2012.06.16 05:34 Learn to Draw
2019.05.09 14:26 apachemonkey21 battleofthebrands
2010.02.08 10:39 WW: Weight Loss That Works, Wellness That Works
2024.05.19 16:18 sgtbb4 LITTLE BROTHER and MALIGNANT Screenplay Comparison (115 Pages)
2024.05.19 15:57 Witty-Performance-23 Why is this game so addicting
2024.05.19 15:37 Thick-Grab-8821 25 [M4F] #Germany - Non Native seeking a connection and fun dates
2024.05.19 15:34 Zagaroth [No Need For A Core?] - CH 189: A Tuneful Trio
2024.05.19 15:32 SignGuy77 Slaying the Saturday Dragon at [Canada’s Wonderland] (05/18/2024)
The average ignorer of my overly verbose trip reports is likely aware that I enjoy my home park in small doses, usually aided and abetted by the summer weekend early entry schedule. But once in a blue while, say, on the occasion of my enthusiast son’s fifteenth birthday, we decide to take a more “normal” approach. On this Victoria Day long weekend we would spend a full day in the park: my son in the company of his high school buddies, and me doing my own thing for reddit coaster science. submitted by SignGuy77 to rollercoasters [link] [comments] TL;DR: getting on all major coasters at Wonderland on a Saturday is possible without fast lane, but it will require a whole day, minimal interruptions, and virtually no re-rides except maybe for rope drop time. After setting the teenagers up with their all day food and drink wristbands and sending them on their way, I lined up for Leviathan. I entered the queue at 10:45 and got off my front row ride exactly sixty minutes later. The experience was not entirely foreign to me - I’ve waited upwards of an hour for Levi before, and even as someone who is approaching 200 laps on our hometown giga I must say it is still very much worth the wait. The ops were great to begin with, then sluggish for a while, and then decent again. Fast lane was not a huge factor this early either (compare with my son’s experience at end of day). And the ride was already nicely warmed up. The first drop and the entire first half literally blew me away, face-wise. My second order of solo business was to try and work the Bat single rider line to my advantage. This has worked beautifully a few times in the past, but this year the ol’ boomerang has been very temperamental. And it remained consistently inconsistent on this day, breaking down about ten minutes into my wait. Having been thwarted twice this season already, I decided to sink the next long while into watching the repairs. This was made more pleasant chatting to another rider who originally came to Canada from Finland and told me some stories about his years working at PowerPark. Eventually though, even this gentleman decided to cut his lost time, and I was left alone in the queue. Long story short, it took about an hour for Bat to get its medicine (mechanic told me it was a faulty air valve or some such on the second half of the track), but I did get my first ride of the season. The backwards loop was kind to me, and the cobra roll had minimal bang. Lunch time loomed, and keeping with the GP theme, I decided to join son’s crew at the new-for-last-season Lazy Bear Lodge. I eat at the park maybe two times a year (and one of those is always a funnel cake) so this was my first experience at the new restaurant. I’m not going to say it’s the best food ever, but the pulled pork was nice, the establishment very cozy, and the lines moved fast. In fact, in stark contrast to the ride queues, most of the food lines today looked short and moving well. Parting ways with the kid, I passed WindSeeker with its passengers stuck near the top and headed for Behemoth. The two middle switchbacks of the extended queue were not being used (they would open shortly after I passed through there), but our venerable hyper made me wait a solid 100 minutes for a single back row lap. Love me some Behemoth airtime, but not really worth it outside of a first ever ride. The crew was doing their best, and a steady surge of fast lane guests definitely made the wait a lot longer. But I did it for you, Reddit! After a forty minute queue to get Flight Deck done, my next conquest was a fifty minute Vortex wait, complete with the extended queue and line cutting teens (here hold my drink! Oops!), concluding with an intense back row lap (my 100th on the Arrow beauty, as it turned out). Then I headed back to Medieval Faire where my son’s pals were finally ready to brave Leviathan (first ever ride for two out of the three friends). I waved to them at the start of their journey into the bowels of the queue, and proceeded to ride other attractions in the area. By the time I saw the birthday boy’s hat at the top of the station stairs, I had already done Drop Tower (30 minutes) Wilde Knightmares (30 minutes), Wilde Beast (15 minutes, because who says let’s ride Wilde Beast at the end of day?) and Viking’s Rage (10 minutes, and the new drive tire makes it feel a lot less free-swinging). I waited another twenty minutes or so outside the Levi station, watching the swollen fast lane side of the stairs and the crew pumping out train after train steadily. Finally after a two hour wait the boys got their ride, and the verdict from the first timers was unanimously positive. The teenagers had also done Yukon Striker earlier on, which took 70 minutes. So altogether, the three B&M’s took roughly 4.5 hours of the day to get a single ride on each. A supper at King’s Feast across from Wilde Beast was had, to get the money’s worth out of the all day meal plan, and the fellas called it a day. Twelve solid hours at the home park, more than triple our enthusiast average. Consider it good dry land training for Universal Studios later this summer. |
2024.05.19 15:25 TheGangstaGandalf Discussion of the Diamond Handbook (Part 1)
*“If you don't believe me, just look at the chart of GME which our DD (Due Diligence/research/analysis) has been forecasting for a while now. The below pattern has only preceded massive spikes in price, but this time, those on the other side of the trade are going to have a much harder time suppressing the price like they did in January and March. Thanks to the activity on 5/25, we have entered the end-game. The MOASS is beginning.”*I think most new apes will look at this, then look at the date of posting (three years ago), and think this is delusional thinking. They will say that MOASS did not ‘begin’ because it hasn’t happened yet. This would be pretty short sighted though, GME has always been a Deep Value investment, long positions are called long for a reason. ‘Buy and HODL’ is such a repeated mantra because that is the investment strategy most apes employ. Like most investments, it takes a long time to realize gains. Your retirement account will be growing for 40+ years before you cash that thing out, GME is my retirement plan so I don’t expect it to be much different.
*“These terms are key to understanding the theory and speculated value of a GME investment. Hyperlinks to Investopedia, "the world's leading source of financial content on the web", have been included for most market terms and concepts and it is recommended to check them out if they are not clear. We will be breaking down some of the more complex terms and concepts within the post and framing them within the context of GME.”*After the introduction, this post does a great job of explaining all the concepts of the stock market that are relevant to the MOASS thesis. However, I do wish it mentioned some other stock terms for the sake of new investors. Since none of the DD is supposed to be financial advice, I can’t really blame them for these omissions, but at the beginning the OP does say they wanted the post to be good for newer investors, so I think some more pointing in the right direction should’ve been provided. I do appreciate the link to Investopedia, but this DD is already a novel, and the average reader might forget about that link by the time they finish it. So an additional link should’ve been provided at the end.
*“SPOILER: GME and \[Popcorn\] have tons of FTDs reported.”*I just kinda don’t like the mention of the Popcorn stock here, it has never been a deep value investment. If you are unfamiliar with the Deep Value investment strategy, please take a look at the old Roaring Kitty livestreams. In summary, Deep Value investing is defined by looking for stocks that are extremely undervalued and unpopular due to no fault of the company. These external factors that are making the stock undervalued can be anything, shorting, COVID, stuff like that. But what makes it a Deep Value investment is always strong management within the company. If the company is not mismanaged in any way, then it is very unlikely to go bankrupt, and will have opportunities to make a comeback. GME has Ryan Cohen leading, a proven successful businessman that has already taken precautions to ensure GameStop never goes bankrupt. Popcorn just doesn’t have that. It is very short-squeezable, but it’s not deep fucking value.
*“Short sellers must eventually close, or cover, their short position.”*Ok, but why ‘must’ they? This is another point I think has been lost in the memes. There are two problems with just saying ‘shorts must close’ without providing context. The first is the simple fact that there isn’t a due date. Unlike a common car loan or mortgage, a short position doesn’t operate on a time table. They can wait forever to close, unless they get margin called.
*“This is the GME MOASS thesis. GME is a stock that stands to hit an unprecedented price point due to the fact that manipulators of the market have failed to bankrupt GameStop thanks in huge part to the Legendary Keith Gill AKA* u(slash)DeepFuckingValue*, Ryan Cohen, and all of the GME investors who took part in this saga. It may not be today, this week, or even this month, but one day soon, these toxic participants have no choice but to buy the stock to close out their short positions.”*I don’t think this is necessarily inaccurate, but I think it’s misguided, and the language here is a bit to emotive for my taste. I think the reason the company didn’t go bankrupt is because of the strategic share offering made by Ryan Cohen to build up more cash than the company’s valuation (at the time). All the other stuff was just dressing, DFV and retail did not make RC do this, this move by RC is what ensured the company literally can’t go bankrupt, until then (and at the time this was posted) it was still a risk in my opinion. So this huge thanks feels kinda like a pre-cum celebration, and I've never really liked putting Keith on a pedestal, he's just an individual investor, just like the rest of us.
*“Why does Holding do anything?”* *“They need your shares to cover their short positions! They got greedy. Thinking GameStop would fail, the short sellers started Naked Shorting the stock. Long story short they created synthetic stocks with their special privileges as Market Makers. But they can’t cover a short with a synthetic share. So because of the Naked Shorting, the Short Sellers, multiple large greedy money managers, and Hedge Funds need a total number of shares greater than the number available to purchase. THEY NEED EVERY SHARE, EVEN YOURS CONAN!”* *“aRe YoU GuYs MaNipuLatIng THe MaRKeT?!”*Holding does something else that I think is really important. It proves that retail is not responsible for the manipulation of the price. You see it in the mainstream media every time the price fluctuates, they say that retail and Roaring Kitty is driving the price up for the memes, and that the ‘meme stock craze is dead’ whenever the price falls, claiming that retail is selling. However, it quickly becomes clear to anyone with the willingness to research that retail holds. Holding doesn’t move the price at all, so they literally can’t blame this sub for the fuckery that happens.
*“No one knows how high the squeeze could take the stock price. The best rational reasoning says that these numbers \[500k per share\] are possible through the laws of supply and demand. Furthermore, it is likely that the Short Percentage is a lot higher than reported, with many suggesting that the short-sellers, cumulatively, need more than 100% of the float to cover.”*A lot of naysayers will claim people are insane for thinking that phone number prices are possible. They will cite that it would make the company’s valuation higher than the amount of money in the world, which is true. However, with the nature of fraudulent naked shorts being fake, the price is fake too, and the valuation of the company doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole float will be sold at those prices. Yes, it shouldn’t be possible, by all accounts it wouldn’t make sense, but it is possible due to the naked shorting. Also, institutions that own shares likely won’t HODL out for the phone number prices, they will sell when they think it’s safe, and when they won’t get in trouble with the SEC for destroying the economy. The infinity pool (the shares that will be sold at these prices) will be a small fraction of the total amount even among retail investors. So the argument that I see against the possibility of this doesn’t hold a lot of weight.
*“Synthetic long positions could be used to disguise their short positions as well, the mechanisms behind this practice utilize the options markets and could explain some of the crazy options activity that we have seen in GameStop the last few months.”*So uhm… I don’t understand ‘Synthetic Longs’ at all. Could an ape with more wrinkles elaborate on this? From what I can extrapolate, this may refer to an institution purchasing a naked shorted share from someone else?
