#this one was a draft though next one should be the official redesign

[inonna]

pretty pink picture

#artists on tumblr #oc art #pixel art #vera orwell #slightly shifting her design to make it more clear what bird she is #this one was a draft though next one should be the official redesign

[a-happy-little-cactus]

Midnight Cuddles

Summary: You can’t sleep, so you go to your friend Bakugou for help, though it’s a bit more than what you were expecting.

Word Count: 1,571

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

A/N: Hey ya’ll! I haven’t posted in a really, really, really long time, but here ya go! Let me know what you think! (Also, I’ve been meaning to write this for a very long time, but never got around to it. Super happy I finally did!)

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As much as you loved it here at UA, it had officially screwed you up.

Within a few days, you have somehow managed to go from great eating habits and sleep schedule to living off Bang, Monster energy drinks, and black coffee while getting somewhere around 2 and a half hours of sleep.

With midterms starting in a few days, for both normal and hero classes, your sense of self-preservation seemed to have taken a nice long vacation. Between studying and training, self-care was pretty much one of the last things you were worried about at this point.

As of now, you were looking aimlessly between your computer and your notes, debating how many questions you could miss on this test without absolutely failing. Hearing a sudden knock at your door jolted you back to reality, though it took you a minute to register what was going on.

“(Y/N)! I know you’re still awake in there! Let me in for a minute!” 

Usually it wasn’t weird for your best friend Mina to want to have random midnight talks, so this wasn’t too out of the ordinary. Pushing yourself out of your chair and taking a swig of your coffee, you walked to the door, careful not to run into anything on your way over, since you had forgotten to turn on the light even after the sun went down.

“Hey Mina,” you said tiredly.

“Hey girl, I-” Mina paused, glancing behind you at your room, which was currently being illuminated solely by your computer screen, as well as the mess that was currently occupying your desk.

“Uh, is everything okay?” she asked.

“Hm? Oh, yeah it’s all-” you stop, having to yawn, before plopping yourself down on the bed- “It’s all good. Just a bit of studying.” 

“Okay, girl, what cup number is that?” Mina asked, gesturing to the coffee cup sitting amongst the many other empty cans.

“Honestly, I’ve stopped counting,” you replied, laughing tiredly.

Mina rolled her eyes, walking over and grabbing the cup of coffee, despite your objections, “Look, you’re going to sleep. This can wait until tomorrow. Besides, Aizawa’s not gonna be too happy if you pass out in the middle of his class.”

“Ughh fine, I’ll go to bed,” you said, accepting that that was probably the most you were going to be able to cram for tonight.

“Good. Well, good night (y/n)!” Mina half shouted from down the hall, in somewhat of an attempt to not wake up everyone else.

“Night!” you yelled back, forcing yourself up from off the bed to get ready to go to sleep.

~time skip~

Despite being unbelievably tired, it had been about 30 minutes since you had finished getting ready for tomorrow morning and laid down, yet you had been completely unable to fall asleep.

‘Stupid caffeinated drinks’ 

You cursed yourself internally for drinking so much coffee. Frustrated, you thought about your options:

You could sneak out downstairs to the common area, but if Aizawa-Sensei happened to be down there, you’d definitely be in trouble.

You could try to cram some more, but you had a feeling if you looked at your Chem. notes one more time you would actually die.

Lastly, you contemplated doing something completely and utterly stupid and irrational: Asking to crash in one of your classmates’ rooms. 

You didn’t know why, but for whatever reason, you found it a lot easier to fall asleep with others near by. Usually this wouldn’t be a problem, since none of the girls really ever minded having an unplanned sleepover. However, considering the fact that it was just over one in the morning, and class started in five hours, you guessed they were all probably asleep. 

You thought about asking one of your guy friends, but Kiri slept like, well, a rock, and wouldn’t wake up without a blaring alarm. You would ask Kaminari, but he was probably still gaming, and it’s not too easy to fall asleep with him yelling at his console in the background. Sero would be a good choice, but he was at a family gathering, and wouldn’t be back until next week. Considering you didn’t really feel comfortable asking the other guys in your class, that left you with one other choice: Bakugou.

While yes, usually Katsuki did go to bed earlier than everyone else, like you, midterms had screwed that up. Even though he was still doing well in class, you had actually bumped into him during a 2am snack run a few days ago, so you guessed it wasn’t too far off to say there’s a chance he might still be awake. Even if he did end up telling you to screw off, it was at least worth trying.

Walking through the boy’s dorm hall, you noticed that you were indeed correct, as even while passing his dorm you could hear Kaminari shouting. What intrigued you though, was seeing the light peeking out from the doorframe of Katsuki’s room.

Knocking, you called for him, “Katsuki, I know you’re at least awake, can you open up?”

After about a minute of silence, the door to his room swung open, and you had a rather irritated looking Bakugou staring you down, the draft flowing from his room making you shiver.

He was wearing a black hoodie with sweats, and had a pair of glasses on, which made you notice the pile of notes, costume redesigns, and other sheets of paper scattered across his desk.

“What do you want dumbass, it’s late, and I’m busy,” he said.

“Uh- Oh right! Um, so, I was uh-” you stuttered out, trying to figure out how to word your sentence, which was proving difficult with the combination of his glare and your tiredness.

“Get to the point extra-” he warned.

“Look, can I sleep in your room tonight?” you asked.

His eyes widened, before regaining his irritated composure.

“How come? You got a room, don’t you?”

“Well, I can’t sleep,” you admitted, though that part was obvious.

“And what makes you think sleeping in my room is gonna change that?” he asked.

You looked away, before answering in a quieter voice, “It’s just, well, it’s just easier for me to sleep when other people are around.”

“Can’t you ask one of your other friends?”

“No, they’re all sleeping, and I don’t want to wake them up,” you replied.

After a moment, he sighed, before opening the door all the way and stepping aside to let you in.

“Fine. But you owe me,” he said.

To that, you lit up, nearly knocking him over with a hug, “Oh my gosh thank you so much! And yeah, that’s fair.”

Katsuki froze, before pushing away from you, averting your gaze.

“Whatever, just don’t bother me,” he said.

“Okay, that’s fine. Do you have any extra pillow’s I can borrow? I’d sleep directly on the ground, but it is hardwood, so I don’t think my skull would particularly like that,” you asked, taking in the rest of his room, which was really just a bed, dresser, and some more miscellaneous papers scattered across the room.

“Why the hell would I have extras, I’m not Mina. And don’t sleep on the floor dumbass, you’re going to wake up with bad back and neck pain, and you’re not going to be able to be at your best for when I beat your ass tomorrow,” he said.

Realizing what he had said, you felt the heat rise to your cheeks.

‘Just use his bed? But then, is he meaning he wants us to share?’

 The more you thought about it, the more you blushed, so you put the thought away, and made your way into the bed. Thankfully, he only had his desk light on, so you faced the wall to deciding you should be able to sleep just fine like this. 

“Oi, scoot over. You’re hogging the bed,” you hear after a few minutes.

‘Wait, what?’

You turned around to face him, confused, but he only gestured for you to move.

Blushing slightly, and glad he had turned the light off, you comply, giving him room to slip into the bed.

“Um, I uh, I thought you were working?” you ask, glad that the two of you were currently facing opposite directions, though it didn’t really help with your nerves.

“I was working. But it’s two in the morning, and I guess your dumbass reminded me to go to bed,” he said, chuckling lightly at the end. 

“Oh.”

After a few minutes of silence between the two of you, you felt the draft of his room again, even with the covers. You had known he kept his room cold, but this was just stupidly cold.

“Hey Katsuki?” you called weakly, in case he had already fallen asleep.

“Hm,”

“It’s really cold, do you have any extra blankets, or could you like, change the AC settings?” you ask.

After a moment, you felt him shifting behind you, before feeling him put his arm around you, his body pressed against yours, and sending warmth back towards you.

You couldn’t do anything other than sit there, a blushing mess, and yet again unbelievably grateful that he couldn’t see your face. 

“Better?” he asked.

“I-um, uh, yeah,” you stutter out, covering your face with one of your hands, making him laugh.

“Good,” he said, sounding a bit proud of himself for his job well done.

That night, despite everything, you two slept better than you had in a very long time.

#bnha x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugou fluff #bnha #katsuki bakugou #mina ashido #bnha imagines #bnha fluff

[jarienn972]

The Right Place - Chapter 13

Minor fail on my part here.  I thought I had already posted this to bring the chapters posted on Tumblr current with those on FF.net and AO3, but in the midst of working on my CSLB draft, I forgot to actually post it.  I’ve got the next chapter in the works though and hope to have it up very soon!

From the beginning on Tumblr: Prologue/1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12

Wednesday afternoon, Portland Medical Center

Four o'clock couldn't arrive fast enough as both Emma and Killian tried to speculate on what Haviland may have discovered while digging through records at City Hall. More potential ideas had of course crossed her mind than his but then she knew the workings of this world far better than he did – not that he was a stranger to the probabilities of fraud, greed and deceit being at play here. Of all of them, he had the most unique perspective in evaluating Donleavy's motives but he wasn't about to let their Portland colleagues know precisely where that insight came from. There was certainly an element of piracy to Donleavy's tactics in his pursuit of his eventual goal – whatever that might be. They were just missing that final piece.

The pirate was also quite insistent that he wouldn't be spending this collaborative session laying in that hospital bed, preferring to sit in the chair instead so he wouldn't be viewed as an invalid. In truth, he would rather they met anywhere but this room, but at least here they had a measure of privacy and that was a far bigger priority. As far as he was concerned, he had spent more than enough time staring at these alabaster walls. He wanted a glimpse of the sea – wanted to return to the deck of his ship, but he'd conceded only because there was still much work to do and at least his attentions remained occupied.

Not surprisingly, McCallen was the first to arrive, exhausted but nonetheless determined. This was his first major case and a little sleep deprivation wasn't about to deter him. He'd catch a nap later if necessary but he was extremely anxious to find out what this bit of new information might be. As he approached the entrance to the room, the young deputy knocked politely on the doorframe before entering even though Emma had left the door open.

"Okay to come in, Sheriff?" he asked while awaiting permission to enter.

"C'mon in, McCallen," Emma replied with a subtle shake of her head. "We're just sitting here running theories of what Sgt. Haviland might have turned up." The deputy accepted her invitation and stepped into the room to find Emma seated atop the bed with her legs crossed in front of her. A tiny smile slithered across his lips when he spied the man whose bruised, battered and comatose body he'd photographed for evidence just days ago now seated in the bedside chair, barely recognizable from the John Doe he'd been tasked to identify. Save for the black eye that was just beginning to yellow around the edges, McCallen saw little of that nameless victim anymore – just a fellow deputy who'd adapted to a disability as he himself had been forced to.

A fellow deputy who had no intention of being viewed as the victim any longer – and McCallen had nothing but respect for that decision.

