Hello Redditors,
This is an incredible success story of how we helped a client achieve incredible results in just four months, generating an $80,000 return on investment (ROI) with a combination of SEO and Facebook Ads. We have completed many successful projects and there's a certain satisfaction in seeing our strategies translate to such tangible growth. I have tried to keep this post extremely detailed so that it can be beneficial for experienced marketers and newcomers alike.
The Client: Hair Extension E-commerce Brand
Revenue Split Between SEO and Fb ads: 3:2
Average Order Value: $350
Total Revenue(6 months): $140,000
Expenses(6 months): Product Cost + Delivery cost + Team + Agency Fees + Ads Cost+ Website Optimization + Packaging: $60000
Basic Company Background:
The brand was being run by a Mother-Daughter duo for the past 3 months. They had a shopify website with average structure and were struggling with facebook ads themselves. Although they made few physical sales due to friends and relatives but were unable to utilize the digital potential of their business as such. After trying facebook ads for some time they wanted a reliable digital marketing team to work with and they were recommended to us by one of our other customers who has a service based business. Initially we connected majorly for facebook ads but after the initial discussion when were doing research from our side, we found that there is huge potential in SEO for this niche so we suggested that we should prepare a proper website on wordpress and focus on both SEO and Ads parallelly as, although Ads will give an initial boost to the business but SEO will bring some stability and help in building a sustainable business.
Facebook Ads Campaign Structure:

• Our campaign housed multiple ad sets targeting users who are interested in fashion products and we also targeted audiences of some big and costly fashion companies. We were mostly targeting females aged 25-45 with good income source to have optimal conversions in the beginning, with our Seo efforts we planned to target a slightly younger audience as well which is going steadily as of now.
• We ran occasional promotions like "Buy x get x free" to boost AOV.
• Due to the high AOV and especially the product niche sometimes it is necessary to build trust so we used retargeting to build trust and showcase benefits, not just push for immediate conversions. Ads focused on comparison(Before & Afters), Customer Reviews, Hassle free product application and natural look, stylish look.

Ads Creatives and Brand Positioning:
It's important to note that after deep research we could find that a major share our hair extensions customers are females aged between 21-45 so we did not actively position our brand as solving problems of low hair volume, but instead we focused on how the products ads style, gives a much better look and you can try new hairstyles and hair colors daily. Also since almost all the demographics in this age group are working, we tested a professional look angle as well which gave us decent results. In ad creatives as well as on the website we made the daughter as the face of the product as we want to slowly grow her instagram as well which can add another organic and sustainable stream of revenue. She shoots before and after transition videos, general product application videos and other videos for ads according to the target audience and brand positioning strategy we discussed earlier. Instead of making long videos focused on product details a lot, we made short but captivating videos which can appeal to the young audience’s fashion sense.
Key Takeaways from FB Ads:
Mostly Meta Ads or Any other marketing tactic is just a traffic source but conversion will basically happen by how well you are able to communicate your product to the audience through your website. Its is necessary to have a smooth user journey, attractive offers, crisp information and right brand positioning on the website.
It is extremely important to make data driven decisions and track customer journeys meticulously. Always rely on your own tracking or google analytics to avoid the potential unreliability of Facebook Ads Manager.
Seo Strategy
If you don’t already know this, SEO is all about how effectively you can strategize your content and technical efforts keeping a bigger picture in mind. After our initial keyword research we could find that the average Kd of the important keywords was low when it comes to commercial keywords which were directly related to the business.
It's important to note that since the website was being built after our onboarding only so it was easy for us to structure the website according to the SEO strategy that we prepared.
At every stage we had meetings with the developer to ensure that there are no technical issues that will hinder the SEO growth and future and also we structured the website to be SEO friendly. We built separate pages for all the product categories and after through keyword research we added content to those pages so that the pages itself can rank for commercial keywords.
After the website was ready we audited it for technical issues(Like mobile friendliness, H1 tags, canonical tags, etc) we started focusing on the content. We wanted to establish our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions and hair care industry in general.
Since the website was completely new, initially we created blogs(2-3 times per week) around informational keywords with low KD purely for increasing our website authority and bringing the initial traffic on the website. We have seen that usually people start stressing about approaching big websites for guest postings since the first day itself but if your keyword research and content is solid, that is not required in the beginning. Initially we focused on profile creations, image submissions, pdf submissions, internal linking in the content, web 2.0 backlinks etc and this was more than enough for us to rank for low difficulty keywords and increase our DA to a decent level so that our category pages can rank for low difficulty keywords.
Here I would like to include a tip, many times people are worried that what if the backlink that they have created doesn't get indexed. In the initial phase we work really hard when it comes to what we call as maturing our backlinks as this is the major factor for ranking on low difficulty keywords. So basically what we do is, we make backlinks of our web 2.0 backlinks itself which helps the primary backlink in getting indexed which ultimately helps with our website DA.
Also many people have been asking us in our previous posts how we structure our blog since I talk a lot about content quality, see it's not as hard and it doesn't involve a lot of research at least in the initial phase when you just have to rank on low difficulty keywords. In this phase usually what we do is study the top 5 ranking blogs on the particular keyword and make sure that we include more content and more subheadings then them. Also we try to find opportunities to include tables or charts wherever possible, we include good quality images(original if possible) and at this stage internal linking is very very important so we focus on that as well. In later stages although the basic strategy for framing the blogs remains same, overall content strategy varies a lot from business to business and requires a lot of strategizing depending on the brand positioning goals.
So after we were able to rank for low difficulty informational keywords and our Website DA reached a decent level due to our backlinking efforts, we started writing content around the fashion advice and common problems which people face related to hair in general. But as discussed earlier, we wanted to keep our brand positioning fashion centric, so even while writing about common problems we applied a positive and solution centric approach. We strategically placed internal links to our product pages in the content and tested popups with offers as well. Apart from this, we started guest posting as well at this stage. For finding websites for guest posting we used SEMrush’s backlink gap analysis tool and created a segregated list of blogs that we can reach out to based on their content quality and DA. By this time the store started generating decent revenue from ads and SEO so the client was completely onboard with reaching out to blogs for guest posting. Guest posting and overall strategic SEO application started generating a good amount of traffic for us and in 3-4 months the revenue generated due to SEO surpassed our Ads revenue as well.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Paid Ads
While Facebook Ads played a crucial role in launching the brand and driving initial traffic, SEO has emerged as the primary driver of sustainable growth. This approach allowed us to:

• Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising: As our SEO efforts matured, we were able to gradually decrease our Facebook ad spend, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment.
• Build Brand Authority: Our SEO strategy has positioned our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions industry. This fosters brand recognition and trust, leading to organic customer acquisition.
• Scale Traffic and Revenue: Organic traffic growth has been exponential, leading to a significant and sustainable increase in website revenue generated through SEO.

SEO efforts are always ongoing but we are really satisfied with the base that we have built and we are really looking forward to working with keywords with higher KD and generating more revenue with SEO In the upcoming months. Although we will keep running ads in future as well mostly for awareness purposes but the major revenue will be generated from our SEO efforts. Apart from this, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking to actively start the Social Media efforts as well from the next month itself. We will be looking to target Instagram and Tiktok in the initial phase and we believe in 2-3 months social media will contribute towards 25% of our revenue which will grow rapidly.
Thankyou For Reading!

Symptoms

• Glowing purple irises
• A dribbling purple froth from the mouth
• A strange, continuous, chicken dance-like series of movements
• Afflicted is incapable of speaking anything beyond "mochi"
• Ghostly purple aura

Remedies

• All items with antitoxic properties (Pecha Berry, Herbal Powder, Full Heal, etc.)
• Moves with curative properties (Refresh, Safeguard, Purify, etc.)
• Induced vomiting in victim
• Inhalation of Misty Terrain fumes
• Getting knocked out

Mochification

The primary effect of being poisoned by Pecharunt or its minions. Due to the Lousy Three's innate control over poison granted to them by the Toxic Chains, they can use this to influence the minds and bodies of anyone they poison. With Okidogi, Munkidori and Fezandipiti, it merely enhances the victim's greed, altering their mental state until the poison is purged from their body. However, Pecharunt in particular uses this curious ability for more malicious ends, due to its higher degree of mastery over poison. People or Pokemon poisoned by it become its thralls, and it often forces them to protect it or steal valuables for it. Its most common way of doing this is by either tricking people into eating "Binding Mochi", a special coagulate of poison that takes effect almost immediately, or force-feeding it to them.
Once mochified, the victim has roughly three hours to expel the poison from their bloodstream: otherwise, it reaches the brain, and the victim becomes mochified permanently until Pecharunt is either knocked out or moved out of range. The victim is only capable of saying variations of "mochi": not only does this bear notable resemblance to Pokespeech, in humans, it can be used as such too. This allows Pecharunt to commandeer Trainers' Pokemon without having to mochify them first, having the mochified Trainer order direct commands for their Pokemon to attack or maim anything that would get in its way.
Mochified Pokemon are noticeably different than humans. They don't perform the "dance" that afflicted humans do, but maintain the glowing purple eyes and dribbling froth, and are shrouded in a ghostly purple aura: to the uninitiated, this may resemble the aura emitted by a Shadow Pokemon. Since they're dribbling more of Pecharunt's poison from their mouth, bites from mochified Pokemon that break the skin may mochify the victim as well. Mochified Pokemon are noticeably dangerous: as they're completely under Pecharunt's control, they will attack anyone and everyone at its discretion. Due to Pecharunt's warped, childish mentality, this often leads to it forcing its thralls to go all-out, seeing them as akin to toys. It uses these enthralled It's not above using this tactic to escape a fight, turning a Pokemon against its own Trainer and fleeing. Poison-types, Steel-types, and certain other species with immunity or resistances to poisons are immune (or at least heavily resilient) to mochification.