*“While at the same time they employed the use of social engineering to slowly depress the positive sentiment for the stock on Reddit and elsewhere.”* *“You may have been called a Shill for one of a number of reasons. This community is very inclusive and open to everyone, but because of the blatant attacks this forum has suffered a lot of people are understandably paranoid. (Myself included). Please, unless you really are a shill, don’t take it personally.”*I want to address this, because there is a lot of misconception about SuperStonk. A lot of people will claim that this sub is just an echo chamber cult that can’t handle anyone questioning the narrative. This may seem true on the surface, but I think the reality is just that we’ve become hyper sensitive to the social engineering the old sub fell victim to, and I remember this sub being attacked with that as well. So whenever we see a post that has extremely emotive language, we become skeptical and down vote it. Emotions have no place in investing, that is a common rule touted in even the oldest investing books, so posts that try to incite an emotional response are shot down. Apes aren’t about to be manipulated again. That being said there are emotive posts that still get upvoted, ones with positive hype-filled narratives. Since these get upvoted and the negative ones don’t that sometimes gives the impression of an echo chamber. This is because the facts do support the MOASS thesis, so a hype title and opening paragraph is just more agreeable with the facts-based narrative. Some people are just scrolling on their phone and don’t have time to read the whole post.
*“Ryan Cohen clearly believes in Gamestop, to the point of announcing that he will be taking equity as compensation. In fact, as of writing this all of the new Gamestop board members are going to be taking equity as compensation. This is seen as an incredibly bullish sign of the company's future success.”*This is one of the principles of Deep Value investing, I wish this was elaborated on more of why this is bullish. This means that the board, and more importantly Ryan Cohen, is tying their individual self-worth to the company. Due to this tie, they will essentially ‘go down with the ship’ if the company goes down. This means that the board and Ryan actually have an interest in the company doing well, instead of having an interest in making money off the company. You may think this sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. If RC cared more about money than the company, then he could destroy the company to make money (this is what’s happening to popcorn), but by tying his worth to the shares, the only way for him to become richer is for the company to flourish.
*“Below is a shortlist of some of the potential catalysts people are speculating about:*-A Stock Split, or some similar move from Gamestop that recalls shares
*“First of all, it is incredibly important to note your potential biases when determining if someone is just a shill trying to spread FUD. Not all FUD is invalid, someone may bring up a solid point against an otherwise great DD, and that could scare you. Remember that just because you do not like what someone is saying, doesn’t make it invalid. It is important users here work with constructive criticism to refine their theories.”*Damn, wasn’t I just talking about this? This critique isn’t going to just be wagging fingers, this is really good stuff that still applies today, and from what I’ve seen apes are doing a great job of distinguishing between FUD and legitimate criticism. I also want to take a second to thank the mod team, especially after their tools were restricted, they’ve been a great help.
*“…but since then retail investors have been buying on every single dip in the price… That's more than two whole months of buying-the-dip. Now, I will not speculate on numbers here, if you want to know more you will have to read the DDs on that.”*This is pretty outdated now. Apes have been buying for three years now, and with the advent of Direct Registering we have a much better idea of how much apes hold. I can say with confidence now that retail owns a floats worth of shares. Since there is so much naked shorting, a lot of institutions probably own their own floats too.
*“TL;DR - Citadel Securities has been fined 58 times for violating FINRA, REGSHO & SEC regulations. Several instances are documented as 'willful' naked shorting. In Dec 2020 they reported an increase in their short position of 127.57% YOY, and I'm calling bullsh\*t on their shenanigans.”*58 times. I don’t actually know how much that number has gone up, but I’m sure it has. I am reminded of an old saying, that if the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it only a crime for the poor. The crime being done to GME is class warfare, it’s nothing less.
*“$295,347,948,000 of that is split into options (calls & puts), while $78,979,887,238 (20.52%) is allocated to actual, physical, shares (or so they say). The rest is convertible debt securities.”*This is why I’m skeptical that it’s even possible for Citadel to get margin called by a normal price run-up. Let’s do some math here. GME’s float is at 232 million-ish shares, let’s say they shorted 300% of that, just to be conservative (lmao), so that’s 696 million. To take what the first post said, Margins don’t get called unless an entities’ collateral becomes less than 80% of what they’ve borrowed. If they use their entire $384,926,232,238 portfolio as collateral, then GME would have to soar to a price of… divide by 4, multiply by 5… $691.32 per share. That may sound relatively reasonable, but I don’t think a normal catalyst would be enough for that. I really think interest rates are the key, think about it, if they have to pay like 30% interest on all of those shares, their portfolio will be reduced by that much (kinda) and we can find a much more reasonable midpoint. Now brace yourselves, I’m about to spend an unreasonable amount of effort on something that is probably wrong because I don’t know shit about fuck about margins or getting called (I have a cash account and I lack rizz).
2024.05.19 15:24 Mediocre_Law_5557 Kengan OC Annihilation Tournament Fourth Match: "Viva l'Italia"
2024.05.19 15:01 ibid-11962 Writing and Publishing Eragon [Post Murtagh Christopher Paolini Q&A Wrap Up #6]
[When I start to write a new book] I have an image. There’s always a strong emotional component to the image, and it’s that emotion that I want to convey to readers. Everything I do after that, all of the worldbuilding, plotting, characterization, writing, and editing—all of it—is done with the goal of evoking the desired reaction from readers. In the case of the Inheritance Cycle, the image was that of a young man finding a dragon egg (and later having the dragon as a friend). [10]
Who's your favorite character to write? Well, for me, it's the dragon Saphira. She's the reason I got into writing a dragon. She came first? She came before Eragon? Like she was the catalyst? The relationship came first, her and Eragon. [33]
I was specifically inspired by a YA book called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville, which is a delightful book. I just loved that idea so much of finding a dragon egg, I was like, "Well, what sort of a world would a dragon come from?" And I knew I wanted the sort of bond between rider and dragon that Anne McCaffrey had, but I wanted the intelligence of the dragons that you find elsewhere, and the language and the magic. And I wanted sparkly scales because it just seemed like dragons are fabulous creatures and they ought to have sparkly scales. That's the fun thing about writing your own books. You can make them exactly the way you want to make them, and hopefully then that appeals to the audience as well. [30]
All of that kind of was swirling around in my head, and I wanted to write about dragons in a way that kind of combined a lot of elements in a way that, "I like this", and "I like this piece", and "I like this piece", but I kind of wanted to have all these different pieces in one type of dragon, and no one had quite done it exactly the way I wanted. [30]
I live in Montana, and our library is an old Carnegie or Rockefeller library, and especially back in the 90s, it didn't have that many books. So once I read all the fantasy in the library, I thought I had read all the fantasy there was to read. Because I was not the smartest kid in the world sometimes. And I kind of thought, "Well, it's the library. They have all the books that exist, right? All the books that matter are in the library." And I really had no idea what to read after that. So I decided to start writing myself and to try and write the sort of story that I would enjoy reading. And of course, what I enjoyed reading was books about flying on dragons and fighting monsters and having adventures. [35]
Reading and literature was always important in our family. My father's mother was a professor of comparative literature and wrote books on Dante and all sorts of stuff like that. Was the myths and folklore part of your life at this time? Yes, but I should clarify that it wasn't formally introduced to me. It was in the house. People weren't wandering around talking about. It was just like the Aeneid is sitting on the shelf. I would go read things. I have a great uncle. He's 90 now, my mother's uncle. Guy is still sharp as a tack. It's amazing. But he gave me a set of cassette tapes of Joseph Campbell, who did Hero of a Thousand Faces. So that was my exposure to his theories of the monomyth and the eternal hero and all sorts of things like that. That got me very much interested in and thinking about the origins of the fantasy that I was reading because I was reading Tolkien and David Eddings and Anne McCaffrey and Raymond Feist and Jane Yolan and Andre Norton and Brian Jaques, and all of these you know authors who were popular at the time. I was very curious where does this come from. Tolkien, of course, felt like sort of the origin in a lot of cases but then I was discovering that, there are earlier stories that even Tolkien was drawing from. That was really a revelation to me. I really sort of got enamored with it. A lot of fantasy is nostalgic and that appealed to me because I was homeschooled and my family didn't really have a lot of relatives in the area, so I felt very unmoored from the rest of society. I think I was looking for a sense of tradition or continuity with the past and fantasy helped provide that. That's an incredibly articulate thought for a 15-year-old author. Or has that come with age? No, it was something I was feeling at the time. You were conscious of it at the time? Well, listening to the Joseph Campbell stuff, I was looking: Where are our coming of age traditions? Where is the great quest to go on to prove yourself as a young adult, as a man? Where's the great adventure? What do I do in life? Those are all things that are part of the adolescent experience and always have been which is why so many mythic stories about coming of age deal with those questions. I think it's a universal thing. That's why Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, all of these have appealed so much because they deal with adolescence. They deal with finding your place in the world as an adult when you're starting as a young adult or a child. [28]
What games have taught you to be a better writer either in creating characters or worldbuilding or plotting even? All of my gaming experience was computer games, video games. One that had a huge influence on me was the old Myst series. Personally I love solving puzzles, so that's the first thing. And also the concept of the series, especially with the second game, Riven, it's all based around people writing books that create new worlds. And you get to go in them and solve puzzles and understand how that world works. And that just tickled every single part of my brain back in the day. Now, I'm going to be slightly unkind here, and I apologize if the author [David Wingrove] is listening to this, but there were a couple of novels based off of Myst. And I was such a fan of the series that I got the books, and I started reading them. And my first thought was, "I could do better than this." And so I decided to rewrite the first Myst novel. And I created a document in MS Word, and I got exactly three sentences into my rewrite. And I thought to myself, "okay, I think I can do this, but I could never sell it. So I better go write something of my own." And the next thing I did was Eragon. So video games kind of had a direct influence on me writing. But actually reading something that I felt was not particularly successful was such an inspiration. Because it was like, "this got published, I know I can at least get to this level." And it was published. And then maybe I can shoot for a little bit higher. [pause] I think some people have had that experience with Eragon. [26]
I had the original idea, the concept of boy finding dragon egg, and I tried writing a couple of very short versions of Eragon when I was fourteen, and none of them panned out so I stopped writing for a while. [28]Real World Version
What do you remember about the early days of writing “Eragon?” Originally, Eragon was named Kevin and the story was set in the real world. But I only finished around 10 pages. [16]Arya Opening Fantasy Version
I wrote three versions of Eragon before I wrote the version that had the unicorn, which was the first major draft. The first version was set in the real world, and that's why he's named Kevin. And the reason it was set in the real world is I was inspired by Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher, which is set in the real world. [32]
I was specifically inspired by a book called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville. By the way, Bruce knows this. If you haven't read it, it's a great book about this young man in the real world who, spoiler, goes into an antique shop and buys a stone that ends up turning out to be a dragon egg. And I really loved that idea of a stone that was actually a dragon egg and the young man becoming joined with the dragon. And so I tried writing the story. And I got exactly five pages or six pages into it and I ran into a brick wall, because a boy finding a dragon egg is a good event, but it is not a good story. And I needed to figure out what was going to happen after that. I didn't know that at first. [36]
