needs to end powerfully, instead of merely satisfactorily. Besides, as my wife put it, “I’m Still Standing” isn’t even as good as “Benny and the Jets,” for God’s sake.

The screenplay by Lee Hall doesn’t help much. Much like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman requires exactly zero heavy lifting from the audience. Over and over, the film hammers us with the point that Elton’s self-destructive tendencies come from a desire to be loved and gain approval. That’s fine, and from a psychological approach, that’s probably quite accurate. But instead of spoon-feeding the audience, why couldn’t the script display more sophistication? There’s even a scene during Elton’s AA session that’s so obnoxiously obvious, it took a certain kind of demented courage to make it in the first place. As I’ve said before, and to steal an appropriate line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the subtext has become text.

You’re probably wondering how the cast manages with such a weird fusion. For the most part, they’re solid. Let’s first talk about Bryce Dallas Howard as Sheila. Howard is a genuinely talented performer, and I’ve seen her do good work, particularly in the lovely Pete’s Dragon. I’m telling you that because she’s extremely miscast here. God knows she tries, but her dodgy English accent and distracting performance don’t do her any favors.

However, she and everyone else is overshadowed by Taron Egerton’s explosive performance. I know, Egerton doesn’t quite look like or sound like Elton John. However, he captures the essence of the man, the brassy confidence used as a shield, the temper tantrums, the moments of artistic genius. It also helps that Egerton did all of his own singing and dancing, and whether he’s pounding away at the piano or quietly walking through a party while singing, he’s magnetic.

As far as I can tell, Rocketman is going to be a success. Since fewer people than ever are physically going to the movies, I’ll take it as a good thing that a quality non-franchise film aimed at adults is doing well. Rocketman is a solidly good film, but Elton John has lived a life of gigantic peaks and valleys. He deserves a film that compliments his life.

*I desperately wanted one of the other members of the AA group to be pissed off that they didn’t get a chance to talk about their problems.

**Unsurprisingly, that artistic honesty isn’t going over well with everybody. You can read more here about Russia censoring five minutes of the movie due to “homosexual propaganda.”

from Blog https://ondenver.com/dont-let-the-sun-go-down-on-me/

0 notes

presuninoc-blog · 5 years

Text

Top ten dating sites free

11 Best Free Dating Site Options (2019) They say we are looking for people who are like us. Most members belong to the 18- 34 age range. The site promises that it can help you make real connections. We know our strengths and talents. It will let the systems find your likely match and would also help them suggest things to improve your relationship or dating style.

Top Ten Free Online Dating Sites If you go to a field trip mountain climbing club or a yoga meditation boot camp you will know what I mean! We would also like to note the subjective nature of this list! To me this is false advertising. These sites require court the only person to create his own report and pay the membership fee. Top Ten Dating Sites There are many free websites completely black dating to help you out there to see that the black singles online without paying any dollar. So this site is free but you will have greater success if you activate superpowers. Before joining any quality dating site please check the sign of the terms and conditions.

11 Best Free Dating Site Options (2019) We are not only looking for free adult dating websites but we want to give you the ones that bring results. Wherever there are a lot of people, your chances of finding a date will just get better. The website offers a fun way to connect and find your date. To help our readers who are looking for a place to find hookups and dates here is our top 10 free personals sites like craigslist list with a review. Go ahead and take a t the ads from your area and you might find someone looking for fun. In addition to wine search filters, Wine Dating Club also offers age, location, and sexual orientation search filters. This combined with enthusiasm will definitely help you find your perfect date.

Top 10 Online Dating Sites Just take some time to talk and connect with girls around you. Craft beer lovers and Bud Light fans alike are welcome on Beer Passions, a dating site that also likes to think of itself as a social network. Once you have signed up, visit their active chat rooms and start connecting. If they never return your message, then it was probably a legit ad. This means that we will disregard Facebook despite its obvious appeal. It allows you to connect with a lot of members and interact with them. I believe I have made a true connection.

11 Best Free Dating Site Options (2019) We will review each suggestion and make the necessary update to this post. We value what you our readers think use the comment or contact us to let us know what free personals sites like craigslist you want us to include in this list. Some are looking for casual hookups while others are using personals sites for the prospect of serious relationships and marriage. . There may be some truth to that old adage. Canadian single men seeking women at these free dating services are hungry for a companion.

