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jeduka · 2 years

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9 Reasons to do Postgraduate Studies in Europe

If you are considering moving abroad, why not consider doing your postgraduate studies in Europe? European universities offer many quality and quantity of their courses, and they also have unique facilities and opportunities best suited for postgraduate studies. Let us tell you the top nine reasons why studying in Europe is a great idea.

1. Quality Education

Europe boasts a large portion of the strongest education system in the whole world. 483 Universities in Europe are ranked as the best universities in the world. Top 10 Ranking Universities in Europe:

University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Imperial College London, United Kingdom

UCL, United Kingdom

ETH Zurich,Switzerland

The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

EPFL, Switzerland

Université PSL,France

The University of Manchester, United Kingdom

King's College London, United Kingdom

2. Continent of innovation

When you think about the word 'development,' you may instantly consider Asia or America, given their strong connections to technology. However, did you know that the technology and programming you use every day originated in Germany? Skype, Spotify, Candy Crush, my craft, and Angry Birds originate from Europe.

3. Europe has history

Europe has a much longer history than some other countries. As a result, Europe's more distant origins frequently appeal to people who lack a similar sense of history at home. The jaw-dropping architecture and stays of yesterday will astound you. Additionally, in case you're a history student, these adventures may also advise your studies.

4. See a lot, close together

Europe comprises around 50 nations, and they all differ in traditions, way of life, language, sights, etc. So you won't run out of things to do, and you don't need to jump on a plane or move across oceans to discover them.

It is simple to travel through Europe. "InterRail-ing" via train is a well-known technique utilized by current students, those on a gap year, and travelers, permitting smooth passage across borders. If you come from someplace far away like Asia or America, make the most of being in Europe and see all you can – you most likely won't be here forever.

5. Study Abroad Scholarships

Are you put off by the tuition fees or living costs accompanying studying abroad in other countries? It’s worth researching to discover what particular European nations can offer. Many need to improve the reputation of their higher education areas, so they will offer study abroad scholarships, bursaries, and subsidized tuition fees to entice more international students to come to their shores.

For example, you may not know that studying in France is the most affordable country in Europe! Learn more: Most Affordable Study Abroad Destinations in Europe

6. Learn a new language

What better time to learn a new language than when you are young and ready to immerse yourself in a city where it's constantly spoken? Knowing more than one language can significantly boost your CV and open doors to future employment opportunities. What's more, in case you're studying a language course, learning it in the nation where it is widely spoken is a whole other experience you shouldn't miss out on.

7. Career options

Regardless of their origins, many, if not all, large international organizations will have a European headquarters. There are numerous graduate opportunities available, especially as organizations expand into new markets. Related to the point above, studying abroad in Europe can benefit you when you start to search for that first career step. Language abilities, adaptability to new locations, and learning of various cultures and markets would all be able to add to finding that dream work in Europe.

8. New friends

Making friends who live around the world is an excellent aspect of studying abroad. This is no different if you choose to study in Europe, given the cultural and ethnic diversity the continent has. Think, if you come back to these cities for business or pleasure in the future, you will have old friends to see.

9. Lifestyle

Europe has a reputation for having a relatively relaxed lifestyle. This is true to a specific extent. At the same time, a few preconceptions about Europeans might be valid. Facing European life firsthand is simply an ideal approach to understanding this for yourself. This doesn't imply that people in these nations don't know the meaning of hard work or that the higher education system here is insufficient with lacking. Instead, this relaxed attitude is evident in a wide variety of conditions and zones of European life.

Postgraduate studies in Europe are a great experience for students to take part in. Numerous institutions offer degree programs, from well-known to smaller, more specialized ones. Postgraduate studies will help you gain valuable work experience and even open new doors for you professionally in the future, so it's worth looking into if this is something that interests you.

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#Studies in Europe #Study in Europe

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utterlyinevitable · 4 years

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I’m bored and you’re headcanons are honestly so quality omfg but anyways write a headcanon of ethan and MC having a high school, slow burn love/not love (angsty ✨✨✨ kinda like us with our muses 💀 I’m not sure if Ethan ends up coming out as gay at the end tho-honestly if he did I’m living for it) love you lots! 💖 your tumblr niece

AHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAH no no nope Ethan will not come out as gay 🤣 But I am going to take full on creative liberty with this and you’re just gonna have to deal 😘

Ethan and Becca Meet in High School

Ethan Ramsey was 26 years old and a TA for the school’s science department. He took the part time role on a year’s contract to help pay off some of his student loans before he started residency.

At 17 years old, Becca was a senior at a small-town high school.

Becca was an interesting student - very quiet but intelligent. She surrounded herself with the strangest group boys. Those boys were her lab bench mates, and were incredibly subpar.

More than once Ethan caught the three boys playing games on their laptops and scrolling their feeds instead of paying attention.

He watched her carry them all on her back through the course. And ask for nothing in return.

It made his blood boil - they were clearly taking advantage of their friend.

The next week Ethan persuaded Ms. Cook changed up the seating arrangements.

Ethan took great pleasure in marking the boys Cs instead of the B+ they were used to getting with Becca’s help.

Second Semester, AP Bio was kicking Becca’s ass. She needed help preparing to get the 5 she needed on the exam in order to rank Top 15 in her class before graduation.

So she attended Ms. Cook’s after school sessions.

It seemed half the class needed extra help, so they were split up into groups. Half with Cook and half with Ramsey. Becca was assigned to Ramsey.

As the days and weeks progressed, the after school group dwindled.

After a choose-your-partner lab that day, Becca ended up with the same group of useless individuals.

At study group that afternoon, Ethan confronted her about it: “I don’t know why you let them take credit for your work. Be proud of your accomplishments.” “Being proud gets you enemies.” “You’d rather have friends and compromise your integrity, than showing everyone what you’re capable of?”

That made her think.

“I’d rather come out of high school unscathed.” “You can’t make everyone love you. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll come into your own.” “And who are you, Dr. Ramsey?” “Someone who took every opportunity I could. I advise you do the same.”

Over the next few weeks they got to know one another better. Ethan becoming her somewhat mentor and encouraging her to speak up more and assert herself.

She took all his words to heart.

He was proud and a little taken aback when she found a fallacy in one of their labs and called Ms. Cook out on it. It resulted in it being postponed to fix the errors.

Being a high school senior meant having to choose what college to go to.

She was getting acceptance letters left and right but she had absolutely no clue what she wanted to to with her life.

“Did you always want to be a doctor?” she asked one afternoon. “No. But it’s what I’m good at.” “How did you know it’s what you wanted to pursue?” “As much as I regret saying this, it felt like a calling.” “Hmph. Okay.” “You don’t agree with the notion?” “I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve applied to so many schools and different programs. How do I know which one’s right?”

They talked about what she’s passionate about and what makes her happiest and what careers she thinks she could pursue.

That got her to think. Think long and hard and over a few days.

She had a new outlook on life - she was on a new quest to find her eternal happiness.

May came around and she took her AP exam. She got a perfect score. _

Becca has eyes. She notices how attractive Dr. Ramsey is. Tbh everyone notices - he’s the thirst of the school district. Her girl friends even ask her about him multiple times a week. All she does is roll her eyes and say he’s too old for them.

Becca had been all but dating Bryce Lahela for the last year and a half.

They were friends.

Friends who kissed and touched and spent almost every Friday and Saturday night together with the gang.

It wasn’t a secret that Bryce was completely enamored by her.

He wanted her. Officially. And he was tried of waiting.

One day after school, Bryce was waiting outside Ms. Cook’s classroom for her.

He nodded at and dodged every student that passed him as he waited. She was the last one to leave.

“Hey,” he gave his megawatt smile. “Hey, what’re you doing here? Don’t you have practice?” “Ended early.”

They exchanged small talk and Bryce finally began to lay everything out in a young, round about way. He kissed her to butter her up.

“Be my girlfriend?” “What’s wrong with what we already have?” “C’mon, Becks,” he pulled her in closer by her beltloop. “No.” “No?” “What’s the point? We’re just going to break up before college.” “You don’t know that.”

She rattled off all her reasons why: they aren’t going to the same school, they’re young, she doesn’t want to resent him, she doesn’t want to fall in love with him just for it to end badly.

Bryce went to fight for her but was interrupted by the slam of a door. The two looked up and saw Dr. Ramsey and Ms. Cook locking up for the evening.

She pulled away from him and turned on her heels.

At the bus stop, Becca sat with her head in her hands.

Ethan came up next to her. “For what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision. You’re going to change immensely over the next few years.” “I know,” she grumbled into her palms. “It just hurts.” _

Becca went to Stony Brook and double majored in Chemistry and Biology.

She then attended Med School at UCLA.

Her second year, a familiar name stared back at her from her required internal medicine textbook: Dr. Ethan Ramsey.

Becca couldn’t help the smile as she remembered him. She’d almost forgot about the TA that impacted her life more than she could ever know.

Out of curiosity she consumed all his research. And when she finished everything, she found his direct email at Edenbrook.

She spent an entire weekend wondering if she should email him - Ask if he remembered her and that she followed his advice. She found her calling and it was helping people, just like him. She thought about throwing a joke in there but figured it had been too many years and it probably wouldn’t translate.

When residency came, she only had applied to Edenbrook.

And that’s when she emailed him.

She hadn’t gotten a response for months.

Actually, she didn’t hear anything until her decision letter came.

That same evening she found an email from him at the top of her inbox: Glad to see you’ve found your voice. We look forward to welcoming you to the team.

Ethan vaguely remembered Becca.

Honestly, he blocked the whole TA part of his life out.

Though, once he received her email, he personally vetted her application. And he was blown away. She wasn’t some naïve teenager.

Becca started working at Edenbrook and wanted nothing more than to learn from Ethan himself.

But he was different - jaded and cynical and not as approachable as she remembered.

He pushed her to reach her potential and she pushed his buttons.

They grew closer, especially with Naveen’s case. Basically the slow burn in canon happens.

These two get together, officially, once their jobs at the new Bloombrook Diagnostics Hospital were instated and they were definitely both staying in Boston for the foreseeable future. _

Becca didn’t particularly want to go to her 10-year high school reunion. She went because she was being recognized for her accomplishments with a few other alum.

She brought her boyfriend Ethan with her. “If I have to sit through this, so do you.” “I can honestly say I’ve never been to a reunion.” “Well, you’re my excuse to leave early. Gotta put the old man to bed,” she winked.

She was grateful for him playing along instead of taking another shift at work, and it would be nice to just be a couple for once. Without expectations hanging over them as the heads of their respective departments at work.

They had been in the ballroom for less than 15 minutes before they heard the loud whispers circulating.

Seems like Becca wasn’t the only one who remember the sexiest TA in all of high school history and of teenage dreams.

There were a bunch of intrusive questions being thrown at them and people coming up to them for the low down.