Hello Redditors,
This is an incredible success story of how we helped a client achieve incredible results in just four months, generating an $80,000 return on investment (ROI) with a combination of SEO and Facebook Ads. We have completed many successful projects and there's a certain satisfaction in seeing our strategies translate to such tangible growth. I have tried to keep this post extremely detailed so that it can be beneficial for experienced marketers and newcomers alike.
The Client: Hair Extension E-commerce Brand
Revenue Split Between SEO and Fb ads: 3:2
Average Order Value: $350
Total Revenue(6 months): $140,000
Expenses(6 months): Product Cost + Delivery cost + Team + Agency Fees + Ads Cost+ Website Optimization + Packaging: $60000
Basic Company Background:
The brand was being run by a Mother-Daughter duo for the past 3 months. They had a shopify website with average structure and were struggling with facebook ads themselves. Although they made few physical sales due to friends and relatives but were unable to utilize the digital potential of their business as such. After trying facebook ads for some time they wanted a reliable digital marketing team to work with and they were recommended to us by one of our other customers who has a service based business. Initially we connected majorly for facebook ads but after the initial discussion when were doing research from our side, we found that there is huge potential in SEO for this niche so we suggested that we should prepare a proper website on wordpress and focus on both SEO and Ads parallelly as, although Ads will give an initial boost to the business but SEO will bring some stability and help in building a sustainable business.
Facebook Ads Campaign Structure:

• Our campaign housed multiple ad sets targeting users who are interested in fashion products and we also targeted audiences of some big and costly fashion companies. We were mostly targeting females aged 25-45 with good income source to have optimal conversions in the beginning, with our Seo efforts we planned to target a slightly younger audience as well which is going steadily as of now.
• We ran occasional promotions like "Buy x get x free" to boost AOV.
• Due to the high AOV and especially the product niche sometimes it is necessary to build trust so we used retargeting to build trust and showcase benefits, not just push for immediate conversions. Ads focused on comparison(Before & Afters), Customer Reviews, Hassle free product application and natural look, stylish look.

Ads Creatives and Brand Positioning:
It's important to note that after deep research we could find that a major share our hair extensions customers are females aged between 21-45 so we did not actively position our brand as solving problems of low hair volume, but instead we focused on how the products ads style, gives a much better look and you can try new hairstyles and hair colors daily. Also since almost all the demographics in this age group are working, we tested a professional look angle as well which gave us decent results. In ad creatives as well as on the website we made the daughter as the face of the product as we want to slowly grow her instagram as well which can add another organic and sustainable stream of revenue. She shoots before and after transition videos, general product application videos and other videos for ads according to the target audience and brand positioning strategy we discussed earlier. Instead of making long videos focused on product details a lot, we made short but captivating videos which can appeal to the young audience’s fashion sense.
Key Takeaways from FB Ads:
Mostly Meta Ads or Any other marketing tactic is just a traffic source but conversion will basically happen by how well you are able to communicate your product to the audience through your website. Its is necessary to have a smooth user journey, attractive offers, crisp information and right brand positioning on the website.
It is extremely important to make data driven decisions and track customer journeys meticulously. Always rely on your own tracking or google analytics to avoid the potential unreliability of Facebook Ads Manager.
Seo Strategy
If you don’t already know this, SEO is all about how effectively you can strategize your content and technical efforts keeping a bigger picture in mind. After our initial keyword research we could find that the average Kd of the important keywords was low when it comes to commercial keywords which were directly related to the business.
It's important to note that since the website was being built after our onboarding only so it was easy for us to structure the website according to the SEO strategy that we prepared.
At every stage we had meetings with the developer to ensure that there are no technical issues that will hinder the SEO growth and future and also we structured the website to be SEO friendly. We built separate pages for all the product categories and after through keyword research we added content to those pages so that the pages itself can rank for commercial keywords.
After the website was ready we audited it for technical issues(Like mobile friendliness, H1 tags, canonical tags, etc) we started focusing on the content. We wanted to establish our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions and hair care industry in general.
Since the website was completely new, initially we created blogs(2-3 times per week) around informational keywords with low KD purely for increasing our website authority and bringing the initial traffic on the website. We have seen that usually people start stressing about approaching big websites for guest postings since the first day itself but if your keyword research and content is solid, that is not required in the beginning. Initially we focused on profile creations, image submissions, pdf submissions, internal linking in the content, web 2.0 backlinks etc and this was more than enough for us to rank for low difficulty keywords and increase our DA to a decent level so that our category pages can rank for low difficulty keywords.
Here I would like to include a tip, many times people are worried that what if the backlink that they have created doesn't get indexed. In the initial phase we work really hard when it comes to what we call as maturing our backlinks as this is the major factor for ranking on low difficulty keywords. So basically what we do is, we make backlinks of our web 2.0 backlinks itself which helps the primary backlink in getting indexed which ultimately helps with our website DA.
Also many people have been asking us in our previous posts how we structure our blog since I talk a lot about content quality, see it's not as hard and it doesn't involve a lot of research at least in the initial phase when you just have to rank on low difficulty keywords. In this phase usually what we do is study the top 5 ranking blogs on the particular keyword and make sure that we include more content and more subheadings then them. Also we try to find opportunities to include tables or charts wherever possible, we include good quality images(original if possible) and at this stage internal linking is very very important so we focus on that as well. In later stages although the basic strategy for framing the blogs remains same, overall content strategy varies a lot from business to business and requires a lot of strategizing depending on the brand positioning goals.
So after we were able to rank for low difficulty informational keywords and our Website DA reached a decent level due to our backlinking efforts, we started writing content around the fashion advice and common problems which people face related to hair in general. But as discussed earlier, we wanted to keep our brand positioning fashion centric, so even while writing about common problems we applied a positive and solution centric approach. We strategically placed internal links to our product pages in the content and tested popups with offers as well. Apart from this, we started guest posting as well at this stage. For finding websites for guest posting we used SEMrush’s backlink gap analysis tool and created a segregated list of blogs that we can reach out to based on their content quality and DA. By this time the store started generating decent revenue from ads and SEO so the client was completely onboard with reaching out to blogs for guest posting. Guest posting and overall strategic SEO application started generating a good amount of traffic for us and in 3-4 months the revenue generated due to SEO surpassed our Ads revenue as well.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Paid Ads
While Facebook Ads played a crucial role in launching the brand and driving initial traffic, SEO has emerged as the primary driver of sustainable growth. This approach allowed us to:

• Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising: As our SEO efforts matured, we were able to gradually decrease our Facebook ad spend, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment.
• Build Brand Authority: Our SEO strategy has positioned our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions industry. This fosters brand recognition and trust, leading to organic customer acquisition.
• Scale Traffic and Revenue: Organic traffic growth has been exponential, leading to a significant and sustainable increase in website revenue generated through SEO.

SEO efforts are always ongoing but we are really satisfied with the base that we have built and we are really looking forward to working with keywords with higher KD and generating more revenue with SEO In the upcoming months. Although we will keep running ads in future as well mostly for awareness purposes but the major revenue will be generated from our SEO efforts. Apart from this, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking to actively start the Social Media efforts as well from the next month itself. We will be looking to target Instagram and Tiktok in the initial phase and we believe in 2-3 months social media will contribute towards 25% of our revenue which will grow rapidly.
Thankyou For Reading!

Hello Redditors,
This is an incredible success story of how we helped a client achieve incredible results in just four months, generating an $80,000 return on investment (ROI) with a combination of SEO and Facebook Ads. We have completed many successful projects and there's a certain satisfaction in seeing our strategies translate to such tangible growth. I have tried to keep this post extremely detailed so that it can be beneficial for experienced marketers and newcomers alike.
The Client: Hair Extension E-commerce Brand
Revenue Split Between SEO and Fb ads: 3:2
Average Order Value: $350
Total Revenue(6 months): $140,000
Expenses(6 months): Product Cost + Delivery cost + Team + Agency Fees + Ads Cost+ Website Optimization + Packaging: $60000
Basic Company Background:
The brand was being run by a Mother-Daughter duo for the past 3 months. They had a shopify website with average structure and were struggling with facebook ads themselves. Although they made few physical sales due to friends and relatives but were unable to utilize the digital potential of their business as such. After trying facebook ads for some time they wanted a reliable digital marketing team to work with and they were recommended to us by one of our other customers who has a service based business. Initially we connected majorly for facebook ads but after the initial discussion when were doing research from our side, we found that there is huge potential in SEO for this niche so we suggested that we should prepare a proper website on wordpress and focus on both SEO and Ads parallelly as, although Ads will give an initial boost to the business but SEO will bring some stability and help in building a sustainable business.
Facebook Ads Campaign Structure:

• Our campaign housed multiple ad sets targeting users who are interested in fashion products and we also targeted audiences of some big and costly fashion companies. We were mostly targeting females aged 25-45 with good income source to have optimal conversions in the beginning, with our Seo efforts we planned to target a slightly younger audience as well which is going steadily as of now.
• We ran occasional promotions like "Buy x get x free" to boost AOV.
• Due to the high AOV and especially the product niche sometimes it is necessary to build trust so we used retargeting to build trust and showcase benefits, not just push for immediate conversions. Ads focused on comparison(Before & Afters), Customer Reviews, Hassle free product application and natural look, stylish look.

