#the fact that submissions let you make a description box + can be commented on | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

smallearthboundfindings · 1 year

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[Banner Source]

Sprite Edit Requests: Open!

Submissions: Open!

Asks: Open!

[Blog Contents Masterpost!]

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Request Rules:

Specify what game style you want, please! If unspecified and the character/item/enemy only appears in one game, then I will use that style by default, but if they appear in multiple games (Porky, for example), I will ask which style you're looking for! Save the wait and let me know in advance!

If you are requesting a character, please specify a pose or action desired! Otherwise, I'll just toss canon sprite sheets or generic standing forwards sprites at you; I don't know what you want.

I can decline requests! Those deemed too complex, inappropriate, or hateful will be declined. Don't even bother.

Yes, you can request your OC! Just follow the other character rules and please give me at least a written description of what they look like! (Though pictures are preferred.) OC requests with no appearance will be declined.

I prefer you use the asks box rather than a comment or reblog for requests. It's easier for me to see that way! If you want to make sure I see your request, put it in the asks!

All of our canon sprites are sourced from Spriters' Resource here, here, and here to give all due credit! It's kinda hard to remember crediting every single time, so I'll put it here! Hope that works...

Submission Box Rules:

If you have something more interesting to say than me at a given time, feel free to suggest new posts as submissions or add to any preexisting posts in whatever way you find suitable! We might feature them on this blog! Just follow our little submission rules if you're going to send a brand new post! (Note: These only apply to submitted facts. Submitted headcanons only require the last rule.)

Please try to include at least one form of media, such as an image, video, or audio track as support or proof! If the media is from elsewhere on the internet and isn't a plain normal gameplay screenshot/song from one of the games, however, please credit it in a link or embed it! TL;DR: credit whoever scanned that page of Pollyanna you want to show us, for example!

Credit your sources, please! Made-up sources or “source: dude trust me”'s will not be allowed unless it’s a joke submission. Say what game or bit of secondary material you’re posting about somewhere and in what context it appears, if applicable. A simple “in the Japanese manual for [game]” or “in the debug menu for [game]” should do!

No hateful, bigoted, or NSFW submissions! I mean, we are working with a Nintendo franchise so this probably won’t happen, but just in case. Swearing is a-okay though because the mod thinks it’s funny. Please submit your Kumatora swear montage; it’ll be hilarious.

Asks:

You're totally welcome to walk up to this blog's asks and go "hey allen, what are your thoughts on george?" or something else like that. I ain't no corporate - I'm real and you can talk to me even if it's silly! I'm just some guy (gender neutral) posting Mother content and I'll gladly welcome community interaction!

Pings:

You may ping if you wanna present something you made based on something we did or showed off here, to credit something, or if you desperately want me to see a relevant informational post / a tournament were Ness got nominated and you wanna sic the propaganda on me / basically anything interesting! Overall, I don't mind them.

Miscellaneous:

Regarding the safety of our community and fandom, active bigots such as racists, LGBT-phobes, TERFs; perpetrators/glorifiers of abuse such as MAPs, zoos, and proshippers; and anyone I deem to be too mean-spirited to other users will be blocked the moment I catch you. This has been your warning. The close tab button is right there.

#not a finding #pinned post #submission rules #request rules #the formatting is a work in progress

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min-youngis · 4 years

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my toes get sweaty

gif not mine

i can be needy + i'm learning to walk again

~ Pairing : Brian Kang / YoUng K x Reader

~ Summary : You’re strong and independent and sometimes you need to be taken care of and that’s okay. Even if you’re still coming to terms with the fact.

Established Relationship.

~ Word Count : 1,024

~ Warnings : Uhhhh, none, muchos fluff, that’s about it. maybe a smidge of angst, just a little bit bc y/n’s got all the wrong ideas. Mayhaps this is what the kids call “Fluff and Comfort” if i am not mista k e n.

~ A/N : whO is even reading these stories anymore lmAo it’s FINE i’m FINE. anyway yoUng K is fucking annoying. everybody is sleepy and tired, that is all. i started this while listening to needy by Ariana Grande and then i listened to Walk by Foo Fighters so the vibes got a bit confusing somewhere but it worked out in the end ig,

like, share, comment, subscribe, it just be like that sometimes.

i’d love to hear feedback! (no, really)! spread the love!