"Thanks," McCallen responded as he shrugged off his weathered olive suede bomber jacket. "Sgt. Haviland texted me that he's on his way. I guess we should have given him your number too."

"Good idea," Emma agreed. "I'll have to remember to do that before he leaves today. Did he give you any idea of what he might have found?"

"Not a clue. He just mentioned he'd uncovered something interesting," the deputy replied. "Let me go find another chair before he gets here though." He tossed his jacket onto the chair by the window before heading back out into the hallway in search of a chair he could borrow from another area, managing to return before Haviland arrived with a wooden chair proffered from a presently unoccupied room next door. He positioned that chair in front of the closet before taking a seat in what had been Henry's preferred spot next to the window – close enough to be fully involved in the conversation yet far enough away so he didn't feel as though he were imposing. He was well aware that he was the least experienced investigator so he was more than willing to allow the others to take center stage.

"Sheriff Jones?" Haviland's voice called tentatively from the doorway as though unsure he had the correct room despite the armed deputy seated just to his right in the corridor. "Ah - looks like I've found the right place," he said when he spotted Deputy McCallen seated opposite where he stood.

"You have," Emma spoke up, turning to see the Portland PD sergeant as he entered the room. "Why don't you shut that door behind you so we can start comparing notes? I'm guessing you must have found something big?"

"You could say that," Haviland replied as he pushed the door closed and made his way past the bed toward the empty chair McCallen had brought for him, but before he took a seat, he paused to introduce himself to Killian. "Mr. Jones," I'm John Haviland. I was originally assigned to investigate the robbery at Scott's Mart where I of course saw you on the security video. From what I could see of it, you handled that situation like an absolute pro and I'm quite glad I could finally meet you – especially considering all of the circumstances involved here. I just apologize that on that day when my officers were investigating the robbery, we didn't know just how far the crime actually extended."

"Don't think there was really any way you could have known the half of it – at least until I managed to get myself dragged into this," Killian stated, "and they clearly didn't expect me to survive…"

"No – pretty sure they didn't," Haviland replied. "Guess you were lucky in that respect."

"It's a damned good thing those fishermen came along when they did," Killian said, using the official story that the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department had documented, not about to divulge the finer details of his rescue. "Anyway - enough about that. We know we're all convened here this afternoon to learn what you've uncovered, not further discuss my rescue."

"Indeed, we are," Haviland responded with a knowing grin, not at all surprised to learn that Killian Jones was every bit as tenacious and entirely down to business as his wife. He pivoted to his left, contemplating taking the offered seat for a second before choosing to remain standing. "In truth, I have a couple of items to share. I spent most of the day over at City Hall looking over public record documents related to the ferry terminal project. That whole project is fairly straightforward – city wants to modernize and streamline the facility. The bid process to build the new terminal is sealed so there wasn't any way to learn what each company submitted, but according to one of my sources, Leviant definitely looks to be the front-runner."

"So - what might this ferry project have to do with Leviant Construction attempting to purchase properties further north along the harbor? Is there an additional expansion project planned as well?" Killian asked. He might not know a great deal about real estate but he understood the acquisition game.

"Honestly – hardly anything," the sergeant responded. "The new terminal is being built adjacent to the existing one on land they already own. It's the same exact location so the properties up around Ms. Scott's store shouldn't be affected – at least not by the ferry project…"

"What do you mean 'not by the ferry project'?" Emma wondered. "Is there something else going on besides rebuilding the terminal?"

"There might be…," was Haviland's cryptic reply - which only stirred up more confusion.

"Might be? What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?" an irritated Killian queried.

"Nothing has been officially announced yet but it seems as though the city is looking into redesigning the roads serving the terminal and the north harbor area in an attempt to give commuters easier access to downtown and the freeways," Haviland began. "Rumor has it that they're wanting to build a connector that would loop straight out of the harbor and feed into both Old Port and points north. I found a prospective filed which showed an artist's rendering of the proposed new interchange and if they're to build what this showed, most of the businesses on the north harbor would end up torn town to make room for ramps and a widened main road."

"Sounds like whoever owned those properties would probably end up in an eminent domain battle with the city," McCallen spoke up. "Wouldn't that lower the property values?"

"You'd think that, but my guess is that Donleavy has someone he's likely paying off inside City Hall who alerted him to the road development plans. For all we know, he might be buying up these properties as a way to blackmail the city into awarding his company the contract." The sergeant stated his theory but something about it just didn't click with Emma.

"If Leviant Construction is already the front-runner in the terminal project bid, why go to all of this trouble?" Emma asked. "It sounds like they'll probably get the contract anyway so resorting to strong-arm tactics and blackmail just don't seem to fit…"

"Well, that's where things get interesting," Haviland continued. "It seems that a lawsuit was just filed against Leviant seeking an injunction to halt construction at that huge office tower they're building downtown. It's nearing completion, but an unnamed source documented that Leviant was using shoddy materials during that construction which made the structure unsafe and unlikely to pass inspection. Delays on that project could cost Leviant millions and cause any awarded bids to be voided – and they'd definitely be out even more if inspectors do find fault with the building. That could mean tearing the existing structure down and rebuilding it or scrapping the project entirely. A little leverage against the city could help keep Leviant in the black and might potentially even bury the lawsuit if Donleavy had the right amount against people certain influential positions."

"So – we have the head of a construction company resorting to extortion, blackmail, kidnapping and attempted murder all in an attempt to get one contract?" McCallen was dumbfounded as to how all of this could be connected.

"Well, it is a very valuable contract," Haviland replied. "And likely whatever Mr. Donleavy and Leviant Construction profit from the terminal project would go into damage control for the office tower."

"That's some serious corporate fraud," Emma said with a deep sigh as she massaged her aching temple.

"And if your husband hadn't stumbled into the fray, we might never have had an inkling of what was transpiring," the sergeant stated. "I'm sorry for all you've had to go through the past few days, Mr. Jones, but your dilemma may have tipped us off to the biggest case in Portland history…"

"Guess you really were in the right place at the right time," Emma said with a sarcastic chuckle. "But now – how do we tie it all together and put Donleavy and his cohorts away for good?"

"I've a few ideas," Haviland answered, "but first, let's work on identifying the man that you unmasked." He addressed Killian directly as he withdrew his phone from his right-hand pant pocket. "I had one of my officers run a list of Leviant employees under the guise that this was a favor for INS. I then matched the names to DMV records and compiled a few for you to look at…" He tapped on the glass screen a few times to open the file then passed the phone to Killian with the first DMV file already displayed. "Take a look through these and let me know if any of them look familiar. Just swipe to the left and it'll open the next photo."

Accepting the phone as Haviland passed it to him, Killian positioned it in his hand so that he could use his thumb to page through the files displayed on the tiny electronic screen as Emma had shown him many times before. He focused on the miniscule image of an unknown man's driver's license photograph displayed so he wasn't privy to Haviland's sudden flush of awkward embarrassment at the realization that Killian Jones didn't have a left hand. He started to open his mouth to offer assistance, but quickly stifled himself as his aid might be viewed as offensive.

Emma had spotted Haviland's reaction and nearly spoke up, but chose not to as she recalled the conversation that she'd briefly had yesterday morning with a dispatcher when she'd only been transferred to speak to McCallen after giving Killian's description and providing the piece that had been missing from the news story – the fact that her husband was missing his left hand. Clearly the alert that had gone out from the Sheriff's Department to other local law enforcement must have omitted that detail as well and the security video that Haviland had viewed would have shown Killian's prosthetic hand - which unless you were up close - wasn't really noticeable as being artificial. Even Jean Scott - who'd gone on and on about the mysterious, handsome British man who'd been taken hostage to spare her - hadn't noticed that he was an amputee. It was obvious that the sergeant was reeling a bit from the surprise, but as she'd decided after learning about McCallen's prosthetic foot, neither of their disabilities were pertinent to getting the job done so she simply kept her mouth shut and hoped that Haviland would come to the same conclusion.

Killian in the meantime had thumbed through four of the DMV files, quickly dismissing the ones that didn't meet the right criteria – too old, too tall, too portly – but he'd paused at the fifth photograph.

"Can you make this image any larger?" he asked, offering the device back to Haviland hoping he would be able to adjust the size of the photograph displayed as he had already determined he was lacking the dexterity to complete the task himself without fear of possibly dropping the sergeant's phone.

"Sure. Do you want me to enlarge just the face?" Haviland asked.

"Please," Killian replied as the image was zoomed in to display just the face of a twenty-three year old blond haired man. Haviland turned the phone around to show Killian the enlarged photo and Emma knew instantly from the way her husband's jaw suddenly clenched that he recognized the man. "That's the younger man – the one I pulled the mask from. I'm sure of it."

"Great – let's see who he is…," Haviland began as he adjusted the image back to the view of the full Maine driver's license so he could read the man's name and contact information again. "Benjamin Toliver, age twenty-three," he recited from the display.

"Guess we need to have a talk with Mr. Toliver," Emma stated, confident that this could be the break they'd been looking for.

"Should we bring him in for questioning?" McCallen wondered.

"I think maybe we should go to him," she suggested. "Bringing him to a police station might raise some red flags. Right now, it doesn't appear that these guys know that Killian is alive. We need to keep it that way as long as possible."

"I agree," Haviland stated. "We shouldn't bring him in just yet. I'd rather start with an approach that might make him a little nervous either at home or at work. He's young and likely inexperienced so he'll probably run straight to his partners."

"I could see the fear in his eyes when I unmasked him," Killian remembered from that afternoon. "Had I not been stabbed, I believe he would have broken down right there and divulged everything. There's little doubt in my mind that he's the weakest link…"

"I just did a quick search of the database and he doesn't have a record but it says he's been working for Leviant Construction for a year. His older brother, Jackson Toliver, is also listed as an employee. This is Jackson…," Haviland flashed the DMV photograph of the older Toliver brother on the screen. "Anything recognizable about him?"

Killian stared at the photograph of Jackson Toliver for a few seconds, straining to recall the look of the eyes behind the mask. "Can you show me just his eyes?" He needed the closest image possible that isolated just the man's eyes to see if they matched the ones he remembered. Haviland zoomed in as much as the device would allow, displaying a cropped image of Toliver's face from his nose up to his hairline. There was a familiarity to the hazel eyes that stared back at him, but the pirate couldn't be entirely sure this was the second robber. Images could be deceiving at times. "My apologies, but I just can't be certain. All I could see was his eyes behind that knitted mask. The color is similar, but I cannot be positive from just that image. I'd need to see the man myself – to hear his voice and hopefully see the impression of my knuckles across his jowls."

"You managed to hit him?" Haviland queried, smiling at the thought that their quarry might have a very visible contusion on his face just like the one they'd given their hostage.

"Of course, I hit him. Rendered the bastard unconscious for a few minutes before I cornered the younger one." The pirate was undoubtedly proud that he'd been able to take on the two thieves - although that pride was smarting just a smidge from his failure to factor in a third partner. "He'll definitely be sporting a few bruises of his own."