Ads Creatives and Brand Positioning:
It's important to note that after deep research we could find that a major share our hair extensions customers are females aged between 21-45 so we did not actively position our brand as solving problems of low hair volume, but instead we focused on how the products ads style, gives a much better look and you can try new hairstyles and hair colors daily. Also since almost all the demographics in this age group are working, we tested a professional look angle as well which gave us decent results. In ad creatives as well as on the website we made the daughter as the face of the product as we want to slowly grow her instagram as well which can add another organic and sustainable stream of revenue. She shoots before and after transition videos, general product application videos and other videos for ads according to the target audience and brand positioning strategy we discussed earlier. Instead of making long videos focused on product details a lot, we made short but captivating videos which can appeal to the young audience’s fashion sense.
Key Takeaways from FB Ads:
Mostly Meta Ads or Any other marketing tactic is just a traffic source but conversion will basically happen by how well you are able to communicate your product to the audience through your website. Its is necessary to have a smooth user journey, attractive offers, crisp information and right brand positioning on the website.
It is extremely important to make data driven decisions and track customer journeys meticulously. Always rely on your own tracking or google analytics to avoid the potential unreliability of Facebook Ads Manager.
Seo Strategy
If you don’t already know this, SEO is all about how effectively you can strategize your content and technical efforts keeping a bigger picture in mind. After our initial keyword research we could find that the average Kd of the important keywords was low when it comes to commercial keywords which were directly related to the business.
It's important to note that since the website was being built after our onboarding only so it was easy for us to structure the website according to the SEO strategy that we prepared.
At every stage we had meetings with the developer to ensure that there are no technical issues that will hinder the SEO growth and future and also we structured the website to be SEO friendly. We built separate pages for all the product categories and after through keyword research we added content to those pages so that the pages itself can rank for commercial keywords.
After the website was ready we audited it for technical issues(Like mobile friendliness, H1 tags, canonical tags, etc) we started focusing on the content. We wanted to establish our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions and hair care industry in general.
Since the website was completely new, initially we created blogs(2-3 times per week) around informational keywords with low KD purely for increasing our website authority and bringing the initial traffic on the website. We have seen that usually people start stressing about approaching big websites for guest postings since the first day itself but if your keyword research and content is solid, that is not required in the beginning. Initially we focused on profile creations, image submissions, pdf submissions, internal linking in the content, web 2.0 backlinks etc and this was more than enough for us to rank for low difficulty keywords and increase our DA to a decent level so that our category pages can rank for low difficulty keywords.
Here I would like to include a tip, many times people are worried that what if the backlink that they have created doesn't get indexed. In the initial phase we work really hard when it comes to what we call as maturing our backlinks as this is the major factor for ranking on low difficulty keywords. So basically what we do is, we make backlinks of our web 2.0 backlinks itself which helps the primary backlink in getting indexed which ultimately helps with our website DA.
Also many people have been asking us in our previous posts how we structure our blog since I talk a lot about content quality, see it's not as hard and it doesn't involve a lot of research at least in the initial phase when you just have to rank on low difficulty keywords. In this phase usually what we do is study the top 5 ranking blogs on the particular keyword and make sure that we include more content and more subheadings then them. Also we try to find opportunities to include tables or charts wherever possible, we include good quality images(original if possible) and at this stage internal linking is very very important so we focus on that as well. In later stages although the basic strategy for framing the blogs remains same, overall content strategy varies a lot from business to business and requires a lot of strategizing depending on the brand positioning goals.
So after we were able to rank for low difficulty informational keywords and our Website DA reached a decent level due to our backlinking efforts, we started writing content around the fashion advice and common problems which people face related to hair in general. But as discussed earlier, we wanted to keep our brand positioning fashion centric, so even while writing about common problems we applied a positive and solution centric approach. We strategically placed internal links to our product pages in the content and tested popups with offers as well. Apart from this, we started guest posting as well at this stage. For finding websites for guest posting we used SEMrush’s backlink gap analysis tool and created a segregated list of blogs that we can reach out to based on their content quality and DA. By this time the store started generating decent revenue from ads and SEO so the client was completely onboard with reaching out to blogs for guest posting. Guest posting and overall strategic SEO application started generating a good amount of traffic for us and in 3-4 months the revenue generated due to SEO surpassed our Ads revenue as well.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Paid Ads
While Facebook Ads played a crucial role in launching the brand and driving initial traffic, SEO has emerged as the primary driver of sustainable growth. This approach allowed us to:

• Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising: As our SEO efforts matured, we were able to gradually decrease our Facebook ad spend, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment.
• Build Brand Authority: Our SEO strategy has positioned our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions industry. This fosters brand recognition and trust, leading to organic customer acquisition.
• Scale Traffic and Revenue: Organic traffic growth has been exponential, leading to a significant and sustainable increase in website revenue generated through SEO.

SEO efforts are always ongoing but we are really satisfied with the base that we have built and we are really looking forward to working with keywords with higher KD and generating more revenue with SEO In the upcoming months. Although we will keep running ads in future as well mostly for awareness purposes but the major revenue will be generated from our SEO efforts. Apart from this, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking to actively start the Social Media efforts as well from the next month itself. We will be looking to target Instagram and Tiktok in the initial phase and we believe in 2-3 months social media will contribute towards 25% of our revenue which will grow rapidly.
Thankyou For Reading!

The lesson.... I have a lot to say when it came to the one preaching...
Mentioned that we shouldn't be like those who aren't mature yet that are easily swayed by the words of other people like a child, "We should use our minds as the compass and not our hearts".
This is weird, for people inside don't even question... All except some in the Church only uses their heart as their guides, for they don't question or want to know more than what is being given.
The preacher makes it sounds like the members are the smart ones... but most don't even have a solid grip on the structure of their belief.
Plus side mentions gives me icks... Political, LGBT hate.
If their are only 2 genders then why are there those people who are both men and women, biologically. Mentions of biology of man and women ( chromosomes)
No one counters that the truth that their are 2 genders, it's that their are different sexualities... Like Sodom and Gomorrah ( the act). So why would their people like that? Why create something which naturally occurs? A straight man can't be gay, a straight woman can't be gay, most do not want to be LGBT but that's who they are they didn't choose that.
But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?" (Romans 9:20-21, NIV). And you can't question God...
Their are verses.. I think which show that how a person is it's because God formed them like that, I can't find it... But who has the power to resist his will?
This was one of the most heartwrentching lesson, a little cause I'm kinda in the middle but more on that they think of themselves as more superior, for they truly believe that there is God and God is only for them,
Other religions or beliefs we should respect, but it is wrong for them to say that God or the truth is only based on each's faith because that is not the case...
That was told.
I don't really believe the Bible as the solid truth, for it isn't the Bible anymore it has a lot of translations, went through multiple hands, some that were removed. But still it has some power, but it was soiled.

Known by another name, allergic rhinitis, hay fever is a common ailment that many Australians experience, especially in the spring and summer. Airborne pollen from grasses, trees, and weeds causes this seasonal allergy, which causes symptoms like a runny or blocked nose, itchy eyes, and irritation in the throat. Because of the variety of Australia's vegetation, certain areas may have higher pollen counts than others, which can exacerbate the illness for a lot of people. Sufferers can more successfully control their symptoms if they are aware of the individual triggers and keep an eye on pollen forecasts.
A combination of medications and preventive strategies are used to manage hay fever. To reduce exposure, keep windows closed, use air purifiers, and stay inside during high pollen times. To ease symptoms, nasal sprays, eye drops, and over-the-counter antihistamines are frequently utilised. In extreme situations, consulting a physician for guidance on stronger drugs or allergy shots may be required. People with hay fever can greatly lessen their pain and spend more time outside by being proactive and knowledgeable. To learn more about Hay Fever, feel free to check out this blog: https://cprfirstaid.com.au/how-to-manage-hay-feve

... but he got soooo bored and couldn't even finish the first episode.
On the other hand, I have been crazy about the show and just wanted to share my joy with him. Of course we sometimes like the same stuff. However, he is more into Marvel, sci-fi and also we love watching art house films together. I love sci-fi too, very much. He is not just into romantic stuff like me. Hates rom-coms as well.
I have recommended Maxton Hall to all my girlfriends, btw. But I don't know, I used to watch everything with my mom in the past, she loved period pieces, romantic movies, series... and we even watched Lost together. I think I miss that feeling a lot. My mom passed away 3 years ago.
As I said, there are tons of other things that me and my hubby enjoy watching together.
And when he said he got so bored and couldn't continue, it broke my heart. I am about to cry, really. Why did I have such a silly reaction to this I wonder. Why... I think I should stop trying to make him watch things like that.
A couple shouldn't have to like the same things all the time, right? This is fact. And we have other things in common. And I think it is normal for a man to not like a young adult show like Maxton Hall, right? which I think is one of the best, maybe the best now.
We are very much into Euphoria by the way, which is much much darker of course.
I feel like I am acting like an adolescent now, Maxton Hall woke something up in me and I can't stop it.
I wish, us women, weren't built like this. I wish I wasn't into Maxton Hall this much but I am.
I know this is a silly post but I just wanted to share my feelings here.
Thank you for reading.