masterlist (idk man) in my description!

~~~

Letting out a sigh, you push open the door to your house, shoulders sagging with what feels like the weight of a mountain. Undoing your scarf and dropping your bag on the couch, you make your way to the kitchen, your only thoughts being food, shower and bed, hopefully in that order, provided you don’t fall asleep on the way.

You have to do a double-take when you see boxes and two plates laid out on the counter next to the microwave, stood as you are like a statue at the doorway to your kitchen. You wrack your brain, trying to remember if you had left it out in the morning before your classes. But you’re certain you haven’t ordered in in nearly a week, living off of instant noodles and granola bars when you get the time in between class and submissions.

You enter the room, walking towards the containers in question, trying to work through possible suspects and scenarios. Your landlord is out of the picture. Your friends are just as busy as you are. Which leaves only one culprit.

It’s like you summoned him with that thought, his head popping into your insofar zoned-out line of vision. He looks like he’s come straight from the shower, hair still a little damp, falling over his forehead. He doesn’t say a word as he makes his way towards you, easily interpreting the defeated and slightly guilty look on your face.

That feeling only intensifies when you make out how tired he looks the closer he comes, slightly dark eye bags and heavier-than-usual steps. You try silencing the needling voices in your head, try to prevent the spiral into harmful overthinking, but in your already emotionally fragile condition, there’s only so much you can do.

You’re about to say something, probably along the lines of, “You didn’t have to,” and, “Why?” and “You have enough to do,” and the especially damning, “I can handle it myself,” but he doesn’t give you a chance to utter a word, tugging you off of the counter that you’re leaned against and into his frame, smoothly sliding one arm around your waist, other tucking your head into the crook of his neck.

A dirty move, but it does the trick, effectively shutting you up.

It’s inevitable really, how you sink into the embrace, all protest evaporating into thin air. There’s no point in fighting it and he knows. You take a deep, shuddering breath, the smell of your soap and his laundry detergent filling your senses. You let your eyes slip shut and your frame slump, tension in your shoulders slowly dropping.

With a soft kiss pressed to the top of your head, he softly says, “I wanted to. I have a day off tomorrow. Don’t overthink it,” answering all your unasked questions in a single breath.

It isn’t that you don’t like being taken care of. You just don’t like the implications of it. It feels like a debt, a favour, pity. But you also didn’t very much like googly eye fridge magnets or stand-up specials on Netflix, but slowly, over the last few months, all that’s begun to change. And besides, you both wear stubbornness like a well-fitted coat and going head to head with him right now seems like a less-than enticing proposition.

You quiet your mind as much as you can and reluctantly pull away, watching through tired eyes as he takes the boxes from the counter.

“While you get changed, I’ll heat all this up,” he says, gently nudging you towards the door with his hip.

You give him as sharp a glance as you can muster so he knows that you won’t object tonight, not for lack of want but rather lack of energy, and exit the kitchen.

When you enter the living room after changing, you see Brian propped up on the couch, a plate full of food in his hands, another on the centre table in front of him. He looks up when he hears your socks scuff against the floor and gives you a soft grin, nodding his head towards the television in front of him.

“Street Smarts!” John Mulaney screams.

You sink onto the other side of the couch and pick up your plate, legs automatically coming up to rest on the table. The two of you sit in relative silence, only the occasional fork noise and a muted chuckle breaking the quietude.

Your eyes get progressively droopier and they’re half lidded by the time Brian gets up, taking your empty plates to the sink. He switches off the light on his return and when he comes and sits back down, your body traitorously leans into his side, betraying your desire for comfort. Smoothly, he maneuvers you so he’s half-lying, back against the couch arm and you’re comfortably nestled between the back of the couch and his body, head on his chest.

Half-heartedly, just to feel like you had put up some form of active protest and to salvage some of your admittedly misplaced pride, you mutter against him, “You’re not supposed to lie down right after you’ve eaten.”

He sees right through you, of course he does, and hums out an equally soft “Okay,” but makes no move to get up, only delicately, almost imperceptibly tightening his arm that’s thrown across your shoulder, holding you to him.

And again, because you’ve always been annoyingly obstinate, you sleepily huff, “We’ll have stiff necks in the morning if we fall asleep on the couch,” all while your leg treacherously curls atop his outstretched ones.

This time, he lets out a soft, vaguely amused laugh and obligingly repeats, “Okay,” stretching his other arm out to retrieve the remote, switching off the television and blindly reaching for the comforter that’s on the chair next to the couch.

Eventually, you’re both fully under the comforter, or as fully as you can be with Brian’s feet sticking out at the end because “My toes get sweaty,” and you succumb to the tiredness, sleep easily finding you, burrowed as you are in the comfort.

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twi-sight2020 · 4 years

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An Introduction

When I was in High School, a friend forced me to read Twilight. I’d seen the books before, even had another friend who had been a fan since the first book had been released, but something about it never appealed to me. I was the girl who owned all the Buffy and Angel seasons, my Mother loved Interview with the Vampire, and I picked up almost every book with a supernatural love interest I could find. In theory, these books were made for me but the descriptions had felt somewhat...lacking. Normal girl falls for broody vampire, I’d seen it all before, it was the the plot of The Silver Kiss, and Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Darkside, and every other book in the teen fantasy category. I wasn’t into it. But, it was fall break and I had nothing to do, and a friend had swore to me i would love the book, so it wasn’t as if i had anything to lose, so i took the leap. And I LOVED it. The main character was a brunette(like me) and clumsy (also like me) she even liked to read (again, like your’s truly) and here was this sexy vampire who was incredibly into her, and he was rich and had superpowers. Plus, his family was amazing. What wasn’t there to love? New Moon was already out at this point and I devoured it as well, being angry at Edward for leaving, and exasperated at Bella for letting his stupidity bring her down. I devoured the lore of the werewolves, and moaned when it seemed Bella was falling for Jacob. And, of course, I cheered when Bella and Edward were reunited.Of course I rolled my eyes at the thought of a love triangle, since we all KNEW she couldn’t be with anyone but Edward. It wasn’t long after that that Eclipse came out, and it was at that Point that Twilight mania seemed to take over my school. I admit, it wasn’t my favorite of the books for a variety of reasons, and it was around this point I started to see more of the appeal of Jacob. Edward struck me as a bit too controlling and annoying. I jumped ship, even though I knew it was fruitless, but still, nothing detoured me from my love of the series. When Breaking Dawn came out, I remember giving my mother the money I had gotten in tips from my waitressing job and having her pick up a copy as she got off work that morning. (she worked nights, my job was evenings on the weekends)I devoured half of the book before work that night and the rest when i got home. And, unpopular opinion, I LOVED it. It was unexpected, it was strange, some of it was downright weird. and it was my favorite book of the series, problematic and all. The movie came out my final year of high school, inspiring seventeen year old me to get the “Alice” haircut (it was not my best look, I assure you, but it taught me to NEVER go that short again)and the movies, oh lord, the movies got my mom into the series. Does she still regularly rewatch them? Yes, yes she does. Of course, when the movies made things more mainstream, it meant the detractors came out of the woodwork. “This is anti-feminist” “problematic” “abusive” “Pro-life propaganda” “Subtle Mormon indoctrination” and so forth. And, yea, there were some things i could see their points on but it was still my series...until suddenly, it wasn’t. The more I read the more I was concerned that some of the messages I had shrugged off as being simply a product of this one fictional relationship might actually influence people to accept this behavior in real life. Yes, most readers would understand that interactions that were seen as loving and protective by a centuries old vampire or a werewolf weren’t the norm but “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” (ignoring the fact that i had also been a child when reading, of course) So I became and Anti, I trash talked the writing style, read sporkings, even wrote an essay for a a literature class on women lacking agency in popular literature using Twilight as one of my two main examples. I rolled my eyes at my aunt naming her dog Bella and made fun of my mother trying to rename my dog “Jacob” I was full on the hate train and there was no backing down. So what changed? Well, for one “Life and Death” came out and I was...curious. of course I didn’t buy it right away, but a bit later I found it on sell during Black Friday and I snatched it up. I thought it would be ridiculous and something I could make fun of, but instead, I genuinely enjoyed it. Several of my friends had the same reaction.But maybe, maybe her writing style had just improved, or maybe it had major changes, but ...no. it was 90% the same story, but I loved it it a way i hadn’t anything that that verse in years. Then, I watched the movies with a friend. Of course there were corny moments and things that made me roll my eyes (but these days, most shows with teenagers cause the same reaction in me) But on the whole, the movies were fun. Not masterpieces of cinema, but fun. And i wondered....was I a bit too harsh before? I wasn’t the only one. Tumblr began its “Twilight Renaissance.” Lindsay Ellis- once such a critic of Stephanie that she helped write a book parodying her- did a video apologizing to Stephanie Meyer and commenting on how it is often books and other media enjoyed by teenage girls that is subject to the harshest criticism, even by other woman. Buzzfeed was having articles and quizzes and memes about it. Twilight was back in my face again, just it was ten years ago. So, here I am, taking another look. Admitting that time changes viewpoints and that maybe i was too harsh, that an opinion doesn’t have to be all or nothing. that I can say “Hey, there are some choices I don’t like and things I have issues with” and yet admit “it’s enjoyable, it’s fun”,And -while it might not be “serious literature” it got a lot of people reading and influenced an entire generation. So I’m going back, I’m reading the main books first and, if I have time, taking in other things (the illustrated guide, Bree Tanner, Midnight Sun) that i skipped over before. I want to see where I come in at the end of things. Will I like the same characters? Will my favorite book and movies still be the same? Can this girl finally make up her mind if she’s Team Jacob or Team Edward? I hope to find out. And I hope to have some fun along the way. I’m going to have my ask box and submissions open,because I really hope to engage with people while doing this, both to keep me motivated and to see where my thoughts and opinions go with this. i haven’t exactly worked out a reading schedule yet, and i will warn that updates may occasionally get sporadic as my personal life can be...a challenge. But,I really hope this doesn’t turn anyone off of things as this si something I’m super excited about. Till then, Be Safe AJ

#Twilight #stephanie meyer #edward cullen #bella swan #jacob black #twilight reread 2020

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mcdougallunitedinpride · 5 years

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Baptized in Terror or in Grace?

by Gary Simpson

Call to Worship

One: Today we remember Jesus baptism.

All: In baptism, our Creator calls us

to use love to free people from hate.

One: In baptism, we celebrate being one in Christ

No longer are we divided by identity.

All: No longer citizen or immigrant.

No longer slave or free.

No longer rich or poor.

No longer male, female, other.

No longer straight or LGBTQ.

We are one in Christ Jesus.

We welcome and celebrate all.

Making all one in Christ.

One: Baptism the Spirit anoints us for ministry

Anoints us to embody divine love.

All: Today, the body of Christ

remembers and celebrates all.

One: Let us worship God and celebrate each other!

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (KJV) And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not; John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: 17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.

21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

Baptism becomes baptism when God is present. According to both Martin Luther and Augustine, “Without the word of God the water is simple water’ and is not baptism.(1) The empowering of the Spirit is what makes the simple act of getting wet a baptism.

There are a number of different meanings of the word baptize. One Bible commentary in my library states that there are about 20 meanings for the word.(2) Some people emphasize meanings that relate more to water or more to immersion. I tend to emphasize more symbolic and more spiritual meanings. In baptism, we identify with Christ, with Christ’s death, with Christ’s resurrection. The most important meaning of baptize has almost no connection with water.(3) There is a sense in 1 Corinthians that the children of Israel were baptized into Moses.(4) In the Exodus narrative, the children of Israel did not get wet. They crossed the red sea on dry ground. The Egyptians were the ones who got wet that day.(5) James Dale wrote a book about John’s baptism. He describes baptism as taking place when the “character, state or condition” of an object is changed.(6)