Top 10 Online Dating Sites Everybody is different, your personal view will depend on your location and intent. Next, you can invite them to dinner or vice versa. You and your match could even make it a group event by inviting other users. There are a lot of ads looking for women to met men and men looking for women. What I like about this website is the ability to chat with interest focus groups.

Top Ten Dating Sites The website loads fast and the mobile version or apps are great too. Badoo offers a platform which is a combination of social network and free dating website. Now backpage has done away with their adult ads section as well. So be careful about what you put into your profile. You can find a lot of connections here but the majority of them are not into adult stuff. There are thousands of singles joining in every day with thousands of them online and hooking up. All you have to do to join is provide a screen name, password, email, first and last name, gender, date of birth, and profile headline, among other things.

Top Ten Dating Sites Some of the members are looking for long-term or serious relationships. Am I the only one finding these issues to be a problem. Just find your state, city and go to personals. You can also post your ad and wait for girls to contact you. It allows you to search for singles in every area. An online dating site to connect with someone who best fits your personality and needs, and the success rate in dating is probably higher than if you are physically approached someone in a club.

11 Best Free Dating Site Options (2019) Real people with similar interests… a beautiful site! Here you will find posts categorize into men looking for women, women looking men, and other casual encounter interests. Take a few moments to answer Pof chemistry test. Top 10 Free Personals Sites Like Craigslist with Review It took us time to come up with the list as there are many factors to consider. Please take note that most of the websites listed here are free to join and use. It lets you interact with friends and help you make new ones. The place is centered into dating and making connections. This will include looking into the number of membership, the ratio between male and female members, website popularity, and success date or hookup rate.

#11 #Best #Free #Dating #Site #Options #(2019)

0 notes

nancygduarteus · 5 years

Text

Can We Touch?

Tiffany Field has spent decades trying to get people to touch each other more.

It started with premature babies, when she found that basic human touch led them to quickly gain weight. An initial small study, published in the journal Pediatrics in 1986, showed that just 10 days of “body stroking and passive movements of the limbs” for less than an hour led babies to grow 47 percent faster. They average fewer days in the hospital and accrued $3,000 less in medical bills. The effect has been replicated multiple times.

Field, a developmental psychologist by training, went on to found the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She was a pioneer in highlighting the effects of “touch deprivation” among kids, famously those in orphanages. She explained to me that the effects are pervasive, influencing so many bodily systems that kids are diagnosed with “failure to thrive,” resulting in permanent physical and cognitive impairment, smaller stature, and social withdrawal later in life—which often includes aversion to physical contact.

Physical touch doesn’t make adults larger, but its pervasive effects are still coming to light. Field has published similar findings about the benefits of touch in full-term infants, and then children and pregnant women, adults with chronic pain, and people in retirement homes. Studies that involved as little as 15 daily minutes found that touch alone, even devoid of the other supportive qualities it usually signifies, seems to have myriad benefits.

The hug, specifically, has been repeatedly linked to good health. In a more recent study that made headlines about hugs helping the immune system, researchers led by the psychologist Sheldon Cohen at Carnegie Mellon University isolated 400 people in a hotel and exposed them to a cold virus. People who supportive social interactions had fewer and less severe symptoms. Physical touch (specifically hugging) seemed to account for about a third of that effect. (The researchers conclude: “These data suggest that hugging may act as an effective means of conveying support.”) Cohen and his colleagues continued to show other health benefits of physical contact, like a 2018 reveal in the journal PLOS titled “Receiving a Hug Is Associated With the Attenuation of Negative Mood That Occurs on Days With Interpersonal Conflict.”

Part of the reason this research didn’t happen sooner is that it was seen as extremely obvious. Yet even as evidence of the importance of physical touch has piled up, the world has been moving in the opposite direction. “You don’t see people touching each other anymore, in large part because they’re all on their phones and iPads and computers,” says Field. “It’s very disturbing to see parents doing less touching of kids, if they’re just sitting there on screens.”