But then I was going down the rabbit hole of, "Well, if there's a dragon, where did the dragon come from? What if it were an actual fantasy world where the dragons were native?" And then that led me to then write a second beginning--I didn't get very far with this--that was more of a traditional fantasy story, and it opened with Arya and a couple other elves escaping a dungeon with a big battle, and at the very end of the battle, they send the dragon egg away, and Kevin finds it. But I didn't have the rest of the story, so I stopped writing it in that format. [32]Research Break
So I tried writing a second version of the story. So the first version of that story I wrote was set in the real world. Second version was more of like a fantasy world. [36]
I had the original idea when I was fourteen. I even wrote an early version of the story where it was set in the real world. But I soon realized that it was a lot more interesting to have a dragon in a fantastical setting. [8]
I tried writing before and I always failed because I would only get like four to six pages into a story and then I didn't know what to do next. And that was because I didn't actually have my story. All I really had were the inciting incidents, like a boy finds a dragon egg in the middle of a forest. Great. But that's not a story, that's just one event. What happens as a result? So before starting Eragon, I was very methodical about this. I read a whole bunch of books on how to write, how to plot stories. [35]Unused Arya Outline
I realized I wasn't getting anywhere. And I didn't know how to do what I was trying to do. Now, fortunately for me, my parents had noticed that I was getting interested in writing. And all of a sudden, books appeared in the house. There was no comment, no one forced it, these just magically appeared, and I read them. Some of the books that were incredibly helpful to me were these books that were called The Writer's Handbook, which was a collection of essays published each year by The Writer's Digest magazine. I had one from 1998, and I had one from, I think, 1993, or something like that. And there were essays from Stephen King and John Grisham and I think Ursula Le Guin and all sorts of other authors about what it was like to be an author both professionally and creatively. And that was incredibly helpful to me because again, the internet was not a resource. But the book that really made the difference for me was a book called Story by Robert McKee. It's a book for screenwriters and it's all about the structure of story. And up until that moment, I had never really consciously thought about the fact that stories have structure and that you can control that structure for the effect on the readers. So I devoured that book and I said, okay, I'm going to try this again. [36]
Did you very much sit down and study structure and character development and etc? I did. It wasn't a formal course or anything, it's just that my parents started buying these books and they started showing up. In fact, I still have them here on my shelf. This bookcase to my right is full of research books, technical books, language books. I read a book called Story by Robert McKee, which is a screenwriting book, that was and often has been very popular in Hollywood. It's a fairly technical look at story structure. I would never say do everything he says because of course you shouldn't necessarily follow any one formula, but that book really got me thinking about the fact that stories do have structure, which I hadn't really thought about before that. And that one can control that structure, and that this gives you something to work with. Before Eragon, I tried writing a number of stories and I never got past the first four to six pages, ten pages, because I never had the plot. All I would ever have was the inciting incident which, in the case of Eragon, is a young man finds a dragon egg. Ok, fine, but that's not a story. So when I read that book, then I was like wow, so I can control the structure of this. [28]
The problem with all of my early writing was that I’d get an idea and just start — I didn’t actually have a plot. But I was a pretty methodical kid, so I started reading about how to write. Fortunately, my parents are observant, and these kinds of books magically began appearing in the house. And I read all of them. [16]
So at this point, I was 15, that's when I graduated from high school and I was very methodical about it because I hate failing. So I said, okay, I'm going to create a fantasy world. And I did that. And then I said, I'm gonna plot out an entire book in this fantasy world. And I did that too. And then I said, but I'm not gonna write this. This is just a thought exercise. I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna stick it in a drawer. And I still have that to this day, that world and that story, I still have it sitting in a drawer somewhere. [36]
Then I spent some time and I created an entire fantasy world and I plotted out an entire fantasy novel in that world and I did not write it. I just stuck it in a drawer and that's where it's been sitting for 25 years now. And then I just did that to prove to myself that I could plot out an entire book. [35]
Before writing Eragon, again I was very methodical even as a teenager, I created an entire fantasy world. Wrote pages and pages about the worldbuilding, and then I plotted out an entire story in that world just to prove to myself that I could plot a story, create a world, and then I didn't write it. I put it aside. I still have it all saved. Put it in a drawer. [28]
And then I decided okay now I'm going to plot out a trilogy, because all great fantasy stories are trilogies. I'm going to do it as the heroic monomyth, because that is, at least my understanding back then, is this is one of the oldest forms of stories. I know it works on a general sense. It's going to give me a safety net, and then I'm going to write the first book as a practice book just to see if I'm capable of producing something that's three, four, five hundred pages long. And that's what I did. That was about two and a half months of worldbuilding, plotting, creating this. Then I wrote the first book and that was Eragon. That was my practice book. I never actually planned on publishing Eragon. It was only after I'd put so much work into it and my parents read it that then we proceeded with it. I was aware of story structure. I continue to read lots of books on it. [28]The First Draft
And then version three is the version that everyone generally knows. And that's where I spent the time to plot out the whole series before writing, because having a idea of where you're going seems to help with the writing, at least for me. Usually. [32]
I originally saw Eragon as a practice novel, which is part of why it’s a very typical hero’s story. I knew that structure worked and it gave me the safety net I needed. [16]
The first draft went super fast. It went really fast because I had no idea what I was doing. And I just wrote that sucker. I wrote the first 60 pages by hand with ballpoint pen, cause I didn't know how to type on a computer. And then by the time I typed all that into the computer, I knew how to type. I did the rest in the computer. But this was back in the day when computers were fairly new. We had a Mac classic, which only had two megabytes of RAM. And the problem is that the operating system chewed up some of that memory. And my book file was around two megabytes large. So I actually had to split the book into two because I couldn't open the whole file on the computer or the computer would crash. So I had to open half the book and then close that and then open the other half. [35]
Once I finished the first draft, I was super excited and I thought, "well all of these things on how to write say that you should read your own book and see if there's any tweaks you wanna make." But I was really excited because I was getting to read my own book for the first time, and I thought this is gonna be awesome. And it didn't take very long while reading it to realize that it was awful. It was horrible. And just to give you an idea of just how bad that first draft was, in the very first draft of Eragon, Eragon wasn't named Eragon, Eragon was named Kevin. And there was also a unicorn in that first draft at one point, so you know it wasn't very good. [35]Releasing the Kevin Cut
If I heard correctly as I was reading, Eragon wasn't originally called Eragon? No, in the first draft of the book he was called Kevin. There's a reason! Look I have an explanation for it, okay. The explanation is that my original inspiration was Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher which is set in the real world. The original version of Eragon that I was developing was set in the real world and when I decided that it would make more sense to have a world where the dragons were native to and switched it over to this fantasy world and began to develop that, I just kept the name that I'd been working with, which was Kevin. Naming a main character is hard, especially when you get used to a certain name. I don't want to say I was lazy. I want to focus on the world building and writing the first draft and I'll worry about the name later. [28]
There is an early version of Eragon that no one's seen, that even my editor at Random House never saw. And that was my first draft. And in that first draft, Eragon encountered a unicorn in the Beor Mountains on the way to the Varden. And the unicorn touches him and essentially affects the transformation that he goes under during the blood oath ceremony with the elves in the second book, in Eldest. And his whole storyline with the Varden once he gets to Farthen Dûr is completely different because now he has these abilities and he and a team of people ends up getting sent on a scouting mission in the dwarven tunnels to go find the Urgal army and then they have to flee back through the tunnels to warn everyone of this huge army and I had a underground cave full of lava, and multiple shades, and a huge Urgal army. There was there was a lot of dramatic stuff. Finding the Ra'zac in Dras-Leona was completely different. This is the draft where Eragon was named Kevin. [32]
I haven't thought about that version in ages. I think Arya was awake all the way from Gil'ead to Farthen Dûr in that version. That's right, I had to completely rewrite that. It's an unpleasant ride for her. No, no, no, she was awake and healed. She was awake. That's right, God, I had to rewrite most of the last chunk of the book now that I think back, it's been a long time. [32]
The worst thing is, I think Kevin would actually take a larger budget [to adapt to film]. No, stop. Why would Kevin take a larger budget? Because the battles were bigger, there was more stuff going on. Seriously, there were more creatures, more travel. Yeah, I think Kevin would actually take more money than Eragon. [32]
You said that Eragon's name was originally Kevin. Was Eragon's name originally Kevin? It was. And I really regret I didn't stick with it because I think that as many books as I've sold, the series would have been at least twice as successful if it had been about the adventures of the great dragon writer Kevin. Especially just seeing Kevin on the front cover. Imagine the appeal to the modern youth. Kevin the dragon writer. I mean Eragon, it's confusing with Aragorn. Oregano. Oregon. But Kevin, Kevin stands out, Kevin's original. That's why I had to move away from it. [31]
So do you wanna share some of those drafts with us, Christopher? Just kidding. Well, I actually had a fan reach out to me. He's one of the big members of the online fan community on Reddit and elsewhere. And he's kind of interested in some of these early versions from almost an archivist point of view, a scholarly point of view. Which is certainly an interesting idea. I mean, there is an early version of Eragon that no one's seen, that even my editor at Random House never saw. ... I cannot describe how much the Internet absolutely needs for you to put out an edition of Eragon that just says Kevin. Should this be like Mistborn or Way of Kings Prime? This is the Kevin edition of Eragon. The Kevin cut. Oh my god. It's "Eragon: Kevin's Version". ... We absolutely need Kevin's Version of Eragon. That's something we need. It's bad. It's bad. Look, there are certainly people who can look at Eragon, the version we have now, and say, "we can tell this was a younger writer." I look at it and I can tell. I could do so much more now with the material than I could then. But if you think that about the published version of Eragon, man, if you saw the unpublished version, the early version, it really is the raw writing of a homeschooled 15-year-old, who wrote a 500 page book about Kevin. I don't know, the internet is very unhinged these days. They would love this. It needs to exist somewhere on the internet. [32]
So I wrote Eragon, and then I read the first draft and it wasn't particularly good, so I spent a good chunk of a year rewriting it as best as I could. I didn't know what I was doing but I was trying. I've heard it said that being displeased with your own work is actually a good thing because it means you know what is good work, and if you're not happy with your work because it's not good, it means you could at least have a goal to shoot for. If you read your work and you're like this is the best thing that's ever been written, you're never going to get any better. [28]Self-publishing
But I could see that the book needed work, so I decided to try to fix it as best I could, and I spent the better part of that year revising, rewriting, changing Kevin to Eragon. And then I gave the book to my parents and fortunately for me, they actually enjoyed what I had done. And they said, we think you have something, let's try to take it out into the world and see if anyone else wants to read it. [35]