A case can be made that Jesus’ baptism was unique. John the baptist baptized people in a ‘baptism of repentance’.(7) Jesus’ baptism was not like the baptisms normally conducted by John the baptizer, because Jesus was not repenting. Baptism signifies submission to God, allegiance to God’s will and inclusion with the restored people of God.(8) Through baptism, Jesus shows that He is in alliance with God, with the will of God and with humanity. Perhaps, in some way, Jesus’ baptism was an example for us and was a marker showing a change in Jesus from being a Jewish carpenter to being a powerful Jewish teacher.

Jesus was probably about 30 years old when He was baptized. Verse 23 is not part of the lectionary reading. In verse 23, we learn that Jesus was roughly 30 years old when He started his ministry. Priests were supposed to be at least 30 years of age to be installed in ministry.(9) Because Jesus is the high priest for humanity, it makes sense for Jesus to start His ministry at about 30 years of age.

John the baptist’s ministry is not one that I find particularly attractive. A description of his ministry makes me think of some of the street preachers in Edmonton, who stand on a box and yell into a public address system that everyone needs to repent or they will be doomed to hell. I try to scurry past them, in an effort to protect my ears from the loud preaching. In fact, I am not sure that I would want to be seen to have any association with John the baptizer's ministry. Depending on the translation, John the baptist called people a generation of vipers(10) or a children of vipers.(11) In fairness to John, he might have been calling the scribes and pharisees the children of vipers. We get that sense from Matthew’s Gospel. The religious leaders might have been present only to witness the baptism,(12) not to gain spiritual blessing from John the baptist. I wonder if they were there to see if John was preaching heresy. I am still left feeling that no matter how you slice it, either being told that your parents are poisonous snakes or that you are a poisonous snake is not a compliment. To John the baptizer, the people he was calling a generation of vipers were the descendants of the snake that deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.(13)

John's comments indirectly challenge racism and challenge ultra nationalism. And I am not sure if John won any friends among the Jewish nationalists of his day. In verses 7 and 8 of this chapter, he reminds the people that being children of Abraham is nothing to brag about. He essentially says that God can create good Jewish people from stones. I am wondering how well his message would be received by a room full of people wearing Make America Great Again hats. Nationalists might find John’s message that God does not care about your national identity or your skin color a bit unsettling, possibly even a little jarring. In John’s personal theology, being Jewish did not place you in a special position above other people. He saw a need for Jewish and non-Jewish people to repent. John’s message to Jewish people was that being Jewish did not exempt people from judgment and that “racial privilege meant nothing” to God.(14)

John the baptizer seemed to have good ethics. He told tax collectors to only collect the taxes that they were supposed to collect.(15) He informed Roman soldiers that they were to be content with their wages, do not blackmail people and do not be violent.(16) While his ministry impresses me as being harsh and insensitive, he was popular. Crowds appeared to follow John.(17) And for some reason, Jesus came to John to be baptized. Perhaps, Jesus wanted to be baptized by John, because they appear to have been relatives. According to Luke Chapter 1, Mary, Jesus’ mother, was related to John’s mother.(18)

One of my favorite Bible commentators is William Barclay, a Biblical linguist and scholar. He translated the New Testament and wrote the popular Daily Study Bible commentary, which covers the entire New Testament. His commentaries are so good that they can be used as a devotional book. William Barclay comments, “Nowhere does the difference between John and Jesus stand out so clearly because, whatever the message of John was, it was not a gospel. It was not good news; it was news of terror.”(19) At Jesus baptism, a dove descended upon Jesus. The dove symbolized purity and harmlessness.(20) In the presence of a ministry of terror, the dove, a symbol of peace, comes down from the heavenly. A harmless, life-giving, hope-filled ministry that touched hundreds of millions of people in the last two thousand years took flight on the wings of the dove.

There is a reason why I am giving this background. Jesus baptism is in no way diminished by the fact that He was baptized by John. Some people who attend progressive churches and many LGBTQ people have suffered a lot at the hands of blunt ministers, harsh churches, demeaning church doctrine. If you were baptized, confirmed, ordained or served in a church system that hurt you or that hurt others, your call to be a person of faith or your call to ministry is not diminished by that church. You are more than your past. Like Jesus, you can have a powerful ministry and you can be a powerful force of good news, despite the frightening messages of churches.

The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as the one who fulfills John’s prophecy that there is a better, a greater, a more significant spiritual leader coming. John indicates that this person who comes after him is so much better than John is that John is not even worthy of untying his sandals. Slaves typically untied sandals.(21) The early followers of Jesus would have understood that John the baptizer was saying that he is not good enough to be Jesus’ slave. A spirituality of terror is not worthy, is not fit to be the slave of a spirituality of hope and peace. The bad news gospel that condemns people based on their identity is not worthy of tying the sandals of the Gospel.

Jesus submitted to being baptized by a person who was a bad news minister, so that we would not have to submit to bad news belief systems, so that we could hear good news, the Gospel.

There is tremendous power in stories, so I am going to share a story, as I conclude. Ken Wilson, author of A Letter to My Congregation, tells the story of his daughter, Grace. His daughter was in a science class, which was taught by a devout Catholic teacher. A student asked the teacher what he thought of homosexuality. The teacher replied that homosexuality is morally disordered. Grace looked over and saw a boy, who identified as gay, starting to cry. To Grace’s credit, she stood up and said, “Well, both of my parents are pastors, and I don’t know what they think about this, but I know that Jesus accepted all people!” Through tears, the teen said, “Grace, you’re my hero!”(22) And I believe that day a gay teen was baptized in God’s love. That day Grace lived up to her name.

My prayer is that many people in the city will be baptized in God’s love through people who are part of this church. And that they will say, “Your church, is my hero!”

God is a lot like Grace and God calls us to be like Grace!

Today, you are declared grace incarnate, grace wrapped in flesh, grace that baptizes many with love. Amen.

Notes

(1) Cited W.H.T. Dau. “Baptism (Lutheran doctrine),” ISBE, I, 395 in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.” Bible.org. 04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018. <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(2) J. Vernon McGee. Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee. (Pasadena, California: Thru the Bible Radio, 1998) ebook.

(3) McGee. (1998) ebook.

(4) 1 Corinthians 10:2-5.

(5) McGee. (1998) ebook.

(6) James W. Dale. Johannic Baptism. (Waucona, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993, vi), cited in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.” Bible.org. 04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018. <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(7) William Barclay. “Daily StudyBible.” Study Light. n.d., 18 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(8) Walter J. Harrelson, et. al, eds. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 1858.

(9) See Numbers 4:3. “Adam Clarke Commentary.” Study Light. n.d., 17 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/acc/luke-3.html>. This point is also made in the Barnes Bible Commentary. “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.” Study Light. n.d., 17 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>.

(10) Luke 3:7 King James Version.

(11) Luke 3:7 William Barclay’s New Testament.

(12) Good News Study Bible. (New York: American Bible Society, 1993), 1297.

(13) Lane T. Dennis, et. al., eds. ESV Study Bible. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2011), 1953.

(14) William Barclay. “Daily StudyBible.” Study Light. n.d., 18 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(15) Luke 3:12-13.

(16) Luke 3:14.

(17) Luke 3:10 indicate crowds were asking John the baptist questions.

(18) Luke 1:36.

(19) William Barclay. “Daily StudyBible.” Study Light. n.d., 18 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(20) “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.” Study Light. n.d., 17 Dec 2018. <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>.

(21) Good News Study Bible. (New York: American Bible Society, 1993), 1379.

(22) Ken Wilson. A Letter to My Congregation: An Evangelical Pastor’s Path to Embracing People who are Gay, Lesbian and Transgender in the Company of Jesus. (Canton, Michigan: Read the Spirit Books, 2014), 41.

#gay Christian #lesbian Christian #bisexual Christian #asexual Christian #queer Christian #pansexual Christian #trans Christian #LGBTQ #LGBT #faithfully lgbt #sermon #devotion #baptism

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t-baba · 4 years

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10 Best WordPress Star Rating Plugins

Star ratings are used by websites to review all kinds of products and services. You can use them to rate pretty much anything your users are interested in: a movie, the food in a restaurant, the quality of service provided by a mechanic, etc.

One of the reasons star ratings are so popular is that they allow users to quickly determine the quality of a product or service based on the experience of people who have used it.

It is also very common to find businesses asking people to rate their services or products. This is because people are more likely to buy something if they see real reviews from other people who have actually used it.

If your website sells something, it is a good idea to include a star rating system somewhere so that your customers can review your products.

In this post, I'll list the ten best WordPress star rating plugins that you can use today.

WordPress Star Rating Plugins on CodeCanyon

There are currently about 75 premium WordPress star rating plugins available on CodeCanyon. All of them serve some unique purpose, like adding a star rating field to different forms or allowing users to review a product or service on your website.

The price for some of these star rating plugins starts from as low as $7. The fact that you get free lifetime updates and six months of free support makes buying them a very good deal.

Best Star Rating Plugins on CodeCanyon

Here is a brief review of the best star rating plugins that you can buy on CodeCanyon:

Stellar—Star Rating Plugin for WordPress

Stellar is a simple star rating plugin for WordPress that gives you the option to create and save ratings for each WordPress entry like a post, page, or product.

The review microdata is also visible in search results, so you will get a boost in visibility. It is fully compatible with all popular WordPress themes.

It comes with a lot of customization options. You can easily change the color, size, and shape of icons that are used to display the rating to users. The rating assigned to each post or page is also visible on the search page.

The plugin has cross-browser compatibility and does not rely on jQuery to work properly.

Testimonials Showcase WordPress Plugin

This plugin gives you an easy way to display testimonials, reviews, and quotes from users in an attractive layout.

It is ideal for situations where you have to display testimonials from your clients and customers. You can also use it to display reviews for different products on your website.

It is very flexible in terms of customization options and offers a responsive design. It's compatible with rich snippets and structured data used by search engines to display reviews and ratings in search results.

The reviews and testimonials can be showcased on the front-end either as a grid or as a slider. Each of these layouts comes with its own settings to control the look and feel of the reviews.

There are five different themes that you can use with this plugin: rounded speech bubbles, flat speech bubbles, flat card box, quote marks, or simple separator.

BNE Testimonials Pro

You can use the WordPress BNE Testimonials Pro plugin to display testimonials and reviews anywhere on your website.

The testimonials and reviews are made up of multiple elements like a featured image of the person or company writing the review, the actual review content, and additional fields for the name, website link, and the rating from the reviewer.

The plugin offers a large variety of customization and layout options for the reviews. You can choose from four different layouts: list, slider, thumbnail slider, and masonry grid. There are also four different themes: simple, default, bubbles, and cards.

The star ratings incorporate Schema.org tags to make sure that the rich snippets for the review are visible in search results.

One big advantage of using this plugin is that it offers the ability to import reviews from other platforms like Facebook, Google, and Yelp. So, if your users have written any reviews about your business on Facebook, they will be automatically pulled and added to your own website.

Gravity Forms Star Rating Field

This Gravity Forms Star Rating Field plugin allows you to add star rating fields to all your Gravity Forms.

You can choose from 14 different styles for the star rating field. There are also some other customization options like showing the current rating value on hover or click and showing some custom rating text in tooltips. Customize the rating label and the value saved in the database.

Contact Form 7 Star Rating Field

This Contact Form 7 Star Rating Field plugin offers the same functionality provided by the previous plugin. However, it has been developed for Contact Form 7.

This lets you add star rating fields to any of your Contact Form 7 forms. There are 12 different customization options available.

It works with all versions of the Contact Form 7 plugin, and you can also make the rating field required for form submission. The plugin also allows you to set a default rating value for the field.