Honestly i was genuinely flabbergasted by the insane amount of idiotic and somewhat embarrassing responses to the situation that both Nagatoro and Naoto are in right now, It really seems that alot of people not only see relationships in the wrong way, but also refuse to see the whole ordeal from the character's perspective, so let's talk about it!
First of all, this situation is nowhere near as big or problematic as alot of people see it, It's a very common thing that nearly every couple on a relationship will go through atleast once, and that's normal because it's one that really gives you the impression that dating is a different thing, and that both Nagatoro and Naoto will have to change their attitude a little bit and develop their mindset to keep things healthy and proper, Because relationships are about trust, being open, respecting boundaries etc... And despite the fact that both love eachothers and would never try to do anything to hurt eachothers, It still a thing they'll have to get through and discuss. It's not a relationship breaker, or any of that sort, and people who think it is need more life experience.
Second of all, let's talk about who was ultimately the one "In the wrong", while this situation really was more of a mistake than anything, you have to admit that Naoto did kinda fuck up this time around, and it's fine as a first. Nagatoro also did wrong by looking without permission, but you'll have to remember that she thought nothing of it because Naoto lied to her, saying that what he was hiding was just ordinary and nothing personal or important, so you can't blame her much, plus even after what she did and being shocked of what she saw, she still managed to apologize by saying she's sorry, she knew what she did was wrong, but Naoto tried to escape the situation by pulling the "you looked without my permission", while that's true, he didn't really say it because he was actually hurt that she looked, but because he was caught, and unlike Nagatoro, he didn't apologize straight up which was a mistake, Plus by doing this, he also broke a promise he made to himself and her in chapter 107. Now some people will say "BUT SENPAI WAS AFRAID OF WHAT SHE'LL DO TO HIM", and I'd agree with that if we were still early in the manga, but we are not, things are different, both have discussed this and both understand that art is art, even if nagatoro felt a little upset she wouldn't lash at him, at worst she'll tease him playfully like she's been doing for a while, and you also have to remember that nagatoro is insecure and has a low self-esteem, but Naoto shouldn't be afraid because they're now dating, and things have changed, both have grown and are more understanding of eachothers and shouldn't be afraid because there is nothing to be afraid of, Naoto could've also been afraid that he'll hurt her, and while that is a good way of thinking, what he did wasn't the right move.
Which brings me to the dumbest responses, people that are saying "NAGATORO DESERVED IT" and "SHE MADE HIM CRY VERY EARLY ON SO ITS KARMA" and to that i say... Are you delusional? Or are you still stuck in chapter 1, does it look like this is the same Nagatoro that used to bully senpai and make him cry? Does it look like this is the same situation? Do you actually think that Naoto sees Nagatoro this way, holding a grudge on her for what she did a long time ago? Of course not! Nagatoro has changed, she grew and developed as a person, and she's no longer the jerk she used to be, same for Naoto, both have developed over the course of the manga thanks to being with eachothers, they're now in love, they no longer see themselves the same way back then, and Nagatoro sure as hell has matured from her past-self, thinking that this is "Karma" is genuinely so dumb, they're dating, this situation is vastly different than before where they were only new "friends", like i really don't understand how can you see Nagatoro cry and say she deserves it for things that are long gone, feeling weak and thinking her boyfriend doesn't trust her enough, this is really just an absurd way to look at this situation, and again, refusing to see it through the character's perspective at all.
Overall I'm really disappointed with these responses and i urge some people here to actually start seeing things from a new light and go outside a bit, this isn't how relationship works, it's not a clash between "who's to blame, who is more wrong" etc... It's much more complex and this situation really shows that their relationship will be a good one that will continue to develop and grow unlike alot of perfect roms that just use the same "and they lived happily after" when couple start dating, next episode you'll see both of them talking it out, apologizing, learning fr it and moving on.

When shopping for a new full mattress, comfort and support are paramount, especially considering this purchase you'll likely live with for the next decade. Understanding the nuances of what makes a full-size mattress ideal for both support and comfort can guide you through this essential decision. Here's a comprehensive buying guide on what to look for in a full mattress to ensure you make the best choice.
Understand Mattress Types
The type of mattress plays a crucial role in the level of support and comfort it offers. Here are the most common types:

• Innerspring Mattresses: These feature coils that provide a traditional bounce feel and firm support. They are known for their durability but vary widely in firmness according to the coil configuration.
• Memory Foam Mattresses: Known for their pressure relief, these mattresses contour to the shape of your body. The density and thickness of the foam can determine the level of comfort and support, and they're excellent at reducing motion transfer.
• Latex Mattresses: Similar to memory foam, latex offers contouring support with a bit more bounce. Latex is also appreciated for its durability and responsiveness.
• Hybrid Mattresses: Combining innerspring coils with foam or latex layers, hybrid mattresses provide a good blend of support and comfort, making them suitable for a wide range of sleep preferences.

Check for Support
A good full mattress should support the natural curve of your spine, allowing it to rest comfortably. The right level of support will help prevent and alleviate back pain. It's essential to choose a mattress firm enough to support your spinal alignment but soft enough to contour your body's curves. This balance helps distribute body weight evenly, reducing pressure points and enhancing comfort.
Consider Comfort
Comfort is subjective and varies based on personal preference. However, factors like mattress firmness play a significant role. Here’s how firmness levels can be broken down:

• Soft: Best for side sleepers who need cushioning at the hips and shoulders.
• Medium: Suitable for all sleep positions, offering a balance of support and softness.
• Firm: Ideal for back or stomach sleepers needing more support to align their spine.

Focus on Size and Thickness
The size of a full mattress, typically 54 inches by 75 inches, is suitable for one adult or a growing teenager. The thickness, however, can vary, affecting the mattress's feel and longevity. Thicker mattresses usually offer more cushioning and support. Assess your personal needs based on your weight, age, and health conditions to determine the appropriate thickness.
Assess Durability and Warranty
Durability depends on the quality of materials used in the mattress construction. Higher-quality materials mean a longer-lasting mattress. Also, look for warranties that cover manufacturing defects and offer a reasonable time to try the mattress at home.
By understanding these factors, you can find a full mattress that meets your support and comfort needs, ensuring restful sleep for years to come. Remember, spending time testing different mattresses and researching options can make your investment in a full-size mattress worth it.

Event will last until 25 May 2024 20:59:59 JST
Event 2nd half will begin 21 May 2024 15:00:00 JST
Event Costume Exchange is available until 31 May 2024 14:59:59 JST

Event Description

The objective is to gather event tokens and some event points by playing LIVEs using stamina or Live Tickets.
Event tokens can be used to to play event songs to gather much more event points.
Completing Million Request will unlock bonus event points plus various item rewards.
Event exclusive card, costumes, items, and achievement titles will be distributed through accumulated event point, event point ranking, high score ranking, and lounge ranking rewards.
Event exclusive story will also be unlocked through event points progress.
General event play style: Play LIVEs for tokens and use them to play event song. Check Million Request page after completing requests.

Event Exclusive Cards & Costumes

Event Ranking Card	Requirements
SR (STARDOM ROAD[Ⅱ]) Serika Hakozaki	MR0: Top 50,000 ranking or 30,000 event points)
	MR1: Top 25,000 ranking
	MR2: Top 10,000 ranking
	MR3: Top 5,000 ranking
	MR4: Top 2,500 ranking

Event Points Card	Requirements
SR (STARDOM ROAD[Ⅱ]) Tomoka Tenkubashi	MR0: 6,000 event points
	MR1: 10,000 event points
	MR2: 16,000 event points
	MR3: 22,000 event points
	MR4: 30,000 event points

Cards from event rewards will have a PST logo on bottom left of card.
Only the event ranking card comes with the event costume. Raising the event ranking card to Master Rank 4 will unlock another version of the costume.
By reaching certain accumulated event point targets you can obtain Costume Vouchers that can be exchanged for the current event's costumes (except the event ranking card's) via the Costume Exchange (衣装交換) button on the event page:

Event Points
45,000, 55,000, 70,000

If the event page is no longer available and you still have unexpired vouchers you can still access the Costume Exchange from on of the banners on the main THEATER page.
You can use Platinum Star Piece to obtain any event cards or costumes you have missed, as well as raising the event cards' Master Rank, at a later date.

Event Login Bonus & Missions

Remember to visit the event page daily to collect 540 event tokens.
You will also receive a one-time-only 10 Limited-time AutoLivePass upon visiting the event page during event duration.
Daily Spark Drink expires on 00:00 JST every day so remember to use them as soon as possible.
You can tap the Mission (ミッション) or the To-do List (やることリスト) button on the event page to check on your event missions progress. Million Jewel Mining List (ミリオンジュエル発掘リスト) tracks event missions (including event song combo / clear count) that can give you Million Jewels.