[We] decided to self-publish the book as a joint venture since we didn't know anyone in the publishing world. That was again a good chunk of a year where we were editing the book as best the three of us could. Preparing it for publication, formatting, I drew the cover. [28]Promotion
Now you have to understand, my parents were always self-employed, have always been self-employed and we were always looking for things we could work on together as a family business. And Eragon was like the perfect opportunity for that. They'd had some experience self-publishing a couple of small educational books my mom had worked on. Because she was a trained Montessori teacher, and so she was trying to use that expertise to write some material herself. But I don't even think we sold 100 copies of those. So we spent another good chunk of a year preparing the book for publication with doing more editing, doing the layout, designing the cover. [35]
The first set of 50 books showed up while we were watching Roman Polanski's Macbeth, which seemed fitting because those first 50 books were all miscut from the printer. And as a result, we had to rip the covers off, send them back for credit from the printer, and then burn the insides of the books. So we had a proper book burning in our yard, and I actually saved some of those burnt pages just as a memory of that event. [35]
Self publishing wasn’t as viable then as a pathway to a career as an author as it is today. Why did it work for you? Everything completely changed because of e-readers. If you wanted to read an e-book, you had to have a PDF on your computer. There were no distribution systems like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Back then, the lowest amount you could print and not have the book be too expensive was probably about 10,000 copies. But we were fortunate because print-on-demand had just become a thing, so books were just printed as needed. Self publishing is a lot easier these days. Of course, today’s marketplace is a lot more crowded as a result. [16]
My family and I were going around the western half of the United States with the self-published edition of Eragon. I was cold calling schools, libraries, and bookstores to set up events. I was doing two to three one-hour long presentations every single day for months on end at various times. You have to understand that because my parents were self-employed, the time they took to help prepare Eragon for publication was time they weren't working on other freelance projects that would have been bringing in money. So by the time we actually had Eragon printed and in hand, if it had taken another two to three months to start turning a profit, we were going to have to sell our house, move to a city, and get any jobs we could. Because of that financial pressure I was willing to do things I probably would have been too uncomfortable to do otherwise. Like doing all those presentations. [28]Getting traditionally published
We were doing a lot of self-promotion. I was cold calling schools and libraries and talking them into letting me do presentations. And that worked pretty well because the librarians could take pre-orders for us. If we went into a bookstore, by hand selling, I could maybe sell anywhere between 13 to 40 books in a day. 42 was like the best I ever did, but usually it was around 15 or so books, which just didn't cover printing costs and travel and food and all of that. But going into the schools, we were doing about 300 books a day, which was excellent. [34]
Can you tell me a little bit about how you and your family self-published the first Eragon book and what marketing strategies you did? Oh, it was all nepotism, you know. I wouldn't have gotten published without my parents. There's nothing as powerful as a publishing company that's four people sitting around a kitchen table in the middle of rural Montana. So yeah, without Nepotism, I wouldn't have gotten published. You have to embrace something like Nepotism if you really wanna succeed in today's world. In fact, people don't realize that you actually get a Nepotism card. There's a secret club. You go to New York and there's huge network opportunities. There's branches of the club everywhere, especially strong in Hollywood, of course, in music. Taylor Swift is an example. So if you can get into the nepotism club, I won't say you're guaranteed success, but you got about 80% chance of actually making it that you wouldn't have otherwise. Do you think your mom and dad would be willing to be my mom and dad? No, absolutely not. No, no. You don't have brown hair, so it doesn't work. You have to have brown hair to be a Paolini. Okay, I'll try to find a different way in, I guess. [31]
So you were very much looking for that partnership? Well we were wary. But the thing is is we were selling enough copies of Eragon that to scale it up we were going to have to start duplicating all the things that a regular publisher does. We were actually looking at partnering with a book packager or a book distributor just to get more copies out. To do everything a traditional publisher could do for me was a huge amount of work so it made sense to pair with Random House or someone else at that point. But it was still nerve-wracking because the book was being a success and then handing it off to another company, we didn't know if it was just going to end up in the remainder bin two weeks after it came out. [28]Gaining Confidence
People in the book world were starting to take notice because of course, if you've been to public school, you may remember the Scholastic Book Fairs and all of the Scholastic reps in the different schools were seeing me come to the schools and selling these books and hearing the kids talk about it. And it was getting attention. So we would have gotten a publisher, I would have gotten a publisher eventually. [34]
The book sold enough copies and bounced around enough that we'd heard that Scholastic—because Scholastic does all the Book Fairs in schools in the US—was interested and that we might get an offer from them. Before that happened though... [34]
Eventually another author by the name of Carl Hiaasen ended up buying a copy of the self-published edition of Eragon in a local bookstore. Which now that I'm older, I'm rather shocked at because it takes a lot to get me to buy a self-published book. It's got to look really good. [35]
Carl Hiaasen wrote the young adult book Hoot as well as many adult books. He comes up to Montana, I think he's got a vacation home here in the valley, but he was up here fly fishing and he bought a copy of Eragon for his then 12 year old son, Ryan. And fortunately for me, Ryan liked the book and Carl recommended it to Random House and it sort of bounced around among the editors for a couple of months before my editor-to-be grabbed it and said, "Yes, we will. I want to take a chance on this teenage author and we're going to offer him money for a trilogy that only exists in his head and see what happens." [34]
How did you find an agent? We had the offer from Random House, and like two days later, we had the offer from Scholastic. And so we knew we didn't know what we didn't know. My dad participated in some online self-publishing forum sort of thing. So he posted up a question and said, look, this is the situation we're in. Does anyone have any advice? And another one of the members said, "well, I was just at this publishing writing conference and there was this young agent there and I was really impressed with his presentation, or him talking about the industry." So my dad got his information online and did what you're never supposed to do, which is he called the agent directly and left this long rambling voicemail message because it was lunchtime in New York and you take your lunch breaks in New York. And only at the end of the message did he say, "oh, yes, and by the way, we have two competing offers from two publishing houses." And when I asked him, I said, "why did you do that?" He said, "well, because if he's any good as an agent, he's going to listen to the whole message before he deletes it." And we found out later that he nearly deleted the message. Because my dad started off like, "I got this teenage son, and he's written this book", and yeah, that, OK. So it was like two hours later we got a call from Simon. And Simon said overnight me a copy of Eragon and if I like it I'll represent you. And Simon has been my agent for 21 years now. [34]
It was a big risk for Random House. And it was a big risk for me because the book was successful, self-published, and we knew that giving it to a publisher, you lose the rights to a degree, and most books don't turn a profit, and it could have just ended up in the remainder bin. So what really worked in my favor is that Random House, and specifically Random House Children's Books, and specifically the imprint of Knopf, which is where I'm at were looking for their own Harry Potter, essentially. Scholastic was publishing Harry Potter. And Scholastic also gave me an offer for Eragon, but I could tell that Random House was the one that really loved the book and Scholastic was doing it because they thought it was a good business opportunity. Scholastic actually offered more money than Random House. But I went with Random House and it was the right choice. And I found out after the fact that Chip Gibson who was the head of the children's department at the time basically chose to use Eragon as sort of something to rally the troops and put the entire children's division behind it, and I was the very fortunate recipient of that love and attention. Which of course would only get you so far if people didn't enjoy reading the book. But fortunately for me, they did a great job marketing it and then people actually enjoyed the book. Which is why when people ask me how to get published, it's like, what am I supposed to say? The answer ultimately is you write a book that people want to read, and that's a facile answer, but it is true. If people want to read it, it makes everything else easier. The agent wants you, the publishers want you, and ultimately the public wants you. [34]
And I didn't realize how much was behind that email, because large publishers do not just casually say, "hey, we want to publish your book". There was a whole plan there, and they had a plan. And so they did. Eragon came out and then I had to figure out how to write a book with everyone expecting the sequel. [36]
So you kind of went and peddled your books at schools, as I understand, right? It seems to have paid off though, because it eventually landed in the hands of bestselling author Carl Hiaasen, but not right away. First, your book got in the hands of his stepson, and the kid liked it so much that he told Hiaasen about it, who then got Eragon fast-tracked with Penguin Random House. I really admire the way that you went for the weakest links, manipulating the minds of our youth and using them to shill your book for you. It's a tried and true marketing strategy from Girl Scout Cookies to coupon books, and I applaud you for your ingenuity. My biggest question here is, do you pay Carl Hiaasen's stepson the agent royalties he so rightfully deserves? He tried to collect one time, but I had to hire a couple of guys to drive him off. But, no, you always go for the weakest link. Back when I was self-published and all that I even tried to get Eragon reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, so I called up the subscription number on the back of the magazine and told them I'd made a mistake and asked them to transfer me over to corporate, and managed to get right to their book reviewer and tried to talk him into reviewing Eragon. So you always go for, as you said, the weakest link. Which is corporate. Ryan, Carl's son, though, yeah, I probably owe him a ridiculous amount of royalties. I'd say so. He made you. Oh, he did, absolutely. Without him, I'd be nothing. I guess the lesson here for aspiring authors is that it's not really about finding your target audience, necessarily. You just have to find your target prolific author's stepson and let the kid take it from there. Yeah, absolutely. As I said, that's part of the nepotism package. The sort of networking inside the industry. This is the stuff that you can never access otherwise, and you'll never get published otherwise. So it's not like you can just grow up in the middle of nowhere in Montana, self-publish a book, and then just become a success, by promoting it. You have to have connections. That's genius. I think you could have had an incredible career in designing loot boxes for mobile games based on how good you are at manipulating the world. Absolutely, microtransactions are God's work. [31]
Was anxiety something you felt moving to this deal with Random House? Was that quite pressuring? Yes, it was a big change to go from writing for yourself as a teenager, homeschooled, living in the middle of nowhere, to knowing that there was a large audience for your next book and that they had expectations. I got criticized quite a bit, critiqued quite a bit when Eragon came out for, shall we say, my lack of experience on the technical side of things with the writing. I'd say some of those were certainly fair critiques. The great advantage of youth is that you don't know how difficult things are and you have a lot of energy. The great disadvantage of youth is you don't have experience, and there's no fixing that aside from time and effort. All of that was definitely in my head when I really started work on Eldest and it was pretty nerve-wracking quite honestly. [28]
When you finished the book, I mean your parents believed in it obviously. Did you too? Or were you like, "You know what, maybe the second book, maybe go all in on the second one?" I didn't feel like I was actually an author until my third book was published. Because the first one, well, that could be a fluke. Well, the second one, yeah, but you know. But once the third book came out, then I was like, okay, maybe I'm actually a writer. But even then, even after I finished the series, I still felt like, okay, now I have to write something that's not Eragon, just to prove that I can. So every book has been its own challenge and has been a way for me to keep feeling like I'm growing as an artist and learning to become a better and better writer. [2]