They tried not to be rude in their admonishments but the whole situation was awkward as fuck. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to bring him with her....

But there was no going back now.

And then Bryce sauntered over.

They hadn’t spoken to one another since senior prom when he took her best friend as a date and then hooked up with someone else at the after party.

“Rebecca, you look amazing,” he came in for a hug. “Thank you, Bryce.”

They had awkward catch ups at one side of the table as Ethan sat at the other end fending off questions from other girls and a select group of boys that remembered him.

Bryce and Becca talked about what they’ve been up to, how he’s now a surgeon and what brought him back home.

They lamented about how it’s strange they’re both in medicine and never spoke of that as a career path way back when.

In their long, flowing and unawkward conversation, they settled that it was best they went their separate ways.

They settled on the agreement that they didn’t think they’d end up at the schools they went to if they did date. They assumed love would reign and they’d choose to stay close by, and New York and California were not close by.

With all the long awaited closure finally out of the way, Bryce motioned towards Ethan; “So, you and that guy? How’d that happen?”

She knew what he was thinking and was quick to squash any rumors from starting.

“We work together. Didn’t mean for it to happen, it just kind of fell together.” “You look happy.” “I am.”

Bryce was bold in his next assumption. Knowing Becca as the girl who always spoke about never getting married and being a free bird as her main reasons for never committing to a boy, he wanted to catch her of guard: “Is it love?”

He wasn’t prepared for her answer.

“Yes.”

People change and are allowed to evolve. But it’s hard to imagine someone you once loved as anything other than who they were. And it’s even harder to see them in love with someone else.

#love you the mostest #open heart #open heart headcanons #hc #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey #bryce lahela #asked #you weren't expecting this and i wasn't expecting to write this #what did i just write????#Anonymous #bryce x mc

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scifigeneration · 6 years

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Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

by Kevin Knuth

US F/A-18 footage of a UFO (circled in red). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Parzival191919, CC BY-NC-SA

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

Cover of the October 1957 issue of pulp science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This was a special edition devoted to ‘flying saucers,’ which became a national obsession after airline pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a saucer-shaped flying objects in 1947.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there’s plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

The Fermi paradox

The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.

With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.

This photograph was taken in Wallonia, Belgium. J.S. Henrardi

Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.

UFOs, taboo for professional scientists

When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.

While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. And no aliens have visited Earth. Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.

I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.

The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can’t possibly be true. But there are credible witnesses and encounters.

Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?

I am often asked by friends and colleagues, “Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?” The fact is that they do. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.

As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock’s respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.

UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope’s field of view. Further sightings are documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky,” in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.

Evidence from government and military officers

Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.

Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil. Arquivo Nacional Collection

The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call “CIA drones” which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.

1948 Top Secret USAF UFO extraterrestrial document. United States Air Force

In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: “Disclosure has happened. … I’ve got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who’ve come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?”

A topic worthy of serious study

There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.

Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.

Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#science #astronomy #NASA #UFO #telescope #space exploration #extraterrestial life #Aliens #alien life

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Will Smith

Willard Carroll "Will" Smith Jr. (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, producer, rapper, comedian, and songwriter. In April 2007, Newsweek called him "the most powerful actor in Hollywood". Smith has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards.

In the late 1980s, Smith achieved modest fame as a rapper under the name The Fresh Prince. In 1990, his popularity increased dramatically when he starred in the popular NBC television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for six seasons until 1996. After the series ended, Smith transitioned from television to film, and has gone on to star in numerous blockbuster films. He is the only actor to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office, eleven consecutive films gross over $150 million internationally, and eight consecutive films in which he starred, open at the number one spot in the domestic box office tally.

Smith has been ranked as the most bankable star worldwide by Forbes. As of 2014, 17 of the 21 films in which he has had leading roles have accumulated worldwide gross earnings of over $100 million each, five taking in over $500 million each in global box office receipts. As of 2016, his films have grossed $7.5 billion at the global box office. For his performances as boxer Muhammad Ali in Ali (2001) and stockbroker Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), Smith received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Family and early life

Willard Carroll Smith Jr. was born on September 25, 1968 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Caroline (Bright), a Philadelphia school board administrator, and Willard Carroll Smith, Sr. (died 2016), a refrigeration engineer. He grew up in West Philadelphia's Wynnefield neighborhood, and was raised Baptist. He has three siblings, sister Pamela, who is four years older, and twins Harry and Ellen, who are three years younger. Smith attended Our Lady of Lourdes, a private Catholic elementary school in Philadelphia. His parents separated when he was 13, but did not actually divorce until around 2000.

Smith attended Overbrook High School. Though widely reported, it is untrue that Smith turned down a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); he never applied to college because he "wanted to rap." Smith says he was admitted to a "pre-engineering [summer] program" at MIT for high school students, but he did not attend. According to Smith, "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."

Recording and acting career

1985–1992: The Fresh Prince

Smith started as the MC of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, with his childhood friend Jeffrey "DJ Jazzy Jeff" Townes as turntablist and producer. Jeff Townes and Will Smith were introduced to each other by chance in 1985. One night, Townes was performing at a house party only a few doors down from Smith's residence, and he was missing his hype man. Smith decided to fill in. They both felt strong chemistry, and Townes was upset when his hype man finally made it to the party.

Soon after, the two decided to join forces. Smith enlisted a friend to join as the beatboxer of the group, Clarence Holmes (Ready Rock C), making them a trio. Philadelphia-based Word Up Records released their first single in late 1985 to 1986 when A&R man Paul Oakenfold introduced them to Word Up with their single "Girls Ain't Nothing but Trouble," a tale of funny misadventures that landed Smith and his former DJ and rap partner Mark Forrest (Lord Supreme) in trouble. The song sampled the theme song of "I Dream of Jeannie." Smith became known for light-hearted story-telling raps and capable, though profanity-free, "battle" rhymes. The single became a hit a month before Smith graduated from high school.

Based on this success, the duo were brought to the attention of Jive Records and Russell Simmons. The duo's first album, Rock the House, which was first released on Word Up in 1986 debuted on Jive in March of 1987. The group received the first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1989 for "Parents Just Don't Understand" (1988), though their most successful single was "Summertime" (1991), which earned the group their second Grammy and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Will Smith and Jeff Townes are still friends and claim that they never split up, having made songs under Smith's solo performer credit.

Smith spent money freely around 1988 and 1989 and underpaid his income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service eventually assessed a $2.8 million tax debt against Smith, took many of his possessions, and garnished his income. Smith was nearly bankrupt in 1990, when the NBC television network signed him to a contract and built a sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, around him. The show was successful and began his acting career. Will Smith set for himself the goal of becoming "the biggest movie star in the world", studying box office successes' common characteristics.

1993–2002: Solo music and film beginnings

Smith's first major roles were in the drama Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and the action film Bad Boys (1995) in which he starred opposite Martin Lawrence. The latter film was commercially successful, grossing $141,407,024 worldwide — $65,807,024 in North America and $75,600,000 overseas. However, critical reception was generally mixed. In 1996, Smith starred as part of an ensemble cast in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. The film was a massive blockbuster, becoming the second highest-grossing film in history at the time and establishing Smith as a prime box office draw.

In the summer of 1997 he starred alongside Tommy Lee Jones in the summer hit Men in Black playing Agent J. The film was released on July 2, 1997, by Columbia Pictures, and grossed over $589.3 million worldwide against a $90 million budget, becoming the year's third highest-grossing film, with an estimated 54,616,700 tickets sold in the US. It received worldwide acclaim, with critics highly praising its witty, sophisticated humor, Jones and Smith's performances.

During the summer of 1997, Smith also began his solo career with the release of "Men in Black", the theme song for the film of the same name, which topped singles charts in several regions across the world, including the UK. "Men in Black" (and second single "Just Cruisin'") was later included on Smith's debut solo album Big Willie Style, which reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200 and was certified nine times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The third single from the album, "Gettin' Jiggy wit It", became Smith's first Billboard Hot 100 number one when it was released in 1998.

In 1998, Smith starred with Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State. The following year he turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West (1999). Despite the disappointment of Wild Wild West, Smith has said that he harbors no regrets about his decision, asserting that Keanu Reeves's performance as Neo was superior to what Smith himself would have achieved, although in interviews subsequent to the release of Wild Wild West he stated that he "made a mistake on Wild Wild West. That could have been better."

Smith's second album was again supported by the release of a film theme song as the lead single: "Wild Wild West", featuring Dru Hill and Kool Moe Dee, topped the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the RIAA. The album in question, Willennium, reached number five on the Billboard 200 and was certified double platinum by the RIAA. "Will 2K", the second single from the album, reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the end of 1999, a video album was released featuring Smith's seven music videos released to date, which reached number 25 on the UK Music Video Chart. The same year, the rapper was also featured on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star Tatyana Ali's single "Boy You Knock Me Out", which reached number three on the UK Singles Chart and topped the UK R&B Singles Chart.

Smith portrayed heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali in the 2001 biopic Ali. For his performance he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. In 2002, following a four year musical hiatus, Smith returned with his third album Born to Reign, which reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA. The album's lead single was Men in Black II theme song "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)", which reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. Later in the year, Smith's first compilation album Greatest Hits was released, featuring songs from his three solo albums as well as those produced with DJ Jazzy Jeff. Smith's latest album Lost and Found was released in 2005, peaking at number six on the Billboard200. Lead single "Switch" reached the top ten of both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart.

Career successes and acting

2005 saw Smith return for Bad Boys II, the sequel to the 1995 film Bad Boys and the second installment in the Bad Boys series, the film follows detectives Burnett and Lowrey investigating the flow of ecstasy into Miami. Despite receiving generally negative reviews, the film was a box office success, grossing $270 million worldwide. In 2005, Smith was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for attending three premieres in a 24-hour time span.

Smith and his son Jaden played father and son in two productions: the 2006 biographical drama The Pursuit of Happyness, and the science fiction film After Earth, which was released on May 31, 2013. In The Pursuit of Happyness, Smith portrayed Chris Gardner. Smith said he first became interested in making a film about Gardner after seeing him on 20/20 and connected with him during production. The film, along with Smith's performance, received praise.

On December 10, 2007, Smith was honored at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Smith left an imprint of his hands and feet outside the world-renowned theater in front of many fans. Later that month, Smith starred in the film I Am Legend, released December 14, 2007. Despite marginally positive reviews, its opening was the largest ever for a film released in the United States during December. Smith himself has said that he considers the film to be "aggressively unique". A reviewer said that the film's commercial success "cemented [Smith's] standing as the number one box office draw in Hollywood." On December 1, 2008, TV Guide reported that Smith was selected as one of America's top ten most fascinating people of 2008 for a Barbara Walters ABC special that aired on December 4, 2008.

In 2008 Smith was reported to be developing a film entitled The Last Pharaoh, in which he would be starring as Taharqa. It was in 2008 that Smith starred in the superhero movie Hancock. Hancock has grossed $227,946,274 in the United States and Canada and $396,440,472 in other territories for a worldwide total of $624,386,746.