Mission	Reward	Expires
Clear 1 LIVE	Daily Spark Drink (1 unit)	Every day 00:00 JST
Complete 1 JOB	Daily Spark Drink (1 unit)	Every day 00:00 JST
Gather 100 event tokens	Million Jewel (25 unit)	Every day 00:00 JST
	Daily Spark Drink 30 (1 unit)
Gather 180 event token	Event token (540 unit)	End of event
	Limited-time AutoLivePass (5 unit)
Clear event song 10 times	Platinum Star Piece (1 unit)	End of event
Clear event song 10 times	Million Jewel (200 unit)	End of event

Event Token: Star・Pendant [Ⅱ] (スター・ペンダント[Ⅱ])

The quantity of event token and points earned from LIVEs depends on stamina cost and score rank achieved.
The maximum number of tokens you can accumulate is 999,999.
Below are the event point and token rewards (both yield the same amount) for non-event songs played using stamina:

Course	Stamina Cost	Score Rank S	Score Rank A	Score Rank B	Score Rank C/D/lower
2MIX (Solo/Unit)	15	35	34	33	32
4MIX	20	49	48	47	45
2MIX+	25	62	60	59	58
6MIX	25	64	63	62	60
MMIX	30	85	83	80	79
OMIX	30	85	83	80	79

The number of live tickets required to play a non-event song is the same as its stamina counterpart, but a 0.7x base multiplier will be applied on event token and points earned.
It's possible to spend up to 10x the number of live tickets on a song, and the event token/point multiplier will scale accordingly.
Live tickets can be obtained from JOBs by spending stamina. During the event, a 25 and 30 stamina job will be available on the special (特別) tab in addition to the 20 stamina jobs on the regular tab

Event Song: Upper Dog

The event song can be quickly selected from the event page via the "Go To Event Song (イベント楽曲へ)" button, or the Event Song (イベント楽曲) on the right side of the LIVE screen.
Token cost and the event points gain are the same across all courses.

Token Cost	Score Rank S	Score Rank A	Score Rank B	Score Rank C/D/lower
180	537	525	514	504

An additional 120% bonus will be applied to your team's Vocal Appeal stat when playing the event song.

Million Request

Can be accesssed through the Million Request (ミリオンリクエスト！) button on the event page. Or through the Check Completed Request (リクエスト達成確認) button on LIVE or JOB results page once you cleared a request.
Request rewards include among others event tokens, Limited-time AutoLivePass, and Bonus Live. When Bonus Live is active you will gain an additional 3000 event points when clearing the event song.
You must accept the rewards for the completed Request to activate the next Request.

No	Request
1	Clear 1 LIVE
2	Complete 1 JOB
3	Clear Sweet Sweet Soul 1 time
4	Clear event song 1 time
5	Complete 1 JOB
6	Clear catch my feeling 1 time
7	Clear event song 1 time
8	Complete 1 JOB
9	Clear LOVE is GAME 1 time
10	Clear event song 1 time
11	Complete 1 JOB
12	Clear 産声とクラブ 1 time
13	Clear event song 1 time
14	Complete 1 JOB
15	Clear Girl meets Wonder 1 time

Event 2nd Half

After the event reaches its designated midway point (see post beginning for the exact date and time), you'll be given the option to spend more stamina / tokens to get more tokens / event points / Live Tickets faster.
You can spend 2x stamina to get 2x the tokens and event points from LIVEs.
You can spend 2x stamina to get 2x the Live Tickets from JOBs.
You can spend 2x / 4x tokens to get 2x / 4x the event points from event songs. A 10x option is available once per day.
PLv exp, affection level, item drops, etc are not affected by the multiplier.

Event Commus

Event stories can be unlocked by clearing Area from Million Sugoroku for the first time, viewing them will yield Million Jewels (50 unit) per episode.

Episode	Event Points Needed
Prologue	Interact with Misaki at the Theater's Waiting Room
1	0
2	1000
3	2500
4	4500
5	7000
6	10,000
Epilogue	Unlocks after the event results

Event Rewards

Event Rewards can be viewed via the Event Rewards (イベント報酬) button on the event page. The current rankings can be access using the Rankings (ランキング) button.
Available Rankings:

• Accumulated Event Points (蓄積イベントpt)
• Event Point Ranking (イベントptランキング)
• High Score Ranking (ハイスコアランキング)
• Lounge Ranking (ラウンジランキング)

Minimum lounge contribution to be eligible for lounge ranking rewards.

Lounge Ranking	Required Points
1st ~ 10th	36000
11th ~ 50th	26000
51st ~ 100th	18000
101st ~ 250th	12000
251st ~ 500th	8000

Event Shop

During the event you can purchase sets of Spark Drink MAX (5 unit) and AutoLivePass (5 unit) from the Event Shop (イベントショップ) button on the event page.
Set A costs 250 Million Jewels (paid) while Set B costs 250 Million Jewels (free/paid). One set each per day.

Useful Links

• Official event song 3D MV video
• Japanese fanguide
• High score calculator
• Event point calculator
• Event point / high score / lounge ranking Twitter bot