One more feature that you will find useful is the ability to include rating results in an email using a shortcode.

Rating Form

This is one of the best WordPress star rating plugins on CodeCanyon. It is highly rated and receives updates at regular intervals. Each update also adds a lot of new features to the plugin.

It comes with a long list of features. For example, the plugin works perfectly with right-to-left (RTL) languages and cache plugins. You can also edit previously submitted ratings, allowing people to change their reviews at a later date.

The ratings are updated using AJAX, and a nice spinning animation is shown while the plugin updates the rating in the database. The results are immediately visible on the webpage once a user submits the ratings.

You can choose from different rating images provided by the plugin or upload your own custom images. You can add star ratings to any post or webpage using shortcodes. It is also possible to use the ratings with comments by using the comment_id attribute in shortcodes.

AP Custom Testimonial Pro

The AP Custom Testimonial Pro plugin also allows you to showcase reviews and testimonials from your clients and customers on your website.

This plugin offers a lot of options for displaying the testimonials on the site. You can also create your own custom layout to showcase the testimonials based on some predefined templates.

The plugin comes with 12 different layouts to display the user reviews. It also offers some other unique features like embedding videos in the testimonials or only displaying certain user reviews based on their ID. You can also optionally add links to the social media accounts of clients who write a review.

The plugin gives you granular control over all aspects of the review. This includes things like the image border color, review title color, review content color, etc.

The shortcode generator that comes with this plugin makes it incredibly easy for you to create custom shortcodes to display the testimonials exactly the way you want.

Free WordPress Star Rating Plugins

Before listing some free WordPress star rating plugins, I would like to mention that using premium plugins comes with its own advantages.

The premium plugin developers are more likely to provide regular updates and solve any issues that you might be facing with the use of these plugins. This is especially true for the best-sellers on CodeCanyon.

Also, the premium plugins generally offer a more polished design to give your website a professional look.

But sometimes a free plugin is the right choice for a limited budget—I've pulled together a few of these free plugins below.

Rate My Post—WP Post Rating

People who are only looking for a WordPress star rating plugin so that they can allow users to rate their posts and pages should consider using the Rate My Post WordPress plugin. It will allow you to easily add ratings to all your posts and pages using shortcodes.

Site Reviews

This plugin is more suited for people who want to allow users to provide reviews in a manner similar to websites like TripAdvisor or Yelp. It comes with a nice set of features that you can see on the plugin description page.

Yasr—Yet Another Stars Rating

This plugin comes with two different types of ratings. The first type is provided by the post author. This is ideal for websites that publish reviews of different products and services. The second type gives your visitors the ability to vote.

Best Practices to Keep in Mind When Using Star Rating Plugins

The ultimate goal of using these star rating plugins is to help your website visitors. So here are some guidelines that you can follow to use them in a way that benefits the visitors.

1. Place Ratings Only in Important Places

If you are reviewing a product or service for your visitors, make sure that you don't place the same ratings in ten different places. If you are writing a detailed review of the product, it is acceptable to provide different ratings for different aspects like the design, quality, pricing, etc. However, don't use the same overall 8/10 rating in six different places in a post.

2. Use Rich Snippet Data With the Correct Attributes

Search engines usually display star ratings in their search results only when they think that it will provide some useful information. For example, let's say you use rich snippets that display star ratings for products but use attributes that indicate that the rating is for posts. In such cases, the search engines might not show the ratings in their search results at all. So make sure that the rich snippet data to show the ratings has the correct attributes.

Final Thoughts

In this post, we have briefly reviewed both free and premium WordPress star rating plugins that you can add to your website. The aim of the post was to include the best WordPress star rating plugins for certain tasks like user testimonials, form fields, and product reviews.

The Best WordPress Plugins on CodeCanyon

If you are looking for a WordPress plugin for any use, take a look at the premium WordPress plugins on CodeCanyon. Hopefully, one of the plugins listed there will meet all your needs.

Here are a few of the best-selling and hot new WordPress plugins available on CodeCanyon for 2020.

WordPress

24 Best WPBakery Page Builder (Visual Composer) Addons & Plugins of 2020

Daniel Strongin

WordPress

17 Best WordPress Slider & Carousel Plugins of 2020

Daniel Strongin

WordPress

20 Best WordPress Calendar Plugins and Widgets

Daniel Strongin

WordPress Plugins

25+ Best Popup & Opt-In WordPress Plugins

Daniel Strongin

by Monty Shokeen via Envato Tuts+ Code https://ift.tt/38vprBM

#CSS3 #HTML5 Branding #HTML5 Weekly #HTMLl5 demos #Javascript #Javascript Branding #Javascript Weekly

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haedonghae · 7 years

Text

Submissive [Donghae x You] Fanfic pt. 19

Type: Smut + Series

Rating: R [Contains swearing, sexual encounters/references, violence]

Characters: You, Donghae, rest of SuJu [*Other characters from other bands may be added]

Description of Story: At one SuJu fan signing, you thought you were going to be another fan that meets Super Junior. Yet, Donghae thinks differently. After weird encounters with this Kpop Star, he starts to spend crazy amounts of money on you. But it all doesn’t come for free. He starts to expect you will give him something in return.

Length: Long

This part includes: Staying with Heechul

Heechul and you got a taxi to go to his home after leaving Donghae’s house. While driving there, Heechul explained why he decided to also fly back to South Korea and get you. Heechul said he could sense something was suspicious between Donghae and you for a while and seeing the way Donghae forced you to come back to Korea with him made Heechul feel uncomfortable so he felt like it was his duty to fly over to get you and protect you from Donghae. You felt your cheeks go red as he talked about how he wanted to protect you. You would’ve never thought in a billion years that your ultimate bias would be saying such things to you.

The taxi eventually stopped in front of an apartment building that looked extremely fancy. It looked like one of those skyscraper business buildings you see in New York City or something. Heechul and you exited the car and he scanned his key card to open the door for you both to enter the building. You two took the elevator up in silence which just made your heart race even more than it was. Even though Heechul talking to you and you thinking about your response over and over again made you a nervous wreck, the feeling of awkwardness pressing against you when it was quiet was worse for you.

Eventually, the doors opened and Heechul led you down to his place that was in the corner. Right when he opened the door, you were hit with the smell of cookies. For some reason, his house was doused in the scent of just baked cookies, even though there was none anywhere. Looking around the house, you felt very cautious about where you would step. His furniture looked expensive and you just didn’t want to put your clumsiness in that equation. His didn’t really live in an apartment though. It was more like a studio since the only other room he had was the bathroom. Everything else was one room. His bedroom was a little weird though. There was a small staircase that led up to his bed. It was kind of cool though.

(visual of Heechul’s studio)

It wasn’t as big as Donghae’s house, obviously, but that didn’t bother you. You were in Kim Heechul’s place, there would be no reason for you to complain.

“Make yourself at home! I know we didn’t bring your stuff but feel free to sit or sleep up in my bed if you’re tired,” Heechul told you with a smile before making his way over to the fridge, “want anything to drink?”

Suddenly, you felt your phone buzz in your pocket and you pulled it out to see it was Donghae calling you. Sighing, you hit the decline button and dug the phone back down into your pocket before shaking your head, “no... t-thank you though.”

Heechul nodded before getting himself a soda and cracking it open as he took a seat at his dining room table. You looked around, not knowing where to exactly go which Heechul seemed to notice since he shouted at you to come sit by him. You did as he said and took a seat next to him, feeling your palms becoming drenched in sweat.

“Want to play checkers?” Heechul asked, placing his soda down before getting the checkers box that was conveniently placed by him. You nodded, seeing in his eyes he wanted to play checkers and obviously you weren’t about to go against Heechul’s wish. He began to set up the board and automatically gave you the red pieces without asking.

Heechul let you have the first go and you two sat in silence for the first five minutes as nothing was really going on in the game. It wasn’t until Heechul cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Y/n... do you mind if I ask you a question?” He asked, looking straight into your eyes.

You looked at him and shook your head, even though you didn’t think you were ready for a random question thrown at you by Heechul.

“Has Donghae ever hurt you?” Heechul asked, still looking at you with his eyes locked. You gulped down a wad of nervousness and began to fidget around, not knowing exactly how to answer that. Donghae did hurt you last night. He did hurt you in the beginning when he bought you that maid outfit. He did hurt you many times by many of his remarks and the way he’d treat you when he was with Dara. But were you going to tell Heechul that?

“No,” You answered quickly, moving one of your checker pieces forward without making any eye contact with Heechul.

Heechul was silent for a little bit and you could just feel his eyes were stinging into you. Soon, he broke the silence with a sigh and moved his checker piece, “good. You see, Donghae had a girl before you that was also doing sexual favors for him. But, she ended up running away from him and then suing him for domestic and sexual abuse. Supposedly Donghae would beat her if she didn’t do what he asked and he would sneak into her room and tried to have sex with her without her wanting to. She won the case, won a bunch of money and was about to make it public but SM paid her millions to not release anything about this. So, it’s only a thing that’s been in all of Super Junior’s minds. We’ve also tried to get Donghae help by making him go to a psychologist, but he stopped going after he only went for a week. He doesn’t think he’s a sex addict when if you really think about it, he is. Even when we are on tour and we’re waiting to go on stage, we catch him watching porn. It’s ridiculous.”

You eyed Heechul as he tsked and looked off to the side. He started to look angry, yet concerned. You could see that Heechul really cared for Donghae and hated that he makes such foolish mistakes. Heechul shook his head and looked back at you, “I don’t really like that you live with him. You seem like a really nice girl, well actually an amazing girl since you like me.”

You couldn’t help but giggle at his comment. He seemed to enjoy that he got a crack out of you since he watched you laugh with sparkling eyes and a wide smile, “am I wrong?”

You shook your head and started to blush as he continued looking at you with joy. Heechul then resumed playing the game and moved one of his pieces over yours, letting out a huge laugh as he took your piece away. You pouted but deep down inside you really didn’t care. You actually wanted Heechul to win.

“I don’t want him hurting you like he hurt that girl. I would offer you to stay here, but I feel like for a girl to be living in this small place with me, we would have to be awfully close. I’m talking, nearly dating status,” Heechul said which made your eyes wide.

“So, I’m assuming Taeyeon lives with you?” You asked him suspiciously.

“No, we’re having a falling off. I don’t even know why I thought her coming to Japan with me was a good idea. We continuously fight and we don’t connect at all. Hell, we haven’t even kissed yet!”

Your mouth dropped at that comment. How could Taeyeon not want to dive into those lips of Heechul’s?

“I think I’m going to break up with her, there’s no reason to stay with a girl that doesn’t make me happy, right?” Heechul asked you with a tilt of his head.

You gulped, “uh, yeah.”

Heechul chuckled and hit you lightly on your arm, “are you just agreeing with me because you like me?”

You shook your head rapidly, “no, no I really think you should break up with her if you don’t like her! I... I’d rather see you happy than not.”

Heechul gave you another wide smile before wiping his hand all over the checker board which sent all the pieces flying. You gasped at the sudden action but before you could say anything, Heechul stood up and leaned over you, your back digging into the counter top behind you. He leaned in very close, your lips inches apart. You wanted him to stop that, it was literally killing you inside by each time he’d inch closer. But, before your lips could touch, he whispered to you, “give me your phone.”

You felt yourself shaking and your face sweating like no tomorrow. Rainstorms got nothing on you at that moment. You dove into your pocket and respectively handed Heechul your phone like he asked. He then took it, stood up and waved it at you.

“Bzz, Bzz, that vibrating sound is getting awfully annoying,” he said, hinting at the fact that Donghae was continuously calling you. You watched Heechul carefully as he walked over to the kitchen sink and began to fill it with water. What was he doing? Did he suddenly want to do the dishes?

“Let’s make a deal,” Heechul began with a low voice, sounding almost... creepy, “if I forget about Taeyeon, will you forget about Donghae? He might be constantly knocking on my door, but the least you can do is get rid of one source that he can contact you with.”