The dissonance of people benefiting from touch but doing less of it is only made more confusing by statements like Joe Biden’s. In a video posted to his Twitter account last week, a response to widespread concerns about excessive hugging and incidents of hair sniffing and the like during his time as vice president, the likely 2020 presidential candidate said he had no intention of making anyone uncomfortable. He then pivoted to claim that people are less open to being touched: “Social norms have begun to change. They’ve shifted, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it, I get it. I hear what they’re saying. I understand it.”

The explanation raises the question: Are boundaries changing? (And does Biden get it?)

The research is clear on that fact that people both need and react well to physical touch—in controlled environments. There is no evidence that people like to be touched any less than in previous generations, only that negatively received touch is more openly vocalized. What’s new is that people who didn’t appreciate being touched in previous decades, or who were always made uncomfortable by it—especially from people in positions of power—are empowered to process the fact that it’s not something they need to put up with. There are platforms to speak up, channels for recourse, and supportive listeners to cushion the blowback.

“There is a lot of research on how touch is hierarchical, and males can touch females but not vice versa,” Field says, noting that caretakers in nursing homes tend to touch female residents much more than males, and the latter are at higher risk of touch deprivation. “I think some of that is reflected in what’s going on, where people are seeing the hierarchical aspect of the touch and not the supportive aspect.”

Attributing situations like Biden’s to an overall change in people’s willingness to be touched is a sweeping claim that stands to make a physically isolated culture even more so. As we get more isolated, Field argues, we need platonic touch more than ever, even if we don’t realize it. There is a vicious cycle there, where the less people initiate, the more abnormal it seems when someone does, and the more likely it is to be upsetting. “I think Biden’s got it right that it’s generally good to show physical affection as a way of supporting people,” says Field—with the caveat that any touch is imbued with meaning, and every person brings different histories to their responses.

So how should a person go about touching?

It’s not that there are new, mysterious rules that are constantly changing, Field says. There have always been limits of acceptability. The key to practicing touch well is to appreciate the emotional power—which is the basis of all the positive effects and, so, the basis of much potential for negativity. If anything, knowing that people bring a history of emotional experiences to each new touch can inform better, healthier interactions.

The phenomenon of reacting to touch is often described as an autonomous pathway, which it technically is: Receptors in the skin detect pressure and temperature and movement, and these signals shoot up the spinal cord and into the brain, which adjusts its chemical output accordingly. That the emotional responses become physical in predictable patterns suggests that our bodies evolved to respond favorably to touch—or at least, to miss out on benefits when we are physically isolated. MRI scans show physical touch activating areas of the cerebral cortex, and other studies show decreased heart rate, blood pressure, and the stress-related hormone cortisol. Massage therapy has proven effective for depression, and neurotransmitters that modulate pain are stimulated by touch.

It’s like all the things we’re promised in bottles of dietary supplements and luxury serums is right there in one act which can be costless and readily available.

But even for all the benefits show in research, it’s not so simple as to say that hugs are good or hugging is healthy. If it were, we’d all have hug robots that we’d hug all the time. Some of us would get addicted. Some would die of dehydration in the arms of the machine. Even people who have no memory of being touched can be affected by it. A hand on the shoulder, one study found, made subject more likely to agree to a request. Though the firing of synapses in the skin that fly up to the brain is an automated process, it’s modulated by other inputs. The exact same touch would likely be received differently from a person who is smiling versus a person who is laughing maniacally.

The simplistic message that personal boundaries are being redrawn is a missed opportunity to think about how touch is supposed to work. This doesn’t need to draw on some idea of political correctness; it’s right there in the studies. None of the touch studies involved unwanted, unexpected, or unpredictable touch. For example, Field did a study to see if the effects of massage therapy were different in people who had and had not experienced past sexual abuse, and there was no apparent difference—both groups saw similar benefits. But this should not be expected to apply to the way both groups would react if a man on the subway initiated a shoulder massage.

The unwanted hug is an act on a spectrum of submission that produces neurochemical responses similar to any other violation of autonomy, from having a credit card number stolen to feeling your car lose traction on a highway. A perceived absence of control becomes a spilling of neurotransmitters from the brain into the blood. If there’s a boundary being redrawn, it’s around people’s ability to continue to make others feel that. The benefits of a hug evaporate when a person perceives it as aggression. The trove of pro-touch research involves consenting volunteers and professional researchers in controlled scenarios where the interaction isn’t loaded with potential for escalation, or imbued with subtext or meaning based on prior interactions. In the real world, the exact same touch might cause blood pressure and heart rate to increase, and stress hormones to surge.