Honor Violence: And why nobody should demand respect

Honor violence is a sort of violence committed where the perpetrator's goal is to regain his tribe's honor, his family's honor, and his own honor. In most cases it’s planned by a family, and committed by one or more men of that family, to a woman of the family who has done or suspected to have done something against cultural or religious norms like rejecting an arranged marriage, or adopting a Western lifestyle. What's worse is that the family helps the perpetrators avoid justice by helping them flee the country. It’s a huge problem in Islamic communities[1], among others, and it’s something that doesn’t exist at all in so many other communities.
Now before I talk about the kind of thinking that is causing these behaviors, I want to clarify some things. First of all, Islam, at least according to the Quran, does not advocate honor violence. Second, honor violence is a tradition that existed in the deserts of today's Saudi Arabia long before Islam. Third, Arab Muslims spread Islam along with their traditions (including honor violence) to a huge proportion of the world (although, I don't doubt that other cultures already had the tradition of honor violence).
What kind of thinking causes a person to commit honor violence?
There are three flaws to discuss here. The main flaw is violent intolerance of dissenters -- the idea that it's best for a person to initiate violence on another person because he has dissenting ideas or actions. A second flaw is the idea that a person's social status is important and should be sought after and preserved. And a third flaw is that a person's social status should be, in any way, linked with his family's, and tribe's social status. An important thing to note here is that these flaws are connected. To clarify, I'm not talking about which flaw is more or less to blame for a person committing honor violence. What I'm talking about is that all of these flaws must be there, in order for a person to think it's best for him to commit honor violence (i.e. for him to want to commit honor violence).
The least bad of these flaws can be explained by answering the question, why do some people care about having respect from their peers? What's the point of it? What problem is it intended to solve? One way to approach this problem is to think about why some people get offended. Consider that when somebody perceives that he has been disrespected, he gets offended, and he may respond in a way to regain respect.
Fallibility and first impressions
One problem with thinking in terms of being respected, is that people are often wrong in their interpretations of other people’s actions and intentions. Often people perceive that they’ve been disrespected, when the person had no intention of disrespecting anybody. Most of the time it’s a case of jumping to conclusions. In other words, the person is not thinking terms of innocent until proven guilty. The thing is that we’re all fallible, meaning that it’s possible, and very common, that we are wrong about our ideas. But a lot of people are not familiar with the idea of checking for other possible interpretations and critically questioning them as a means of avoiding jumping to conclusions, as a means of finding the correct interpretation.
One common first interpretation that people make is that someone wants to hurt them, or to make them lose in some way. But this is a bad way to think about people’s actions because some people don’t want to hurt anyone or make anyone lose anything. So assuming that there is always malicious intent is a mistake because it ignores all the cases where there isn’t malicious intent. So it's not giving the person the benefit of the doubt.
This way of thinking, of always assuming that there is malicious intent, sees human interactions as win/lose. But this is a mistake. It’s entirely possible, and desirable, for human interactions to be win/win, for everybody to get what they want and nobody loses anything they want -- there is no law of nature preventing it from happening.[2] This is a special case of the idea that 'all problems are soluble'.[3]
So the better way to think about human interactions is that win/win situations are possible, where the people involved share the same primary goal of everybody winning, of everybody getting what they want. Now it is true that sometimes a person is trying to make you lose something, or otherwise hurt you, so it’s important to try to look out for this as a means of protecting yourself from harm.
One common misinterpretation people make is to treat a criticism of an idea or an action as a personal attack. But this is a mistake because a criticism is an explanation of a flaw in an idea, so criticizing the idea does not make the holder of the idea lose anything. In fact, criticism helps a person go from wrong to right. It helps him change his mind. It helps him find the truth, which is a great thing! So why perceive it as an attack? The person loses nothing. He only stands to gain (the truth!).
So consider a situation where you're presented with a criticism of your idea. If you agree with it, you stand to gain the truth, and if you disagree with it, you stand to lose nothing. So with criticism you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. So giving and receiving criticism is win/win.
Some common responses people make to criticism is to say "that hurts my feelings," "I'm offended by that," and "that's insulting!" These people respond in this way to communicate that the other person is wrong in some way. But that's not a valid argument -- it's not objective. A person's feelings can't be used as a standard for judging the truth. What's needed is an explanation, one that doesn't depend on a person's feelings. And on a related note, if your feelings are hurt by the truth, then what you can do is ignore the truth (not something I advise), or you can change your feelings about the truth. But what you shouldn't be doing is pressuring people to hide the truth.
Now some people mistake personal attacks for criticism. But calling somebody stupid because he believes an idea does not constitute a criticism. It’s not an explanation of a flaw in an idea. Instead it's an attack on the holder of the idea. And it’s designed for only one purpose, to hurt. People who make personal attacks instead of arguments see human interactions as win/lose. And this is where the idea of respect comes in. The personal attacks are about disrespecting the person. But why would anybody want to do that? What’s the point? What problem does it solve?
Truth-seeking vs Status-seeking
Something closely connected to the win/lose attitude is the status-seeking attitude. People with this attitude think in terms of people having social status, and getting more of it, or keeping the amount they currently have, is something they want. So if a person with the status-seeking attitude tries to disrespect another person, they perceive it as raising their own status while necessarily lowering the other person’s status, hence win/lose. The rest of us, who see human interaction as win/win, see the world in terms of truth. We are truth-seekers instead of status-seekers. We seek cooperative interactions instead of adversarial ones.
To get a better understanding of the difference between truth-seeking and status-seeking, let's consider how they differ in the way they work. Status-based thinking means judging ideas by figuring out how much status the ideas have. In contrast, truth-based thinking means judging ideas by their merit. As I explained in _Atheism: The faith of intellectuals?_, judging ideas by status means believing ideas by looking for confirmation, while judging by merit means believing ideas only after they have survived all known criticism.
As an example, imagine a guy hearing that somebody said something that he perceived as an insult to his parent, and he felt hurt by it. This means he's thinking with the status-seeking attitude instead of the truth-seeking attitude. So he is caring about having social status, and one extra flaw is that he thinks his social status is connected to the status of his parents. And so if he perceives that somebody has insulted his parent, he perceives this as a lowering of his parent’s status, which he also perceives as his own status being lowered. So he is hurt (feels disrespected) by this. He thinks that the "insulter" intentionally did it to try to hurt him, or otherwise make him lose something. But it's a mistake to make such an assumption because the "insulter" may have had no such intention -- maybe he was a truth-seeker not a status-seeker. The truth-seeking attitude does not cause this problem. A truth-seeker thinks like this: "Hmm. Somebody has said something bad about my mom. I wonder if the thing he said is truthful, or not. If it’s truthful, then my mom is bad, and I should talk to her about fixing her error so that she can improve, so I'm glad that he said it because it revealed an opportunity to improve, YAY!! And if it’s not truthful, then maybe this guy is a fool and I don't care what fools think, or maybe he's just mistaken so there's no reason to mind it because mistakes are common." So the truth-seeking attitude doesn’t produce the feeling of being insulted/disrespected. Only the status-seeking attitude does that.
The status-based attitude is one that is shared by many cultures. In gang culture, individuals each have an amount of status that they intend to keep. For this reason, if a gang member perceives that somebody has disrespected him, he sees this as his status being lowered while the other guy’s status being raised. And in an effort to regain his status, he may retaliate with physical violence. So here the gang member is committing two flaws -- demanding respect, and violent intolerance of dissenters.
There are lots of other examples of this. In tribal cultures, an individual’s status is partly determined by how much status his tribe has. For this reason, if a tribesman perceives that somebody has disrespected a member of his tribe, he sees this as his own status being lowered because he sees his tribe’s status being lowered. Now imagine a situation where somebody perceives that the king of his tribe (like Prophet Mohamed) has been disrespected. He would be very offended by this. And if he also has the violent-intolerant attitude too, and if the circumstances were opportune, then he would initiate violence in his misguided attempt to regain respect for his family, and by association, for himself.
Another example is honor violence within a family, or community. If a man thinks that his status is lowered if his daughter does something against his community’s religious norms, and if he also has the violent-intolerant attitude, then he may initiate violence if she commits such an act, as a means to preserve his family's status in the community, and by association, his own status. I should clarify that what usually happens is the family plans this together, where one person does the murder, and then the family helps him avoid the police, say by helping him leave the country.
What's interesting about the status-based idea is that it denies that respect should be earned. A person thinking like this may be in the wrong, and know it, and still demand to be treated as though he is in the right. Street thugs do it when they violently demand respect. Authoritative parents do it when they say 'Don't argue with me' to their kids. Some husbands do it when they expect their wives to side with them in social situations even when they are in the wrong. And some Muslim men do it when they commit honor violence.
The status-based attitude rears it’s ugly head in people’s politics too. These people align themselves politically by their tribal origin (status), rather than by their ideas (merit). It’s ugly because it’s not based on the truth, and because it means the person is unwilling to consider changing his mind about his politics -- because you can’t change your tribal origin. Judging ideas by status means that if you find out that you’re wrong, you’re going to deny it and claim that you’re right, and demand respect too. This way of thinking means no possibility of changing your political affiliation even if you were given devastating criticism of your political ideas. In contrast, judging ideas by merit means that you're willing to change your mind if you find out that you’re wrong. And this way of thinking means the possibility of changing your political affiliation.
Another way to describe the truth-seeking and status-seeking attitudes is like this. Truth-seeking means approaching problems as though the person does not yet have the truth, which is why he is seeking the truth. Status-seeking means approaching problems as though the person already has the truth, which is why he isn't seeking the truth, and instead he is seeking confirmation of what he already believes to be true. Note how the truth-seeking attitude accounts for the fact that it's possible one's ideas are in error, while the status-seeking attitude does not account for that fact. So somebody who is applying the status-seeking attitude is acting like he is infallible/omniscient. He's acting like he thinks he's God.
Rational people vs irrational people
Another way to describe the truth-seeking attitude is to describe the people who have it, rational people. As Elliot Temple explained [4]:

So a rational person sees criticism as win/win because it's part of his truth-seeking attitude. So when he gets criticism of his ideas, actions, or feelings, he doesn't interpret it as a personal attack (win/lose) and instead he tries to judge the criticism in order to try to extract value from it. He sees criticism as a good thing because he knows that criticism leads to further evolution of his knowledge. He sees criticism as necessary to improve himself, so he willingly seeks it out and enjoys thinking about it.
As I mentioned before, a common mistake people make is in how they interpret criticism of ideas. They see it as their person being criticized, rather than the idea alone being criticized. They misinterpret this because they consider some of their ideas to be static -- they are attached to them. They consider these ideas to be part of their identity -- something they refuse to even consider changing. And if you criticize one of these ideas they are attached to, since they consider that idea as part of their identify, they interpret your actions as an attack on their person. And in retaliation, they may call you out to be arrogant and condescending, or cuss you out, or initiate violence, as an attack back at you, in their misguided attempt at self-defense.
So the status-based attitude is what causes people to care about honor (i.e. social status). They have an intense desire for status, and it can pervade practically all of their thinking. Now in tribal cultures, another flaw they have aside from this status-seeking attitude, is that a person's social status should be linked to his family and tribe. And in some tribal cultures, especially the ones where Islam is dominant, they have a strong tradition linking their status with the women of their tribe. Now, combine this status-seeking attitude and these other flaws, together with the attitude that it's morally right to initiate violence in response to a dissenter, and what you have is somebody willing to commit honor violence (including honor killings) against his daughters, sisters, and other female members of his community, and on anybody who he perceives to be lowering his status/respect/honor.
On a final note, I should clarify something about the relationship between the individual and the community. It is true that a man who commits honor violence is being pressured by his family to commit the violence as a means of preserving their social status, but whether or not he acts on that pressure, or even feels that pressure, depends on his ideas. Will he care what his family and community thinks? Well, in those communities a lot of the opportunities for a man, like getting married or having a good job, depends on the status of his family and his tribe. So if a woman taints his family's status, and if he doesn't remove that taint by killing her, then he'll lose those opportunities. But so what? He could forego all of those "opportunities" by fleeing the country with his daughter. If he doesn't do that, it's because of his evil ideas. Pressure from society is not a defense! Individuals are responsible for their actions regardless of the "pressures" from their communities.
——————————————————————
[1] _Honor Killings Go Beyond Mere Homocide_, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Also see The AHA Foundation on Honor Violence.
[2] See _The Beginning of Infinity_, Chapter 9: Optimism, by David Deutsch.
[3] See _All problems are soluble_, by Elliot Temple. Also see [2].
[4] _Rational People_, by Elliot Temple.
^{Originally published in 2014}

I always struggle with getting enough manpower. Currently I am playing as the Netherlands and I feel like if i get enough manpower and I start a war it empties out after 2 years and it takes me decades to get enough manpower again, especially in overseas wars. I also use mercenaries but I don't like that most of them are just purely infantry armies. If i make my main armies into small stacks they are vulnerable and get killed faster, if I make them into bigger stacks they die of attrition. I have the 2. Tier government reform for extra manpower, the estate privilege for manpower plus the nobility happy. I rarely see anyone complain so I don't know if it is a common problem. Please help

I've been using gregmat+ subscription, and read all those gregmat vocab mountain and magoosh common+basic word but during my practice in ETS official guide ,I see alot of vocabs unknown to me..Is it not enough with gregmat vocab mountain and magoosh or do I still need to grasp the vocabs from other source.Really confused I am using chinese souce K.m.f and verbal reasoning but felt a bit dufficult in k.m.f.Is it good to practice with or should I go into official resource?
About quant , I completed manhattan 5lb and 5sets of it ,Ets quantitative reasoning AND the foundations of gregmat.Despite those completion, I am still getting 160 in PP1 test. HOW should I practice ahead to achieve 165+.I have 15days to go for a test