On August 19, 2011, it was announced that Smith had returned to the studio with producer La Mar Edwards to work on his fifth studio album.

Men in Black III opened on May 25, 2012 with Smith again reprising his role as Agent J. This was his first major starring role in four years. Smith worked with Barry Sonnenfeld during the film's helming who commented that Smith was an exception in being an actor who was successful not for the size of his head, but that his "ego" compensated for it. After the release of Men in Black III, Smith was content with ending his work with the franchise: "I think three is enough for me. Three of anything is enough for me. We'll look at it and we'll consider it, but it feels like that it might be time to let someone else do that." Men in Black 3 was released ten years after release of Men in Black II (2002), and grossed over $624 million worldwide. Unadjusted for inflation, it is the highest-grossing film in the series.

Recent work

Smith starred opposite Margot Robbie in the romance drama Focus. He played Nicky Spurgeon, a veteran con artist who takes a young, attractive woman under his wing. Focus was released on February 27, 2015. Smith was set to star in the sci-fi thriller Brilliance, an adaptation of Marcus Sakey's novel of the same name scripted by Jurassic Park writer David Koepp, but later left the project.

Smith played Dr. Bennet Omalu of the Brain Injury Research Institute in the sports-drama Concussion, who became the first person to discover chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Smith's involvement was due to his departure from the science fiction film Brilliance. He had doubts about the film early in production, saying, "Some of my happiest memories are of watching my son catch and throw a football. I didn’t want to be the guy who did a movie saying football could be dangerous." These views subsided upon his meeting with Omalu, whose words about American ideals resonated with Smith.

In 2016, Smith played Deadshot in the supervillain team-up action film Suicide Squad. Smith's inclusion in Suicide Squad meant choosing it over Independence Day: Resurgence, which he turned down due to seeing his involvement in the sequel as "clinging and clawing backwards." Later that year, Smith starred in director David Frankel's drama Collateral Beauty, playing a New York advertising executive who succumbs to a deep depression after a personal tragedy. Weeks after signing Smith onto the film, his father was diagnosed with cancer, from which he died in 2016. As part of his role required him to read about religion and the afterlife, he was brought closer to the elder Smith, calling the experience "a beautiful way to prepare for a movie and an even more majestic way to say goodbye to my father."

Upcoming projects

Smith will portray The Genie (originally played by Robin Williams in the 1992 animated film) in a live-action film adaptation of Disney's Aladdin directed by Guy Ritchie which is scheduled to be released on May 24, 2019.

Personal life

Smith married Sheree Zampino in 1992. They had one son, Trey Smith, born on November 11, 1992, and divorced in 1995. Trey appeared in his father's music video for the 1998 single "Just the Two of Us". He also acted in two episodes of the sitcom All of Us, and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and on the David Blaine: Real or Magic TV special.

Smith married actress Jada Koren Pinkett in 1997. Together they have two children: Jaden Christopher Syre Smith (born 1998), his co-star in The Pursuit of Happyness and After Earth, and Willow Camille Reign Smith (born 2000), who appeared as his daughter in I Am Legend. Smith and his brother Harry own Treyball Development Inc., a Beverly Hills-based company named after Trey. Smith and his family reside in Los Angeles, California.

Public image

Smith was raised in a Baptist household and went to a Catholic school, but he no longer identifies himself as religious. Though he is not a Scientologist and has denied rumors claiming him as a member of the Church of Scientology, he has spoken favorably about it, saying "I just think a lot of the ideas in Scientology are brilliant and revolutionary and non-religious."

Smith gave $1.3 million to charities in 2007, of which $450,000 went to two Christian ministries, and $122,500 went to three Scientology organizations; the remaining beneficiaries included "a Los Angeles mosque, other Christian-based schools and churches, and [.....] the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Center in Israel." Smith and his wife have also founded a private elementary school in Calabasas, California, the New Village Leadership Academy. Federal tax filing showed that Will Smith donated $1.2 million to the school in 2010.

Smith donated $4,600 to the 2008 presidential campaign of Democrat Barack Obama. On December 11, 2009, Smith and his wife hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway to celebrate Obama's winning of the prize. In 2012, Smith stated he supports legalizing same-sex marriage.

http://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/?q=Will+Smith&lang=en

6 notes · View notes

marketingcomcaio · 4 years

Text

The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020

No matter how great the content on your website is, your hard work could amount to nothing without proper technical SEO.

Technical SEO gives your site structure, makes it super easy for search engine bots to crawl and index, and helps Google understand what each page is about.

URL structuring, robots.txt, redirect codes, canonical tags, .htaccess files, load time, and many others. It all matters.

Do all those things sound unfamiliar to you? No?

Well, you don’t need to.

Tons of companies already know this stuff and it’s really easy to work with them.

That’s where this guide comes in.

Our team at Neil Patel Digital researched, reviewed, and listed the top technical SEO companies on four criteria:

Outstanding customer reviews.

Awards, impressive clientele, and a long history of delivering stellar technical SEO work.

Thought-leadership—consistently publishing of insightful articles and trends on the topic.

A strong reputation amongst other SEO professionals.

From these criteria, we found technical SEO companies you can trust and what they’re good for:

The 4 Top Technical SEO Companies in The World

Neil Patel Digital – Best for Technical Content Structuring

Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Without further ado, let’s dive into what makes us trust and bet our reputation on these companies.

1. Neil Patel Digital – Best For Technical Content Structuring

It’s been touted over and again that content is king. While there’s truth in this, what most people never take into consideration is content structuring.

Neil Patel Digital is the go-to SEO company for excellent content structuring.

Well, don’t take my word for it. Let me show you why.

From our years of extensive search engine optimization experience, we found that for content marketing to work and power long-term SEO strategy, it must have the right structure.

This is a key piece of our comprehensive SEO program.

And what have we to show for doing this, you ask?

The result of doing this speaks for itself:

Over 3 million visitors per month on this blog. All built from scratch.

Content was a huge part of this but the site wouldn’t be nearly as large without the right structure and technical SEO.

You can get access to this vast technical SEO expertise by working with the Neil Patel Digital team.

Today, we’ve developed a content marketing program with content structuring (in the form of content clusters) to help clients get technical SEO right from day one.

2. Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Almost all great endeavors begin with taking in-depth audits of what’s already existing.

Technical SEO is no exception.

You won’t achieve much in your effort to optimize your site for search engine bots’ crawling and indexing without first doing a proper audit of your site’s structure.

And Webris is the company we recommend for technical SEO audits.

If you a do quick Google search for “technical SEO audit,” you’ll find this excellent content piece by Webris:

Ranking on Google’s top spot for this search term is another way of saying that earned its stripes on this list.

No company can earn that by accident.

This proves that Webris walks the talk when it comes to technical SEO audits and is a reliable option if you’re just getting started.

Founded by Ryan Stewart, the core strengths of Webris is technical SEO audits and conversion-focused UX. This company boasts of an incredibly talented team of advanced technical SEO consultants.

Major brands like Shopify and Accenture trust Webris and have worked with them.

3. Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Salt.agency prides itself on “Technical Excellence” and that’s for a good reason. This company breathes technical SEO before anything else:

Massive enterprise sites can have all sort of crazy technical problems.

If you’re running one of these sites, you need a team that’s worked with that type of complexity before.

In this case, Salt.agency is the best option.

With offices in Boston, Leeds, and London, Salt.agency’s clients include Cloudflare, Hartley Botanic, Brex, Travel Supermarket, and many others.

4. Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Orainti specializes in providing technical and strategic SEO services for brands in competitive industries.

This company approaches digital marketing and search engine optimization with a technical mindset, which justifies its inclusion in this highly-vetted list.

And they work mostly with ecommerce brands selling internationally.

International ecommerce businesses have tons of unique challenges like dealing with multilingual sites, getting product and category pages ranked properly, and avoiding duplicate content.

Orainti comes highly recommended for this.

Aleyda Solis is the Founder of Orainti. She is a veteran SEO practitioner, speaker, and author who has earned recognition and awards for her technical SEO expertise by organizations such as Forbes and European Search Awards.

Orainti boasts an impressive portfolio of top brands, including Zillow, Under Armour, Sage, Eventbrite, and others.

5 Characteristics That Make a Great Technical SEO Company

What separates the good technical SEO shops from the great ones? What would you specifically look for when choosing someone to work with?

Here’s what I look for.

1. A Complete Implementation Process that Includes Technical SEO

Technical SEO brings structure to your site. It helps search engine bots crawl, index, and rank your website correctly, which is essential for driving traffic.

Also, it helps to boost your site’s load time.

However, this doesn’t mean that once you have an excellent technical SEO, everything search engine optimization will fall in place automatically.

The best technical SEO companies have a complete SEO program including manual site review, technical SEO implementation, content strategy, and others.

If you’re really good at SEO already and just need a quick SEO audit to double check everything, you could get value at working with a specialist. But for everyone else, I recommend working with someone that understands the complete SEO strategy. It’s the only way to build a site with tons of traffic.

2. Thought leadership

It takes lots of experimentation to implement technical SEO strategies that move the needle. Companies that embark on this kind of excruciating work always like to document their experience and findings.

Working with SEO thought leaders increases the odds of a successful project.

After all, if someone can successfully teach technical SEO, they can also help your business directly.

Publishing cutting-edge content about technical SEO is a great sign that they’ll deliver amazing results.

3. An Impressive Client Portfolio

An excellent way to see if the expertise and processes used by a technical SEO company works is by looking at its client portfolio.

There is nuance here.

Having a ton of major brands is great. But that doesn’t mean that you can get help with your exact situation.

Ideally, the technical SEO company has worked with similar companies like your own.

4. Real Life Results

The nice thing about technical SEO is that it’s extremely practical. Technical problems come up that tanks traffic. Then technical SEO experts fix those problems.

It’s cut and dry.

Any great technical SEO company should have plenty of case studies where they turned around a site after it got hit. The more obscure the technical problem, the more likely they’ll be able to find weird problems on your own site.

Sometimes, these case studies are published on their site. But a lot of companies don’t like sharing the best stories. So ask their team as you talk to them. They should be able to give you plenty of examples during a call.

5. A Diversified Team

Covering every last technical SEO requirement is way too big of a task for a single person. You’ll need a fully-staffed team to do it all. Especially on major sites.

Go through the company’s team pages and LinkedIn employees, then look for lots of depth and expertise across the entire team.

What to Expect from a Great Technical SEO Company

If you’re like most people who only realize the need for technical SEO late on, you’ll probably be wondering what you should expect from one.

The most significant things to expect are what follows.

1. A discovery session

After you reach out to a technical SEO company, they’ll want to get on a call to understand what you’re looking for.

It’s the only way to understand the goals that you have for your site.