You suddenly looked at your phone that was in his hands and shook your head, even though you didn’t mind entirely focusing on Heechul instead of Donghae, “if you’re going to try to ruin my phone, please don’t. I need to contact my parents with that.”

But, Heechul didn’t listen. Instead, he plopped the phone into the sink and let the water submerge into every crevice of your device. You shrieked and launched towards it but Heechul grabbed at you and looked at you with a smile.

"Don’t worry, we can get you a new phone. I’m stacked, ok? You might not sense it with this small place, but I am. I just don’t want Donghae blowing up your phone while you stay with me,” He said and looked down at your phone that was ruined.

“I’m staying with you?” You asked, your heart pounding so loud in your chest that you were convinced Heechul could hear it.

“Well, yeah. I don’t want you to go back to an abusive guy, especially hearing about what he uses you for. And maybe once we start staying together for a while... something could happen?” Heechul asked, knowing exactly that those words would make you collapse.

“U-u-u-uhhh.”

“I did say I feel like for a girl to live with me we’d have to almost be dating. So if you’re going to be living here all the time, then we’d have to eventually get that close, right?” Heechul kept pushing at you.

“... I, uh.. uh... I don’t... I don’t know. I-I was only g-g-going to li-li-live with Dong-Donghae for only f-f-f-four month-months,” you somehow managed to say.

Heechul looked at you, crinkling his eyebrows, “soo you want to go back to Donghae’s place?”

“No!” You shouted too loud, quickly covering your mouth from the sudden outburst, “I mean, I’d like to stay with you. It’s just, I couldn’t live here. My parents are expecting me back home within four months.”

“How old are you?” Heechul suddenly asked, moving closer to you to eventually take a seat.

“18, my parents don’t want me to officially move out until I’m older,” you nervously confessed.

“ah,” Heechul nodded, “ok. Well, that’s fine. You can still stay here for four months?”

“Well, there’s also... the factor that... if I lived with Donghae, he’d give my parents money. Well, if I did... favors for him, he’d pay me to give that money to my parents. I really really don’t want to go back to Donghae, but if it’s for my family then I’d go back,” you sighed out, hating saying that to the man you loved with all your heart. You heard Heechul chuckle softly, brushing back a lock of your hair that was starting to cover your face. Your heart literally jumped out and burst onto the floor. How could he think doing that to you was ok?

“Don’t worry Y/n. I can give you money for your family. I got money, money that I don’t know what to do with it except for spending it on a pretty girl.”

You gasped, disbelieving your ears. Did Heechul really just call you pretty? What was his plan? Who let this guy say what he was saying?

“No, Heechul I could never let you do that. I... I don’t want to come off as that girl. Don't... don’t spend your money on me,” you said shyly to him.

“Alright,” Heechul said, “you know how to do makeup, right?”

You looked at him with your eyebrows crinkled. What was he on about? Why would it matter if you knew how to do makeup? You nodded slightly and he nodded with you.

“Ok, then I hire you as my makeup artist! Make me look pretty before shows. It will give me an advantage. You can do my makeup here and then when I show up to the concert, I will have more prep time since I won’t have to do my makeup beforehand. Deal?” Heechul asked, holding out his hand.

“Are you serious?” You asked him with wide eyes.

“Do I look like I’m joking with you?” Heechul questioned with a stern look. You shook your head and looked down at his hand. Did you really want to do this? Even if Heechul was offering you money to do his makeup, what about the broadcasting job Donghae gave your dad? Would he take that away?

No. Donghae couldn’t be that heartless. If he did, you would find Donghae and beat him up. You nodded, feeling your heart race and sweat running down your face. You took Heechul’s soft hand and gave it a little shake, suddenly feeling a sense of joy run up through your body as you realized you agreed to live and work for your ultimate bias, Heechul.

[*Additional noteeeee, hey so yeah I’ve been gone... for a while... I’m really sorry. Honestly, I’ve been working my butt off this entire summer with no time to do anything except eat and sleep. Hardly did I get time to do anything in my spare time. But, my work schedule is back to not being crazy due to school being around the corner. But still... school is about to start so that might factor into any delays with more parts. I will try my hardest this time to write more though! I really do like writing fanfics and I love sharing them with everyone. It’s just, life loves to slap me in the face. Also, I’m sorry that this part contains hardly any conversations or whatever with Donghae. Don’t worry, Donghae will be back in the story, literally in the next part. We just gotta give our boy Heechul some parts. But yeah, again I’m really sorry about the lack of posting. I’ll try my best to keep on posting more though!]

[*Another additional notey, so I posted this part yesterday, working really hard on it and tumblr decided to just delete it all or something. So, I was mad about that. Was up very late last night writing it. But it’s whatever now, hopefully, nothing will happen to this part. Otherwise, I’ll... I don’t know what I’ll do but something will happen]

18 notes · View notes

beautyintheblackness · 7 years

Text

No Fear (1st Draft)

James Baldwin said, “Education is indoctrination if you’re white and subjugation if you’re black.” An exclusive club for the good ole boys and girls, in which I, a multi-racial, aesthetically brown girl is not invited. I began New York University September 2016, under the hopeful pretense that I would be included in a group of over achievers and fellow students who were born to innovate. When I received my acceptance letter, I felt a sense of achievement and fulfillment. I finally had a clear view of my next steps in the big wide world. I could see myself moving upward and it was I who supplied this mobility alone. Like most students, I swooned at the thought of the classes I would take, burning a whole through my credit card to obtain as much NYU memorabilia as I could afford, and attended all of the orientation events. I was prepared to take on the world, prepared to intake a plethora of knowledge, and believed that this was the beginning of the greatest moments to come.

The first week, I was eager to get started, I read ahead and took descriptive notes. I annotated and highlighted any and everything I didn’t understand, because I wanted to know these subjects’ in and out. At first, the ostracism was light and incomprehensible to the eye. The overlooking of my hand through the entirety of the class, the huffs and exasperating puffs when I did get called on, insisting I hurry up and make my point, and the contentious cutting off of my questions to elaborate how articulate I was, had taken no effect on me. I figured my Professors were irritable to the fact I wasn’t giving more or thinking hard enough.

It wasn’t until my Science Professor decided to have a class conducted online I realized it had nothing to do with me trying at all. My silence was more appreciated than actually learning, engaging, and giving my input. My classmates and I had to take an open book test, where we all would come up with the answer and the final answer would be considered our grade. In this instance, everything went well and I was pretty proud of my class on coming together to make sure we get a passing grade. As we went on, we discussed the chapters of the text we had to read the week prior. I was enthusiastic and eager to get started, because this book was an astonishing read thus far and I had tons of questions. When the Professor began asking questions assuming no one read the text, because no one answered. A fellow student Sam and I answered most of them, my Professor laughed and in a light tone asked me to, “Give some other students a try.” I obliged and didn’t speak, because I didn’t want to be that student who hogs all the “spotlight” and doesn’t give other students a chance to shine. However, Sam kept answering questions and he was praised for it. Sam also would go on long discussions between him and the Professor, while everyone stared at the screen blankly. So, after 50 mins of silence, I tried my luck again. I didn’t want to hog the proverbial microphone, but no one else was answering questions except for Sam and I wanted to engage in the conversation. Once again, the moment I gave my input on the topic in question, I was asked more sternly than the last time by my Professor, “Please Ariel, can you be quiet? Let other students have a chance to speak!” I was befuddled, I was giving others a chance to speak. In fact, the only person who wasn’t allowing others to speak was Sam and the Professor. Yet in still, I was being punished for the disruption and disobedience. I didn’t speak after for the whole class. My Professor tells me in front of the rest of the class, “I apologize Ariel, I know you are articulate, but we must give other students a chance.” As if my voice and my answers put a muzzle on their mouths, forcing them to remain in a position of submission. After that, I knew, once again, this would not be a learning opportunity for me.

After the weekend passed, I chucked the whole situation as coincidence. Maybe I was hogging all the questions. So I left it alone, letting the situation glide to another failed attempt in mere eagerness, mistaken as boisterous. As the weeks went on, I found this to be the everyday routine. My World Cultures Professor, would dismiss me entirely. Calling me meta-theoretical, because I couldn’t see how a female Dongguan factory worker, who had no idea about the succession of women’s progression in her own country, could be happy living working over 60 hours a week for what others worked for under 40 hours a week. She also implied I was trying to compare the sinister and abysmal acts of the Japanese internment camps in the US to the atrocious acts of the Holocaust in Germany. She went on a tirade so fierce and dripping with disdain, my own classmates roared ugly comments towards me, suggesting I was anti-Semite, which was completely and utterly wrong. I asked her, “Could it be the socioeconomic status of both ethnicities be the reason why they were targeted in WWII, considering both ethnic communities had accumulated extreme wealth from countries they did not originate from?” She humiliated me and ultimately put my credibility on the line because of her accusatory response. After I tried repeatedly to explain what I said and how I was in no way under any circumstance trying to compare the two. In fact, I was trying to figure out why these two ethnicities were targeted so unfairly. Especially, considering the Italians and Germans of the US were not put in such a horrible situation as the Japanese and the Israelis. I was in complete disarray, I hardly was called on in this class and when I was called on, I was mocked and smeared as a result. However, my classmate Collin can make apathetic statements about colonization and go on a rant about how it’s completely necessary. He also said, “It’s the natural way of life, someone has to be in control of another, Imperialism and Colonization is the natural way.” My Professor allows him to go on this tangent and then sums it up with, “That is an interesting point you’ve made Collin, thank you for your input.” She did not challenge him or subject him to irrational behavior from his fellow classmates. She kept us quiet and let him go on to make his point, then rewarded him for “thinking outside the box.”

By the end of mid-terms, I felt extremely low. There was no one I could talk to other than my boyfriend, who couldn’t really do anything for me either. “We are on two different sides of the coin,” he said, “How can I help you, when I don’t receive the same treatment as you do. I go into class no matter how late and I’m always considered present. If you are three minutes late, you get a mouthful in front of the class on how you are not taking advantage of the opportunity you are privileged to have by going to this institution. I know it’s wrong, but what can I do?” Deep down I knew he was right, we were in the same class and he saw with his own eyes the blatant mistreatment I was receiving from my Professors. Either from what I told him or from what he witnessed himself, it was clear I was being seen as a threat.

When the second half of the semester started, I was completely drained. Physically, I had gained twenty pounds and mentally, I was tired. I wanted to give up, I tried to drop my science class, because I was doing severely poor in this class and felt completely limited. The more I tried to be punctual and engaged, the more I would get shut down. It wasn’t until my science Professor went out of his way to print a rebuttal of my presentation, because he didn’t believe in my scientific viewpoint on CRISPR (a genome splicer that edits DNA). I was handled and led to believe what I thought is completely wrong and the rest of the class should know how wrong I am. Although, there were other students who had extreme viewpoints on their presentations. One of them being, “Ultra Hybrid Humans” and how homo-sapiens will be extinct in the next 1,000 years, because of these Hybrid humans on our planet. There was no rebuttal or debunk for that thesis. That classmate received an A and a chuckle or two from the Professor for once again, “thinking outside the box.”

I threw in the towel, I was disgusted. I had enough with the double standards and the biases that controlled my narrative every day. NYU’s mission statement glorifies their goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, but somehow this falls short of the mark in the classroom. Inclusion is only given to those whom have already received the entitlement of being included. It seems that different views and opinions are only seen as open minded and innovative when aligned with the similar ideology of the Professor’s in the classroom. As a society, we have formed this idea of “I am right, you are wrong mentality.” However, this ideal helps no one and innovates nothing.