"Thank you for that," Haviland grinned. "It'll give us something we can look for to help identify whoever is Benjamin Toliver's partner – whether that might be the brother or someone else. I think maybe we should make a trek over to Leviant Construction's worksite tomorrow morning before it could possibly get shut down by any injunction. We'll go ask Benjamin Toliver a few questions about the robbery at Scott's Mart – just enough to make him nervous – and we'll see who he turns to for help. I'd love for it to be Donleavy, but I'll settle for the other masked partner right now because I've got a very good feeling that we might be able to get those two to turn if we need to."

#cs ff #cs fanfic #cs fan fiction #captain swan ff #the right place

[jonesgirl88]

I haven’t written anything in a while and this is based on a dream my sister had a while ago. Enjoy!

One day Emma Swan's, the sheriff of a small town, 10 year old son, Henry, comes home and talks about a new girl in his class. Henry suggests they could have the girl, Grace, and her father, Jefferson, over for dinner. Emma agrees and when she and Jefferson meet, it's instant attraction. They quickly begin a relationship. 

Emma learns, through Jefferson, Grace's mother left when Grace was young and he hasn't seen her since. Emma mentions Henry father, Neal, split when he found out Emma was pregnant so she understands the struggle of single parenthood. When asked if they were ever married, Jefferson says they were but aren't anymore.

Jefferson has a brother--Killian. When Jefferson introduced Emma to Killian, he is distant and kind of cold. He isn't unpleasant but it's as if he doesn't approve of Emma.

One night, when Grace is sleeping over, Grace divulges to Emma that her dad meets with her mom and that's why she's sleeping over with Henry. Emma is upset at this and confronts Jefferson when he arrives to pick up Grace. Jefferson admits he does keep tabs on Grace's mother because she gets in trouble when she's on her own. This time, she had been arrested in a gambling sting. Emma accepts it and offers to put a professional ear to the ground to help. Jefferson thanks her but declines the offer. Emma does it anyway.

One night, Jefferson wakes up Emma with an emergency: he needs to drop off Grace for a few days. When Emma asks what's wrong, he says it has to do with Grace's mother and Emma’s “superpower” kicks in and she gets the feeling he's running. Emma hesitantly agrees as long as she has a form of identification for Grace and he says he'll be over in an hour.

Following her gut, she quickly writes a transfer of guardianship and medical proxy for Grace. During this, she receives a call from a contact and he tells her Jefferson isn't divorced: he's still married to his wife. Emma reels, thanks her contact and hangs up.

When Jefferson arrives with a sleepy Grace, Emma has Jefferson take her to Henry's room so she can go back to bed. When he emerges, she confronts him about still being married. He claims he submitted the paperwork but she never signed it. Emma says he should have been upfront and Jefferson agrees. In, what he claims is, a “sign of good faith”, he hands over Grace's passport, birth certificate, medical records, and school information. Alarm bells are going off in Emma’s head; especially when Jefferson willingly signs the guardianship paperwork she drafted.

When Jefferson leaves, Emma calls Killian and tells him it's an emergency. He's there in 5 minutes, looking like he rolled out of bed and threw on the closest items he could find. Emma confronts him,  with hostility, about not telling him Jefferson was married. Killian replies he assumed she knew because she was the sheriff but why was that worth calling him so late at night.

Emma tells him what happened: how Jefferson dropped off Grace, how he brought over a bunch of legal, medical, and educational documents, and how he willingly signed a guardianship document she created. Killian slowly goes white and after a moment of silence, Emma voices her fear: she thinks he's running away. Killian nods and agrees, bringing up a time Jefferson did the same thing to him. Jefferson left Grace with him for the summer while he was off with Grace's mother, his wife, falling deeper down, what Killian calls, the rabbit hole. Grace's mother isn't a good influence and can be downright dangerous for Jefferson--it took Killian all of his savings to drag Jefferson away from her last time. She's like a drug he can't quit and she knows it and uses him.

The fourth time Killian came to his rescue he swore it was the last time. Which is why Jefferson gave Grace to Emma. He's counting on Emma to bail him out.

Emma is furious with Jefferson--everything she loved about him was a lie. She asks Killian what they should do and Killian says make the transfer official: make sure Emma has legal guardianship of Grace. For the first time that night, Emma softens and asks if Killian is willing to help her and he agrees.

(This is where the dream ends and I finish the story)

Over the course of eight months, he helps Emma with Grace and they grow closer, falling in love with their little family and each other. He takes them on adventures on the weekends--sailing, camping, skiing, amusement parks. He attends parent/teacher conferences with Emma, originally for Grace but eventually for Henry too.

Eight months later, after homework is done and Killian is in the kitchen with Emma, Henry and Grace are playing video games in the family room, the doorbell rings. Emma answers it to see Jefferson standing there. He smiles slightly and asks how she is, as though he's aware eight months have passed but forgot about it. Emma steps out onto the porch and gently closes the door, wanting to punch him but figuring the sheriff getting arrested for assault isn't a good idea.

She asks where he's been and he answers that he's been with Grace's mother. Emma corrects him and says “wife” and he acquiesces with a downcast gaze. He replies he's been helping her get clean and he couldn't leave her. When asked why he didn't call, Jefferson responds he was so focused on helping her get clean, he forgot to call.

Because she's been out a while, Killian opens the door to see his brother and girlfriend having a confrontation. Without words, and before Emma can stop him, Killian punches Jefferson in the jaw, sending him sprawling on the porch. Emma reprimands him but Jefferson says he deserved it and is surprised Emma didn't do the same thing.

He finally asks about Grace, if he could see her and explain things to her. Killian asks where he's staying and Jefferson is hesitant to answer but with reluctance he answers he's not staying in town. He's only moving through. When asked to explain, Jefferson sighs and begins.

While he was helping Grace's mother he realized he was tired of taking care of people. He didn't like being tied down--to Grace's mother, to Emma, and even to Grace. He needed time away, without anyone to take care of. Killian is practically boiling at this point and Emma is seething. He wants to explain to Grace that he’s going away for a while and she's staying with Emma and Killian.

Emma, fast thinking, agrees but only if he does it tomorrow--not tonight. Jefferson agrees and he leaves. Once they're back inside, the kids none the wiser, Emma drafts up a new contract giving Emma and Killian parental rights over Grace.

The next day, before Jefferson can see Grace, Emma has Jefferson sign the contract. He reads it and agrees to the terms, signing it quickly. Once it's official, Killian brings in a confused Grace, who runs to her father. Jefferson embraces her and he sidesteps her questions by telling her he has to go away for a while and that she's going to live with Emma and Killian. Of course, Grace being 11, doesn't understand why he's leaving again. It's a tearful goodbye but Jefferson turns and leaves, he never looks at her as he drives away.

It takes a few weeks for things to return to a semi-normal state. The first weekend, Emma and Killian surprise Grace with a redesigned bedroom. She had been sleeping in the guest room but once Jefferson left the second time, they redesigned it for her to have a permanent place in their home. The second weekend, the paperwork goes through and Grace is officially theirs. The third weekend, Killian, with the help of Henry and Grace, proposes to Emma. Their family is official the fourth weekend.

I don’t hate Jefferson (in fact, before Killian, I was a total Jefferson/Emma shipper) but he’s the only other one with a child Henry’s age...yeah there’s Violet but we rarely see Grace and Jefferson anymore. It has to do with Stan but he’s still a character that shouldn’t have been abandoned. 

I’m thinking of turning this into a full-fledged fic but I have so many WIPs it’s just another idea that’s been semi put to paper.

#hope you liked this #ouat #captain swan #ouatfic

[newstechreviews]

Sweeping failures by Boeing engineers, deception by the company and significant errors in government oversight led to the two fatal crashes of the 737 Max, congressional investigators have concluded.

A 245-page report issued Wednesday provides the most scathing account so far of the miscalculations that led to 346 deaths, the grounding of Boeing’s best-selling jet and billions of dollars in losses for the manufacturing giant.

“The Max crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake or mismanaged event,” the report by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said. “They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management and grossly insufficient oversight by the” Federal Aviation Administration.

The report — the result of five investigative hearings, a review of about 600,000 pages of documents, interviews with top Boeing and FAA officials and information provided by whistle-blowers — makes the case for broad changes in the FAA’s oversight of the aircraft industry.

It offers a more searing version of events than the sometimes technical language in previous crash reports and investigations, including one conducted by the Transportation Department’s Inspector General.

The conclusions were drawn by the majority staff under committee Chairman Peter DeFazio. The report cites five main reasons for the crashes:

Pressures to update the 737’s design swiftly and inexpensively

Faulty assumptions about the design and performance of pilots

What the report called a “culture of concealment” by Boeing

Inherent conflicts of interest in the system that deputizes Boeing employees to act on behalf of the government

The company’s sway over top FAA managers

DeFazio said he found it “mind boggling” that Boeing and FAA officials concluded, according to the report, that the plane’s design had complied with regulations in spite of the crashes.

“The problem is it was complaint and not safe — and people died,” he said. “Obviously, the system is inadequate.”

Lawmakers are drafting legislation designed to reform how the FAA oversees companies such as Boeing and reviews aircraft designs. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to vote on a bipartisan bill on Wednesday. DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, hasn’t yet unveiled his legislation.

Republican leaders on the House committee took issue with the report’s findings, saying they represented partisan overreach that went beyond what other reviews have found.

“Expert recommendations have already led to changes and reforms, with more to come,” said a joint statement from Sam Graves of Missouri and Garret Graves of Louisiana. “These recommendations — not a partisan investigative report — should serve as the basis for Congressional action.”

Boeing said in a statement it had cooperated with the committee’s investigation and had taken steps at the company to improve safety.

“We have learned many hard lessons as a company from the accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Flight 302, and from the mistakes we have made,” the company said. “Change is always hard and requires daily commitment, but we as a company are dedicated to doing the work.”

The FAA said in a statement late Tuesday night that it was committed to working with the committee to make improvements. “We are already undertaking important initiatives based on what we have learned from our own internal reviews as well as independent reviews of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents,” the agency said in the statement.

But tensions between the committee staff and the FAA were clearly evident. Ali Bahrami, who oversees safety at the agency, came under repeated criticism in the report for what the committee called his lack of awareness of issues surrounding the Max and the accidents. The committee staffers declined to provide him with questions before the Dec. 5 interview, which made it difficult for him to recall documents and events, an FAA counsel warned at the start of the interview, according to a transcript.

While DeFazio and other lawmakers haven’t called for a permanent grounding of the jet, the father of a woman who died in the Ethiopia crash said the report raised questions about the plane’s return to service.

“The FAA should immediately halt the recertification process for the 737 Max in light of this report,” said Michael Stumo, father of Samya Stumo. He accused Boeing and the FAA of withholding information from the families of victims in an emailed statement.