If a technical SEO company wants to jump straight into an audit without even getting on the phone, it’s a sign they’re running an “audit mill” and aren’t going to spend much time on your project.

Find a company that wants to go really deep and understand the full picture.

2. A one-time audit proposal

Most technically SEO companies will perform a one-time audit for a flat fee.

Since this is a standard part of their practice, they can usually jump into this right away.

Assuming their fee works with your budget, you could have someone get started within a week. That’s how easy it is to get going.

Before starting the audit, ask them for everything that they’ll check. It should include everything like canonical problems, indexing issues, duplicate content, other Google Search Console errors, everything.

If the list doesn’t feel extremely comprehensive, get a few quotes from other companies.

3. Completing the audit

Once you’ve agreed to move forward with an audit, the company will get started.

These usually take a few weeks to complete, depending on the size of your site.

Of course, you’ll need to give them access to your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, WordPress account, and possibly your web host.

During the audit, there shouldn’t be much work for you or your team. The company performing the audit may have questions but they can do the vast majority of the work on their own.

4. Implementation proposal

Most technical SEO audits only include the discovery of site issues. The project doesn’t usually include the work that’s required to fix any problems.

This is because most problems don’t have easy fixes.

For example, if your site has terrible site speed that’s impacting your rankings, you’ll need to do a ton of front-end work in order to fix it. That will also involve your marketing team and possibly other agencies.

So once the audit is complete, expect to see a proposal that includes implementing any solutions.

Something to watch for here: a great technical SEO company will know the limits of it’s expertise. When they find problems outside their capabilities, they’ll tell you and advise you to work with someone else on fixing them. Site rebuilds and content marketing are good examples of this.

If a technical SEO agency tells you that it can fix every single problem, double check and make sure they truly have real expertise in those areas.

Should I take Technical SEO Seriously?

Yes!

Technical SEO is like the frame of your house. Only with good bones can your content and marketing drive traffic to your site.

But, as things add up, and you have hundreds or thousands of pages on your site, something is going to break.

Search engines have a harder time crawling your site, content isn’t indexed, and your site speed slows way down.

Even if you start with a great foundation, you need a healthy rebuild every few years.

If you haven’t done a deep technical SEO audit recently, now’s the time.

The post The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020 appeared first on Neil Patel.

The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020 Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

0 notes

remelitalia · 4 years

Text

The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020

No matter how great the content on your website is, your hard work could amount to nothing without proper technical SEO.

Technical SEO gives your site structure, makes it super easy for search engine bots to crawl and index, and helps Google understand what each page is about.

URL structuring, robots.txt, redirect codes, canonical tags, .htaccess files, load time, and many others. It all matters.

Do all those things sound unfamiliar to you? No?

Well, you don’t need to.

Tons of companies already know this stuff and it’s really easy to work with them.

That’s where this guide comes in.

Our team at Neil Patel Digital researched, reviewed, and listed the top technical SEO companies on four criteria:

Outstanding customer reviews.

Awards, impressive clientele, and a long history of delivering stellar technical SEO work.

Thought-leadership—consistently publishing of insightful articles and trends on the topic.

A strong reputation amongst other SEO professionals.

From these criteria, we found technical SEO companies you can trust and what they’re good for:

The 4 Top Technical SEO Companies in The World

Neil Patel Digital – Best for Technical Content Structuring

Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Without further ado, let’s dive into what makes us trust and bet our reputation on these companies.

1. Neil Patel Digital – Best For Technical Content Structuring

It’s been touted over and again that content is king. While there’s truth in this, what most people never take into consideration is content structuring.

Neil Patel Digital is the go-to SEO company for excellent content structuring.

Well, don’t take my word for it. Let me show you why.

From our years of extensive search engine optimization experience, we found that for content marketing to work and power long-term SEO strategy, it must have the right structure.

This is a key piece of our comprehensive SEO program.

And what have we to show for doing this, you ask?

The result of doing this speaks for itself:

Over 3 million visitors per month on this blog. All built from scratch.

Content was a huge part of this but the site wouldn’t be nearly as large without the right structure and technical SEO.

You can get access to this vast technical SEO expertise by working with the Neil Patel Digital team.

Today, we’ve developed a content marketing program with content structuring (in the form of content clusters) to help clients get technical SEO right from day one.

2. Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Almost all great endeavors begin with taking in-depth audits of what’s already existing.

Technical SEO is no exception.

You won’t achieve much in your effort to optimize your site for search engine bots’ crawling and indexing without first doing a proper audit of your site’s structure.

And Webris is the company we recommend for technical SEO audits.

If you a do quick Google search for “technical SEO audit,” you’ll find this excellent content piece by Webris:

Ranking on Google’s top spot for this search term is another way of saying that earned its stripes on this list.

No company can earn that by accident.

This proves that Webris walks the talk when it comes to technical SEO audits and is a reliable option if you’re just getting started.

Founded by Ryan Stewart, the core strengths of Webris is technical SEO audits and conversion-focused UX. This company boasts of an incredibly talented team of advanced technical SEO consultants.

Major brands like Shopify and Accenture trust Webris and have worked with them.

3. Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Salt.agency prides itself on “Technical Excellence” and that’s for a good reason. This company breathes technical SEO before anything else:

Massive enterprise sites can have all sort of crazy technical problems.

If you’re running one of these sites, you need a team that’s worked with that type of complexity before.

In this case, Salt.agency is the best option.

With offices in Boston, Leeds, and London, Salt.agency’s clients include Cloudflare, Hartley Botanic, Brex, Travel Supermarket, and many others.

4. Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Orainti specializes in providing technical and strategic SEO services for brands in competitive industries.

This company approaches digital marketing and search engine optimization with a technical mindset, which justifies its inclusion in this highly-vetted list.

And they work mostly with ecommerce brands selling internationally.

International ecommerce businesses have tons of unique challenges like dealing with multilingual sites, getting product and category pages ranked properly, and avoiding duplicate content.

Orainti comes highly recommended for this.

Orainti boasts an impressive portfolio of top brands, including Zillow, Under Armour, Sage, Eventbrite, and others.

5 Characteristics That Make a Great Technical SEO Company

What separates the good technical SEO shops from the great ones? What would you specifically look for when choosing someone to work with?

Here’s what I look for.

1. A Complete Implementation Process that Includes Technical SEO

Technical SEO brings structure to your site. It helps search engine bots crawl, index, and rank your website correctly, which is essential for driving traffic.

Also, it helps to boost your site’s load time.

However, this doesn’t mean that once you have an excellent technical SEO, everything search engine optimization will fall in place automatically.

The best technical SEO companies have a complete SEO program including manual site review, technical SEO implementation, content strategy, and others.

2. Thought leadership

Working with SEO thought leaders increases the odds of a successful project.

After all, if someone can successfully teach technical SEO, they can also help your business directly.

Publishing cutting-edge content about technical SEO is a great sign that they’ll deliver amazing results.

3. An Impressive Client Portfolio

An excellent way to see if the expertise and processes used by a technical SEO company works is by looking at its client portfolio.

There is nuance here.

Having a ton of major brands is great. But that doesn’t mean that you can get help with your exact situation.

Ideally, the technical SEO company has worked with similar companies like your own.

4. Real Life Results

The nice thing about technical SEO is that it’s extremely practical. Technical problems come up that tanks traffic. Then technical SEO experts fix those problems.

It’s cut and dry.

5. A Diversified Team

Covering every last technical SEO requirement is way too big of a task for a single person. You’ll need a fully-staffed team to do it all. Especially on major sites.

Go through the company’s team pages and LinkedIn employees, then look for lots of depth and expertise across the entire team.

What to Expect from a Great Technical SEO Company

If you’re like most people who only realize the need for technical SEO late on, you’ll probably be wondering what you should expect from one.

The most significant things to expect are what follows.

1. A discovery session

After you reach out to a technical SEO company, they’ll want to get on a call to understand what you’re looking for.

It’s the only way to understand the goals that you have for your site.

Find a company that wants to go really deep and understand the full picture.

2. A one-time audit proposal

Most technically SEO companies will perform a one-time audit for a flat fee.

Since this is a standard part of their practice, they can usually jump into this right away.

Assuming their fee works with your budget, you could have someone get started within a week. That’s how easy it is to get going.

If the list doesn’t feel extremely comprehensive, get a few quotes from other companies.

3. Completing the audit

Once you’ve agreed to move forward with an audit, the company will get started.

These usually take a few weeks to complete, depending on the size of your site.

Of course, you’ll need to give them access to your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, WordPress account, and possibly your web host.

During the audit, there shouldn’t be much work for you or your team. The company performing the audit may have questions but they can do the vast majority of the work on their own.

4. Implementation proposal

Most technical SEO audits only include the discovery of site issues. The project doesn’t usually include the work that’s required to fix any problems.

This is because most problems don’t have easy fixes.

So once the audit is complete, expect to see a proposal that includes implementing any solutions.

If a technical SEO agency tells you that it can fix every single problem, double check and make sure they truly have real expertise in those areas.

Should I take Technical SEO Seriously?

Yes!

Technical SEO is like the frame of your house. Only with good bones can your content and marketing drive traffic to your site.

But, as things add up, and you have hundreds or thousands of pages on your site, something is going to break.

Search engines have a harder time crawling your site, content isn’t indexed, and your site speed slows way down.

Even if you start with a great foundation, you need a healthy rebuild every few years.

If you haven’t done a deep technical SEO audit recently, now’s the time.

The post The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020 appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/technical-seo-companies/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020 that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/the-4-best-technical-seo-companies-of-2020 via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

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jjpocketbook · 4 years

Text

The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020

No matter how great the content on your website is, your hard work could amount to nothing without proper technical SEO.

Technical SEO gives your site structure, makes it super easy for search engine bots to crawl and index, and helps Google understand what each page is about.

URL structuring, robots.txt, redirect codes, canonical tags, .htaccess files, load time, and many others. It all matters.

Do all those things sound unfamiliar to you? No?

Well, you don’t need to.

Tons of companies already know this stuff and it’s really easy to work with them.

That’s where this guide comes in.

Our team at Neil Patel Digital researched, reviewed, and listed the top technical SEO companies on four criteria:

Outstanding customer reviews.

Awards, impressive clientele, and a long history of delivering stellar technical SEO work.

Thought-leadership—consistently publishing of insightful articles and trends on the topic.

A strong reputation amongst other SEO professionals.

From these criteria, we found technical SEO companies you can trust and what they’re good for:

The 4 Top Technical SEO Companies in The World

Neil Patel Digital – Best for Technical Content Structuring

Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Without further ado, let’s dive into what makes us trust and bet our reputation on these companies.

1. Neil Patel Digital – Best For Technical Content Structuring

It’s been touted over and again that content is king. While there’s truth in this, what most people never take into consideration is content structuring.

Neil Patel Digital is the go-to SEO company for excellent content structuring.