It took me, I wanna say almost 10 years to feel like I wasn't an imposter and that it wasn't just gonna get yanked away. You know what my dream was when Eragon was was going to get published by Random House? Like this was my pie in the sky because I didn't think it was going to happen. But this was my dream. I did all the math and I was like, man, if I could somehow someday sell 100,000 books, which is impossible. But man, if I could sell 100,000 books, that's a darn good living. Man, I could really make a living off that. I could support a family and 100,000 books. Man, that'd be amazing. And then it kind of took off from there. [33]
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2024.05.19 14:53 MotherLeek7708 SO MUCH fiction about OLED vs minileds, facts guys:
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2024.05.19 14:24 TarotLessTraveled Analogical Features paragraph 3: Le Mat and the Dog
https://preview.redd.it/elpfrqvsld1d1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=78d4a1ace797468df1931c82e96a3717645d9434 submitted by TarotLessTraveled to SeekingMarteau [link] [comments] Le coin de chair visible chez l’homme, et sur lequel s’appuie le chien, est la partie la plus basse de lui-même, la partie restée animale en lui. Elle est nue, parce que malgré les habits qu’il s’est créés au cours de l’évolution, il ne peut s’en détacher. Le chien signifie également un reste des erreurs du passé qui trouble l’homme dans sa marche en avant. Ce chien symbolise encore un plan de vie inférieur qui tend à s’élever et à suivre l’homme; de même que l’homme s’est élevé au-dessus du plan animal, celui-ci ne devant pas oublier qu’en marchant vers son évolution, sa chute l’a ramené au rang de l’animalité et que dans sa marche il doit faire évoluer autour de lui les créatures inférieures. In order to understand the third paragraph of Marteau’s Particularités Analogiques, we have to place his card within the historical context of Tarot de Marseille tradition, which starts with the 1639 deck attributed to Philippe Vachier, the earliest known TdM. Vachier’s Le Fol is depicted as the quintessential wanderer, with his bindle hanging off the end of a staff balanced over his shoulder and trekking pole in his right hand. He is out in the open, journeying we-know-not-where, dressed in the motley and floppy crown of a court jester; his face and hands are white – absent of color – which matches the broad white stripe below his golden belt. His face and hands are an even whiter shade of non-color than the featureless backdrop, but interestingly, his leggings and long sleeves are flesh-colored. Behind him is an animal which some recognize as a dog, others a cat; Marteau identifies it as a dog, so that is how I will also refer to it from this point forward. It appears the dog is reaching at a rent in Le Fol’s hose: perhaps it is responsible for shredding the leggings, or perhaps the tear was already present and caught the dog’s attention; we cannot say for certain. Nor do we know what the relationship between Le Fol and the dog is: it may be the dog is a companion on the road, or it may be that, as some have suggested, the dog is chasing a stranger away. In either case, Le Fol’s expression suggests that he is either unaware or unconcerned; his eyes are raised toward some distant horizon only he can see. What is most intriguing, however, is that beneath the flesh-colored hose is dark green under-hose; what is revealed, then, is not the man beneath the costume but more of the costume. We cannot know for certain what Vachier was thinking when he elected to portray Le Fol in this way, but we can hypothesize from more general patterns. Typically, clothing symbolizes persona, the person as presented rather than the person as is. An individual covers himself in a persona to fit into a collective social structure and identify what role he plays in said structure, but typically also, when we tear away the constructed outer layer, we find the individual within, which would be represented by his flesh. A common dream motif for many people is discovering that they are naked, “exposed.” This not only separates them from those around them (who are all fully clothed) but makes them vulnerable to judgments. Another function of the persona is it protects us from being seen, preventing others from observing those bits of us we do not want them to see because they embarrass us or because they are the aspects of us most sensitive to criticism and other attacks. A few years after Vachier, a cardmaker working out of Paris, Jean Noblet, marketed a deck in which the most iconic image featured a similarly clad figure also named Le Fol but whose leggings were torn to a far greater degree, revealing underneath not only fleshy buttocks but fully exposed genitalia as well. Again, unfortunately, we cannot know what message, if any, Noblet meant to convey with his ribald depiction; however, we can note another striking difference between these two cards: while the Vachier figure’s flesh is white, Noblet’s is ruddy with blood and human warmth, except for his hands, which retain the strikingly bloodless white coloring consistent with the Vachier. https://preview.redd.it/w9zn0tn1md1d1.png?width=949&format=png&auto=webp&s=7de0dee0327aa23d48ccb76915c24e69f6041596 Ensuing cardmakers in what became the Tarot de Marseille style mostly elected to follow the Vachier model. There were a few exceptions that did not go as far as Noblet but did show naked flesh-colored flesh under the rent hose; however, they were a decided minority until Paul Marteau released his deck in 1930 and introduced a kind of revival in this presentation. Marteau did not break with tradition in this matter arbitrarily; his commentary makes evident that he thought deeply about the meaning of every detail, and we might have hoped that, being an expert in Tarot de Marseille symbolism, he would have compared and contrasted his deck with historical counterparts, meticulously explaining how the choices he made brought the cards into alignment with his philosophy. This, however, was never really an option, as Marteau promoted his deck as a faithful reproduction of the one published by Nicolas Conver in 1761, a master cardmaker in Marseille who, himself, “preserved the woods and colors of his remote predecessors” – a fiction that enabled Marteau to market his own work as the “Ancien Tarot de Marseille”; thus, any discussion of changes he made would only have served to undercut that claim.[[i]](#_edn1) Marteau opens the third paragraph of his Particularités Analogiques writing that the visible region of flesh (“Le coin de chair visible”) represents man’s basest aspect, the part of him that remained animal (“est la partie la plus basse de lui-même, la partie restée animale en lui”). Marteau’s premise is that Le Mat is on an evolutionary journey; his clothing typifies the collective aspect of that evolution, as it is the most obvious outward symbol of how man has risen from a purely instinctive and unconscious mode of being into a state of expanded awareness, not only of himself but his role within a social collective. When this is torn away, a far more primal and universal truth is revealed, one which has been increasingly concealed under layers of acculturation; it is the part of us that cannot be refined through education or social status and, thus, remains the source of our most profound shame, yet this is where the dog is able to make contact. In this paragraph, Marteau not only explains the nature of this contact but its wider significance. My attempts at translation differ from those of Kitos Digiovanni, who writes that the dog “nips” at the “lowest part of him,” [[ii]](#_edn2) and Marius Høgnesen’s, who writes that “the dog hassles … the lowest part of man, the part representing the animal, that remains in him.” [[iii]](#_edn3) Both Digiovanni and Høgnesen characterize the nature of this contact as active, if not aggressive, and that coincides with what seems to be popular consensus. The respected tarot scholar Robert M. Place writes, “In the Tarot of Marseilles.... The seat of the Fool’s pants is being torn by a dog. This is meant to be comical, but it also signifies that the dog is treating him as a stranger, an assumption that is further supported by the fact that he is carrying a bag of belongings on his shoulder. The early Franciscans, who wandered through the countryside preaching and begging, found that they were treated with suspicion at first, and, like our Fool, they had to fend off the attacks of dogs.” [[iv]](#_edn4) It is not my intention to argue whether this is a correct or incorrect interpretation of the image; tarot cards reflect the psychological motifs through which we view and make sense of the outer world. They help us to become more self-aware; thus, there are no right or wrong answers any more than there are correct or incorrect responses to picture interpretation or inkblot tests. My only concern is what Paul Marteau meant when he wrote, “sur lequel s’appuie le chien.” “Le chien” is dog; “sur lequel” is the equivalent of “on which.” The key to comprehending Marteau’s interpretation of the image resides in how we translate “s’appuie,” which I understand to come from the infinitive “appuyer” and means “to press,” “to push,” or “to lean,” according to the Collins dictionary translator. This coincides with the Google, Reverso, and Bing translators as well, which also add “to support” to the list. Thus, the dog is not attacking and driving off an unwelcome stranger, nor is it tearing at Le Mat’s hose; the contact is less aggressive. “S’appuie” is the reflexive form of the infinitive; therefore, it would mean “the dog leans itself” or “presses itself” upon the visible region of flesh; I translate it as “supports itself,” and render the first sentence, “The visible region of flesh in man, on which the dog supports itself, represents his [man’s] basest aspect, the part of him that remained animal.” The commentary continues, “It is bare because despite the habiliments he has created for himself throughout the course of his evolution, he cannot deny it. The dog also represents a vestige of past failures that disconcert man in his forward march.” (Elle est nue, parce que malgré les habits qu’il s’est créés au cours de l’évolution, il ne peut s’en détacher. Le chien signifie également un reste des erreurs du passé qui trouble l’homme dans sa marche en avant.) Marteau suggests Le Mat is looking forward rather than paying attention to the dog trailing him because the presence of the dog is an unwanted reminder of his failings and the fundamental nature that he would prefer to shed. In this sense, the dog is like the bindle, which contains man’s collective inheritance resulting from the Fall into carnal existence: it is attached by fixed rings to the staff he carries to prevent Le Mat from removing it and freeing himself of its weight. We may refer to ourselves as individuals and adhere to the mythology that we are singular, but this arcanum reminds us our lives are burdened by the accumulated history and transgressions of all mankind. Finally, Marteau writes, “This dog furthermore symbolizes an inferior stage of life that tends to lift itself up and follow man; just as man raised himself above the animal plane, he must not forget while advancing toward his evolution his fall brought him back to a primeval state, and in his march he must inspire the lower creatures to evolve around him.” (Ce chien symbolise encore un plan de vie inférieur qui tend à s’élever et à suivre l’homme; de même que l’homme s’est élevé au-dessus du plan animal, celui-ci ne devant pas oublier qu’en marchant vers son évolution, sa chute l’a ramené au rang de l’animalité et que dans sa marche il doit faire évoluer autour de lui les créatures inférieures). The dog is a less-evolved animal, yet it too feels the call to advance; it cannot accomplish this alone. Le Mat’s evolutionary march is not solely for his benefit; he has a responsibility to all living things, for he also arose from a primitive state, and just as he is inspired to become something more, he must engender this same inspiration in others. My translation: The visible region of flesh in man, on which the dog supports itself, represents his [man’s] basest aspect, the part of him that remained animal. It is bare because despite the habiliments he has created for himself throughout the course of his evolution, he cannot deny it. The dog also represents a vestige of past failures that disconcert man in his forward march. This dog furthermore symbolizes an inferior stage of life that tends to lift itself up and follow man; just as man raised himself above the animal plane, he must not forget while advancing toward his evolution his fall brought him back to a primeval state, and in his march he must inspire the lower creatures to evolve around him. [[i]](#_ednref1)Marteau, Paul. Le Tarot de Marseille. Arts et Métiers Graphiques, Paris, 1948. Imprimé en Suisse 1984. The quote comes from the “Introduction.” [[ii]](#_ednref2)Kitos Digiovanni’s blog https://smallcabin.org/le-tarot-de-marseilles-by-paul-marteau/ [[iii]](#_ednref3)Paul Marteau. Tarot de Marseille. Trans. Marius Høgnesen. Published by circleandtriangle, 2021. [[iv]](#_ednref4)Place, Robert M. Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. New York: Jeremy P. TarchePenguin, 2005. |
2024.05.19 14:13 Gamin_Nater_78 An Outsider looking In