The 737 Max was grounded March 13, 2019, three days after the second crash involving a safety feature on the plane that malfunctioned and repeatedly sent the planes into a dive toward the ground.

Boeing and regulators had approved the design under the assumption that flight crews could recognize and override a malfunction of the system within a few seconds. Even though the system could have been disabled by flipping two cockpit switches, pilots on a Lion Air flight departing from Jakarta on Oct. 29, 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines plane leaving Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, became confused, lost control and crashed.

The feature, known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, was designed to make the Max feel exactly the same to pilots as the earlier family of 737s known as the Next Generation. However, the system was triggered erroneously by a single sensor that failed in both crashes and it continued to push the nose down repeatedly.

The FAA has tentatively approved multiple design changes to prevent such an accident in the future and the plane could be certified to resume operations in the fall.

The House report identifies numerous instances in which it alleges the company should have known that MCAS was potentially dangerous.

For example, a Boeing test pilot during the early development of the plane in 2012 took more than 10 seconds to respond to an erroneous MCAS activation, a condition the pilot concluded could be “catastrophic,” the report said.

“The reaction time was long,” one Boeing employee told another in an email on Nov. 1, 2012, which was viewed by Bloomberg. The unidentified employee asked whether the rating of the system’s risks should be raised, which may have prompted a more thorough safety review.

Those concerns “were not properly addressed” and the company “did not inform the FAA,” the report said.

Boeing ultimately concluded that flight crews would react far swifter to an MCAS failure, typically within four seconds.

The report also said the responses by Boeing and the FAA to the first accident — warnings to pilots issued in early November 2018 — weren’t adequate to prevent a second crash.

“Both Boeing and the FAA gambled with the public’s safety in the aftermath of the Lion Air crash, resulting in the death of 157 more individuals on Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, less than five months later,” the report said.

The guidance on how to avoid an accident during an MCAS failure detailed the symptoms pilots would see and reminded crews how to shut it off. The committee criticized Boeing and the FAA for not mentioning the system’s name.

FAA officials have said they debated whether to include MCAS in the directive, but opted not to because it wasn’t mentioned in pilot flight manuals. Boeing within days sent additional guidance to airlines on MCAS and how it worked. Details on MCAS were also widely reported in the news media and internal airline documents obtained by Bloomberg show that it had been explained to Ethiopian Airlines pilots before their crash.

‘Undue Pressure’

A key finding involves a long-standing practice — which was expanded by Congress several times — to deputize Boeing employees to act in behalf of FAA while reviewing aircraft designs.

According to a 2016 survey obtained by the committee, 39% of Boeing’s Authorized Representatives, senior engineers who conducted reviews for FAA, at times perceived “undue pressure” on them from management.

One such senior engineer knew that Boeing was delivering Maxes to customers without a required alert in 2017 and 2018, yet didn’t notify FAA, the report said. The lack of such an alert was cited by Indonesian investigators as a factor in the Lion Air crash.

Both House and Senate legislation is expected to seek reforms of the so-called delegation system, which the report said is riddled with “inherent conflicts of interest.”

Boeing opted almost a decade ago to update the 737 to compete against a similar redesign of the Airbus SE A320 family. It faced intense pressure to ensure that — just as Airbus promised — pilots transferring from earlier 737 models didn’t need expensive additional simulator training.

Simulator Training

The company had agreed to pay Southwest Airlines Co. $1 million per aircraft if Max pilots had to train in the simulator before transitioning to the new plane, which could have cost it between $200 million to $400 million.

The push to avoid simulator training led to multiple poor decisions by Boeing, the committee alleged. The manufacturer rejected adding a sophisticated safety system that might have helped in the accidents at least in part because it would have required additional training.

The company also deemphasized MCAS to the FAA as a result. In a 2013 company document, Boeing said it would describe MCAS to the FAA as an add-on to an existing system. “If we emphasize MCAS is a new function there may be a greater certification and training impact,” the memo said.

The broad failure to fully explain MCAS was a critical issue because the system was made more powerful midway through its development, but many within the FAA didn’t know and the agency delegated the final safety approvals to the company, the report found.

“The combination of these problems doomed the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights,” the report said.

#Blogger

[mastcomm]

France’s Unofficial Minister for Fashion Isn’t Afraid of a Redesign

In France, where fashion is considered part of the patrimony and first ladies have been front-row regulars (and supermodels), the government has long treated the industry with kid gloves. Then, in 2017, Brune Poirson arrived.

“In the beginning, everybody thought I was crazy,” said Ms. Poirson, who is officially one of three secretaries of state to the minister for the ecological and inclusive transition and, unofficially, France’s de facto minister for fashion.

Both a champion of the industry and its rare critic, Ms. Poirson, 37, is playing a role in negotiations regarding President Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on handbags and other luxury goods, also known as the “handbag war.” Last year, she also spearheaded wide-ranging legislation that included banning brands from destroying an estimated 630 million euros (or $700 million) of unsold goods annually, a common practice in the industry. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has said France would be the first to formally adopt this measure.

“When you’re a young woman in government — or in general, in life — and you decide to tackle a topic like fashion, everybody goes after you,” she said in an interview. “It’s almost the end of your reputation. If I were really a politician, I would have taken nuclear energy or something. But I think there is more to do in the field of fashion. I know we need to do something about it.”

It is, after all, France’s second-most profitable sector, worth an estimated €150 billion. (The first is aeronautics.)

And Ms. Poirson isn’t your typical French politician.

“Brune Poirson has a very important mission for the government and for France,” said Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, the industry organization for French fashion. “She considers that fashion is essential and should be exemplary, and she brings conviction and determination to promoting the circular economy.”

Seated before a coffee table in a corner of a grand but sparsely furnished ministry office on the boulevard St.-Germain, early in the evening of yet another long day of transport strikes, Ms. Poirson made no secret of her impatience with a sclerotic French system of government and business, or the way things have functioned for years (and even centuries).

“We need to change the way we work,” she said in polished English. “In politics, what’s terrible is that things take time not because it’s difficult, but because people are unwilling to change things for petty reasons. It looks good on TV for a week if you can say you implemented something 10 years after it was planned. It’s completely depressing. So sometimes, if you want to change things, you can’t rely too much on politics.”

Her press officer, seated nearby, squirmed and reached for his smartphone; she burst out laughing. “He’s dying,” she said. “But it’s true.”

She is also nothing if not outspoken. A video shot on the Senate floor in November 2018 captures for posterity her lightning takedown of an older, male colleague. Gérard Longuet, a conservative senator, had addressed her with a patronizing “ma chère amie,” or “dear friend.”

“Call me Madame la Ministre,” she shot back, coolly raising her tone as hoots from other senators echoed in the background.

Ms. Poirson’s clothing style is likewise to the point: She favors minimalism, with the occasional whimsical earring. “I have to be super-simple because that’s who I am,” she said. “No prints, because you get bored and then you want to buy more, and I try to wear exclusively nonsynthetic materials because of all the micro plastics, unless it’s second hand, and clothes that are only made of one fabric.”

In the three years since her appointment, she has championed France’s embrace of a more circular economy, and drafted the zero-waste law that is moving through the legislative system and is expected to be signed by President Emmanuel Macron. In addition to banning incineration of unsold products, the law phases out all use of disposable plastics beginning January 2021; bans microplastics in cosmetics; and makes filters mandatory on industrial washing machines.

Ms. Poirson worked with François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of the luxury group Kering, to shape details of the “Fashion Pact,” an industry initiative that seeks to curtail its environmental impact. The document was signed by 56 companies — though not by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury conglomerate that owns 75 brands — and was presented at the Group of 7 meeting in Biarritz, France, in August.

The pact is not legally binding and was decried by critics as toothless because it lets signatories pick and choose guidelines rather than setting goals, and sidestepped the problem of overconsumption. “Well, it’s the French way of approaching things,” Ms. Poirson said, with the faintest hint of exasperation.

Ms. Poirson has no truck with some luxury brands’ argument that they represent only a tiny fraction of the fashion sector. “That’s like France pointing the finger at China as the bigger polluter,” she said. “I refuse to hear that argument. Everyone should work to maximum capacities to find a solution to climate change. ”She was born in 1982 in Washington, D.C. to French parents — her father worked for the World Bank; her mother restored paintings — and the family returned to France before she could walk. She and her two younger brothers grew up in Apt, in the Vaucluse, part of the then-grittier, pre-Peter Mayle Luberon region in Provence.

She knew from childhood that she wanted to work in the public sphere. But, unlike most French politicians, Ms. Poirson is not an énarque, as graduates of the École Nationale d’Administration, the primary vivarium for French political life, are known.

“I wanted to do the exact opposite of E.N.A. It was a project,” she said. “My roots are really strong. I know exactly where I’m from. It gives you a lot of strength to go anywhere else, anywhere in the world. And I went with the intention of coming back, always.”

That path led to the London School of Economics; Laos — where she spent a year working on education, particularly of young girls, among the Hmong ethnic minority; and, by 2008, New Delhi, where she worked in the public and private sectors, for the Indian cabinet minister Satyan Pitroda and the French company Veolia.

In 2016, she studied political science and sustainability at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, but the combination of the American and French presidential campaigns, Brexit and new motherhood brought her back to France to run for office.

“People often say that when you have a family, you just want to protect them,” she said. “For me, it was the opposite, in a way. I had a daughter, so I had to work twice as hard.”

She ran for local office in the Vaucluse area and used a grass roots campaign to beat the far-right candidate Marion Maréchal Le Pen (niece of Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front and Mr. Macron’s former opponent). Within 48 hours, Mr. Philippe, the prime minister, invited her to join the government.

Ms. Poirson said her next steps are “not necessarily legislation, but keeping the fight on sustainable fashion.” She said she would like to establish a fund for innovative fashion brands working to change the production system, though has few specifics.

Her position on handbags getting swept up in a possible trade war? “Getting into logistics of commercial sanctions will only create losers,” she said. “Commercial conflicts are just a source of uncertainty and weigh down global growth.”

And she wants to revive sectors like France’s lace industry now hanging by a thread.

“I want to go back to the areas in France with a strong textile history and see how we can actually return to local production,” she said. “I believe in path dependency — when a place is good at one thing, I think you can really rebuild on that.”

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#Event

[torentialtribute]

Scottish Premiership badge special: From a factory and double-headed eagles to a blessing

Say what you like about Scottish football, but when it comes to club heads and badges, it's hard to beat.

There are lions, squirrels, eagles … even a harp and a boat, a few beautiful flowers and a famous factory. Something for everyone.

ABERDEEN

.

The original comb, designed by local artist Donald Addison in the early 1970s, had a capital A to form the contours of goal posts.

A football was used in the middle of the A while FC followed to identify the football club.

Simplicity was the key to this design and while the current top modernizes, it is still fed up with Addison's early work.