If it can be said that touch has medicinal properties, then, like any medicine, touch is not good for everyone in every situation. To play the metaphor out: appropriate dosages vary, and any particular responses are dependent on what’s already going on with that person. This is why many doctors start medications at low doses and monitor responses closely. If it’s well received, the doctor can titrate dosing up and, over time, be less vigilant about monitoring for adverse reactions.

The analogy of course isn’t perfect, but experts in platonic touch advise the same: Start with small gestures. Some people may recoil at a touch on the shoulder; others will reach back and touch yours. It is not some mysterious code that should scare people into simply never trying to touch anyone—but it is a code predicated entirely on power dynamics. Just because a person is not actively pushing someone else away does not mean that touch is well received. Active reciprocity may be the surest sign, though even that is imperfect.

If the current lexicon of physical touch feels too loaded with meaning, there is also room for innovation. Americans largely practice one of two types of hug: the full-body press that’s generally reserved for close relationships, or the “A frame” type bending at the back, partially twisting, and barely even touching. There are many ways to deviate from the hug canon in less awkward and potentially even fun ways, Field notes, citing a book of hugs numbering over 300 in type—written by someone named “Dr. Hug,” whose credentials I can’t verify. “We’re getting a lot of calls about cuddling groups,” Field says with some degree of marvel, “which I think is related to a decline in touch not just among strangers, but even among intimate couples.”

In his statement last week, Biden went on to say that he is always seeking out “human connection” because “life is about connecting to people.” This is difficult to disagree with, but it carries the implicit qualifier that life is about connecting with people in meaningful, mutually beneficial ways. People always have and always will find meaning in life via positive connection, and there is all the more reason to consider the role of physical touch in that.

Field is already hearing from men who have told her that after “this Biden episode” they believe they need to wait for women to initiate physical contact, if there is to be any. “I do think men need to be more careful. Which can be unfortunate for genuinely affectionate people,” Field says. “And if women want to be touched, then it may be that they’re going to have to initiate.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/on-touch/586588/?utm_source=feed

0 notes

ionecoffman · 5 years

Text

Can We Touch?

Tiffany Field has spent decades trying to get people to touch each other more.

The explanation raises the question: Are boundaries changing? (And does Biden get it?)

So how should a person go about touching?

It’s like all the things we’re promised in bottles of dietary supplements and luxury serums is right there in one act which can be costless and readily available.

Article source here:The Atlantic

0 notes

samuelpboswell · 5 years

Text

Q1’s a Wrap, B2B Marketers: Where We’ve Been & What’s Next in 2019

We made it, B2B marketers. Spring is finally in the air and Quarter 1 is officially a wrap. Take a moment to bask in your individual, team, and business successes—you earned it. As is tradition, in just a few short months the digital marketing industry has experienced some newsworthy shifts—from a big Google algorithm update in March to a host of new targeting and advertising features across several platforms. To build on the Q1 successes we just celebrated—and take full advantage of new opportunities—let’s take a look back at what 2019 has gifted us so far. What’s new and worth paying attention to? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? And what do we all need to keep in mind as we move into and beyond Q2? Let’s dive in.

The Digital Marketing Sights and Sounds of Q1

When It Comes to Digital Marketing Spend …

CMOs are continuing to diversify their budgets to adapt to new trends, take advantage of opportunities, and overcome challenges. According to Forrester, CMOs will spend nearly $150 billion by 2023 on search marketing, banner and outstream advertising, instream advertising, and email marketing in the United States. However:

Paid search is expected to lose share to shopping and voice search;

Programmatic banner buys will retrench;

Television innovation will likely drive more instream growth;

And email will “woo B2B adopters.”

Should you do a complete overhaul on your budget allocations? No. But it’s worth taking a deeper look at the market conditions (e.g. increasing use of home assistants) that are driving these trends—and looking at your historical performance data to see if you can find opportunities or correlations with rising trends.

via GIPHY What Else?