During my last Word Culture class for the semester, we were broken up into four groups. Not to my surprise, all people of color (non-Asian) were in one group and the Asians and Europeans were in groups together. We were asked to decipher if the term, “Model Minority,” is perceived to be a compliment or a hindrance to the Asian community. My group proposed it was a hindrance, because all groups have their specialties, but is not promoted, because anything outside of the standard of white imperialism, is not considered valid or model material. My Professor didn’t like our point of view and began to discredit and dismiss our argument as a whole. It wasn’t until a fellow classmate Nathaniel and his group spoke in support of our theory that she even took into consideration what we were saying. She immediately came after me, as if I was the one who solely came to this conclusion. So in my mind, I had two choices. I could be like my Latin classmate Johnathan, who smeared and degraded his own culture for the sake of being separated from its entirety. He even degraded himself, by saying he would be nothing without this school, because he was in fact a Latino. Although he didn’t look aesthetically Latin in his words, “I can pass, so that makes me superior”. Or I could stand up for myself and my ideology, that it’s not what you look like or how much you polarize cultures. It’s about the significance in knowing who you are as individual, not a race. Knowledge or education is not a leverage tool, but should be in fact something you share to maintain the modernity of this nation and of its people. I received a standing ovation from my classmates.

My Professor was so impressed, she let me have the last word before we were dismissed. I concluded that a model minority, is something that suggest other minorities should follow, but in fact, this is a farce, because no one is perfect. Also, no one wants to be painted with one brush, we all are complex individuals and we all have attributes that are worth sharing. Even in our difference, we share similarities. That is the point and should be the objective synopsis of this class moving forward.

I had never been so passionate and forthright in any of my classes in New York University. I didn’t want to be, but I was tired of being overlooked and underestimated. One of my classmates, Demetrius, came up to me after others dispersed. He told me how proud he was of me and that I should never keep quiet and speak out for us. For people of color, people that feel underprivileged, and people who don’t have a voice. He also told me, he never spoke to me before, because he didn’t like the fact that my boyfriend was white, but after hearing me out and seeing what I had to go through in this particular class. He commended me for overcoming adversity and asked if we could be friends. I agreed and walked out of class that day with my head held high. I accomplished something much more than grades. I accomplished the ability to be seen as an equal among my classmates and my Professors. I gained courage and willfulness. I wasn’t afraid anymore to speak out and stand up. For the first time, I had no fear.

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aqais81 · 6 years

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The Simple Secret That Increases Productivity by 57%

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This article contains excerpts from Kyle’s best-selling book Escalate: The Practical Guide to Get Yourself Unstuck and Build Lifelong Momentum

In 2005, psychologist Dan Ariely found one of the simplest ways to increase productivity. You might be wondering why you’re just now hearing about it. Unless you’ve read Ariely’s book or some drab psychology studies, you likely haven’t come across it.

In the study, Ariely paid students to build Lego models (Kamenica, Ariely, & Prelec, 2005 Man’s Search for Meaning: The Case of Legos. PsycEXTRA Dataset. Doi: 10.1037/e640112011-016). Each model was composed of forty pieces and accompanied by instructions. In one group, each completed model was placed on the desk in front of the students. Then the students would receive another box and start assembling the next model.

In another group, the students received two boxes. Every time they completed a model, it was immediately dismantled and placed back in the box, so the students could start assembling the second box, and over and over.

In both groups, all of the models were identical. However, the first group outperformed the second group eleven to seven. The difference? The first group could see their progress. The mere fact that their progress was visible inspired them to work harder and faster. As a result, they continued to build enthusiastically, despite being paid less for each later model.

These numbers may not seem remarkable but take on new meaning when you realize that the group whose progress was visible outperformed their counterparts whose progress was not, by over 57% (despite being paid less for each consecutive model completed). How many organizations and individuals do you know who would pay phenomenal amounts to gain 57% more productivity? What could you accomplish if you could get 57% more productivity out of yourself?

This principle not only affects productivity but also HOW you do your work. To illustrate this, let’s look at an all-too-familiar example of mowing the lawn. You’re rarely excited or inspired to mow the lawn. As you grab your mowing shoes, you remind yourself of this and again as you grudgingly get behind the machine.

However, as you start cutting, almost immediately, there is a satisfaction that takes control of you as you see the mess that you call a lawn go into the mower, and clean leveled grass come out. Even more, when you make turn 4 or 5, you start to take pride in seeing multiple rows of clean-cut grass.

What happens next? Well, instead of trudging behind the push mower, you quicken your step. Instead of degrading the chore and yourself, you’re filled with satisfaction. “Look how good that looks!” you tell yourself.

When you make progress visible, it spurs you forward. It encourages you to keep going and makes even the most demanding of tasks more enjoyable.

The biggest barrier to this though, is a failure to celebrate small wins.

Take the example of Carrie, a well-educated and experienced client of mine, who was tasked with helping her growing organization in food production, implement a leadership development program. Not long into the engagement, Carrie expressed frustration about not making any progress.

“What would make you feel better about the situation?” I asked.

“Having the program in place and running,” she replied.

We then walked through all the progress she had made.

“Carrie, you began this project about six months ago,” I told her. “When you started, how much did you know about leadership development?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

“What do you have in place right now that you didn’t have in place six months ago?” I asked.

“Nothing! That’s the problem.”, Carrie said dejectedly.

“You really believe you don’t have anything new in place?” I responded. Followed by, “What would you need in place right now to feel like you’ve made progress?”

“We would be offering training quarterly, have leadership development built into our performance management process, and have a suite of tools and resources for the organization to use.” She replied.

I considered her reply for a moment, “I see. Well I know for sure you have done some things. Forget what you believe you should have in place and tell me what you do have in place.”

“Well, we have three ongoing lecture series,” she said. “And we’re starting to include leadership suggestions in our newsletter and have revised some job descriptions.”

Carrie paused before reeling off several other initiatives that were also in action. I questioned her about all the steps she had taken to accomplish each achievement. There were many, including diligent efforts to find good presenters for the lecture series.

“And who did all of that?” I asked.

“I did,” she replied.

“How do you feel about your progress now, considering none of it existed just six months ago?”

I questioned.

She was humbled, but also excited. “You’re right,” she agreed. “We have made progress. Imagine how much progress we’ll make in the next six months!”

With this fresh perspective, she recognized that the organization had made tremendous advances in the six months she had worked with them. Seeing her progress began by recognizing her small efforts for what they were, small wins.

As I did with Carrie, you can recognize and reward your own progress by unpacking what you’ve done into the tasks it took to do it. When you focus on creating an entire leadership development program, researching presenters may not seem like a small win, but it certainly is.

It has to be done, and once it is, you are one step closer to your desired results. Identify and then celebrate these things as the wins they are. Reward yourself!

“Remember, the journey of a thousand steps starts with one, but it only continues if that first step is seen as a victory.”

Too often you stop yourself from taking action because you know you won’t achieve your long-term goal right away. You fail to recognize that the culminating effects of small steps are what lead to extraordinary achievement.

One of the most significant issues I have run into in my work is that individuals have a tough time recognizing small wins. They focus so much on the goal, on a few large milestones, that they fail to acknowledge the progress they are making in simple ways every day.

When you fail to recognize these wins, you miss out on a huge opportunity to gain desire and accelerate your progress.

It is one thing to tell yourself that you’ve worked hard at the end of the day; it is another to identify what you actually did. For action and progress to be visible and inspiring, you must engage in honest observation and reflection. If you think about and track your efforts in ambiguous terms, it will not do much for you and won’t help to increase your desire. Many people work hard every day of their lives, and yet they still lose desire.

If you want your actions to increase your desire, you need to remove the ambiguity and get specific about what you did and how it led to (or will lead to) your desired results. It is more inspiring to reflect on each of your efforts and observe how they are moving you forward than to tell yourself that you worked hard.

How do you find the power to take action, and gain desire from the effort you’ve taken? Spend time reflecting on your efforts, make your progress visible, and reward yourself for that progress.

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What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.

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Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

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entirelysafe · 6 years

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OSHA Wants to Hide Information on Worker Injuries

New Post has been published on http://entirelysafe.com/osha-wants-to-hide-information-on-worker-injuries/

OSHA Wants to Hide Information on Worker Injuries

The Agency Plans to Roll Back an Important Obama-Era Recordkeeping Rule

OSHA proposed last week to roll back parts of the “Electronic Recordkeeping” regulation that the Obama administration issued in 2016. The rule would have required certain employers to electronically send worker injury and illness information into OSHA. OSHA then intended to publicize the (non-confidential) information on its website. In a somewhat amusing, but Orwellian press release, OSHA portrays the rollback as an effort to “better protect” workers’ confidential information.

This is about the administration listening to employers who don’t want workers and the public to know about dangerous conditions.

I finally had a chance to read the full OSHA proposal. Spoiler Alert: I’ve read a lot of OSHA regulatory proposals over my career and this one barely passes the laugh test, much less presents a serious argument for why this regulation should be weakened. Instead of an effort to better protect workers’ confidential information, this is a poorly justified attempt to protect employers from having to reveal potentially embarrassing information.

In other words, according to former OSHA official Debbie Berkowitz, “This is about the administration listening to employers who don’t want workers and the public to know about dangerous conditions.”

But even this partial rollback isn’t good enough for the Chamber of Commerce. Marc Freedman, the Chamber’s vice president of workplace policy, said publishing any employer data on injuries and illnesses could also be used to unfairly malign businesses. “Not all injuries that have to be recorded reflect on an employer’s safety program. We don’t think they’ve fully taken care of the problem.”

Background

In order to fulfill the purpose of the Act, OSHA is authorized to require employers to record injury and illness information, as well as collect information on safety and health from employers, including injury and illness information. Consequently, OSHA has long required certain employers to keep injury and illness logs; specifically, OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301. OSHA Form 300 is a log of all injuries and illnesses, including names of worker injured or sickened. The 300A Form is a summary of that form that contains no names or confidential information. Employers are required to post that information in the workplace between Feb. 1 and April 30 of every year. The 301 Form is a detailed description of workplace injuries that includes information about what happened and what the employee was doing just before the incident occurred.

On May 12, 2016, OSHA amended its recordkeeping regulation to require employers to annually submit to OSHA, by electronic means, injury and illness information that employers were already required to keep. Establishments with 250 or more employees in industries that are routinely required to keep records are required to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301 to OSHA or OSHA’s designee once a year. Small businesses with 20 to 249 employees in certain designated industries are only required to submit information on the summary form 300A. Employers were already required to collect this information. The only change was that they were now required to send it into OSHA through a web-based electronic system that OSHA would develop.

Until the new regulation was issued, OSHA did not — with one exception — require any of that information to be sent in to OSHA. The main purpose of requiring employers to collect the information was to help them improve their health and safety programs, and OSHA Inspectors consulted the information when conducting inspections. The one exception was OSHA’s collection of injury and illness information from around 80,000 employers every year, a program that lasted from 2006 to 2013 and was used to better target OSHA inspections in the most dangerous workplaces.

The 2016 rule had two phases. The first phase was submission of the Form 300A summary data which, after several delays, took effect last year. The second part, sending in information from the 300 Form and the more detailed 301 data, was supposed to take effect this year. Submission of the 300 Log and the detailed Form 301 data are the requirements that OSHA is proposing to cancel in last week’s proposal.