Exploits in Europe saw the words Aberdeen Football Club added to the design in an effort to make the emblem more recognizable on sides outside Scotland and two stars were added above the emblem on the jersey to display their European trophies indicate .

The year 1903, the year in which the club was formed, has been under the famous A-posts in the middle of the red and white circles since the mid-80s. CELTIC

The colors green and white have become synonymous with those in the East End of Glasgow, but there are few recognizable insignia in world football

It was first introduced in 1908 when players received medals after winning all four domestic trophies

Anniversary badges have

Since then, it has always remained with the club and the latest version The badge has remained unchanged since its entry into force in 1977-78. has become commonplace with the recent example of a commemoration of the famous side of the Lisbon Lion Club, which became the first British team to join the European Cup in 1967.

In addition to the four-leaf clover, the year of establishment and the full title of the club, just like the other parties in the competition, complete the circular top.

In the iconic navy blue colors of the Dundee, the design with double shielding encloses the letters DFC that are intertwined.

And although there have been minor adjustments over the years – including a switch to red and white letters in the 60s (well, it was a time to experiment) – the badge has retained its simplicity .

Simple. But effective.

It took 105 years after the formation for Hamilton Accies to add a top to their red and white shirts. Was it worth the wait?

The insignia, circular in shape, is their full title, Hamilton Academical Football Club, curved around a red shield in the middle. Hamilton's coat of arms and shield contains three plants to represent the Dukes of Hamilton (not to be confused with those General Lee-driving good old boys, Bo and Luke, who were the Dukes of Hazzard.)

the test of time and remains in place after it was introduced in 1979. That was also the year in which the Dukes of Hazzard were first broadcast. Unfortunately it flew to the sunset in 1985 and never returned.

Heart-shaped comb is steeped in local history based on the Heart of Midlothian mosaic built into the pavement on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh.

It marks the entrance to the now demolished, old Tolbooth building that was a place for public executions.

Visitors to Edinburgh usually spit on the sidewalk heart for success. Rudi Voller and El Hadji-Diouf would love it.

[bewerken] Like Aberdeen, this [bewerk] [bewerk] [voeg lijst toe] Do Like Aberdeen, this one always looked stylish as a & # 39; shiny & # 39; in the sticker book.

was a moment when Hib's fans were afraid that the iconic club badge was not in line with the 16th-century arms law. (Yes, really.)

In the End, Fears (19459002)

The central shield contains elements that help unite various elements of the club's background, although There has been a debate over the years as to whether their Irish heritage should be displayed prominently.

Anyway, the Irish harp, removed but brought back in the 1950s, takes its place next to the castle (Edinburgh) and the ship (Leith). They could certainly get The Proclaimers out there somewhere, or at least a few lines of their hit, and Hib's national anthem, Sunshine on Leith . It is worth thinking about the next redesign.

]

If an animal can get fear in opposition, it's a … squirrel. Perhaps if the opposition is a nut and to be honest, there have been a few decades in Scottish football.

The current top of the Rugby Park club is an attempt to preserve as much as possible of the original.

While Hibernian escaped, Killie fell into violation of heraldic law.

The previous draft closely reflected the coat of arms of the city of Kilmarnock and was therefore deemed unacceptable.

The weapon of the city is not one, but two, red squirrels, purple shield with above the lots with Latin phrases in scrolls at the top and bottom of the whole design.

The current top retains the two squirrels, has replaced the shield with a football, and has a hand with fingers in the blessing position. Do not tilt it sideways or the hand may be the LA thing.

The last element comes from the Boyd family (who were long before the current Killie hotshot Kris), which is synonymous with the Ayrshire region. The Latin expression & # 39; confidemus & # 39 ;, which appears at the top of the design, reads: & # 39; We trust & # 39 ;.

of the newly promoted sides, Livingston & # 39; s top design is strongly focused on the orange and black color scheme of the side.

The first colors have been used by the team since their inception in 1943.

Ferranti Thistle, and then Meadowbank Thistle, both had their own unique insignia.

Since the transition to Livingston FC, the latest design has searched for various elements of its predecessors.

Unbridled lion, first introduced in the days of Ferranti Thistle, sits in a yellow and black thistle. The black shield with an amber-colored border was used in the early days of Meadowbank Thistle.

A Latin motto was used on the first Livingston emblem but has since been replaced by the words & # 39; West Lothian & # 39; where the club is located.

football and a factory. Nothing to do with Danny Dyer though, thankfully.

But the Motherwell Ravenscraig Steelworks depicted on this badge has no historical significance – so much so that Motherwell is known as The Steelmen.

Unfortunately, its closure in 1992 led to the loss of hundreds of jobs in the factory and thousands of them were more linked to this

In the club colors of amber and claret, the license plate of the Lanarkshire side designed by followers in the early 80s & 80s. It is circular with a shield in the middle. The name and year in which the club was located at the top and bottom while the shield contains three important elements.

Pine trees are at the top of the shield, which is important as the club plays their home games at Fir Park. Underneath is a football and at the foot of the shield is that famous image of the steel mill.

The official club top of Rangers is the only one in the SPL that is not on the shirts of the players

The design on the shirts of the side of Steven Gerrard sees the letters RFC intertwined.

Alternatively, the old crest appears on Ibrox, on club merchandise and on any literature that goes with it.

The element of dispute characterizes the red lion rampant which, cited earlier, is one of the many signatures that the heraldic law deems unsuitable for club heads. (Curse you, heraldic law!)

Nevertheless, the club continues to hold the red animal in the center of its circular badge, along with the Govan side motto – & # 39; Ready & # 39 ;.

The name of the club is said to have come from the local parish dedicated to John the Baptist.

One of the symbols that brought him back was & # 39; The Lamb of God & # 39; and that has stood the test of time and remains on the latest interpretation of the club top.

The modern design comes closest to the one that was introduced at the end of the 1980s when a two-headed eagle was lying under the lamb in the middle.

The inclusion of the bird comes from the arms of the Perth and Kinross District Council, another club that wants to include the history of the region in the top that would represent the football side.

In the 1950s, the club adapted Paisley & # 39; s, including two reds water strawberry flowers and two blue coverings The blue and white diamond pattern in the middle of the yellow shield represents the strong connections of Paisley Abbey with.

The blue and white check pattern in the center of the yellow shield represents the strong connections between Paisley Abbey and The Royal Stewart family.

That stranded heraldic law hit the club in 1996 because of the castle-like elements above the shield and the badge that followed it remained with the club ever since.

Black and white stripes – the colors of the club – replaced the turrets of the castle while the club's name was written in black letters in the white circle.

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#Scottish Premiership badge special: From a factory and double-headed eagles to a blessing"

[theconservativebrief]

The leading international body of climate change researchers is preparing to release a major report Sunday night on the impacts of global warming and what it would take to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, a goal that looks increasingly unlikely.

The report is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consortium of hundreds of climate researchers convened by the United Nations. Authors are meeting this week in Incheon, South Korea, to finalize their findings, but Climate Home News obtained an early leaked draft.

Why examine the prospects for limiting global warming to 1.5°C? Because under the Paris agreement, countries agreed that the goal should be to limit warming to below 2°C by 2100, with a nice-to-have target of capping warming at 1.5°C.

According to the drafts, the report finds that it would take a massive global effort, far more aggressive than any we’ve seen to date, to keep warming in line with 1.5°C — in part because we are already en route to 3°C of warming. And even if we hit the 1.5°C goal, the planet will still face massive, devastating changes. So it’s pretty grim.

But this is also a thunderous call to action, laying out what tools we have at our disposal (we have plenty) to mitigate global warming and to accelerate the turn toward cleaner energy. Let’s walk through the basics.

The planet has already warmed by 1°C due to human activity, and we’re seeing its consequences right now: Sea levels have risen more than 8 inches since 1880, we’re witnessing the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in 1,500 years, and extreme weather events are becoming more damaging due to climate change — to name a few.

So heating the whole planet by another 50 percent stands to have even more devastating impacts, particularly for the most vulnerable, according to the leaked draft of the IPCC report:

Globally, the poorest people are projected to experience the impacts of 1.5°C global warming predominantly through increased food prices, food insecurity and hunger, income losses, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts and population displacements. Such impacts can occur, for instance, from increased heat stress and other extreme events, such as coastal flooding, with over 100 million people projected to go into poverty through impacts on agriculture and food prices

However, it could get worse if the world got even hotter. And right now, we’re likely to soar past 1.5°C as early as 2030 and hit 3ºC by 2100.

A key point to remember is that while we talk about climate change in terms of averages, buried in those averages are extremes: more frequent and intense heat waves. More damaging storms. Higher oceans. These events can have a compounding effect that costs society far more than lost lives and damaged property from the disasters themselves. Coastal flooding can create a refugee crisis which in turn can drive armed conflicts, for example.

That’s why, as my colleague David Roberts explained, 2°C of warming is way worse than 1.5°C. It would increase sea levels by another 4 inches (10 centimeters) on average. It would knock down global wheat production by 7 percent. It would increase the intensity of severe rainfall events by 2 percent.

Zooming in to specific regions, 2°C would cause freshwater availability drop by twice as much in the Mediterranean as it would under a 1.5°C warming scenario. Some of the most densely populated regions of the world like Southeast Asia face far greater crop declines with an additional 0.5°C of warming. By 2100, limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C would avert 150 million premature deaths.

All this adds up to a compelling moral and economic case for reaching a more ambitious climate change mitigation goal.

Right now, though, only a handful of countries are on track to meet their targets set under the Paris agreement — targets, remember, that they set for themselves. Global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing, and even climate change-fighting champions like Germany are on track to miss their goalposts.

Yet if every country were to meet its goals under Paris, that would still put the planet on a trajectory to warm by 3°C. Hitting the far more ambitious 1.5°C target is therefore a much heavier lift, in terms of politics, economics, and technology. Climate change campaigners have compared the endeavor to fighting a world war.

It would require replacing the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel generators with cleaner alternatives. It would drive the world to electrify everything. Planners would need to redesign cities to allow cleaner transportation. And governments would have to pay for their emissions at a price high enough to include the social costs of carbon.

The grimmest prognosis in the draft report is in the details of the effort it would take to actually limit warming to 1.5°C. Countries won’t just have to give up fossil fuels and stop emitting greenhouse gases; they’ll have to pull carbon dioxide straight out of the air.

“All mitigation pathways compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 involve removal of CO2 from the atmosphere,” according to the draft. And not by a little, but by a lot, upward of 180 gigatons of carbon dioxide by the end of the century. This will require machines that scrub carbon dioxide out of the air as well as biofuels coupled with carbon capture and sequestration. These tactics have their own energy demands and environmental drawbacks, and we may not be able to deploy them in time.

“There is a high chance that the levels of CO2 removal implied in the scenarios might not be feasible due the required scale and speed of deployment required and trade-offs with sustainable development objectives,” according to the leaked report.