The martial arts I have the most experience in is Wrestling, Bjj, Judo, and then Sambo. For striking, Muay Thai, kick boxing, boxing. In that order and I've done these for a few years, and so I'm well acquainted with the culture of all of these with the exception of boxing due to mainly training at an mma gym and not a boxing club. From all of these, the worst culture I experienced was in Bjj by far. Here are some of my observations.
Hierarchy
While Judo also has a hierachy and it is part of Judo culture, so you do line up in belt order, and so on, but this is more about a remnant of Japanese culture, and I find it isn't toxic, that's not to say there aren't clubs where there are toxic elements, especially in Japan, but in sports clubs, I don't think it's toxic. There's also no mocking lower belts, but instead they are encouraged and are included in the club as equals.
I can't say the same for Bjj, the hierachy is present in Bjj, and yet there are additional elements which make it toxic and so you have the higher belts making jokes about white belts and saying " that's such a white belt move" and so on or there are memes that are share where there's open mockery of white belts. I think this is uncouth and undignified since these are people who have decided to take part in a martial art, and instead of them being made to feel included and valued, they're basically worthless until they've proven themselves to be in it for the long run which is usually when they're blue belt, and then they're given respect. There is a bit of this in boxing where the coach will pay no attention to the beginners unless they show up for a few months and then the coach will say these are serious people and then pay attention. However, this is almost a self fulfilling prophecy in the sense that, the coach pays no attention, the beginners leave due to not receiving attention, the coach then says these weren't serious people and deserves no attention, however had they received attention, perhaps they would have stayed.
The hierachy is generally in the form of how different belts are perceived, and the respect they are given. There are constantly dumb memes and comments about doing "white belt shit" and the hierarchy system is strictly enforced through the culture where if you're a white belt, your opinion is worthless and you're sort of seen as a joke. In Judo, this is not the case. While there is a hierarchy, it isn't really part of the culture to look down on white belts or lower belts and to make jokes, but this is common in Bjj. Sambo and Wrestling doesn't have ranks but there's no mockery in that sense. I'm not talking about your instructor, team mates etc making a off handed comment, I'm sure that happens in every art but Bjj alone makes a big deal of saying things like "white belts do xyz, blue belts do such and such, purple belts skip warm ups, brown belts are fat" and so on, it's quite
Sexual jokes/gay jokes/mocking your own art
You have a ton of "gay jokes", I'm not the sort of person who is offended and I'm sure you have lots of people who make these jokes in other areas of life, but when you're doing this to your own art, it's pretty dumb and insecure. It's a sort of insecurity masked by jokes rather than tackling it head on. If we take wrestling, then the things which make Bjj sexual apply more to wrestling and yet in wrestling, there's no degrading your own art and trying to "recognise the absurdity". The angle I'm coming from is not, "that's homophobic" but rather, you're so insecure that you're mocking your own hobby and art rather than defending it. I get that in the U.S some people may make jokes about wrestling being gay etc, but where I'm from, Pehlwani (wrestling) is highly respected and you'd never see any comment like that, albeit the culture doesn't give room for sexual jokes, but even then, it's given respect which I feel Bjj does not do.
Hazing
When I got by belts in Judo, I did the grading, bowed, got my belt, and then bowed again. That was it. In Bjj, this doesn't happen, there's a sort of "frat culture" where getting a belt of an opportunity for a bit of hazing where you get whipped by everyone or there's a shark tank where you roll with everyone. The latter isn't degrading or harmful, but I find it odd that it's a thing to be hazed when being graded.
instructor worship
There is this element in Judo too, but the Judokas don't really use their position as a Sensei to act like philosophers and nor do they act like they deserve special treatment for being a black belt. I'm sure this exists in some places, but not in the West from what I've seen. In Bjj, not only do the instructors want a special form of respect, they use this position to insert themselves as specialists in all other areas.
Right wing culture
My Judo club is mostly left wing, my Bjj club is mostly right wing. The latter is full of racism, bigotry, conspiracy theories, and bigotry. Bjj does seem to attract the right wing crowd in a way that Judo does not do, perhaps it's due to Judo being more "proper" and an Olympic art, but I find it odd how out of all the arts I do, Bjj has a horrible right wing culture. While the people in the Judo club are left wing, they do not seem vocal about their beliefs and are generally not trying to make associations between being left wing and being a Judoka, whereas the Bjj guys are very vocal about being anti-vax, and they're constantly trying to associate doing Bjj with being right wing by linking it with being tough and manly and contrasting it with being weak and "liberal". This also exists in wrestling where I'm from albeit it's more mixed so you have some left wing people too, but in my Bjj club, I'd say 99% are right wing, and the people I've spoke to who are left wing are maybe around 5 or 6.
I get that all these elements will be present in every other martial art, Bjj is not unique in this and nor are other martial arts free from toxicity. These elements exist in those martial arts too, but I feel that this seems to be very common in Bjj and the extent to which it exists in Bjj surpasses the extent to which it exists in other martial arts.

So, I used to play back when the game launched and there was this whole thing about some uniques not dropping etc, before people knew what uber uniques were.
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Now that I am back, looks like they are way more common now (not actually common but you get the point)
My question is, can they drop anywhere in T4? Ive seen that the unique item I need drops from Lord Zir (Fractured Winterglass), but I don't know if this only drops from him, or it can drop anywhere else with a lower chance

So in order to grasp what's going on, there's basically three chapters which you need to know about, so you can jump on the bandwagon well prepared. You lousy degen. Welcome anyways. Okay, here we go. Chapter one.
1. What is "le short squeeze"?
In order for you retards to understand what you're actually doing by buying and holding. You need to understand the concept of shorting and short squeezing. This is not just a pump n dump or a simple way to make money. This is war. It's us idiots, against the suits. Why? Because we like the stock much more than they do. Probably...
Shorting goes as follows. You can make money off a stock by selling it for profit, or buying it cheap AFTER selling it. How does that work? Well, let's say some dude owns a 100 stocks. Let's call this dude Requis. Requis owns 100 stocks of a company of which he believes it will grow in 20 years or so. Some evil hedgie believes the stock will actually lose value soon. So the hedgie goes to Requis and will be like: Yo. Borrow me some of your stock. Requis says okay. Hedgie sells it immediately at market value, hoping the stock will lose value so hedgie can buy it back for cheaper so hedgie can return the loaned stock to Requis. This way hedgie sells it for a hundred bucks per share, and buys it back for 80 bucks per share. Pocketing 20 bucks in profit per share. This is shorting in a nutshell. Now what's awesome in this case is, hedgie is obliged to return the stock to Requis. So they HAVE to buy it at some point.
That's where we come in. We have the stock because we like it. They want the stock because they need it. They have to buy it. Otherwise Requis will get angry. Soo...they have to persuade us into selling the stock. But since we own the stock, we're the ones dictating the terms as long as we hold. We're squeezing out max turnover from the stock sale. That's a short squeeze.
2. History repeats itself
This whole thing happened before with the well known GME stock. I'm not going to explain what happened, as Hollywood made a fking movie about it. It's called Dumb Money, if ur interested. Anyways, there are some lessons to be learned from what happened before. The GME stock was cheap af and soared to unimaginable heights when the squeeze happened. A similar pattern is occuring right now with the FFIE stock. People in this sub are talking about $5 or $3. But based on the GME story, the potential is waaaaaay higher. What the GME squeeze taught us, is that patience is key. Some important key takeaways to consider are: The trade of FFIE will be halted multiple times. The same happened to GME. During these trade halts, the value of the stock will most likely go down. Sometimes it will go down a lot. This doesn't mean anything okay? There's literally no reason for you to sell at that point, as it's a common tactic used by market regulators to reduce volatility. Another important thing to consider is to stay focused on the stocks that matter. Don't lose focus and check out other stocks that soar. By doing so you're doing the hedgies a favor. Third key takeaway is the importance of holding. DO NOT SELL right after the stock went up significantly. It doesn't necessarily mean the squeeze has been squeezed.
3. What can we expect?
The truth is we don't know what to expect. That's the risk of trading stock. Especially since we're a bunch of retards too dumb to get dressed in the morning. Personally, I think $2, $3, $5 and even $10 are rookie numbers. I think $100 or even more is very much possible. But it all depends on how we handle this. On a serious note, do whatever the heck u want. It's your stock. You own it. You know ur financial situation best and you know how much u need to make a certain decision. All I'm saying is, based on what happened in 2021 and what we learned from that (for as much we are able to learn as a bunch of retards), it is very much possible to gain more from this than many of you are imagining right now. Like, seriously more. But it requires patience and persistence. Let the smart ones talk when it comes to details that help us in assessing whether to hold or not.
This is basically all u need to know. Now I will be on my way to the fucking moon. Hopefully I'll see you stupid dipshits there.
None of this is financial advice. I'm a fucking idiot and I don't know how to read or count past five. I never went to school as I failed my sanity tests as a kid and don't know how to apply for school.