What Were The Benefits?

The main purpose of this regulation was to help OSHA and the workplace safety and health community better determine why workers are getting hurt on the job and how to protect them more effectively. OSHA stated in the preamble of the 2016 regulation that the “data will improve OSHA’s ability to identify, target, and remove safety and health hazards, thereby preventing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths.” Beyond enabling OSHA to better target the most dangerous workplaces, OSHA stated that the making the data public “will allow the public, including employees and potential employees, researchers, employers, unions, and workplace safety and health consultants, to use and benefit from the data. It will support the development of innovative ideas and allow everybody with a stake in workplace safety and health to participate in improving occupational safety and health.”

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes aggregate data available to the public, OSHA’s data collection would make much more detailed and site-specific data available to researchers. And the establishment-specific data would “enable OSHA to conduct rigorous evaluations of different types of programs, initiatives, and interventions in different industries and geographic areas, enabling the agency to become more effective and efficient. ”

Why Does Trump OSHA Want to Stop Collection of the Detailed Information?

But what seemed like a great idea two years ago, is not longer a great idea, according to OSHA, which is now amending its recordkeeping regulations to protect sensitive worker information from potential disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). OSHA has preliminarily determined that the risk of disclosure of this information, the costs to OSHA of collecting and using the information and the reporting burden on employers are unjustified given the uncertain benefits of collecting the information. (Emphasis added.)

None of these statements are true nor are they effectively supported in the proposal.

1. Protecting Sensitive Worker Information: OSHA assured the public when it issued the original 2016 regulation that all confidential information would be protected. This would include the information on the left side of the 301 Form, specifically workers’ names, birthdates, names of their doctors, etc. But OSHA now argues that it’s possible, despite unanimous and universal court decisions ensuring the confidentiality of that information, that some court in the country could someday allow that confidential information to be released to the public.

OSHA warns, “That risk remains so long as there is a non-trivial chance that any court in any of the nation’s 94 federal judicial districts might issue a final disclosure order after the exhaustion of all available appeals.” Arguing that the risk is “not speculative,” the proposal cites an organization that in 2017 “invoked FOIA to request that the Department produce electronically-submitted information from Forms 300, 300A, and 301.”

Note the emphasis that I added: “electronically-submitted information.” In order to ensure the security of confidential information, OSHA ensured that employers will not even submit information to OSHA that is confidential, such as names. If the information is not “electronically submitted” to OSHA, then there is nothing there to FOIA, even if some court, someday, goes rogue.

The other example OSHA uses to show that the risk is “not speculative” is a lawsuit by former OSHA employee Adam Finkel requesting information on OSHA employees who may have been exposed to toxic beryllium dust in the course of their jobs that OSHA lost in 2006. But Finkel never sought nor did he receive identifiable information, and the court only ordered the de-identified results to be handed over. OSHA’s use of this case in its argument is somewhat garbled, but it concludes that despite the fact that the court never ordered identifiable information to be released, “it is reasonably foreseeable” that a future court could.

So, in conclusion, the “risk of disclosure” that OSHA is allegedly protecting workers from, is entirely speculative and not based only any real evidence outside the fevered imaginations of OSHA regulatory writers, undoubtedly egged on by the Secretary, the White House and corporate opposition to the whole concept of transparency.

And the workers that OSHA is supposedly protecting? As AFL-CIO Health and Safety Director Peg Seminario said in a statement to Bloomberg BNA:

“OSHA’s claim that it is proposing to revoke employer requirements to submit detailed injury data in order to protect employee privacy is truly cynical. Workers and worker representatives strongly support the collection of this information to help identify workplaces with serious injuries in order to protect workers health. Only industry groups oppose these common-sense requirements. The real reason for this rollback is to protect employers who don’t want workers or the public to know about dangerous conditions and hazards at their workplaces. “

ACTION BOX/What You Can Do About It

Let OSHA know that it should be protecting workers, not employers.

Electronically: You may submit comments electronically at https://www.regulations.gov/, which is the federal e-rulemaking portal. Follow the instructions on the website for making electronic submissions;

Fax: If your submission, including attachments, does not exceed 10 pages, you may fax it to the OSHA docket office at (202) 693-1648;

Regular mail, express mail, hand delivery, or messenger/courier service (hard copy): You may submit your materials to the OSHA Docket Office, Docket No. OSHA-2013-0023, Room N-3653, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210; telephone: (202) 693-2350 (TTY (887) 889-5627). OSHA’s Docket Office accepts deliveries (hand deliveries, express mail, and messenger/courier service) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET, weekdays.

Important. Be sure to include the docket number OSHA-2013-0023 or regulatory information number (RIN) 1218-AD17.

Comments must be submitted by Sept. 28.

2. Uncertain Benefits of the Original Regulation: OSHA has suddenly decided that the benefits of collecting and publicizing this data are now “uncertain.” Why? Because “OSHA has no prior experience with using the case-specific Form 300 and 301 data to identify and target establishments. OSHA is unsure as to how much benefit such data would have for targeting, or how much effort would be required to realize those benefits.” And the summary From 300 is adequate to enable OSHA to target the most dangerous workplaces.

In other words, because we’ve never done it before, there’s no way to figure out if it would be beneficial. So much for innovation.

But OSHA does have a point that the summary Form 300A should suffice for inspection targeting. And it’s also possible that OSHA at this point doesn’t have the staff or resources to fully analyze all the data they will be collecting. But the proposal completely ignores the main benefit of collecting and publicizing the data: the benefit the data will provide to outside researchers and the public.

3. The Costs to OSHA: Not only are the benefits uncertain, but because of the sheer volume of Form 301 reports, “to gain (speculative, uncertain) enforcement value from the case-specific data, OSHA would need to divert resources from other priorities, such as the utilization of Form 300A data, which OSHA’s long experience has shown to be useful.”

Also, OSHA would better spend its time and resources addressing the high level of non-compliance with requirements that employers send in severe injury reports and the summary 300 Forms. I’m not sure what resource-intensive efforts OSHA is making to ensure better compliance with those requirements (not much from what we hear), but enforcing this additional requirement would fall into the same basket.

OSHA is also estimating that getting rid of this requirement would save OSHA around $400,000 because it wouldn’t have to finish developing the data system to collect the data. Not much money saved there, and from my memory, the system was already finished, or very close to being finished at the end of the Obama administration, 18 months ago.

4. Costs to Employers: OSHA also cites the burden to employers of sending the data into OSHA. First, remember that the data being sent into OSHA has already been collected, so the only additional costs is actually sending it to OSHA. OSHA estimates that by relieving the nation of this burden, a total of $8.7 million will be saved. That’s not $8.7 million per employer — that’s $8.7 million for the entire country. The cost of workplace injury, illness and death in this country is over $250 billion per year. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of prevented injuries or deaths for this regulation to pay for itself.

5. “Benefits” of Repealing the Requirement to Submit Forms 300 and 301 Information: OSHA has kindly attempted to describe the benefits of rolling this regulation back — or “better protecting” workers, as they say.

Sort of.

First, remember they argue that they are protecting workers from the risk that their confidential information will be disclosed. And, according to the OSHA proposal, “The value of worker privacy is impossible to quantify, but no less significant because of that fact.”

Indeed.

Second, OSHA admits that the Form 300 and 301 information “could add enforcement benefits,” but on the other hand, those benefits are “uncertain and difficult to quantify” — mainly because OSHA has never actually worked with this data before.

Therefore, the agency concludes that “the (substantial) benefits to worker privacy outweigh the (uncertain) foregone benefits to enforcement.”

In other words, according to OSHA, the benefits of eliminating the threat to worker privacy may be unquantifiable, but this unquantifiable (and probably non-existent) risk is nevertheless somehow “substantial” enough to outweigh the “uncertain” and “difficult to quantify” value that the information could provide to researchers, the public and OSHA.

So “unquantifiable” somehow trumps “uncertain” in OSHA world.

Back in the day, logic like this would have been laughed out of the room and sent back to the drawing board.

The Good News

The only good news coming out of this is that OSHA had decided not to monkey with language in the regulation prohibiting employers from retaliating against workers for reporting injuries and illnesses. The Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups were upset that this provision could keep employers from imposing retaliatory drug tests or incentive programs that discourage workers from reporting injuries or illnesses.

Source: By Jordan Barab, Confined Space

#Form 300 #Form 300A #Form 301 #OSHA #News

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touraandtravels-blog · 7 years

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10 Link Building Tips - How to Get Authority Backlinks!

My 10 Link Building Tips Plus Secret Code Revealed!

On the subject of SEO, link building to gain authority backlinks is a crucial element that cannot be overlooked in the SEO war for search engine results page placement. You can have great content, but this in only a fraction of the battle. Quality backlinks are a great method to help you establish your blog as an authority site, which will help increase your Google pagerank. Each link is like a vote for your site In a nutshell, if the inbound links have related content to your site, it is more relevant. Just the opposite for sites that are linked to yours with non-relevant content… the higher relevance of the inbound link, the greater their quality. You need to realize that whether you have a blog or a standard website, these link building techniques can be applied to gain high quality inbound links headed for your site. Let’s dive right in! Here are 10 Quality Backlink Tips to Apply to Your SEO Campaign! 1. Let’s start with Guest Post Blogging – This is probably one of the most overlooked methods for creating one way, quality backlinks to your site. For those not familiar… guest post blogging is where you write content for another blogger and in return you will gain exposure from the Author Bio area to where you can place information about yourself to include, usually up to 2 inbound links coming to your site. Of course you can write just about anything you want using anchor text as your backlink.For training purpose, you can find mobile apps from play store. 2. Another Link building strategy is Blog Commenting – This is widely underestimated as a backlinking strategy… it may not be as effective as other link building techniques, but this method can gain you some quality inbound links to your site. Achieving inbound links through blog participation works pretty well to achieve rankings in the Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, but the link building strategy is not as effective for Google. This is due to most blogs having the default, nofollow attribute attached to the links in blog comments. Below is an awesome SECRET Code that NOT too many people know about, and you can implement into Google.com or Yahoo.com to narrow your blog search for commenting down with ease. site:.com inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed”-”you must be logged in” “Add Keywords” This code is designed to locate blogs that allow for commenting. To learn how to use this code, please visit my article: High PageRank Inbound Links… Secret Revealed! One way to help your backlinking efforts is to apply your inbound link as Anchor Text… Example: I might put John Engle | The Blog Optimizer. Or, if it is going to an article maybe: John Engle | Keyword Research Done Right! To learn how to apply anchor text, follow the link above! 3. Social Media Networks – Social media network sites are another effective way to receive precious incoming links. With the Google Panda Update to its indexing Algorithm, social media networking is involved in the ranking wars and is part of the algorithm that judges and indexes your website and blog pages.For training purpose, you can find mobile apps from iTunes. With the help of the new ranking algorithms, did you know that any particular article could create enough buzz from the top social media networking sites that it can make an impact on your rankings and slingshot your article post to the first page of the search engine results pages? Don’t set your focus on the link building idea… you will need to focus on social media interaction with and around your site. Make sure your blog has social media buttons so that readers can easily share and spread the word about your content with their social media networks. 