Well, don’t take my word for it. Let me show you why.

From our years of extensive search engine optimization experience, we found that for content marketing to work and power long-term SEO strategy, it must have the right structure.

This is a key piece of our comprehensive SEO program.

And what have we to show for doing this, you ask?

The result of doing this speaks for itself:

Over 3 million visitors per month on this blog. All built from scratch.

Content was a huge part of this but the site wouldn’t be nearly as large without the right structure and technical SEO.

You can get access to this vast technical SEO expertise by working with the Neil Patel Digital team.

Today, we’ve developed a content marketing program with content structuring (in the form of content clusters) to help clients get technical SEO right from day one.

2. Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Almost all great endeavors begin with taking in-depth audits of what’s already existing.

Technical SEO is no exception.

You won’t achieve much in your effort to optimize your site for search engine bots’ crawling and indexing without first doing a proper audit of your site’s structure.

And Webris is the company we recommend for technical SEO audits.

If you a do quick Google search for “technical SEO audit,” you’ll find this excellent content piece by Webris:

Ranking on Google’s top spot for this search term is another way of saying that earned its stripes on this list.

No company can earn that by accident.

This proves that Webris walks the talk when it comes to technical SEO audits and is a reliable option if you’re just getting started.

Founded by Ryan Stewart, the core strengths of Webris is technical SEO audits and conversion-focused UX. This company boasts of an incredibly talented team of advanced technical SEO consultants.

Major brands like Shopify and Accenture trust Webris and have worked with them.

3. Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Salt.agency prides itself on “Technical Excellence” and that’s for a good reason. This company breathes technical SEO before anything else:

Massive enterprise sites can have all sort of crazy technical problems.

If you’re running one of these sites, you need a team that’s worked with that type of complexity before.

In this case, Salt.agency is the best option.

With offices in Boston, Leeds, and London, Salt.agency’s clients include Cloudflare, Hartley Botanic, Brex, Travel Supermarket, and many others.

4. Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands

Orainti specializes in providing technical and strategic SEO services for brands in competitive industries.

This company approaches digital marketing and search engine optimization with a technical mindset, which justifies its inclusion in this highly-vetted list.

And they work mostly with ecommerce brands selling internationally.

International ecommerce businesses have tons of unique challenges like dealing with multilingual sites, getting product and category pages ranked properly, and avoiding duplicate content.

Orainti comes highly recommended for this.

Orainti boasts an impressive portfolio of top brands, including Zillow, Under Armour, Sage, Eventbrite, and others.

5 Characteristics That Make a Great Technical SEO Company

What separates the good technical SEO shops from the great ones? What would you specifically look for when choosing someone to work with?

Here’s what I look for.

1. A Complete Implementation Process that Includes Technical SEO

Technical SEO brings structure to your site. It helps search engine bots crawl, index, and rank your website correctly, which is essential for driving traffic.

Also, it helps to boost your site’s load time.

However, this doesn’t mean that once you have an excellent technical SEO, everything search engine optimization will fall in place automatically.

The best technical SEO companies have a complete SEO program including manual site review, technical SEO implementation, content strategy, and others.

2. Thought leadership

Working with SEO thought leaders increases the odds of a successful project.

After all, if someone can successfully teach technical SEO, they can also help your business directly.

Publishing cutting-edge content about technical SEO is a great sign that they’ll deliver amazing results.

3. An Impressive Client Portfolio

An excellent way to see if the expertise and processes used by a technical SEO company works is by looking at its client portfolio.

There is nuance here.

Having a ton of major brands is great. But that doesn’t mean that you can get help with your exact situation.

Ideally, the technical SEO company has worked with similar companies like your own.

4. Real Life Results

The nice thing about technical SEO is that it’s extremely practical. Technical problems come up that tanks traffic. Then technical SEO experts fix those problems.

It’s cut and dry.

5. A Diversified Team

Covering every last technical SEO requirement is way too big of a task for a single person. You’ll need a fully-staffed team to do it all. Especially on major sites.

Go through the company’s team pages and LinkedIn employees, then look for lots of depth and expertise across the entire team.

What to Expect from a Great Technical SEO Company

If you’re like most people who only realize the need for technical SEO late on, you’ll probably be wondering what you should expect from one.

The most significant things to expect are what follows.

1. A discovery session

After you reach out to a technical SEO company, they’ll want to get on a call to understand what you’re looking for.

It’s the only way to understand the goals that you have for your site.

Find a company that wants to go really deep and understand the full picture.

2. A one-time audit proposal

Most technically SEO companies will perform a one-time audit for a flat fee.

Since this is a standard part of their practice, they can usually jump into this right away.

Assuming their fee works with your budget, you could have someone get started within a week. That’s how easy it is to get going.

If the list doesn’t feel extremely comprehensive, get a few quotes from other companies.

3. Completing the audit

Once you’ve agreed to move forward with an audit, the company will get started.

These usually take a few weeks to complete, depending on the size of your site.

Of course, you’ll need to give them access to your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, WordPress account, and possibly your web host.

During the audit, there shouldn’t be much work for you or your team. The company performing the audit may have questions but they can do the vast majority of the work on their own.

4. Implementation proposal

Most technical SEO audits only include the discovery of site issues. The project doesn’t usually include the work that’s required to fix any problems.

This is because most problems don’t have easy fixes.

So once the audit is complete, expect to see a proposal that includes implementing any solutions.

If a technical SEO agency tells you that it can fix every single problem, double check and make sure they truly have real expertise in those areas.

Should I take Technical SEO Seriously?

Yes!

Technical SEO is like the frame of your house. Only with good bones can your content and marketing drive traffic to your site.

But, as things add up, and you have hundreds or thousands of pages on your site, something is going to break.

Search engines have a harder time crawling your site, content isn’t indexed, and your site speed slows way down.

Even if you start with a great foundation, you need a healthy rebuild every few years.

If you haven’t done a deep technical SEO audit recently, now’s the time.

The post The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020 appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/technical-seo-companies/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, The 4 Best Technical SEO Companies of 2020, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/the-4-best-technical-seo-companies-of-2020/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

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armeniaitn · 4 years

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Beyond Motherhood: Powerful Women in Politics

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/beyond-motherhood-powerful-women-in-politics-44324-06-08-2020/

Beyond Motherhood: Powerful Women in Politics

This week in our empowerment series we meet three phenomenal women – U.S. Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA-18), U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA-14), and Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Sara Gideon.

Together they exemplify what it means to be a strong leader blazing trails, empowering women, all while supporting the Armenian American community.

Rep. Anna Eshoo

First, we meet Representative Anna Eshoo. Born in New Britain, Connecticut, Rep. Eshoo is both Assyrian and Armenian and has represented California’s 18th congressional district since 1993.

The first woman elected to serve as Chair of the Health Subcommittee, Rep. Eshoo also serves as the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, as well as the House Energy and Commerce Committee. During her time in office, she has fought for consumers, access to health care for families, advocated for the development of clean energy technology and protected the environment. In order to provide citizens with affordable health insurance, she has drafted parts of the Affordable Care Act and continues to strengthen this law.

Rep. Eshoo has left an indelible mark on US policy – from her work on the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996 to her work in helping fund “Next Generation” 911 technology following the tragic events of September 11. Recognized as one of the 10 most powerful women in Silicon Valley, she has also been awarded the Statesmanship Award for her commitment to improving the lives of others.

As the only Armenian-Assyrian in Congress, Rep. Eshoo who has served as a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution since 1993, took pride in leading the bipartisan effort to move the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.Res.296, to the House floor for a vote in 2019. The bipartisan resolution which passed with an overwhelming vote of 405 to 11 fights denial of the Armenian Genocide and encourages truth and justice.

In response to the passage of the resolution, Rep. Eshoo stated, “Between 1915 and 1923, 1.5 million Armenians, and hundreds of thousands of Assyrians, Greeks, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians were systematically slaughtered at the hands of the Ottoman Empire… There is an historic parallel today as Turkey is once again engaging in ethnic cleansing, this time against the Kurds in Syria. This resolution not only honors and commemorates my ancestors and all those who perished in the first genocide of the 20th century but serves as a timely reminder that we must remain vigilant to prevent similar atrocities today.”

A proud mother of two children, Rep. Eshoo received her degree from Canada College and the CORO Foundation. In 1982, she was voted to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors where she went on to serve the County Board for 10 years before she became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Jackie Speier

Another powerhouse in the halls of Congress is Rep. Jackie Speier – an Armenian American politician who has served as a US Representative for California’s 14th congressional district since 2008.

A staunch supporter for women’s equality, LGBTQ rights and cleaning up government corruption, she was named in Newsweek’s top 150 “Fearless Women” in the world, as well as one of the most influential people in American politics in “Politico’s 50.”

She serves on the Subcommittees on Environment and Government Operations and is also Co-Chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, Congressional Armenian Caucus, Bipartisan Task Force to End Sexual Violence, and the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.

A staunch advocate against sexual assault in the military as well as on college campuses, she had over 300 bi-partisan bills signed into law that have helped achieve justice for women and children. Rep. Speier introduced the “Me Too” movement in the halls of Congress in October 2017, later becoming the basis of the bipartisan “Congressional Accountability Act” and “Reform Act” that was signed into law in December 2018.

Although she’s had several wins, she’s also faced her fair share of challenges. For instance, when Rep. Speier started working on implementing sexual harassment training in Congress in 2014, she was told that anti-harassment training would never take place. However, the CAA Reform Act made sure that anti-harassment training was mandatory.

She tells the story of one of her most tragic and challenging encounters in her book, Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back. In it, she shares her traumatic experience in Jonestown, Guyana, where she joined the late Congressman Leo Ryan’s delegation in rescuing defectors from Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple. Congressman Ryan was murdered, and Rep. Speier was shot five times.

Recovering from this traumatizing experience, she decided that she wanted to show her strength rather than her weakness and fight against inequality and injustice in the U.S. Congress. Her experience highlights her strong leadership and character as she fought her hardest to stay alive and use her voice to help others.

She brings that same passion to the Armenian cause. As co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues and one of three Armenian American members of Congress, she was a relentless advocate for passage of H.Res.296, the Armenian Genocide resolution.

On the heels of the passage of the resolution, she said, “The House’s resounding 405-11 vote to recognize the Armenian Genocide is a great victory for millions of Armenians around the world. Congress has failed to affirm the truth for far too long and I’m heartened that we have joined our allies around the globe, and 49 U.S. states, in acknowledging that the Ottoman Empire perpetrated a genocide upon the Armenian people.” She went on to say, “This vote also sent a critically important message to the world in light of Turkey’s modern-day ethnic cleansing campaign of the Kurds in Syria. Today, we sent a message that history can’t be rewritten, that America will no longer abandon Armenians with feeble excuses for a so-called ally, and that we will never forget the atrocities of the past and present. Today we affirmed the Armenian Genocide was real and we stand against it and those who seek to perpetuate such evil again.” Speier received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Davis and her J.D. from UC Hastings College of the Law. A proud wife and mother, Gideon focuses on making the lives of working families easier, particularly in the current economy.

Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon

Lastly, we meet Sara Gideon, speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. Speaker Gideon, who is of Indian and Armenian descent, is running for US Senate in Maine with a focus on public interest. Speaker Gideon recently won the Democratic primary for the US Senate seat in Maine challenging the seat held by Senator Susan Collins.

During her time in the Maine House of Representatives, she passed a landmark bill in order to provide tax refunds to homeowners in Maine and has focused on opening up more educational opportunities for the people of Maine to have a chance at financial independence.

Additionally, she has addressed delivering resources to battle Maine’s opioid epidemic. Former Governor Paul Lepage went against Sara’s opioid legislation, however, that did not result in her giving up. Instead, she brought both political parties together to overturn the veto.

She’s exhibited passion and dedication in her work for the people of Maine, and she brings that same conviction to the campaign trail.

She’s had opportunities to connect with Armenian Americans throughout the region. This past April 24, 2020, she stood by the Armenian American community of Maine in commemorating the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. “… As the granddaughter of Armenian refugees, I hold this day as a solemn reminder that we must continue our work to protect human rights,” Gideon said.

Outside of her advocacy work, she also helped secure recognition of Artsakh’s independence for the state of Maine.

A wife, mother and graduate from George Washington University in International Affairs, Speaker Gideon is poised for a seat in the US Senate.

Whether they are in the halls of Congress, on a trip to Armenia or a stop on the campaign trail, these women have made incredible strides in advancing issues that are paramount to the marginalized. They have used their platforms to advance matters that are not only central to their beliefs and the broader communities they serve, but they have also continuously advocated for the Armenian American communities they represent and the Armenian cause.

We look forward to a day in which the next generation of leaders ascends into the ranks that these women have achieved. They are truly making a difference on the inside – in the halls of Congress even – and that helps us advance the cause.

Tvene Baronian

Tvene Baronian is a rising sophomore attending Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She plans to graduate with a double major in Environmental Studies and English. On campus, Tvene is a member of the Environmental Club, Campus Green Club, Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN), Outdoor Recreation Adventure Program (ORAP), Sustainability Club, Koshare Dance Collective, and the Lacrosse Club. In addition to her involvement on campus, her passion for her Armenian heritage drives her participation in various volunteer organizations including Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), Hamazkayin Nayiri Dance Ensemble, HMEM Scouts and the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). During her free time, she loves to sing, dance, write and draw. She has a passion for music and has performed at Carnegie Hall, where she showcased her love of Armenian opera.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Why gay-friendly Taiwan is a creative haven for LGBTQ art

Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

Around this time last year, Taiwan was gearing up to host Asia’s largest ever Pride parade having just become the first place on the continent to legalize same-sex marriage.

More than 4,000 gay couples have since taken advantage of the landmark legislation. But beyond being able to tie the knot, the island’s LGBTQ communities are feeling the positive effects of the law in various other ways.

For Taiwan’s LGBTQ visual artists, for instance, the past year has heralded new forms of creative expression, according to photographer Su Misu, whose explorations of gender identity, sexuality and bondage range from candid nudes to fantastical subversions of religious imagery.

“More and more people are exhibiting their own self-identity, using their creative voice to express individuality,” she said over email. “People are also beginning to construct the histories of the LGBTQI movement in Taiwan, calling for others to participate and study it. All this can help the gay community, which focuses on different issues, to thrive.”

“I am a fake but my heart is true,” a 2016 image by Taiwanese photographer Su Misu, whose work explores gender identity, sexuality and bondage. Credit: Su Misu/Chi-Wen Gallery

Even before the marriage legislation, LGBTQ artists in Taiwan enjoyed a level of creative freedom denied to their counterparts in many parts of Asia.

Beyond the legal rights of expression enshrined in its constitution, Taiwan ranked 34th in the world (and 2nd in Asia, after Thailand) in a gay happiness index based on the experiences of 115,000 men from around the world. A recent report on workplace equality by the island’s oldest registered LGBTQ organization, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, found that the territory’s art sector was among the industries in which respondents felt “most comfortable” about coming out to co-workers.

Coupled with the island’s generous public arts funding, this atmosphere has produced a welcoming environment for LGBTQ art. And in 2017, just months after Taiwan’s constitutional court paved the way for the marriage law by declaring same-sex marriage a legal right, the gay art scene was afforded rare mainstream attention with the exhibition “Spectrosynthesis — Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now.”

Ku Fu-Sheng’s 1983 “The Room at the Top of the Stairs,” on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, in 2017. Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Billed as Asia’s first major LGBTQ art show, the program featured over 50 works by 22 artists (from places including Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore, as well as the Asian diaspora) addressing a range of topics, from forbidden love to sexual violence. Staging the show at a large public institution, Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), meant that LGBTQ art had a rare opportunity to reach mainstream audiences, according to Patrick Sun, founder of the non-profit organization behind the show, Sunpride Foundation.

“If we do a show at a private gallery then I’m sure all my friends would come,” he said in a phone interview from Hong Kong, where he’s based. “But we want to talk to the general public.”

A ‘political victory’

For one of the show’s participants, 44-year-old avant-garde filmmaker Su Hui-Yu (no relation to Su Misu), the show represented a “political victory” that proved especially heartening for young artists.

“In Taiwan, it represented the changing of the wave (that) even a public museum would love to curate the show. It’s more symbolic in a political dimension than in (an) artistic one. But I think it encouraged art students a lot.”

A still from “Nue Quan” by Su Hui-Yu, an artist who explores LGBTQ issues and themes in his work. Credit: Su Hui-Yu / Double Square Gallery

For Su’s generation, however, the gay art scene has long been flourishing. Although straight, his work has often explored LGBTQ topics. One of his most recent projects saw Su film unrealized scenes from “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” a homoerotic fantasy movie featuring orgies, killings and an exorcism, that was released without parts of the original screenplay, as Su believes they were deemed inappropriate in conservative 1980s Taiwan.

“There was already a strong tradition of queer study (and) queer art in Taiwan since the 1990s (and) since the lifting of martial law,” he said, over email, of the repressive military rule that formally ended in 1987.

A still from filmmaker Su Hui-Yu’s project “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” which was based on unrealized scenes from the screenplay of a 1985 homoerotic fantasy movie of the same name. Credit: Su Hui-Yu

It was this decade that saw the opening of LGBTQ-friendly venues like IT Park and the Gin Gin Bookstore, which has housed a gallery space in Taipei for more than 20 years, alongside an explosion in gay literature, nightlife and academic discourse. But while gay artists were free to practice their art, conservative attitudes persisted.

When same-sex marriage legislation was first proposed in Taiwan in the early 2000s, it faced vociferous opposition. So-called conversion therapy, a pseudoscience that attempts to “treat” homosexuality, remained prevalent (it was only formally banned in 2018). Organizers of a 2003 exhibition of works made by gay artists during consensual art therapy even felt it necessary to clarify in the show’s notes: “This exhibition is not to show LGBT people need to be cured.”

Participants at Taiwan’s annual gay pride parade pictured outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei in October 2019. Credit: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

In the euphoric aftermath of the passing of the same-sex marriage bill in 2019, it was easy to forget that 67% of voters had, in fact, rejected the idea in a referendum a year earlier. The Taiwanese government pressed ahead with the law, though some rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, such as cross-national marriage, are still prohibited.

A scene from digital artist Wang Jun-Jieh’s “Passion,” which was screened at the “Spectrosynthesis” show in Taipei in 2017. Credit: Wang Jun-Jieh

For 36-year-old photographer 526 (a pseudonym pronounced “five two six”) it was family pressures rather than societal ones that stopped him from openly practicing his art, which includes intimate portraits of trans and LGBTQ subjects taken in their own bedrooms (pictured top).

“Even today, my parents are still afraid to tell their friends what I am doing,” he said over email. “It’s frustrating that even your parents can’t see your value, or tell others that their son is gay. I hope they can be brave, because … we need stand out and let all the people know: We are here.”

Nonetheless, he said that visibility of LGBTQ art is getting “better and better,” and that Taiwan’s progressive environment “makes it a good place to make art.” He pinpoints the legalization of same-sex marriage as not only a landmark in his artistic identity, but in his life more generally.

“I couldn’t have imagined that (the law) would happen in my lifetime,” he said. “If I’d known this would happen, I would probably not have stayed in the closet for 31 years.”

A beacon for Asia

The relative freedoms of Taiwan’s LGBTQ artists come into sharp focus when compared to their Asian neighbors. In Japan and South Korea, there are no real legal restrictions, though conservative attitudes prevent their respective scenes from thriving in quite the same way. At the other end of the spectrum, homosexuality remains a punishable crime in parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Brunei and some areas of Indonesia.

In between, there are a number of places that ostensibly allow gay art to be displayed, but where censorship remains a significant barrier. In mainland China, for instance, authorities have been known to periodically close down LGBTQ exhibitions without explanation.

Meanwhile in Singapore, where artists are permitted to exhibit LGBTQ-themed work despite the fact that gay sex is illegal (a law that is rarely enforced), censorship is also common. In 2016, authorities removed a number of items, including sex toys, from artist Loo Zihan’s exhibition “Queer Objects,” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, due to obscenity laws. (A few years earlier, Loo responded to an age restriction placed on one of his shows by photocopying visitors’ ID cards and incorporating them into the displays.)

The idea that Taiwan can serve as a beacon for the rest of Asia was a key idea behind “Spectrosynthesis.” Speaking to CNN at the time, curator Sean Hu expressed his hope that the Taipei show would have “a ripple effect across Asian society.”

Installation view of Hou Chun-Ming’s “Man Hole” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, for the show “Spectrosynthesis.” Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Indeed, a second edition of the show has since been held in Thailand — again at a mainstream, publicly-funded venue, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre — featuring almost three times the number of artists. A third is planned for Hong Kong in 2022, with Sun expressing hopes for them becoming a “new normal” in other Asian cities.

With Taiwan attempting to establish itself as a commercial arts destination (the launch of the Taipei Dangdai art fair in 2019 signaled that the island may hope to challenge Hong Kong’s domination of the Asian market), the island’s gay artists could, in turn, benefit from the growing international profile.

One such artist, Tzeng Yi-Hsin said she experienced an uptick in international inquiries after two of her images were featured in “Spectrosynthesis.”

“I didn’t get a lot of response or feedback from inside Taiwan, but right after the show, I received more interest and approaches from people outside,” she said, citing interest from Japanese collectors and Western media.