The Weeknd - I Feel It Coming ft. Daft Punk
The song leads with a familiar narrative of cat and mouse within romance. Within the first 60 seconds video starts with the foretelling images of the narrator surrounded by statues. A noteworthy lyric “when you’re alone with me.” While the symbolism at play in this piece of art is unrelentingly broadcasting an understanding of communal consciousness and a panpsychic realm; the willing manifestation of focus and privacy between lovers is that of a conscious paradise, even if fleeting. “I feel it coming” paired with the rising of a sun. Telling of knowledge of a new dawn for humanity. Images of her are seen by the narrator while laying down, eyes closed. A commonly reported phenomena of experiencers, to see supernatural beings of the opposite sex in a courting manner. Particularly while trying to sleep or with their eyes closed. At the 1:50 mark the feminine apparition materializes before the narrator. I assume this to be both the metaphors of inhabiting a tangible human and manifesting in otherwise inchoate minds. The feminine human and spiritual being are one and the same. This imagery is followed by the lyrics “You’ve been scared of love and what it did to you.” For me this only suggests the seemingly endless echelons of hells available to spirits, beings that traverse minds both in the approach to and vast chasms away from reality. I have little choice but to believe the beings that are commanding in presence that I continue to encounter have weathered storms of perverse pain, confusion, and doubt to reach me. Similarly, all humans of the experience seem to know of the trails of romance and mental bouts therein, largely written off as a trapping of maturity. I currently suspect otherwise… This romance plays out before storm clouds envelope the heavens, the stage darkens, and he after she turn to stone. Telling the tale that we the corporeal beings of this world are the ones who leave evidence, we become statues that reverberate our story and hold evidence to all who are interested. Her statue releases a serpent, a symbol that has been used since humans were writing in cuneiform to represent a manner of spirit. I have come to understand this symbol through the language of a scheme/way/team/agenda, that some spirits move though people and the world in a carousel and act out similar narratives in a repetition in place and conflict. This is paralleled by the movement of a serpent, as it moves forward the periodic motion/path is followed though by all parts of its body. You’ll note that the Weeknd acts out a character that reaches for the snake rather than the petrified human form. Salacious stuff ;) The piece ends with Daft Punk uncovering a glow that is trapped under ice. Perhaps a fate that awaits this place long after humans are gone.
If you are really interested in going down the symbolic rabbit hole see: Caduceus, Nehushtan and Serpent Symbolism in the Ancient Near East. There is a Babylonian inscription that tells of rulers selected by two serpents, they are bestowed as the human rises to station. I believe this is relatively the case for all humans in every level of society. It is certainly a lower sort placed on expereincers who are burdened by this phenomenon. Again, I believe this is done to deny the world that which the human is innately capable of. We are only challenged because we are great.
I hope having an eye for this symbolism grants knowledge that this burden can be overcame, the testaments to the resilience of the human spirit are everywhere. You are more powerful than the shallows of this realm can reveal. Hang in there, I am confident we will all see a brighter horizon soon enough.

So I have an almost 2 years old cat. I got her when she was only 1 month old. I was in a group chat and one of the members mentioned that his friend is giving away kittens. I said that they’re too small to be given away in this age, but it’s not like the owner would change his mind. I was told that the mother already rejected them and they already know how to do everything. Since I was thinking of getting a cat, I decided to take my fiancé to go take a look at them. We weren’t planning to adopt anyone, it was more of “let’s see, why not go”. When we came to the place there were 4 little kittens. 2 of them looked healthy and they played with each other, but the owner said right away that they’re booked. The owner wasn’t very nice and somehow he didn’t speak the same language as us, so the guy from group chat just translated us few phrases and that’s all. Other two kittens were significantly smaller. One didn’t seem interested in us anyhow and the other was sleeping. It wasn’t a surprise the mother cat rejected them. She looked skinny and exhausted. She wouldn’t let kittens eat from her and she didn’t want to be near them. At this point we decided to go home and we felt somehow uncomfortable. And here’s the thing, we started getting asked “so which one do you take?”. They didn’t seem to take “we will think about”, “we’re not sure”, “we just came to take a look” for an answer. Basically, we were forced to take one. The one that was up was still trying to eat from his mama’s tits, so ofc I wouldn’t take this one and the other was still sleeping even tho we took her in our hands. We decided to take her. Owner got very happy, shoved the kitten in some box he found and sent us away. He said he took them to doctor previously and they’re flea-free. This guy from group chat was trying to hit on me all the way to our house in front of my fiancé (ofc, this is unimportant detail, but still unpleasant). The kitten has woken up to this time. We bought her food and litter with litter box in the nearby store. Luckily for us, she was willing to eat, even tho she had some diarrhea first days, then she got fully weened. She always knew how to use litter, so we were very proud. She seemed fine with us. She didn’t seem to miss her litter at all. Ofc we treated her the best we could. She wasn’t in fact healthy. She had a big ringworm that she passed to us. We took her to the vet and got all fixed (not the castration way hahah). The problems started pretty early. She was driving me crazy. She would bite and scratch, but we taught her not to do that. After all she was just a kitten. She seemed to be a very bold and not at all affectionate cat. She wouldn’t let us even hug her. She would run away from it like from fire. She was constantly knocking over her glass of water and her bowl of food. Almost every day. We got her a fountain and she destroyed it. She chewed up the cord and she would pull on it and knock over the fountain. Every time she ended up in the bathroom she would push toilet paper from the counter in the toilet. She genuinely didn’t seem to give a single f*** about me. I started getting breakdowns because of her that she didn’t care about either. I said a lot of times during it that I am going to give her away, that she’s going to a shelter. But every time I would calm down and take it back, bc I thought it’s cruel. And I was hoping that it’s just a teenage phase and she will get better with age. Also the reason I wanted a cat is because I was lonely. I lost my childhood cat few months before. I was grieving a lot. I was in another country and my fiancé was at work most of the time. My depression was at all time bad. I still was not over my childhood cat, but I thought that maybe getting another one would help me with my loneliness. But my new cat was nothing like her. My old cat was calm and cuddly and she would love me so much. I admit ofc not all cats like this. Everyone has different personality. That’s why I kept trying with my new cat. Despite Grippers (the new cat) being absolute asshole that was indifferent about us, we cared about her a lot and we would constantly think about how she feels. She would still drive me crazy occasionally and I would go on Reddit and read how this is normal and blablabla. Sometimes she would play with me. She also HATED any guests in our house. She would keep near them and bite them when they least expect. She wouldn’t let anyone except for us touch her. Through these two years she freaked out over nothing few times and I had to take her for her not to attack anyone else. My hands would be badly damaged afterwards. Then I went back to my country for few months and ofc I did everything to be able to take her with me. She hated it there. Then we moved places and she loves our new home. It has an outside and she loves going there. I tried training her to a leash when she was younger, but she hated all the sound and people of a big town, so that failed. She wouldn’t want to go even in the corridor of the building. But now she would run outside at every possibility. And she slowly stopped appearing at home for few hours a day. We were worried she might get pregnant, but apparently all the cats around were girls and she was awful to them too. She would scream at other cats and be very territorial. All other domestic cats were so much calmer than her, so that was embarrassing. Since we just moved we were low on money, but still trying to put some aside to spay her. We tried not letting her out, but she’s the type of cat that will drive you completely nuts until she gets what she wants. Also she would run away from the leash. Ofc I tried that again. Everything always felt that it’s either her way or she’s gonna meow until you lose your marbles. And then she got knocked up in our garden. Yup, she got pregnant! I was all for spaying her despite that, but my fiancé wasn’t so sure and spaying a pregnant cat costs double and we already didn’t have the money. My fiancé said that maybe she will get nicer if she has babies, so be it. And now she has 6 weeks old kittens. 4 of them. And they all are great! We love them and Grippers is an amazing mom. She gave birth on our bed and didn’t want to leave the bed for the first week they were born. We thought that’s how she shows us that she trusts us. Yet, she didn’t change. She still doesn’t care for us and only is meowing for food or water from the sink, even tho we bought a new better fountain. She meows a lot and she became even more demanding and she won’t let my fiancé sleep in the morning with her meowing. It really overwhelms him. I learned to detach from her, but the most common phrase in this household became “what do you want?!” directed at her. Sometimes she would meow for pets, but seems like even that should be done on her terms. I started joking that maybe we should find a home for her and not kittens. Suddenly I realized that she’s not a teenager anymore and that I’ve been thinking of her treating us like her slaves for all this time. I realized that there’s always some trouble with her (I know that she’s far from a “bad” or “hard” cat) and that the thought of spending all her life with her is very dreadful to me. Even thinking of ever doing smth for her seemed so lame, bc this cat literally doesn’t care. I had another breakdown that night, but this time I didn’t take my thoughts back. Thinking of her having a house where people can handle her and they won’t be as sensitive as me and my fiancé, a house where she will be loved and taken care of seemed nice. But what felt even better is a relief of not having to deal with her anymore. Rn I’m planning to wait till kittens are 10 weeks old and adoptable age and find her a home through asking shelters to put advertisement. I want to give her away with one of her kittens since she seemed to care about them so much and I don’t want her to be lonely. Rn I’m thinking if I should give away all of the kittens or should I keep some. I can clearly see which one of them are cuddlier and seem to care about me and the reason I wanted a cat was to feel someone’s presence while I’m alone at home (with grippers I don’t feel this way. Maximum she does is sit beside me across the bed or somewhere else). Keeping any also seems a bit of a risk, bc I’m so scared it’s gonna turn out just like with grippers. It’s a bit complicated, since I get attached to them and I care about them. I’m not sure if I’m being wrong here, so that’s why I’m asking Reddit. Should I keep or give away my cat? Should I keep any kittens? P.S. Please, refrain from telling me off for not spaying my cat, I know that’s bad.