As the B2B buyer’s journey becomes increasingly similar to that of its B2C counterpart, the B2B e-commerce market is expanding rapidly—and expected to reach $1.8 trillion in 2023. (Demand Gen Report)

B2B brands are feeling the pressure to take a stand on values, as a new study reveals that 8 in 10 business leaders would end a business relationship based on the vendor’s failure to address high-stakes communications like data security. (Marketing Dive)

When It Comes to Search Marketing …

While Google always draws plenty of news coverage, it’s recent core update was a big attention grabber. According to Search Engine Journal, it was “one of the biggest updates in years,” focusing not on any particular signal or niche, but to make overall improvements. In addition, mobile continues to be an area worthy of marketers’ attention for a couple reasons: Mobile web traffic is dominating the search landscape, with Google releasing its first mobile-first indexing update last year and indicating that mobile-first will be an ongoing focus. As a result, this should be an ongoing focus in Q2 and beyond. Beyond the search implications, mobile is essential to connecting and creating amazing experiences. In fact, according to a new Adobe* survey of 1,000 adult smartphone owners:

89% of respondents agreed strongly that they need a device while on the go, while one-fifth of respondents said that they cannot live without their devices.

50% of respondents said the ad offers they receive are just “OK.”

Less than 20% of respondents said the offers they receive are relevant.

The takeaway? Creating quality experiences—across platforms and devices—is only growing in importance, even for B2B marketers. This is not a passing fad, it’s the new era of business. [bctt tweet="Creating quality experiences—across platforms and devices—is only growing in importance, even for B2B marketers. @CaitlinMBurgess" username="toprank"] What Else?

Updates to Google My Business now gives business owners the opportunity to share service areas and information via Google Maps and Search. (Google)

In addition, business owners can now respond to reviews via Google Maps on desktop. (Search Engine Roundtable)

Bing began piloting Custom Audiences, which would enable marketers to remarket customized messages to each customer segment (Search Engine Land)

Nielsen and Google announced a new partnership for mobile ad measurement. (Fast Company)

When It Comes to Content Marketing …

Content is the beating heart of digital marketing strategies. And Backlinko, with the help of their data partner BuzzSumo, recently analyzed 912 million blog posts to understand the current state of content marketing. Some interesting findings include:

Long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short articles.

When it comes to social shares, longer content outperforms short blog posts. However, for articles that exceed 2,000 words, return diminishes.

Question headlines get 23.3% more social shares than headlines that don’t end with a question mark.

“Why” and “what” posts, as well as infographics, received 25.8% more links compared to videos and “How-to” posts.

For us, this reinforces the core principle of our approach to content marketing: Striving to be the best answer. Your customers, prospects, and target audience are searching for answers—the best answers. They want in-depth, relevant content that makes it easy for them to gain insight and make decisions. This requires a thoughtful narrative, not just all the words. This should be top-of-mind for all marketers moving forward. [bctt tweet="Your customers, prospects, and target audience are searching for answers—the best answers. This requires a thoughtful narrative, not just all the words. @CaitlinMBurgess" username="toprank"] Read more on this topic:

How a Best Answer Content Strategy Drives B2B Marketing Results

Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long Form or Short Form?

What Else?

The 2019 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study is out. It’s findings? Thought leadership content influencers the majority of buyers, but only if it’s done right. (Edelman)

When It Comes to Social Media …

We predicted that 2019 would bring a new age of “Stories-telling” on social media. Simply put, Facebook Stories for Pages and Instagram Stories have offered brands a new medium and style for reaching their audience. And some cool stuff happened on this front in Q1. Most notably, Facebook confirmed in mid-March that it was testing a new feature that would let Pages archive and share Stories. Why is this a big deal? Because it would allow users to help expand the organic reach of a brand’s content beyond its followers, according to Search Engine Land. And in a time when organic reach and engagement on social is dwindling for brands, it’s worth considering whether the Stories format fits in with your business and marketing objectives, your audience, and so on. Read more on this topic:

What You Need to Know About Instagram Stories for B2B Marketing

The Future of Connection on Facebook: How Stories May Change the Marketing Game

What Else?