Tzeng Yi-Hsin’s “Olympia,” based on a Édouard Manet painting of the same name, is one of a series of pictures that saw the artist and photographer reenact famous paintings from art history. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

Another shot from Tzeng’s series recreates Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (The Luncheon on the Grass). Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

However, Tzeng also expressed reservations about the exhibition’s heavy focus on male artists. Only three of the 22 participating artists were female, with just one identifying as transgender. (Sun welcomed the critique, saying he “took it to heart” and is ensuring that his foundation makes “a conscious effort to include female and transgender artists.”)

For the 41-year-old artist and photographer, this curatorial decision represents a wider problem facing the arts in Taiwan: That gay male artists continue to take a disproportionate chunk of the limelight.

“The majority of curators and collectors are male, and, from my perspective, they are more interested in gay male art,” she said, adding: “We all notice that there are a lot of gay artists (in Taiwan), but if a curator asks, ‘Who’s a lesbian artist?’ No one knows.”

Eschewing labels

According to Su Misu, an oversimplification of LGBTQ issues is another obstacle facing Taiwan’s gay artists. She identified a variety of difficult or challenging topics that remain hard to address in mainstream forums.

“Issues deemed ‘taboo’ need more visibility, including drug abuse, AIDS, sex workers, transgender people, disabled people and BDSM practitioners,” she said, adding that exploring these topics could help challenge “inaccurate stereotypes about sex and gender.”

Art that conforms with the public’s existing ideas about LGBTQ communities will, she said “only reinforce labeling minority groups.”

Pride 2020: A history of the rainbow flag

Even the concept of LGBTQ art itself may be a generalization said Tzeng, who doesn’t recognize the existence of a gay art “scene,” per se, in Taipei. While some of her work directly addresses LGBTQ themes, much of it is unrelated to her sexuality, such as her iconoclastic images defacing classic paintings or photographs of pop cultural and political figures like former Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek.

“I never identified myself as a gay artist. I know my identity, but I’m just doing my own work.”

Tzeng’s “My Dear Lovers” series saw her “defacing” various images and photographs. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

It’s a point also raised by Sun who, despite organizing LGBTQ-themed exhibitions, said that artists’ primary concern is “not to be labeled in expressing what they want to say.” But whether that means organizations like his might, in an ideal future, no longer need to exist, is a moot point given the widespread challenges facing Asia’s gay artists, he said.

“In the next 10 or 15 years we have a lot of work to do,” he said. “So we can worry about that when the world has changed!”

Top image: An intimate portrait by Taipei-based photographer 526.

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iguana012 · 7 years

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Intro post: Tatsuki Machida

Now that the off-season is officially here, skating fans will have the opportunity to see their retired faves again and in Team Japan’s case the number of retired faves has been increasing every year. Of all TJ retired “stars”, one of them stands out through their personality, way of thinking, skating, and why not - refusal to speak to the media again.

Tatsuki Machida was what people call a “2nd tier” skater until his last couple of competitive seasons. He was the “almost there but not quite” guy. Nobody in his family was involved with skating and he was doing it just for fun until he saw Daisuke Takahashi and decided he wanted to become a skater like him.

His life story has inspired skaters and fans alike; thanks to him, many people were encouraged watching him get out of the crowd and reach the top. It’s probably one of the most beautiful “underdog becomes hero” fairy tales. But just like every other inspirational story, there’s more pain and sadness behind the medals than fulfillment and happiness.

Early life

He was born a premature baby and the doctors told his mother there were chances he wouldn’t survive. His mother stood by his incubator praying until he started feeling better.

He has a younger sister Sakura and his father is a company employee at Mazda

He was very close to his maternal grandmother Kumiko, who gave him a handmade amulet. Kumiko embroidered his silhouette on it. He always kept it in the pocket of his warm up jacket.

When Kumiko fell sick, he wrote a letter to her: "My mother wants to visit Tottori to take care of you, but she can't. She can't leave here since I'm a figure skater. I feel very sorry for it." Kumiko died of cancer.

He used to live in Hiroshima. His mother worked in two places at the same time to pay the costs for his skating.

When he was in the second year of University, his mother fell sick and spent over a month in the hospital. As he had seen how hard she worked, he told her "I'll try my best to earn prize money and to be a skater who will be invited to many shows. So please leave one of your two jobs"

His mother and sister often went to see him compete. He is very close to his sister.

Although he was living in Hiroshima, he decided to attend the same high school as Daisuke Takahashi in Kurashiki city, Okayama. He had to take the train every day.

He was obsessed with video games so much that one time he showed up at the rink with his console instead of his skating boots.

He started taking interest in books when he traveled by train to school and back.

He moved to Osaka when he entered Kansai University and joined the Kansai University skating club.

The Kansai University skating club is now famous for its skaters: Nobuo and Kumiko Sato, Daisuke Takahashi, Nobunari Oda, Satoko Miyahara and Marin Honda.

He became close friends with Takahito Mura and Keiji Tanaka.

Making a name for himself

He won the Jr National Championships in 2006 and placed 9th at the 2007 Jr World Championships

In 2008 he met Yuzuru Hanyu with whom he later developed a new friendship

In 2009 he finished 4th at the National Championships and was listed as first substitute for the Vancouver Olympics

In 2010 he won his first major international medal, a silver at the Four Continents Championships

He and Yuzuru Hanyu were assigned to their first (and same) Grand Prix event but none of them had a strong debut; Tatsuki had started trying quads in competition but he only landed one at the 2010 Nebelhorn Trophy, where he won the gold medal

In 2011 he moved to Lake Arrowhead to train with Anthony Liu, a coach he had met earlier at a summer camp

Anthony Liu became like a father - older brother figure for him. With his help, he started to become more consistent

In 2012 he contacted Phillip Mills after watching Ashley Wagner’s “Black Swan” program. He wanted a similar “bird-themed” program for himself. Mills choreographed Firebird for him

He became very close to Mills and his family; Mills would later describe him “A diamond; no colors, just sparkles. Sparkles of talent.”

Rise to fame and retirement

By 2012 he had become Phillip Mills and Stephane Lambiel’s new muse; he was skating a Lambiel program for his short and a Mills program for his long

He finally qualified for the Grand Prix Final when he was 22, but finished last

He had a strong desire to go to Worlds but he finished 9th at the Japanese Nationals that same season

He was deeply disappointed with himself but was already facing the Olympic season and he vowed he would rise from his own ashes. He shaved his head and started choreographing his first program, Byakuyako.

At the start of the 2013-2014 season, he had only landed 2 ratified quads in competition. From then on he landed 28 in just a season and a half.

He reached the Nationals podium for the first time, qualified for his first Olympics and Worlds and became the #2 man in the country and the world

He used to say he was aiming for the gold medal at the 2015 Worlds and was considering competing until 2018

He was talking about his FS as something that had never been seen before, and a challenge for him artistically and technically

He forbid the media to disclose details about his new programs and he used to practice with the windows of the rink covered

His new SP, Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, was inspired by his personal experiences in his love life

Phillip Mills told the media it was only the beginning of what Tatsuki had to offer to the audience

Nobody knew he intended to retire until the day he announced it

The Aftermath

His mother, Yayoi Machida: “At first he was saying his goal was the World Championships. He would have possibly gone to Worlds if he had made the podium at the Nationals. Perhaps he thought he didn’t deserve to.”

He always brought around 5 books with him to every competition he went and always valued the artistic side of figure skating: for his FS Symphony no 9 he held his opening pose for 20 seconds so that the music could be longer, as the limit of 4:30 minutes was too short for the symphony.

Takahiko Kozuka: "Whenever we had meetings and press conferences we all enjoyed his comments which are well known as the ‘Machida quotes’. His way of thinking was completely different from ours and that will always be my perception of him. He was very different from me or any other skater for that matter. He was one of a kind."

Yuzuru Hanyu: “My ideal image of a man is Tatsuki. As an athlete and as a performer, he never turns away from the road he’s chosen.”

He told Takahito Mura “I know you have the ability so I’ll be counting on you to carry on the years I’ve given up on and achieve the things I couldn’t.” Mura said Tatsuki could have stayed for longer.

“We enjoyed chatting even though he was never the type who talked much,” Mura describes Machida. “But he’s always been unique, and his breakthrough came around the time of ‘Timshel’. I was very shocked to find out that a skater who had been competing with me all this time had retired. His presence has been a big part of my life and I am truly grateful for his words - 'I entrust everything to you’. I have to get good results and do my best for him."

"He retired just so suddenly. Otsukaresama from the bottom of my heart,” Daisuke Murakami said, choking up. “I’ve been rooting for him so much and I’ve worked so hard to catch up with him… he’s truly been an inspiration. The first word he told me was 'ganbatte’ (give your best). I will do that, keeping his words in my mind.”

At the 2012 NHK Trophy, Murakami suffered a serious injury. The socket in his right shoulder was dislocated and he needed an urgent surgery. He had to go on a long hiatus from skating to recover and he thought of retirement. But the only thing that changed his mind was Machida.“He was amazing,” Murakami says, referring to Machida’s 2013-2014 season. “He had a brilliant breakthrough at that time. His presence at the Sochi Olympics inspired me and I decided to keep going because I haven’t reached my full potential yet."

Yoshinori Onishi, his last coach: “When I heard he retired, my wife and I burst into laughter. That’s just like him, I thought.”

Machida would always say “I’m the 6th ranked skater” and other such timid things, so Onishi told him “Humans are like this, if you only say negative words that’s how things will be. Carrying out one’s own words is essential. If you set a huge goal for yourself won’t you be able to do it and try your best?”

“Machida’s true character is actually clumsy. This boy who struggled with chasing both grad school and skating, he did so well,” Onishi said.

Phillip Mills: “Tatsuki’s Ladies in Lavender was about something completely different but I’m hoping that the people viewed it as something that helped themselves. It’s many different things that inspire me to try and give the skaters what they deserve. Something that will help them not only grow artistically but be successful competitively and to inspire hopefully the world and develop into an artist. Not just an athlete, but an artist as well. And I think Machida has done that, with me the best of anybody thus far. I was so fortunate to work with him for all those three seasons.”

Personal life

He is currently living in Saitama, near Tokyo, attending and working at the Waseda University.

He wants to become a choreographer, art director and coach. He’d like to direct his own ice show.

He is also dedicated to finding a way to facilitate the balance between skating and studies for elite athletes.

He considers himself “simply a student, no longer a star” and has never spoken to the media since he retired in 2014.

However, he keeps getting media attention whenever he appears and is always welcomed with a loud round of applause.

When his appearance was confirmed at Prince Ice World right after his retirement, the tickets were sold out in less than 2 hours. Moreover, BS Japan broadcasted the show live for the first time in its history due to Machida’s sudden popularity.