4. Article Directory Submissions – Article Directory Submission Sites are a great way to receive even MORE traffic to your site, above and beyond the search engines, and they ALSO create precious backlinks. For a list of High PageRank article submission sites, visit my article: 7 Dofollow High PR Article Directory Submission sites. 5. Directory Submissions – Not to mistaken for Article Directory submission… this is an effective way to receive powerful traffic and backlinks. Directories submission sites offer a way of collecting, categorizing links and offering validation to web sites. They are not search engines and behave nothing like search engines. Some of the top directories available on the Web are: the DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory, Best of the Web Directory and GoGuides.org (known for being Spam Free) and SearchSite.com.If you are looking for buy apple mobile snapshot app reviews online or websites android and iOS apps you can contact by clicking on above link. 6. Submitting Press Releases – an oldie, but goodie! Press releases are the mainstays of any marketing program. What’s so powerful about a press release? It’s just the facts, including benefits, and it’s sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press releases to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. News organizations, publications, newsletters, and even some forums, will post press releases. When you write the release, be sure to include a link back to your site. Aside from letting the world know about what’s going on at your company, press releases also help your company’s website build and maintain high search engine rankings. In the past, press releases were only for journalists who may be interested in your company or industry. Press releases need to written and formatted with the search engines in mind as well. Follow the link for more information! Follow the link below for a list of 50 Press Release Sites! 7. Forum Participation – Participating in online communities like forums is also an effective strategy for building links and generating traffic. Forums are internet message boards that allow you to start new discussions or participate in ongoing discussions about a variety of topics. Most forums allow you to participate by simply signing up for a free account with your e-mail address and very little personal information. Forums tend to be moderated, but unlike blogs, your forum posts are often posted for public viewing without having to go through a review process. Adding value to the community increases the likelihood that your link and comment stay posted and that your site will be visited by other forum participants. As mentioned before, participate in forums that are closely related to the theme of your web site, and try and find forums with a PageRank higher than 4, have high traffic, and possess a large number of relevant incoming links. Don’t waste your time submitting posts to forums that are unrelated to the content of your site. Acquiring links through forum participation works well to increase your rankings in all the major search engines as well as your overall site traffic from the forums themselves. You can find these forums by using the search box in Google, Yahoo, etc., by searching for a keyword or keyword phrase related to your site and adding the word “forums” at the end of your keywords. GOOD NEWS: You can also use the same code from above that you used for blogs, just change the word “blog” to “forum”, next to the ‘inurl:’. 8. Video Marketing – I recently learned that videos are up to 50 times more likely to land on the first page of Google compared to standard text based websites. We all learn something new every day, and today was my day! Unfortunately for those of us that do not do videos, I guess it’s time to fish or cut bait and get with the program. Taking the time to create your video masterpiece is a great way to dominate search engines… of course don’t go to any great lengths to create a Hollywood style, studio masterpiece, it is stated that people relate to those that are themselves through video. Create a video, distribute to various video sites like YouTube and spread the word about your video through other means mentioned in this article. Since I am not a video guru, as I understand it, when placing a video on sites like YouTube, you don’t automatically receive an inbound link. Apparently you need to use the proper section to place your link to the page that your video is placed. I put my link in the vide description section to ensure an authority, inbound link coming to my site. Closing Comments About Link Building and Backlinks! You were expecting 10 high quality, authority link building tips, weren’t you? No problem, the last 2… HERE YA GO! 9. Write a Testimonial for a friend – write a testimonial for a friend and ask them to post it on their site. Whether it’s a client, friend or supplier, it doesn’t hurt to ask. 10. Partnerships Link Exchange – one of the oldest tricks in the book is link exchange… ask Facebook friends, Twitter acquaintances or business partners to post a link to their favorite article, or the home page of your site. Just be sure to offer the same in return. A link building campaign is a lengthy process! It is important to remember that quantity is not nearly as important as quality while you build your link structure. 1 high quality back link has a greater ranking effect on your site than 100 non-relevant, low quality backlinks. Your linking building strategy will be far more successful if you create links (both inbound and outbound) that are of high quality. When you link to other sites from yours, make sure that their site is more popular than your own. The same goes for inbound links… try to make sure that the links pointing to your site from another’s site is more popular than your own. Link building will be an ongoing process that you’ll work at for the lifetime of your web site. Follow the Link to the Original Article Which Will Have ALL the Links You NEED for Link Building, Which Will Help You With Your SEO Campaign.

#buy ios reviews #apple ios paid app reviews #paid ios snapshot reviews #buy ios snapshot app reviews

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Pointers for Getting A German Schengen Visa

Out of Town Blog Pointers for Getting A German Schengen Visa

Pointers for Getting A German Schengen Visa

Previous Post: How To Get A German Schengen Visa for Philippine Passport Holders

The other day I wrote about the whole process and the requirements in getting a Schengen visa. This time, I’ll be providing some extra pointers to give you that slight advantage in your application. In addition to these, I will be giving some advice specific to my situation, i.e. applying while unemployed and with a purpose of honeymoon for newly-weds.

visa denied – German Schengen Visa

Planning Ahead

Let’s begin with compiling your documentation. Considering you have settled on going to Germany, you must expect the hurdles in completing all the needed paperwork. Rule of thumb is to plan ahead even before setting an interview appointment. Ideally, you should only schedule your appointment when you are already building your calendar schedule (no. 3 below).

Create a checklist. Fortunately, the downloadable list of requirements is in checklist form where you can tick which document is on hand. If you’re feeling enthusiastic about keeping checklists, either you can make one on Excel or download checklist apps like Google Keep, and mark which ones are complete. Back then, we had a spreadsheet checklist that we’d kept updated each time we’ve accomplished credentials.

Check your passport for validity. The German Embassy forbids changing passports during processing, so it’s recommended that you either renew your passport before visiting the embassy. Your passport should at least be valid ‘for another 3 months’ on the date of visa application and should have ‘two empty pages’.

Make a detailed calendar schedule. Similar to a project calendar, this calendar will aid you in knowing exactly when to acquire which document. This schedule should include when your interview appointment at the embassy is.

Photocopy your papers. Having a cache of photocopies of each of your documents – including your IDs – is truly a life-saver.

Verify your bank account. Remember that submitting your bank statement with bank certificate is required. Make sure that your money in your bank account is enough to cover for travel expenses. My husband was asked a few questions regarding his finances – they’re that thorough.

Prepare auxiliary documents as you see fit. These are additional documents which are not in the checklist provided by the embassy but you think would be necessary to present. We were newly-weds at the time of application, so we decided to present our marriage certificate. Providing this supports the fact that we were recently married as I was not using my husband’s surname on all my identification documents. Also, since I was unemployed at that time, I produced printouts of job interview invitations. Preparedness and anticipation are keys to getting this right.

It is imperative that you bring all the necessary supporting documentation at the appointment. The German Embassy reserves the right to refuse incomplete submissions. There are instances when the embassy will contact you for more documentation. For more information on submissions, read here.

At the Interview

Now that you have collected your paperwork, let’s move over to readying yourself for the interview. In the previous article, I mentioned that questions are usually based on the documentation you presented. It is, in fact, true as the embassy officers want to know whether you are sure about your credentials or not. Aside from the usual questions related to the documents you provided, you can find other possible questions they can ask you all around the Internet. Below are some of them including how you can answer them.

“Why Germany?” and/or “What do you know about Germany?” – This question does not need to be overly formal. Answer this question truthfully and concisely. For example, if you’re a beer fan and would like to try German beers, then you can simply answer that. Be sure that your answer is sincere and personal. As I mentioned before, I answered that I was a fan of the German National Football Team for years and have dreamed of visiting their home country.

“Do you have family or friends living in Germany?” – If you answered yes, answer in brief who, their relation to you, and where they are staying in Germany.

“Are you married?” – If you replied yes, this might be followed by “What does your spouse do?” or “How long have you been married?” or “Do you have children?”.

“Who will finance your travel?” – If you will not be shouldering your own expenses, respond briefly by saying who will pay for your trip and present their financial capacity. In my case, they accepted my husband’s bank statements instead of mine.

“How much this journey is going to cost you?” – Prepare this beforehand by computing an estimate of your expenses. Google the prices of fares, venue tickets, food, and others. Don’t make things up. You do not need the exact amount, something close to that number should suffice.

“Can you reschedule a shorter trip?” – State why you can or cannot reschedule, especially if your trip will happen during an important event.

“How do we know you will return home within your visa’s validity?” Or maybe some trick questions like “What are your plans after your return?” or “When in the Schengen Area, are you going to seek employment?” – Of course, you would want your answer to imply that you will be returning. However, think ahead of supporting reasons that you can add to indicate why they should believe you. You can point to your personal responsibilities that demands your presence here, e.g. an occupation, a business, a sick relative, etc. The last two questions may seem easy for you to answer if you’re employed, but be alert as they can catch you unaware.

When answering questions:

Make sure to make eye contact.

Construct your replies in a way that the focus is on what is asked.

Prevent yourself from giving lingering answers.

Always remember that leaving a good impression (but please, do not overdo it) would be most helpful at this point.

Once you are done with the interview, and have paid the fee, you will then be advised that the processing will take three to five business days. If you are asked to pick up your passport, come at the date and time you are requested to drop by. If you are unable to do so, you must inform the embassy right away.

Wait, there’s a snag…

Sometimes, things do take a turn for the inevitable. Not all people receive the much-awaited Schengen visa. The question now is, what should you do if you get rejected? If you take a good Google search, you will find that there are people who have shared their stories of rejection and how they handled it. Surely, a turndown may seem sad and disappointing but it does not signal the end of the world for everyone. There is still hope.

Fortunately, I have not yet gone through this experience so what I will be providing below are mostly collated information from other people’s experiences.

If you have received a letter stating the reason why your application was rejected: I’ve read that people do receive rejection letters with ticked boxes corresponding to the reason behind it. In it, there are nine reasons why, but let’s stick to the most common reasons (as I have observed):

1) “The information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay was not reliable” – This would really make you ask yourself a million times what went wrong. If you have made a checklist, then you will somehow be able to pinpoint the snag. Did you give a copy of your confirmed accommodation? If you’re going to multiple places in different countries, have you provided a detailed itinerary? Are your means of financial support really enough to support you for the whole travel duration?

2) “Your intention to leave the territory of the Member States before the expiry of the visa could not be ascertained.” – Go over your checklist and see if you were able to submit the paperwork (BIR Form 2316/ITR, Letter of Approved Vacation Leave, and Certificate of Employment) that would prove your rootedness in the Philippines. If you did submit them, try to think about your current situation again. You may have lacked some more documents that would absolutely support your purpose. Aside from your submissions, they may have found your answers to their interview questions unsatisfactory.

german schengen visa

If you have received a rejection letter, what you can do is to craft a remonstration letter. A remonstration letter aids you to make an appeal to the embassy to reconsider your application. You can start by looking at a sample remonstration letter and tips how to write one here. It also helps to read some Schengen rejection stories like on Dream Euro Trip, on Two Monkeys Travel, this article on Rappler, and this one from Huffington Post.