LinkedIn* launched its live video platform in January, giving organizations the ability to broadcast in real-time to select groups or the LinkedIn community at large. (TechCrunch)

Facebook announced that it would be updating its ad reporting, replacing its singular relevancy score with three new metrics: Quality ranking, engagement rate ranking, and conversion rate ranking. (Search Engine Journal)

Twitter announced it was developing new tools to make it easier for publishers to understand what type of content is resonating with their readers. (TechCrunch)

To avoid data privacy issues and get paid for its data, Twitter announced that it will start requiring app developers to submit their app for review if that app calls recent tweets or mentions a user more than 100,000 times per day. (TechCrunch)

LinkedIn announced a new partnership with Adobe to improve ad targeting. (Social Media Today)

When It Comes to Influencer Marketing …

Adoption of B2B influencer marketing continued to rise in Q1. From enhancing trust and credibility to reaching new audiences, more B2B brands are beginning to understand the many benefits of forming mutually beneficial partnerships with influential voices. Just last month, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden outlined five B2B influencer marketing trends marketers need to pay attention to:

Micro and Macro Influencers. A lot of marketing press has emphasized micro or even “nano” influencers over celebrities. There’s merit to that. But successful programs map the right “big and small” influencers to the right content within the buying journey.

Centralizing Influencer Operations. Disparate processes and lack of coordination can create real problems. But centralizing influencer marketing operations can create opportunities across organizations.

Always-On Influencer Engagement. Early on, many B2B brands are campaign-focused when working with influencers. But more advanced marketers and brands are focused on developing relationships and fostering advocacy with influencer partners on an ongoing basis.

Focus on Quality vs. Quantity Metrics. From influencer identification to brand vs. popularity, there’s a big shift happening in the way qualitative metrics are used.

Influencer Marketing Software Investment. As organizations begin to implement influencer marketing initiatives across departments and businesses, coordination in identification, engagement, and measurement needs to be a priority. And specialized platforms can help.

What Else?

According to Buffer’s State of Social 2019 report, 37% of survey respondents—marketers from across a wide range of industries—say their business has invested in influencer marketing. And 68% say their investment has been “somewhat” or “very” effective. (Buffer)

When It Comes to The TopRank Marketing Team …

We’ve been busy. And without going into too much detail, here’s just a quick recap of some of the team’s highlights:

Lee continued his speaking adventures all around the real and digital world including: a live webinar with BuzzSumo on best answer content for B2B, a presentation on creating experiences with interactive influencer content at inOrbit 2019 in Slovenia and B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, AZ, and more.

Senior Director of Digital Strategy Ashley Zeckman and Account Manager Jane Bartel teamed up to share how the team deployed an always-on influencer marketing program for a “leading social networking site for professionals.”

We kept our live blogging skills sharp at B2B Marketing Exchange and Social Media Marketing World 2019.

Our agency was featured in Forrester’s B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report—which to our absolute delight, called out our experience in B2B influencer marketing.

We also added a special new member to our team: Laser Bear. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMHSu-SYo8E[/embed] Get to know him more by checking out Lee’s post dedicated to “Breaking Free of Boring B2B."

Bye-Bye, Q1. Hello and Welcome, Q2.

To recap our recap, here are some core things to keep in mind as you move into Q2 and beyond:

As innovation accelerates and preferences changes, budgets are shifting. Don’t set and forget. Always be looking for opportunities to refine and optimize.

Mobile-first is the new mantra for improving performance and experiences.

Best-answer content will continue to rule as buyers continue to guide their own search for solutions and inspiration.

Social offerings are evolving in a way that benefits B2B brands. But before you jump in, do your due diligence to ensure you’re making an informed and strategic bet.

As more B2B brands adopt influencer marketing, sophistication is growing (and so is the competition).

B2B marketers, we wish you all the best in Q2 and beyond. Keep up with the latest industry news, trends, and opportunities by tuning in each week for our Digital Marketing News Roundup, with highlights and video commentary from Tiffani Allen and Joshua Nite. *Disclosure: LinkedIn and Adobe are TopRank Marketing clients.

The post Q1’s a Wrap, B2B Marketers: Where We’ve Been & What’s Next in 2019 appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2019/04/digital-marketing-2019-q1-recap/

0 notes