I only know of this game after it's collab with CoDM, and after looking at the girls on the blueprints, finding the official website (with a banger theme btw) and reading a bit from the "Bureau Intel" it's peaked my interest. submitted by Gamin_Nater_78 to PathToNowhere [link] [comments] What's the gameplay like? Is there a story? What about the art direction? Is there some sort of gacha game mechanic in it? How different is it compared to fps games? I only ask because I need a bit more than just character design to download the game, and let me tell you it looks interesting. All info is appreciated, thx (as of writing this, I quickly switched from this tab to the one with the official website and back, now the music isn't playing when I'm not on the tab with the MBCC Bureau website, pls help) https://preview.redd.it/c1ssr7c7kd1d1.png?width=1518&format=png&auto=webp&s=836a3328fd420f174b072774477069946b7f67ed https://preview.redd.it/owg1h4e8kd1d1.png?width=2400&format=png&auto=webp&s=648b92aaad97ddb42fbb65180bc12dbbb90d4b7e https://preview.redd.it/auwj6tl9kd1d1.png?width=1518&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf1b0d9dc6fefcbc4129906bcd1676e34d130dfc https://preview.redd.it/gsg2ifjakd1d1.png?width=2400&format=png&auto=webp&s=de22e2277f9cc8582f6a60a10679f5c747574f47 |
2024.05.19 14:08 Yurii_S_Kh Monotheism, Part 3: Islam
Islam: Origins submitted by Yurii_S_Kh to SophiaWisdomOfGod [link] [comments] Jibril (Gabriel) appears before Mohammed, drawing The religion of the Law, which for 15 centuries prepared the chosen people for the coming into the world of the its Savior, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, preceded New Testament religion. According to the Holy Apostle Paul, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3:24). It was all in all only "a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. 10:1). When the Savior came into the world, Old Testament religion had fulfilled its purpose. Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us the mystery of the Heavenly Kingdom and established the New Covenant, which was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:31-33). Man was redeemed from original sin and its consequences by the voluntary death on the Cross of Jesus Christ as Savior of the World. He entered into an entirely new period in terms of his relationship with God in comparison with the Old Testament: instead of the law, there was a free condition of sonship and grace. Man received new means for achieving the ideal set for him of moral perfection as a necessary condition for salvation. Islam, having arisen in Arabia in the seventh century, appeared as the religion of the law six centuries after the God of the chosen people of the religion of the Law fulfilled its purpose. The difference between the Old Testament religion of the Law and Islam is not only that the latter emerged more than two thousand years after God gave on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments and other precepts that governed life for the chosen people. The most important difference is that the Law of Moses has a Divine source. The book of Exodus gives a narrative of the majestic Epiphany. "And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up" (Exod. 19:17-20). The founder of Islam, however, did not have a Divine revelation. How did Islam arise? We read about this in the Hadith “Al-Jamii al-Sahih”. A mysterious being began to visit Mohammed. He slept in a cave on the slope of Mount Hira. On the night of the 24th of the month of Ramadan in year 610 someone appeared to him in human form. This event is considered the beginning of Islam. This story about it is from the Sunnah: “[A]n angel appeared to him and bade him 'READ!' 'I am no reader!' Mohammed replied in great trepidation, whereon the angel shook him violently and again bade him read. This was repeated three times, when the angel uttered the five verses that commence the 96th chapter: 'READ! in the name of thy Lord, who did create—who did create man from congealed blood. READ! for thy Lord is the most generous.’” Mohammed puzzled over whether a demon or angel visited him. He confided his experiences in his wife Khadijah. I will introduce more of the story of Mohammed's biography, generally accepted by Muslims: “She said to the messenger of God, ‘O son of my uncle, are you able to tell me about your visitant, when he comes to you?’ He replied that he could, and she asked him to tell her when he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont the apostle said to Khadija, ‘This is Gabriel who has just come to me.’ ‘Get up, O son of my uncle,’ she said, ‘and sit by my left thigh.’ The apostle did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. She said, ‘Then turn round and sit on my right thigh.’ He did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ When he said that he could she asked him to move and sit in her lap. When he had done this she again asked if he could see him, and when he said yes, she disclosed her form and cast aside her veil while the apostle was sitting in her lap. Then she said, ‘Can you see him?’ And he replied, ‘No.’ She said, ‘O son of my uncle, rejoice and be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan’” (Ibn Hisham, Biography of the Prophet Muhammad). It is surprising how easily and, gently speaking, naively this question, which in the spiritual realm is a question of life or death, had been answered with the help of a woman. Before all else, an Angel is a bodiless being, and for his sight there are no actual barriers: one can see through even clothes. Clothes hide nudity only from the eyes of man. Even so, the body of man in and of itself is not something perverse or shameful. It is a creation of God. The lust of man is sinful as well as is carnal desire, but not the body. In paradise the progenitors were naked and were not ashamed (see Gen. 2:25). The nature of an Angel is inviolate. They are alien to passions of man. But if this was a demon, then he could easily resort to trickery. Knowing how they tested him, he especially would be able to take leave of himself, so that they would take him for an Angel. The attitude of Islam towards the Bible Islam emerged as something syncretic out of several sources: ancient Arabic cults, Judaism, Christianity, Hanifism (a pre-Islamic monotheistic movement in Arabia) and Mazdaism (an ancient Iranian religion). There is no doubt that the Old Testament holy books and the Gospel had an influence on the formation of Islam. In the Quran many people and events from biblical history are mentioned. However, these stories are presented completely arbitrarily and inaccurately. According to the Quran, man was created from water. "It is He Who has created man from water: Then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things)" (25:54). In another surah, it says: "Proclaim! (or read!) in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood" (96:1-2). In another part it speaks about clay, "He created man from sounding clay like unto pottery" (55:14). In contrast to the Bible, the Quran does not say that man was created in the image and likeness of God. This discrepancy is most profound. With God's image and likeness, man is summoned to commune directly with his Creator. He can become one with the Lord. This is not so in Islam. The book of Genesis tells the story of how the entire family of the patriarch Noah (in Arabic, Nuh) was saved in the Ark. The Quran speaks about the death of Noah's son: "So the Ark floated with them on the waves (towering) like mountains, and Noah called out to his son, who had separated himself (from the rest): ‘O my son! Embark with us, and be not with the unbelievers!’ The son replied: ‘I will betake myself to some mountain: it will save me from the water.’ Noah said: ‘This day nothing can save, from the command of Allah, any but those on whom He hath mercy!’ And the waves came between them, and the son was among those overwhelmed in the Flood" (11:42-43). Another surah tells it somewhat differently: "(Remember) Noah, when he cried (to Us) aforetime: We listened to his (prayer) and delivered him and his family from great distress" (21:76). There is no need to provide more examples. In the Quran, things are especially distorted when discussing New Testament events. Here the differences are purely fundamental. The Incarnation, the Crucifixion on Golgotha, and the Resurrection are all denied. Even the event of the Nativity of Christ, known to the whole world, is described very strangely. It is alleged that Maryam retreated to a faraway place and gave birth to a Son under palms (19:23). In this surah, called Maryam, She is called the "sister of Harun," i.e. Aaron. He indeed had a sister named Miriam, but she lived 15 centuries before the Nativity of Christ. Probably due to so great a number of errors and distortions, many representatives of Islam, in order to escape from this quandary, allege that the modern Holy Scripture of Christians has been distorted (a circumstance known as tahrif). Immediately, the question arises: what evidence do they provide? There is no evidence. Characteristically, the view of Muslims toward the Bible has undergone significant change over the course of several centuries. Early Islamic writers such as al-Tabari and ar-Razi believed that the distortion comes down to tahrif bi'al ma'ni, i.e. the corruption of the meaning without changing the text. However, later authors such as Ibn Hazm and Al-Biruni introduced the idea of tahrif bi’al-lafz, i.e. the corruption of the text itself. At that, both of these positions have been preserved to the present day. Thus, the level of acceptance among Muslims of the Bible depends on one's understanding of tahrif. The very existence of these fundamentally different positions indicates that there is no concrete evidence. It is impossible to ignore one interesting feature of the attitude that representatives of Islam have toward the Biblical text. In that they do not have their own "undistorted" biblical text, they cite our canonical text as undistorted. However, when they need to support a point, for example, negative examples from the life of Banu Isra'il (the children of Israel) with a reference to parts that do not conform to Islam, they proclaim the text to be distorted. Muslims allege that the New Testament (Injil), which the Quran refers to positively, is not in fact the current four Gospels. We have already said that they do not provide any evidence. The falsehood of the accusation that Christians distorted the Scriptures stems from the internal inconsistencies of the very Islamic authors who wrote on this theme. According to the Quran, the New Testament was originally a true, sacred text. "And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah" (5:46). In another section: "Say: ‘O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.’ It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy" (5:68). This excerpt clearly demonstrates that the Quran itself does not speak of the distorted Scripture, but about "rebellion and blasphemy" related to misunderstanding. There is one part of the Quran (10:94) which is very problematic for Islamic commentators: "If thou wert in doubt as to what We have revealed unto thee, then ask those who have been reading the Book from before thee: the Truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord: so be in no wise of those in doubt." This ayat refers the Muslim "in doubt" to the authority of the biblical Holy Scripture. Abdul-Haqq writes: “The learned doctors of Islam are sadly embarrassed by this verse, referring the prophet as it does to the people of the Book who would solve his doubts” (Abdul-Haqq, A. A. (1980). Sharing Your Faith With A Muslim. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers. As cited in Geisler, N.L. (1999). Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group). According to the logic of this verse, the biblical Scripture was undistorted in the 7th century at the time of the Quran's creation. Then one must recognize that the current text is also correct, since we use manuscripts written over several centuries prior to the Quran. Textual criticism of the New Testament has achieved outstanding breakthroughs in the 20th century. Currently, there are over 2,328 manuscripts and manuscript fragments in Greek, coming to us from the first three centuries of Christianity. The most ancient New Testament manuscript, a part of the Gospel of John 18:31-33, 37-38, is the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, dated 117-138 in the era of the reign of emperor Hadrian. Adolf Deissmann acknowledges the possibility of the emergence of this papyrus even under the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117). It is preserved in Manchester. Another ancient New Testament manuscript is the Papyrus Bodmer, P75. The 102 surviving pages contain the texts of the Gospels of Luke and John. "The editors, Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, date this copy to between 175 and 225 A.D. It is thus the earliest surviving known copy of the Gospel according to Luke available today and one of the earliest of the Gospel according to John" (Bruce M. Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. p. 58). This precious manuscript is located in Geneva. Uncial script on parchment: leather codices with uncial script, (in Latin uncia means inch) letters without sharp corners and broken lines. This script is distinguished by its great refinement and precision. Each letter is disconnected. There are 362 uncial manuscripts of the New Testament. The most ancient of these codices (Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus) have already been mentioned. Scholars complemented this impressive collection of ancient New Testament manuscripts with the New Testament text, which consisted of 36,286 excerpts of the Holy Scripture of the New Testament found in the works of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church from the first through fourth centuries. This text is lacking only 11 verses. Scholars of textual criticism in the 20th century did a tremendous job on the collation of all—several thousands of—New Testament manuscripts and identified all textual discrepancies caused by scribal error. An evaluation and typologization was performed. Precise criteria for determining a correct variant were established. For those familiar with this rigorous scientific work, it is obvious that allegations of the distortion of the current holy text of the New Testament are unfounded. In terms of the number of ancient manuscripts and the brevity of time separating the earliest surviving text from the original, no one work of antiquity can be compared with the New Testament. Accusations that the Bible's text is distorted are puzzling. How could it actually have been done? How could Christians and Hebrews have come together to do this? Everyone knows the degree of their mutual [doctrinal—Ed.] alienation. And yet both Christians and Jews use one and the same canonical text of the Old Testament. Furthermore, the entire New Testament was preserved in the Chester Beatty Papyri, composed in approximately 250 A.D. It is inconceivable to accept that under the conditions that existed in Christian society, hundreds of exemplars of the New Testament text were miscopied for the purpose of distortion. On the Monotheism of Islam Historians and religious scholars regard the three "Abrahamic" religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as monotheistic religions. For the researcher, the doctrinal principles that representatives of each of these three religions formulate are sufficient. However, on a theological level, the insufficiency of such a formal approach becomes clear. Monotheism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for true religion. Only a religion that has Divine revelation as a source has the true and spiritually accurate doctrine concerning God. Christianity not only maintains that God is the living, absolute source, "the only true God" (John 17:3; 1 Thes. 1:9; cf. John 5:20), but also teaches thoroughly and in depth of the nature of God as without beginning, without end, and of a perfect Spirit. The chief characteristic of the Divine nature is love. "God is love" (1 John 4:16). These words of the apostle contain the principal idea of the New Testament as the good news of salvation. The ineffable goodness of God created the world. The Lord housed man in paradise. Even after the Fall, God continued to love mankind. The greatness of God's love was revealed when the incarnate God died a most agonizing death for us. Christians know from not only the Holy Scripture, but also through the power of spiritual experience, that God is all-knowing and all-wise. The apostle says: "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13). God knows not only all that has happened, and all that is, but he has also perfect knowledge of the future. The mirror of the supreme Wisdom of God is the universe which He created, astounding man with its extraordinary complexity, beauty, and harmony. God demonstrates his ineffable Wisdom also in the dispensation of our salvation. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out" (Rom. 11:33). True religion is not limited by the demand of worship for the Creator. Its ultimate goal is the spiritual unity of man with God. The Savior speaks about this in a prayer to his Father before his suffering on the cross: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" (John 17:21). From the aforementioned characteristics of the Divine follows the concept of true, Christian monotheism. There can be only one all-powerful and all-just God. The concept of God in Islam does not have a source of divine revelation. It developed on the basis of ancient Arabic religion. The word “Allah” was used in the polytheistic pantheon of Arabs to denote “God”: Allah (al - the definite article; ilah - god). Among the pagan Arabs, prior to their adoption of Islam, Allah was the supreme lunar deity, worshipped in north and central Arabia. The father of Muhammed, who was a pagan, was named Abdullah ("Servant of Allah"). In pre-Islamic times, the crescent moon was the symbol of the worship of the moon-god among the Arabs. This is confirmed by archeological evidence. The crescent moon was carried over as the main symbol of Islam. Arabs of the Syrian desert called the wife of Allah as Al-lāt, and in the south of central Arabia, Al-‘Uzzá. In other areas of Arabia, they, along with Manat, were worshipped as the daughters of Allah. This genetic trail was preserved in the Quran. There is mention of this in the 53rd surah: "Have ye seen Lāt, and ‘Uzzā, and another, the third (goddess), Manāt? What! For you the male sex, and for Him, the female? Behold, such would be indeed a division most unfair!" (53:19-22). In Islam, Allah is a created religious image by the human consciousness. He does not express the real almighty divine personhood. Consequently, monotheism in Islam is imagined. In a number of places in the Quran, he is endowed with intrinsically human characteristics and traits. Allah says:
The idea of monotheism, (tawhid, from the verb wahhada—to reckon something as one) was formulated in the Quran in several surahs. For example, in the 16th surah, "The Bee": "For We assuredly sent amongst every people an apostle, (with the Command), "serve God, and eschew evil" (16:36). In the terminology of the sharia, anything people worship except for Allah is "taghut". Since Islam does not know of direct revelation, nor the holy Manifestation of God to the world, nor the unification of man with God on the foundation of love, its monotheism is imagined, formalistic and abstract, requiring not that man change himself or his way of life, but only worship and daily prayer. Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) |
2024.05.19 14:01 xolve I like TST and Siebberry, but having a label attached would be really great e.g. how its shown in Edge. Right now I keep top level tab as a guide for tab tree.
submitted by xolve to firefox [link] [comments] |
2024.05.19 13:54 EsmagaSapos Career advise (SCM & Robotics/Automation)
2024.05.19 13:42 moveintheshadows AITA for getting mad at her for not apologising and comparing her to my ex?
2024.05.19 13:36 Significant-Tower146 Best Cash Registers for Grocery Stores
submitted by Significant-Tower146 to u/Significant-Tower146 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/nrbky82ddd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8608cba9cf1aa42e1d68371ab9d01cd196862de9 Are you a grocery store owner on the hunt for the perfect cash register system? Look no further! Our new Cash Registers for Grocery Stores article has got all your questions answered. From state-of-the-art technology to traditional cash registers, we've rounded up the best options on the market, specifically catered to grocery stores just like yours. So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and take a few minutes to browse through this curated selection of cash register systems that will keep your business running smoothly. Don't miss out on your perfect match! The Top 15 Best Cash Registers for Grocery Stores
Reviews🔗Royal Consumer 500DX Cash Register for Small Businesshttps://preview.redd.it/jubbbciddd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e19ef923e1f1e0caafcb39f5f22f6532d47ec50 As a small business owner, I can attest that the Royal 500DX Cash Register has been an absolute game-changer for me. The dual LCD displays provide clear visibility for both the clerk and the customer, making transactions seamless and efficient. One of the standout features is its capacity to handle up to 2,000 employees, which is more than adequate for a small to medium-sized business. Additionally, the unlimited messaging capability ensures that you won't miss any important announcements or updates. However, the product does feel a bit flimsy due to its predominantly plastic design, which might concern those who prefer a sturdier build. Another fantastic aspect of this cash register is the 999 Price Look-Ups, allowing for quick processing of transactions. Programming four different tax rates also makes the setup process incredibly straightforward. On the downside, the impact printer, although functional, occasionally feels outdated compared to more advanced models. Overall, the Royal 500DX Cash Register has proven to be a reliable and user-friendly addition to my small business. Its features cater to my daily needs and have undoubtedly contributed to the efficiency and success of my operations. 🔗Sharp XE-A102 Compact Electronic Cash Register with LED Displayhttps://preview.redd.it/6ny8fjyddd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b6328ffef9a0311778b7a4b451e0b18dec73b5d I have been using the Sharp XE-A102 Electronic Cash Register for a start-up retail business, and it's been a reliable and efficient partner. The compact design allows it to fit easily in our small store, and the bright LED display makes it easy for us and our customers to see the transaction details. The 8 departments feature helps us organize our inventory, and the 80 PLU/Items capacity allows us to input all our products without issues. One of the standout features of this cash register is its ability to accept different payment methods like cash, cheque, and credit card, which has made it easy for us to cater to our customers' preferred payment options. Additionally, the time and date display feature ensures that our transactions are accurate and timely. However, there are a few minor drawbacks to the Sharp XE-A102. It can be a little noisy and slow compared to some other cash registers, which may be an issue during peak hours when we need to serve customers quickly. Moreover, the instructions provided are quite small, making them difficult to read and follow. Overall, the Sharp XE-A102 Electronic Cash Register has been an excellent addition to our start-up retail business. Its compact design, 58 mm wide reliable printing, and ability to accept multiple payment methods make it a valuable tool for any small retailer. While it may have a few minor issues, the majority of users, including myself, are satisfied with its performance and recommend it to others. 🔗Professional XE Series Electronic Cash Registerhttps://preview.redd.it/9ghz5oaedd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=feaa1f9c3dd16f023352a745c133e2b9c5aab294 I recently added the Sharp XE Series Electronic Cash Register to my tiny boutique store, and I couldn't be happier. Before settling on this model, I spent a lot of time researching various cash registers, but the XE Series stood out for its advanced sales reporting capabilities and seamless tie-in with QuickBooks Pro. The moment I unboxed it, I was impressed by its sleek, professional appearance and built-in SC card slot for easy connectivity and data back-up. Setting up the register was incredibly easy, and within just a few hours, it was ready to go. Its intuitive interface made training my employees a breeze. The thermal printer was a pleasant surprise; it's much quieter and faster than traditional receipt printers. Plus, the customizable receipts with graphics and logos definitely give my store a professional edge. One of my favorite features is the automatic tax system, which not only saves time but also reduces the potential for errors and makes reporting so much easier. The locking drawer ensures security and comes with multiple bill and coin compartments, making deposits a lot more organized. The only downside is the rather complicated user manual, which could definitely be improved. It's not a complete deal breaker, though, as there are plenty of helpful YouTube tutorials available online. All in all, I'm thrilled with my purchase of the Sharp XE Series Electronic Cash Register. It's a perfect fit for my small business and a real game-changer when it comes to streamlining sales transactions and accounting. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this cash register to anyone running a small retail or service business. 🔗Casio Single-Tape Thermal Cash Register for Businesshttps://preview.redd.it/9qo9ivmfdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b796fc73fe9d4964333dedf01204832108f7316c Casio's PCR-T280 is a fantastic single-tape thermal cash register that offers more functionality for medium-sized businesses than entry-level models. With the ability to track up to 1,200 price lookups, it offers a level of specificity in item sales tracking not commonly found in its class. It also allows businesses to track sales up to eight different operators, making it an excellent tool for business tracking and growth. One of the standout features of this product is its hygienic, antibacterial keyboard. In our current world, where cleanliness is paramount, this characteristic provides a measure of peace of mind for both business owners and customers alike. Furthermore, its multipurpose tray can hold money in four bill compartments and five coin compartments, ensuring the efficient flow of transactions. The PCR-T280 also boasts a high-speed thermal printer, which can be used either for customer receipts or as a journal printer for recording all the store's activities. Its mode lock with key control feature provides multiple operation positions through physical keys, providing a level of security usually found in more expensive models. Although it is not touch-screen, its simple and intuitive design makes it easy to program and use. Some users did find the manual a bit difficult to follow, but with a bit of practice, most find it quite manageable. With its ability to handle multiple sales tax needs and its capacity for PLU capabilities, the Casio PCR-T280 has proven itself as a reliable tool for various businesses, small or medium-sized. However, one minor drawback is the depth of the money/change drawer, which could have been a little deeper for added convenience. Despite this minor issue, the vast majority of users recommend this register for its performance and price point, providing an excellent value for businesses looking for an affordable, reliable cash register solution. 