Countries will also have to make drastic changes to land use practices. Some of the warming that’s baked in will also force millions to retreat from coastlines. “Sea level will continue to rise for centuries,” according to the report.

We also don’t have much time to act. Because it takes decades for a buildup of carbon dioxide to influence the planet’s temperature, a 1.5°C warming trajectory demands cutting the planet’s emissions 40 percent by 2030. The longer we wait, the more radical our options.

The IPCC authors insist this report is not a political document, but it’s hard to avoid the political subtext. We’ve known the scale of the challenge for some time, but seeing it all combined in one place is staggering, and that’s part of the point of this exercise. Some of the language in the report could change by the final version to be released next week, but the facts of the report aren’t new.

Though many public officials have historically shrugged off dire forecasts of our planet’s future, the upcoming report closes off the temptations of wishful thinking, that humanity will somehow limit its emissions on its own or that we can develop technology to offset all our problems. It shows that even in the best-case, most optimistic scenario, hard decisions lie ahead.

Original Source -> A major climate report will slam the door on wishful thinking

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[365footballorg-blog]

Boehm: Catch a glimpse of US soccer's future when FC Dallas visit Red Bulls

USA Today Sports Images

June 22, 20186:14PM EDT

Odds are, most readers have been ravenously devouring the televised feast of World Cup action this month. It’s also quite likely that the US and Canadian national team fans among you have ruefully, maybe even repeatedly, regretted those squads’ galling inability to make the big dance in Russia.

We don’t have to belabor that harsh reality too much. But you can get an early glimpse of the talent that could help beat the path towards Qatar 2022 on Saturday, when FC Dallas visit the New York Red Bulls in a nationally-televised clash as MLS returns from its World Cup pause (6 pm ET | UniMás, Twitter – Full TV and streaming info).

Conceivably half of the players that RBNY and FCD could put on the pitch at Red Bull Arena are US-eligible: Alex Muyl, Ethan Kutler, Aaron Long, Tim Parker, Tyler Adams, Sean Davis, Jesse Gonzalez, Reggie Cannon, Jacori Hayes, Kellyn Acosta and Victor Ulloa. (As these are two US-based teams, this will inevitably focus more on that side of the border; let’s meet again for a similar conversation when two of the league’s three Canadian sides face off later this year.)

I’m not saying that all of those guys will become USMNT regulars. But they’re at clubs that value them and others like them, and set them up to succeed, to seize international opportunities should they be earned. Acosta and Adams – who could play out a fascinating battle in the center of the park on Saturday – have already seen regular national-team minutes over the past year or two. Parker made a solid case for himself in recent US friendlies, and Gonzalez is in the goalkeeping mix. Cannon, Hayes and Long are in the discussion, or will be soon.

Less likely to feature this weekend, but moving through the pipelines just the same, are the likes of Brandon Servania, Paxton Pomykal, Jesus Ferreira and Ben Mines. Consider, too, others once tabbed for great heights only to hit bumps and sidetracks in the road like Amando Moreno and Tommy Redding, two reclamation projects, if you will, with unfulfilled potential that the Red Bulls believe they can put to use.

Perhaps more importantly than any specific names, Saturday is also a showcase of some of the leading philosophies and methods by which rising domestic prospects will be identified, guided and groomed.

Most around MLS are familiar with these teams’ academies, two of the most ambitious and successful in the league in terms of overarching philosophies, team performances and player development. Dallas long ago decided to invest in the physical and human infrastructure to harvest North Texas’ rich youth soccer scene rather than sign big-name stars from abroad. After building a powerful youth program that went underutilized by previous technical staffs, the current RBNY brain trust have elevated their academy to the forefront of their plans and better integrated it within their global affiliate network.

Both organizations have learned that just having a strong academy isn’t enough, though. The Red Bulls have put their USL side to better use than perhaps any other MLS franchise, both blooding youngsters and working older newcomers into their style of play.

That’s how they sculpted Long from a central midfielder cut loose by both the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders into one of MLS’s steadiest center backs. It’s why they felt confident enough to take a flyer on Redding and Colombian winger Carlos Rivas as part of the offseason trade that sent Sacha Kljestan to Orlando City.

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FCD have surely studied the RBNY case, and are reportedly finally ready to launch their own USL side, likely in the D3 league set to debut next year. Myriad examples – dating all the way back to Freddy Adu, really – have shown that bridges must be built from the youth to professional level in order to give the kids the best chances of getting over.

In the meantime, the North Texans have sent young reserves out on loan to OKC Energy, their cross-state rivals the Tulsa Roughnecks and other points further afield. They’ve also scouted and drafted intelligently, picking up players like Hayes and Tesho Akindele – who’s since become a CanMNT regular – who were overlooked by others.

There’s no one blueprint for growing the homespun stars of the future, and one of the underrated strengths of this country’s generally chaotic youth landscape is that multiple pathways have arisen for ambitious players to advance their careers. But two of the top models are humming along in Frisco, Texas and Harrison, New Jersey, and this weekend we’ll get to see them face off.

Tune in, and think positive thoughts for 2022 (and 2026!).

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Boehm: Catch a glimpse of US soccer's future when FC Dallas visit Red Bulls was originally published on 365 Football

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[minnievirizarry]

Product Marketing | How to Reach #1 on Product Hunt [Case Study]

If first impressions last, then NinjaOutreach should have been doomed by our bungled product marketing long ago.

We first launched NinjaOutreach on Product Hunt—a popular app curation and discovery platform—in 2014.

I wasn’t part of the team yet at the time, but our founder, Dave Schneider, did admit the launch could have gone better.

Granted, we still managed to get featured as #10 on Product Hunt’s homepage—and on our first attempt at that.

Fast forward to 2018, with new team members, a significant rebranding, fresh look, and copy, we relaunched NinjaOutreach version 2.0.

And this time around, even with a small team and a low-budget product marketing strategy, we made it to #1 on Product Hunt’s homepage.

We eventually ended the day at #2, but compared to our previous rank of #10, that was a significant jump!

Of course, we didn’t achieve all of this without a plan.

And in this article, we’ll share our product marketing strategy for how we made our comeback and reached #1 on Product Hunt.

Background story

“It’s a ‘90s software for a 2016 price.”

Such was the comment of one unimpressed user who never made it past his trial period.

Despite those harsh words, we couldn’t deny that although we had more customers than most of our competitors, we were definitely behind when compared to their sleeker designs, cohesive branding + content, and smoother UI.

As Dave said, NinjaOutreach started out as a “desktop app that everyone hated.”

Ultimately, this lack of harmonious branding, coupled with clunky UX both in-app and on the website failed to adequately convey the true value and functionality of our tool.

Also confirming this theory was an in-depth study from a firm Dave hired, which found that potential customers rated us low in trustworthiness.

Why so?

Apparently, this was because (surprise, surprise) they didn’t find our “look” particularly trustworthy.

Fortuitously, this came at a time when I, along with our Head Copywriter, Daphnie Loong, was already pushing (short of nagging) the team for a redesign.

And with all the new supporting evidence, the ball was in our court.

It was time make the shift, and we were finally ready to give NinjaOutreach its badly needed makeover.

The rebranding was a monumental effort that led to monumental changes.

Save for the official business name, everything about NinjaOutreach changed. And not just changed, but taken to a whole new level.

Excited to spread the word about these upgrades, Dave and the marketing team thought it would be a good idea to relaunch NinjaOutreach on Product Hunt.

So, our Asset Manager Evgen Schastnyy assembled a small team, and with the guidance of Dave and our co-founder Mark Samms, operation Product Hunt Comeback was set in motion.

About Product hunt

What is Product Hunt?

For the uninitiated, Product Hunt is an online community, app curation, and discovery platform where users share app news and recommendations with each other.

It’s essentially like a Quora or Reddit for apps, where apps are curated and either get upvoted or downvoted by the community. The platform also allows commenting, so each thread comes with relevant discussions about each app.

How Product Hunt Works

Members who post app recommendations are called product Hunters, so to post an app is to “hunt” it.

App developers are called Makers, and they can also hunt their own products.

Aside from typical audience engagement and upvotes, Product Hunt has its own algorithm which determines how an app gets ranked and whether it gets featured on the homepage.

Product Marketing Tactics We Used to Generate Buzz

In a moment, we will share a detailed step-by-step guide to our product marketing strategy.

But for the impatient, here is a snapshot of the product marketing tactics we used to generate buzz for the app.

Social Media Banners

As Dave mentioned in his Reddit post, social media buzz was key to our product marketing campaign’s success.

Before we launched, our design team already crafted customized banners reflecting our new brand. Each one was tailored for Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Additionally, we had special “milestone” images designed for celebrating if and when we hit 100, 300, and 500 upvotes.

Below is a screenshot of the images we used on our Twitter page.

In-App and In-Site Messages For Long-Time Customers

As an app that’s been around for over three years, we’ve accumulated our own loyal bunch of customers and site visitors who were more than happy to support us.

To help mobilize these long-time users, our Head Copywriter Daphnie edited the templates announcing our launch along with a section to fill in with the link to our listing.

We used Daphnie’s final copy on our pop-up message for returning site visitors as well as in-app notifications for customers logging in.

Eventually, we updated these notifications to cover each new milestone that we hit.

Newsletter Announcement

Daphnie also published our Product Hunt announcement through our weekly newsletter, where we have over 10k subscribers.

Team Member Support

To widen the reach of our product marketing campaign, everyone in the team went through their own networks to share the news.

Here’s Dave’s post on his Facebook.

Now that we’ve shared our main product marketing tactics, let’s move on to a more detailed breakdown of how we executed our strategy.

Our How-To Product Marketing Steps For Reaching #1 on Product Hunt

Dave and Evgen organized a list of tasks into a spreadsheet and made this accessible to all the team members involved in the product marketing campaign.

They divided the sheet into three tabs for each chronological period related to the campaign:

Pre-Launch

Launch Day

Post Launch

Each column contained instructions on what to do, where to store any files involved with the task, who is responsible for it, and a section to indicate the task’s status.

Pre-Launch Product Marketing Task Checklist

1. Find a Hunter Who Will “Hunt” the Product

There is an ongoing theory that Product Hunt’s algorithm puts less value on apps promoted by their own Makers.

Product Hunt has since pointed out that this is false and that in fact, Makers can hunt their own products.

However, we found out that certain Hunters have special privileges where a product they post makes it straight to the front page instead of the less-trafficked “new and upcoming” section.

So, we erred on the side of caution and decided to find another Hunter for our relaunch.

It’s a good thing that in all our marketing campaigns, we managed to develop warm relationships with some of our prospects.

Because of this, our Asset Manager Evgen only needed to send out a couple of emails until we got a “yes” from at least one of them.

Once Evgen found our Hunter, (special thanks to our friend Chris!) he provided the necessary info our Hunter needed to post about our product.