🔗Heavy-Duty Cash Register with Alpha Keyboard and LCD Displayhttps://preview.redd.it/n49jkvmfdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de539e0ebd57052b2847b9d3ccc982047c4b050e As an avid user of cash registers in my grocery store, I recently discovered the Royal Alpha 1100ml Cash Register, and my experience has been quite satisfactory. This heavy-duty register is perfect for my high-traffic establishment, offering a reliable and swift cash management system that I can always depend on. The first thing that caught my eye about this cash register was its single fast and quiet alphanumeric thermal printer, capable of handling over 1 million lines. It's been able to keep up with the constant rush of customers, making it a reliable addition to my store. The large 10-line LCD user display and alpha keyboard ensure easy programming, which was a breeze, even for a beginner like me. The SD Card slot is another excellent feature, enabling efficient accounting data transfers to a PC, a necessity for any modern business. However, I will say that the software included with the register can be a bit flaky at times. While it is supposed to read the x and z reports that the machine puts on the sd card, I sometimes find myself having to use the sd card to transfer report data manually. Additionally, getting in touch with their tech support doesn't seem to be very helpful, as they often provide no real technical assistance. Despite these minor issues, the Royal Alpha 1100ml Cash Register has been a solid addition to my store. Its heavy-duty locking cash drawer with four slot bill and removable five slot coin tray, along with its automatic tax computation, has made managing funds and keeping track of sales much easier for me. If you're in need of a reliable cash register for your business, I'd highly recommend giving this one a try. 🔗Fast and Accurate Cash Register System with Thermal Printing and 8-Line Displayhttps://preview.redd.it/f33rfq0gdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e9314ab913ffe6b00f0a11467485ee790805c89a I recently discovered the Sharp XEA407 Cash Register while searching for a reliable and feature-rich solution for my little grocery store. After trying it out, I must say it's exceeded my expectations. The first thing that impresses anyone who lays their eyes on it is the sleek eight-line display. It's not just a pretty face though; it's got brains as well with 7000 Price Lookups (PLU's), allowing quick and accurate entry. The inclusion of 99 departments is brilliant as it makes managing diverse product types a breeze. My favorite feature? Hands down, the microban keytops. They provide built-in antimicrobial protection, keeping those pesky germs at bay, which is particularly important given the current health situation. And let's not forget about the large 32GB SD card slot for computer connectivity and data storage. However, there were a few hiccups too. The lack of French documentation was a letdown for me, a French-speaking Canadian. Plus, a few customers have reported missing parts upon delivery, making the product unusable. So, while there are some minor issues, the Sharp XEA407 Cash Register has overall been a reliable and efficient addition to my store. It's fast, easy to set up, and offers more than enough features for most small businesses. If you're looking for a cash register that combines modern tech with dependability, this might just be the one for you. 🔗Royal 100Cx Portable Battery/AC Powered Cash Registerhttps://preview.redd.it/ehbrx3qgdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6336a0d1631936e4129065c3bb0ff8f80b083cff As a small business owner, I've been on the hunt for a reliable, portable cash register to make sales easier at my farmer's market stand. The Royal 100Cx, with its compact design and battery-powered operation, has been a reliable companion for me. The automatic tax computation feature is a game-changer, allowing me to easily manage sales and taxes on-the-go. However, the initial setup can be a bit daunting, and the manual doesn't do a fantastic job of explaining everything. The preset department pricing and sales analysis by category of merchandise are standout features that have helped me keep track of inventory and sales trends. It's crucial for businesses like mine, where inventory and sales fluctuate frequently. The ink roll printer provides a receipt printout, providing a professional touch to every transaction. In terms of drawbacks, one thing to note is that the tax computation is limited to only four rates – VAT, Canadian, and a couple of others – which may not cater to everyone's business needs. However, for my small farm market business, it's more than sufficient. Overall, the Royal 100Cx is a dependable piece of hardware, and it's been a significant asset in streamlining my sales process. It may have a slightly steep learning curve, but once mastered, it's a powerful tool for any small business seeking a portable, autonomous cash register solution. 🔗Royal 435dx Cash Register with 16 Department Capability and 8 Clerkshttps://preview.redd.it/p46ibzsgdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=388c3cad238c37035aa583f7a2fca3ca9b3546fb As a small business owner, I can attest to the convenience of the Royal 435dX Electronic Cash Register in my daily operations. Its 16 departments and 800 PLU's ensure an efficient flow of transactions, while the 8 clerk capacity and 4 tax rates enable seamless management, even for those serving in various locations or catering to international clientele. One of the highlights of this cash register is the front and rear LCD displays, allowing both the clerk and customer to see each transaction clearly. The memory protection with backup batteries provides added security to safeguard data in case of a power outage, a particularly valuable feature for businesses operating in areas with unpredictable power supply. However, a minor con would be the single station 57mm impact printer, which could limit the pace of transactions during peak rush hours. Also, the locking cash drawer tends to be a bit cumbersome, requiring more time than necessary to retrieve and return change. Despite these minor drawbacks, the Royal 435dX Electronic Cash Register has significantly improved my business operations, allowing me to keep track of transactions efficiently, even during peak hours. I would recommend this cash register to other small business owners looking for a reliable and feature-rich option that delivers exceptional performance at an affordable price point. 🔗Casio SE-S700 Cash Register: High-Speed Single-Station Thermal Printerhttps://preview.redd.it/bw8m582hdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cda297dee8ba2852e9a6050cf6d8cd0952683543 I recently upgraded my old, heavy cash register to the Casio SE-S700, and I must say, it has made running daily transactions a breeze. The built-in rear customer display ensures that prices are accurate, while the 8 department keys and 999 PLUs make it a cinch to organize my inventory. One of my favorite features is the customizable receipt header, allowing me to print unique messages on each customer receipt. The large, easy-to-read LCD display ensures that no mistakes are made during sales transactions. However, there are a few cons to consider. The plastic construction doesn't instill much confidence in its durability, and I wish the cash register drawer featured a more secure locking mechanism. Overall, the Casio SE-S700 has proven to be a reliable and efficient cash register for my small business, saving me time and preventing any hassles when it comes to handling transactions. 🔗Refurbished Sharp XE-A106 Sleek Microban Cash Registerhttps://preview.redd.it/pv6bngihdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5531ba303d34110e9ab375d0da811cd88813ade8 I recently got my hands on the Sharp XE-A106 Cash Register and boy, am I impressed! This refurbished gem has been a game-changer in managing sales at my small business. The first thing that caught my eye was the Microban antimicrobial keys. It's not just about style; it's about hygiene too! The large LED screen is another feature that I absolutely adore. With one line for eight digits, it's so easy to keep track of prices and sales. The drum printing on standard 2-1/4" plain paper roll is fast and quiet, making it perfect for my retail store. Plus, with functions like eight preprogrammed departments, 80 price lookups, four clerk numbers, auto-tax system, and flash reporting, managing sales has never been easier. But wait, there's more! The locking cash drawer with four-slot bill compartments, five-slot removable coin tray, and a media slot for quick deposit of checks and bills is just brilliant. Not to forget the easy programming that took me under an hour to set up. However, nothing's perfect. The one downside I noticed was the slow printing speed. Also, you can't turn off the receipt printer for a "no sale" option. All in all, the Sharp XE-A106 Cash Register is a reliable workhorse for any small business. Despite the few drawbacks, it's worth every penny. If you're in the market for a cash register, this should definitely be on your list! 🔗Royal 6000ML Compact Cash Register with 10 FT Cord, 6000 Price Look-ups, and 36 Departmentshttps://preview.redd.it/z2g8nyuhdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81c258294f362b2178c26fb0205217b7bdf1d328 I recently purchased the Royal 6000ML Cash Register for my small grocery store, and I have to say, it's been a game-changer. This compact cash register has truly helped streamline our operations, making it easier than ever to manage sales and generate accurate reports. One of my favorite features is the 36 Department categorization, which has allowed me to analyze sales data in a more detailed manner. Additionally, the 6,000 Price Look-ups (PLUs) have made entering frequently sold items quick and easy. The alphanumeric thermal printer, along with the front display and rear LED display, ensures that I can keep track of transactions with ease. However, there have been some cons as well. The initial setup was a bit challenging due to the lack of clarity in the instruction manual. Some users have also reported issues with the power cord connecting properly to the register. Overall, despite a few hiccups during setup, the Royal 6000ML Cash Register has been a valuable addition to my business. Its efficiency and ease of use make it an ideal choice for small-scale retail operations. Buyer's GuideImportant Features to Considerhttps://preview.redd.it/l1f6tb7kdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60f362f1d8ff300f38ec8af6d5fe74e00e85ad5c When choosing a cash register for your grocery store, there are several key features to consider:
Considerations Before BuyingBefore making your purchase, consider the following:
General AdviceTo ensure you get the most out of your cash register investment, follow these tips:
https://preview.redd.it/s7jo37mkdd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48430d79d82a6e170380b58862e27330a2f51f95 FAQWhat is a cash register used for in grocery stores?A cash register, also known as a till, is a device used by stores to manage sales transactions and customer purchases. In grocery stores, cash registers are used to scan and record product prices, calculate sales taxes, and process payments from customers. They also help store owners keep track of inventory and sales data.Which features should I look for in a cash register for my grocery store?https://preview.redd.it/fb0j6d1ldd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d070d87608432052aea95c9c5c86bdd7c3e1551 When choosing a cash register for your grocery store, consider the following features: - Barcode scanner
Do all cash registers accept credit and debit cards?Not all cash registers accept credit and debit cards by default. Some older models may require additional hardware or software to process card transactions. Newer cash register systems, usually known as POS systems, can handle payments through various methods, including credit, debit, mobile wallets, and contactless payments.How do I find a suitable cash register for my grocery store's size?Consider the complexity of your operations and the size of your store when choosing a cash register. For smaller grocery stores, a simple standalone cash register may be sufficient, while larger stores might require a more extensive POS system. Additionally, think about your future growth and ensure that the cash register you select can be upgraded or expanded if needed. https://preview.redd.it/0wzz1tildd1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3d244b63ca89c0cc85259168d4fd20abcabb906 What are the benefits of using a cash register in a grocery store?
How do I maintain and troubleshoot my cash register?Keep your cash register clean and free from dust, and make sure to perform regular maintenance tasks, such as checking the printer and scanner functionality. Additionally, stay updated on software and firmware updates to ensure optimal performance. For troubleshooting, consult your cash register's user manual. If you still need assistance, contact your cash register manufacturer or seller for technical support.What is the difference between a cash register and a POS system?A cash register is a more basic device used for processing transactions and managing inventory in a retail environment. In contrast, a POS system is a more advanced software solution that integrates multiple functions, such as sales reporting, employee management, and customer relationship management, in addition to accepting and processing payments.How can I upgrade or replace an existing cash register in my grocery store?Before upgrading or replacing your existing cash register, consider your store's requirements and the future growth of your business. Some cash register manufacturers and resellers offer trade-in programs that allow you to exchange your old cash register for a new model at a discounted price. Alternatively, you may choose to sell your old cash register and purchase a new one that suits your needs and budget. Make sure to transfer all relevant data from the old system to the new one to ensure a smooth transition.How much does a cash register cost for a grocery store?The cost of a cash register or POS system for a grocery store can vary depending on factors such as the features, brand, and type of system. Basic standalone cash registers can cost anywhere from $100 to $1,000, while more advanced POS systems can range from $1,000 to $10,000 or more. Be sure to research different options and compare prices before making your purchase.As an Amazon™ Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. |