That included our:

Product name

Product tagline

Link to the product

Handles of the makers

Blurb for the maker

All product screenshots, GIFs, and other necessary images

Youtube link to our product explainer video

After setting our launch date and time, Evgen packed all these into a Google Docs folder (you can also use Dropbox) and sent it to our Hunter.

(Tip: If you prefer to find a Hunter for your product but don’t have warm connections, you can try a cold pitch.

Most profiles of Hunters on Product Hunt are connected to their Twitter account.

If you see people with a good following hunting a similar product like yours, try and reach out.

You can also use aggregators like 500 Hunters.)

2. Brainstorm Ideas for a Special Launch Day Promotional Offer

To encourage more people to try out our product, Evgen and the product marketing team brainstormed ideas on the best special promotional offer for the launch day.

It was a delicate balance between giving a significant discount and not selling our product too short.

In the end, the team decided to offer 10% off the first month for new registrations.

(Tip: We don’t advise this for newer products with no prior fan base, though. In that case, it’s a better idea to offer something ridiculously low at first. That way, you can get the most out of your launch.)

To make sure that every Product Hunt user will see that offer, we added a banner on the top of our product pages specifically for any visitor traffic that arrived via Product Hunt.

(Tip: We used a free-to-use tool called Introbar which let us set up our Hello banner in a few minutes.)

3. Write the In-App Message for Ninjaoutreach Users

A loyal customer base willing to leave glowing comments is a great asset for any product marketing campaign.

There’s just no better social proof than those coming from long-time, paying (and happy) customers.

So, Daphnie finalized the template for an in-app message to go out to any NinjaOutreach users logging online on our launch day.

She also edited other versions of the template so that Evgen can modify our Product Hunt announcements to match the milestones of the day.

For example, if and when we get the #1 place on Product Hunt’s homepage (which we did!) our message would look like this:

4. Draft the Email Template for Ninjaoutreach Subscribers

An email list is a powerful resource that you can leverage if you want to promote a product to a warm audience.

These are people who already trusted you enough to subscribe to your emails, after all.

In our case, we had over 10k subscribers. And for our weekly newsletter, Daphnie edited this template for Dave.

Related to this, next to-dos on our list were to:

5. Prepare the Email Template for NinjaOutreach 2.0 Beta Testers

Here’s the product marketing template that Daphnie edited for Evgen.

6. Set up the Tweet Template for Reaching out to Product Hunt Influencers

And here’s the template that Evgen prepared on Twitter.

7. Update the Knowledge Base with Screenshots of the 2.0 Version

Since our 2.0 version comes with a new look, we made sure to go back to our old tutorials and update our Knowledge Base with screenshots that reflect our tool’s improved interface and design.

8. Prepare 2.0 Branded Medias Tailored Specifically for the Launch

A rebranding won’t be complete without promotional media, so our design team got these ready as well.

These media included:

Branded social media images for:

Each team member profile

All company page profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram

Milestone posts:

Launch

100 upvotes

300 upvotes

500 upvotes

Thank you post to end the day

Demo video of the new interface of the app

9. Create a List of Related Slack and Facebook Groups and Join Them

Evgen also prospected some relevant Facebook and Slack Groups where he could join and eventually post announcements of our launch.

Of course, he made sure that the material fits the groups’ requirements and that the members already showed interest in getting such announcements.

10. Assemble the List of Product Hunt and Twitter Influencers to Reach out to on Launch Day

Social media, as we said, is crucial.

To make sure we have as many people know about our launch as possible, the team assembled a prospect list of the audiences we wanted to reach out to.

These people came mainly from 3 groups:

Current NinjaOutreach users who we approached via the live chat message

NinjaOutreach mailing list

Twitter users who liked NinjaOutreach on Product Hunt previously or liked one of our main competitors.

(Tip: We used the Heroku app to scrape the Twitter profiles of Product Hunt upvoters.)

Launch Day Product Marketing Task Checklist

As soon as our Hunter put up the recommendation for NinjaOutreach 2.0, the team was all set.

With an organized plan in place, it was easy to get the ball rolling. 1. Post to Product Hunt Between 12 am and 2 am PST Our goal was to get our listing up so people can see it as the day starts, so we agreed to have our Hunter post it early.

At roughly between 12 am and 2 am PST, our NinjaOutreach 2.0 Product Hunt listing was up.

2. Drop the Maker’s Introduction Comment

A product launch isn’t complete without the app Maker’s message.

Consequently, Mark posted the template he’d prepared, which discussed NinjaOutreach 2.0’s new look and interface.

He also shared the details of our special promotional offer exclusive for Product Hunt.

3. Post Updates in the Company Chat to Keep Everyone in the Loop

A concerted team effort needs constant updates to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Hence, here’s Evgen posting an announcement to the All Employees team chat to keep everyone in the loop.

4. Send Announcements to All Newsletter Subscribers, Beta Testers, Website, and In-App Visitors

Since we already had our templates, we just added our link to the Product Hunt listing and sent our announcements to all available channels:

Newsletter subscribers

Beta testers

In-app visitors

Website visitors

5. Announce the Launch on All Company Social Media Pages

Our branded images and Product Hunt announcement captions were all ready as well, so we just set those to go live on all our company social media pages on launch day.

Here is how our Twitter social media blurb looked like:

We used the same template for our Facebook and Instagram announcement.

At this point, Evgen also asked other team members to update their social profiles and help spread the news on their networks.

(Tip: We used Zapier for our targeted outreach, but for all other social media post scheduling, we used Viraltag.)

6. Share the News to All Relevant Facebook and Slack Groups

After having spent some time building rapport with his Facebook and Slack communities, here’s Evgen in one of his groups announcing our Product Hunt launch.

7. Message Any Warm Contacts

We also shared the announcement via Email, Skype, and other mediums to contacts we’ve had recent or ongoing conversations with.

In my case, I just used our outreach tool to email all my warm contacts for me. (I used NinjaOutreach to promote NinjaOutreach—how meta is that?)

Since I continuously maintain a personal list of contacts that I have a good rapport with, I just opened my account and imported this list to NinjaOutreach.

Once done importing, I saved these contacts into a new prospect list for this particular campaign.

Next, I went to: Outreach > Templates > Create Template

Because I’ve been in steady conversations with the people on this list (I move any lapsed conversations to another list), I pretty much know the right approach to use in my outreach.

I wrote my message naturally, then hit Save to store my template.

(Afterwards, when our listing went live, I just inserted the corresponding link.)

With my template done, I went back to the Outreach tab then clicked Autosending > Schedule a Campaign.

Next, I selected the correct list for our product marketing campaign, the email address I preferred to use, and the name of the custom template that I had just saved.

There are ways to pre-schedule a campaign on NinjaOutreach using the Send Later option, but because my template required the link to our listing, I had to wait for us to go live on Product Hunt first.

Once our Product Hunt thread went live and I was able to insert the link into my template, I then chose the Send Now option.

With all input fields covered, I clicked Launch Campaign and just let NinjaOutreach do its job.

8. Post an Announcement to Celebrate Hitting the 100 Upvotes Milestone

An email outreach tool may be less appealing compared to some dating or cat GIF curation apps out there.

Still, that didn’t stop us from creating our own hype.

Here’s our celebratory Tweet for when we reached our first hundred upvotes, for example.

We also used the same template for our Facebook post.

9. Publish a Post to Celebrate Hitting the 300 Upvotes Milestone

Things got even better when we reached 300 more upvotes, so we loaded up our celebratory Tweet for that as well.

Again, we used the same template for our Facebook post.

10. Spread the Word to Celebrate Hitting the Top of the Product Hunt Homepage

Finally, the best moment came when we hit #1 on the Product Hunt homepage.

Evgen and the rest of the product marketing team were ecstatic, and we gladly used our celebratory templates for this special achievement.

Here’s our Facebook post to commemorate the milestone.

TopHuntsDaily, a Product Hunt Twitter bot, already made the announcement for us on Twitter, so we just Retweeted that.

11. Tweet the Influencers in the Prospect List

Product Hunt discourages anyone from directly asking for upvotes, so we simply shared the word with our branded images and a link to our product listing.

We also made sure to stay within Twitter’s direct message and Tweet limits.

To accomplish these faster, we used an app called Zapier to do a Google Sheet + Zapier + Twitter integration.

Basically, Zapier connected the different apps we used and automated the process of turning our templates in Google Sheets into Twitter posts.

Zapier can do this for other apps and this integration + automation process is called making a “zap.”

To demonstrate, here is a look at my Zapier account.

I already clicked Google Sheets and Twitter to view any available zap templates for those apps.

As you’ll see, you can also use zaps to save any Twitter mentions and followers into a Google sheet too. But for this particular task, the zap we needed was the one that made it possible to post Tweets from new rows on Google Sheets.

After choosing a zap, Zapier will show a short description page about it so users can double check that it’s going to do exactly as intended.

The next steps of the in-app walkthrough are easy enough to understand and in a few minutes, you’ll have a working zap.

So, back to the campaign.

We integrated several Twitter accounts of some of our team members who have a good following and set these to Tweet around 10 messages each.

We then scheduled these 10 Tweets to go out every 20 to 30 minutes to:

People who upvoted NinjaOutreach in our previous 2014 launch

Those who upvoted competitors and similar apps.

12. Monitor Mentions and Reply to Comments Throughout the Launch Day

All things considered, we still needed to keep the engagement going to maintain our top homepage position.

Using our other social media accounts, we also continued to share our Product Hunt link to our personal and business contacts, asking them to support us and join the conversation.

Also, some team members stayed on for the whole day of the launch to reply to any mentions and comments on Product Hunt and other channels.

Post Launch Product Marketing Task Checklist

1. Respond to All Supporters

After the launch, we rechecked our social media channels to say thank you to all the people who upvoted and shared the news. Evgen personally reacted to all the Tweets to show his appreciation.

2. Turn off All Automated Announcements

With our product marketing event done, we disabled all the automated messages we sent to our users and website visitors through Intercom.

3. Publish Documentation About the Relaunch

And our last task? It’s to publish a case study about this launch, and that’s why you’re reading this now. 😉

Final Notes

From #1 on the Product Hunt homepage, we ended the day at #2, with a total of 470+ upvotes, 31 reviews, and 21 comments.

Despite not being able to hold the #1 spot through to the end, NinjaOutreach still gained some leads from this exercise.

For one, in three weeks after our Product Hunt launch, we’ve received over 1.1k visits and 10 new signups from this source alone.

Two months later, our total goal completions referred by Product Hunt reached almost $900.

We even got a couple of new business collaboration proposals.

However, that’s not to say it couldn’t have gone better.

Yes, a social influencer outreach app could not possibly demand the sort of viral engagement that other cooler, more consumer-oriented apps could.

Still, we should have gotten more signups.

But given that we were able to successfully promote our rebranding with a small team, using minimal time, and with a low-cost product marketing campaign (this only cost us more or less $300 to execute), this, to us, was a pretty good first step for NinjaOutreach 2.0.

And as we push through the year with new key leaders to our team, the future continues to be ripe for more opportunities to take NinjaOutreach even further.

The post Product Marketing | How to Reach #1 on Product Hunt [Case Study] appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://ninjaoutreach.com/product-marketing/

[theconservativebrief]

The leading international body of climate change researchers is preparing to release a major report Sunday night on the impacts of global warming and what it would take to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, a goal that looks increasingly unlikely.

The report is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consortium of hundreds of climate researchers convened by the United Nations. Authors are meeting this week in Incheon, South Korea, to finalize their findings, but Climate Home News obtained an early leaked draft.

Why examine the prospects for limiting global warming to 1.5°C? Because under the Paris agreement, countries agreed that the goal should be to limit warming to below 2°C by 2100, with a nice-to-have target of capping warming at 1.5°C.

According to the drafts, the report finds that it would take a massive global effort, far more aggressive than any we’ve seen to date, to keep warming in line with 1.5°C — in part because we are already en route to 3°C of warming. And even if we hit the 1.5°C goal, the planet will still face massive, devastating changes. So it’s pretty grim.

But this is also a thunderous call to action, laying out what tools we have at our disposal (we have plenty) to mitigate global warming and to accelerate the turn toward cleaner energy. Let’s walk through the basics.

The planet has already warmed by 1°C due to human activity, and we’re seeing its consequences right now: Sea levels have risen more than 8 inches since 1880, we’re witnessing the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in 1,500 years, and extreme weather events are becoming more damaging due to climate change — to name a few.

So heating the whole planet by another 50 percent stands to have even more devastating impacts, particularly for the most vulnerable, according to the leaked draft of the IPCC report:

Globally, the poorest people are projected to experience the impacts of 1.5°C global warming predominantly through increased food prices, food insecurity and hunger, income losses, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts and population displacements. Such impacts can occur, for instance, from increased heat stress and other extreme events, such as coastal flooding, with over 100 million people projected to go into poverty through impacts on agriculture and food prices

However, it could get worse if the world got even hotter. And right now, we’re likely to soar past 1.5°C as early as 2030 and hit 3ºC by 2100.

A key point to remember is that while we talk about climate change in terms of averages, buried in those averages are extremes: more frequent and intense heat waves. More damaging storms. Higher oceans. These events can have a compounding effect that costs society far more than lost lives and damaged property from the disasters themselves. Coastal flooding can create a refugee crisis which in turn can drive armed conflicts, for example.

That’s why, as my colleague David Roberts explained, 2°C of warming is way worse than 1.5°C. It would increase sea levels by another 4 inches (10 centimeters) on average. It would knock down global wheat production by 7 percent. It would increase the intensity of severe rainfall events by 2 percent.

Zooming in to specific regions, 2°C would cause freshwater availability drop by twice as much in the Mediterranean as it would under a 1.5°C warming scenario. Some of the most densely populated regions of the world like Southeast Asia face far greater crop declines with an additional 0.5°C of warming. By 2100, limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C would avert 150 million premature deaths.

All this adds up to a compelling moral and economic case for reaching a more ambitious climate change mitigation goal.

Right now, though, only a handful of countries are on track to meet their targets set under the Paris agreement — targets, remember, that they set for themselves. Global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing, and even climate change-fighting champions like Germany are on track to miss their goalposts.

Yet if every country were to meet its goals under Paris, that would still put the planet on a trajectory to warm by 3°C. Hitting the far more ambitious 1.5°C target is therefore a much heavier lift, in terms of politics, economics, and technology. Climate change campaigners have compared the endeavor to fighting a world war.

It would require replacing the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel generators with cleaner alternatives. It would drive the world to electrify everything. Planners would need to redesign cities to allow cleaner transportation. And governments would have to pay for their emissions at a price high enough to include the social costs of carbon.

The grimmest prognosis in the draft report is in the details of the effort it would take to actually limit warming to 1.5°C. Countries won’t just have to give up fossil fuels and stop emitting greenhouse gases; they’ll have to pull carbon dioxide straight out of the air.

“All mitigation pathways compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 involve removal of CO2 from the atmosphere,” according to the draft. And not by a little, but by a lot, upward of 180 gigatons of carbon dioxide by the end of the century. This will require machines that scrub carbon dioxide out of the air as well as biofuels coupled with carbon capture and sequestration. These tactics have their own energy demands and environmental drawbacks, and we may not be able to deploy them in time.

“There is a high chance that the levels of CO2 removal implied in the scenarios might not be feasible due the required scale and speed of deployment required and trade-offs with sustainable development objectives,” according to the leaked report.

Countries will also have to make drastic changes to land use practices. Some of the warming that’s baked in will also force millions to retreat from coastlines. “Sea level will continue to rise for centuries,” according to the report.

We also don’t have much time to act. Because it takes decades for a buildup of carbon dioxide to influence the planet’s temperature, a 1.5°C warming trajectory demands cutting the planet’s emissions 40 percent by 2030. The longer we wait, the more radical our options.

The IPCC authors insist this report is not a political document, but it’s hard to avoid the political subtext. We’ve known the scale of the challenge for some time, but seeing it all combined in one place is staggering, and that’s part of the point of this exercise. Some of the language in the report could change by the final version to be released next week, but the facts of the report aren’t new.

Though many public officials have historically shrugged off dire forecasts of our planet’s future, the upcoming report closes off the temptations of wishful thinking, that humanity will somehow limit its emissions on its own or that we can develop technology to offset all our problems. It shows that even in the best-case, most optimistic scenario, hard decisions lie ahead.

Original Source -> UN panel prepares to scold world on progress toward meeting global warming goals

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[theconservativebrief]

The leading international body of climate change researchers is preparing to release a major report Sunday night on the impacts of global warming and what it would take to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, a goal that looks increasingly unlikely.

The report is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consortium of hundreds of climate researchers convened by the United Nations. Authors are meeting this week in Incheon, South Korea, to finalize their findings, but Climate Home News obtained an early leaked draft.

Why examine the prospects for limiting global warming to 1.5°C? Because under the Paris agreement, countries agreed that the goal should be to limit warming to below 2°C by 2100, with a nice-to-have target of capping warming at 1.5°C.

According to the drafts, the report finds that it would take a massive global effort, far more aggressive than any we’ve seen to date, to keep warming in line with 1.5°C — in part because we are already en route to 3°C of warming. And even if we hit the 1.5°C goal, the planet will still face massive, devastating changes. So it’s pretty grim.

But this is also a thunderous call to action, laying out what tools we have at our disposal (we have plenty) to mitigate global warming and to accelerate the turn toward cleaner energy. Let’s walk through the basics.

The planet has already warmed by 1°C due to human activity, and we’re seeing its consequences right now: Sea levels have risen more than 8 inches since 1880, we’re witnessing the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in 1,500 years, and extreme weather events are becoming more damaging due to climate change — to name a few.

So heating the whole planet by another 50 percent stands to have even more devastating impacts, particularly for the most vulnerable, according to the leaked draft of the IPCC report:

Globally, the poorest people are projected to experience the impacts of 1.5°C global warming predominantly through increased food prices, food insecurity and hunger, income losses, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts and population displacements. Such impacts can occur, for instance, from increased heat stress and other extreme events, such as coastal flooding, with over 100 million people projected to go into poverty through impacts on agriculture and food prices

However, it could get worse if the world got even hotter. And right now, we’re likely to soar past 1.5°C as early as 2030 and hit 3ºC by 2100.

A key point to remember is that while we talk about climate change in terms of averages, buried in those averages are extremes: more frequent and intense heat waves. More damaging storms. Higher oceans. These events can have a compounding effect that costs society far more than lost lives and damaged property from the disasters themselves. Coastal flooding can create a refugee crisis which in turn can drive armed conflicts, for example.

That’s why, as my colleague David Roberts explained, 2°C of warming is way worse than 1.5°C. It would increase sea levels by another 4 inches (10 centimeters) on average. It would knock down global wheat production by 7 percent. It would increase the intensity of severe rainfall events by 2 percent.

Zooming in to specific regions, 2°C would cause freshwater availability drop by twice as much in the Mediterranean as it would under a 1.5°C warming scenario. Some of the most densely populated regions of the world like Southeast Asia face far greater crop declines with an additional 0.5°C of warming. By 2100, limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C would avert 150 million premature deaths.

All this adds up to a compelling moral and economic case for reaching a more ambitious climate change mitigation goal.

Right now, though, only a handful of countries are on track to meet their targets set under the Paris agreement — targets, remember, that they set for themselves. Global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing, and even climate change-fighting champions like Germany are on track to miss their goalposts.

Yet if every country were to meet its goals under Paris, that would still put the planet on a trajectory to warm by 3°C. Hitting the far more ambitious 1.5°C target is therefore a much heavier lift, in terms of politics, economics, and technology. Climate change campaigners have compared the endeavor to fighting a world war.

It would require replacing the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel generators with cleaner alternatives. It would drive the world to electrify everything. Planners would need to redesign cities to allow cleaner transportation. And governments would have to pay for their emissions at a price high enough to include the social costs of carbon.

The grimmest prognosis in the draft report is in the details of the effort it would take to actually limit warming to 1.5°C. Countries won’t just have to give up fossil fuels and stop emitting greenhouse gases; they’ll have to pull carbon dioxide straight out of the air.

“All mitigation pathways compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 involve removal of CO2 from the atmosphere,” according to the draft. And not by a little, but by a lot, upward of 180 gigatons of carbon dioxide by the end of the century. This will require machines that scrub carbon dioxide out of the air as well as biofuels coupled with carbon capture and sequestration. These tactics have their own energy demands and environmental drawbacks, and we may not be able to deploy them in time.

“There is a high chance that the levels of CO2 removal implied in the scenarios might not be feasible due the required scale and speed of deployment required and trade-offs with sustainable development objectives,” according to the leaked report.

Countries will also have to make drastic changes to land use practices. Some of the warming that’s baked in will also force millions to retreat from coastlines. “Sea level will continue to rise for centuries,” according to the report.

We also don’t have much time to act. Because it takes decades for a buildup of carbon dioxide to influence the planet’s temperature, a 1.5°C warming trajectory demands cutting the planet’s emissions 40 percent by 2030. The longer we wait, the more radical our options.

The IPCC authors insist this report is not a political document, but it’s hard to avoid the political subtext. We’ve known the scale of the challenge for some time, but seeing it all combined in one place is staggering, and that’s part of the point of this exercise. Some of the language in the report could change by the final version to be released next week, but the facts of the report aren’t new.

Though many public officials have historically shrugged off dire forecasts of our planet’s future, the upcoming report closes off the temptations of wishful thinking, that humanity will somehow limit its emissions on its own or that we can develop technology to offset all our problems. It shows that even in the best-case, most optimistic scenario, hard decisions lie ahead.

Original Source -> UN panel prepares to scold world on progress toward meeting global warming goals

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