While a classical music nerd, he also enjoys pop music and Korean pop music

He used to have a stalker who followed him closely wherever he went for about a year and a half; the stalker has disappeared from social media platforms for almost a year

He was constantly rumored to be in a relationship with fellow skater Haruka Imai; in 2014 she traveled with him in the US and Tatsuki introduced her to Phillip Mills, who choreographed her new programs

Skating style and qualities

Journalist Jean-Christophe Berlot: “As soon as Tatsuki Machida, the 2014 world silver medalist from Japan, entered into the Meriadeck rink, TV crews from Japan started following him wherever he would go, from his warm-up to concentration time to -- of course -- his practice sessions. "You can always feel when a master is entering into a hall," former great Pierre Brunet (who coached Carol Heiss to her Olympic victory) used to say. Machida's taking part in the Trophée should be an event in itself in Bordeaux.”

Tatsuki Machida on his own skating

I see figure skating as a performing art. A quadruple jump, like a quad toe, can be a piece of art in itself. A beautiful surrounding helps going into that direction, at least. So, it's important for me to use my technical capacity to create art. If you want to give a good performance, you need to understand culture, and to study the music, the composer's life, the choreography of your programs.You know -- (he smiles) -- in English, we say "figure skating," but in French, they say "artistic skating." I think they are right. Figure skating should be a performing art, just like ballet or dance. It belongs to the same category. I cherish performing arts.

During my time on the ice, I forget about the competition. I tell myself, "This is my stage." In this way I don’t just think of jumps, scores or medals. I think of expression. Jumping is also a way to express oneself. A jump is a piece of vocabulary to express one's feelings. I have to say that my skating career is 18 years old. I have worked on each one of these jumps all year long, and this for 18 years. They are just expression. I don't think of them, I just do them.The rink is my stage, and all I want to do is to focus on expression.

A quad expresses strength. It is so powerful. When I land a quad, I can hear the audience react directly. In comparison, a triple will be an enhancement to the program. I love big audiences. I always want to show my art to the entire world. In Japan, skating arenas are much bigger than this one, and they are always full!I like big audiences, especially for my long program: We have chorus in the fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and a big audience makes it even more special!

Tatsuki Machida’s skating through the audience’s eyes

His skating style has always been described as “larger than life”, “dramatic”, “grand”, and even “royal”. He had a commanding presence on the ice and his jumps were huge. He had one of the best 3A and probably the best 3Lz among all Japanese men. There was (and still is) a lot of meaning behind his programs; a thought, a personal experience, a feeling. He skates with his heart on his sleeve. He takes you along in his journey. He has the posture and lines of a ballet dancer. His best work is perhaps “The Inheritor”, a tribute to skating itself. Every jump is included in the program, in between intricate transitions and balletic choreography. It is the very essence of Tatsuki Machida - the person, the skater, the artist.

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More info, articles, edits and videos on http://tatsuki-machida.tumblr.com/

#Tatsuki Machida #figure skating

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lattetudes · 7 years

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hey!!! i was wondering, how come you study in france? i'm fairly new to your blog and i love your posts, i would like to hear more about your experience regarding studying in france in your situation!! and if you have any anecdotes about that that you would like to share!!

hi! firstly, thank you so much! it really means a lot to me. (seriously, i have the biggest smile on my face). i’m so sorry for the late response, i was moving (:

send me another ask if you’d like to know more! this is a little long -

the how

french has been in my life for a long time. i think i was first enrolled in an international program (where they taught it) when i was twelve - not even a couple months later, i left to visit france for the first time to visit my mom.

she went to france (in 2011) to get her master’s degree in linguistics.

my brother (2013) and sister (2011) went with her. (i, however, didn’t join her until the the summer before what would have been my freshman year. was that something i regret? yes.)

so for three years, i visited them (and when i wasn’t, i lived alone with my dad, who worked a lot to support an apartment in france and in the united states).

when i fourteen, i visited paris for two weeks with my class as part of an exchange program.

it was chic, it was this entirely new universe i’d never seen before. i’d never felt more different, and i think that was a good thing. the cafés, the music, the pathways where hemingway walked - it’s this sort of unconquerable way of living that makes up Paris’s charm – something that cannot be calculated into a ranking.

it’s truly beautiful. and when i was asked if i wanted to go to poitiers, three hours away from paris (my last chance) for freshman year, i took it. i made the mistake of staying for friends - i couldn’t go through life wondering what if. i didn’t want to regret anything, you know? i knew i wasn’t going to be at the top of the class, not at first.

only, it didn’t end up being one year. i would end up staying there for my entire career as a lycéenne.

the apartments the apartments my family stays in are very small, with exception to our last one

our first one was the size of a shoebox. i’m not kidding when the kitchen and the bedroom were in the same space. (the bed was a fold out couch).

i don’t remember our second apartment very well. i think it was next to an indian restaurant - it did have two bedrooms, making it easier to stay in when i visited my family.

the third was located in a small complex with a small parking space.

the fourth, i don’t remember at all (:

the fifth apartment is located above a sephora, about two minutes from the central square. we spent about three-four years here (renting), and it even had a loft space on the third floor. an artist, an attorney, and many other people with different stories lived there with us. i remember when the police showed up, twice. another story for another time (: i’ve got so many memories here, which makes it even harder to leave. it means a lot to me. i love it here: it’s empty now, save for a computer (the one i’m writing on right now), a desk, wifi, and a printer. our lease is up by the end of the month (:

the sixth, next to a park and a café, where the neighbors play their music just a little too loud (: it’s different for sure. we just moved here, the rooms are fill with boxes and nothing is unpacked yet - hopefully, it will feel like home soon.

i spend christmas and the summers in the united states, in the house where i grew up until i was fourteen.

since i live in a small city, i walk by almost all the apartments i’ve visited / lived in everyday. it’s surreal for sure - i get to see where i’ve started and where i’m going to be.

france!

i live in a city where you know everyone, and everyone knows you.

there’s music almost always playing in the street.

some people will judge you because of your nationality: it’s okay and you learn to deal with it.

a lot of people like to do manifestations (they like to protest) here.

shops are everywhere - all of them are small town french stores and they’re super chic and very inexpensive.

the cafés are great, very lovely and the food is above average

breakfast isn’t a big deal. croissants, orange juice, little bread and cheese, coffee..

i don’t like croissants (: or i didn’t, i’ve started to like them after four years.

bacon isn’t bacon.

in central square, they’ll have parties / an event in correspondance with the season

at christmas, central square is transformed into santa’s village: skating, hot cocoa, waffles, churros, cute scarves and hats, hazelnut coffee, that type of thing (:

most restaurants close at 2pm and re-open around seven.

the bagel shop knows me and my order because i go there everyday.

the quiches are amazing, if you like quiches.

cobblestone streets.

sundays are quiet, almost everything is closed.

where i live, it’s true: the french dress to impress.

smoking is a thing - it’s not unusual, and everyone does it (not me), teachers included.

i once saw one of the social economics teachers smoking with his students and taking instagram photos.

he was one of the newer professors. he left to get some life experience

the language: studying in french

freshman year, it was hard. i didn’t have many friends, i was just learning the language, and most of all: i was lonely.

everyone spoke so fast. i was completely out of my depth. to make matters more difficult, i suffer from social anxiety: which made talking a struggle i have to live with.

by the end of my first year, my comprehension of french was excellent.

when studying in another language, it may get a little bit overwhelming, but you have to really acknowledge what you don’t understand: is it the concept, the idea, or vocabulary?

there is a trick to learning languages that can shorten the journey to fluency from decades to mere months. there’s also something most teachers won’t even tell students for fear they would never start, but in fact, is vital that you know. hint: complete linguistic immersion is everything (:

4% of students embarking on language courses in schools achieve a basic level of fluency after three years. this is what happened to me, and i realized this as soon as i got here: basic was a generous way of describing my level back then.

one of the biggest reasons cited for abandoning is that students don’t feel any sense of progression. a student with an A* will visit france and find they can’t even have a basic conversation. (me, my first year)

i felt like giving up becuase i had the wrong expectations set.

it takes 600+ hours of study & practice to reach fluency in french

from february (which is way too late to start studying for the bac), i studied for a minimum of three - four hours every single day.

be realistic about what you can achieve so you won’t get demotivated.

immersing yourself as deeply as possible in the subject allows you to rack up the hours as quickly as possible.

memory fades unless it’s the language is used.

low-intensity studies (high school french) are ineffective because their intensity is so low that you end up forgetting a large percentage of what you learn.

it’s not until B1/B2 that the light comes out and it starts to feel really good speaking French.

i took the B1 in tenth grade, my second year. i passed with like an 85 percent. it does get better.

It’s really worth while registering to take DELF exams - tests that mesure your linguistic ‘level’.

i hadn’t heard of the DELF until i got to lycée. don’t be me!

i felt lost for the better part of a year.

repetition is vital to learning.

sleep is vital to memory. i still have problems with this, given the fact it still takes me a while to complete all my work.

my lycée, or high school

is amazing. it’s made out of glass, shaped like a pyramid, and is relatively new compared to most of my city.

we have french, spanish, russian, and chinese students (i’m the only american) who study here!

it’s right next to this mall, auchan, where everyone goes when they don’t have class.

a mini-café is managed by the MDL (student council) on the first floor.

you can get coffee, tea, cookies, chocolate, or crèpes there (on some days). it seriously helps with the long hours in the library

we have soundproof music rooms: pianos, music, drums..

on sunny days, groups of us will sit outside on the grass and just talk. we form circles and listen to people play music and sing.

a lot of people smoke / hang out near the observatory (which is shaped like a flower). hasn’t been used in years.

for the most part, the teachers are very good.

for our last history class, we cried because the professor was leaving.

he baked us brownies and brought some drinks and it was one of the saddest moments of première (eleventh grade).

last year, we visited paris for two days. one night, the whole class united in a hotel room - we told ghost stories until 2am.

in spring, we host a festival: dancing, handball, singing contests, etc.

one day, my class dressed up as the x - men.

french literature class is one of the hardest classes i’ve ever had to take.

international week (where every student comes from around the globe to visit): i went to a party with some romanian students and drank beer for the very first time.

i can drink legally, now that i’m eighteen.

drinking isn’t a big deal here, not where i live.

on tuesdays and wednesdays, my classes end at 12pm.

three days out of a school week, i go to school at nine thirty in the morning.

mondays and fridays, i end at five thirty.

i have to take the bus for forty five minutes everyday.

ACFs on thursdays: classes created by students which are validated by a jury at the end of the year. i did fashion couture class this year and dance class last year.

if you guys have any more asks about my lycée, i’d love to answer them!

#answered

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measuringlife · 5 years

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Measuring Monday: Career Aspirations & Trajectory

The first job I said I wanted to have as a little kid (maybe 5 years old or so) “when I grew up” was a fashion designer. I remember this “fashion plates” toy I had where you could mix and match the plates of outfit tops and bottoms. Then pencil /charcoal rub across them onto paper so you could color in the outfit you created. I also had a light up sketch table for tracing that I remember I really liked. I got into playing Barbie and dressing them up however that dream didn’t last very long. In like 2nd grade I wanted to be a judge, perhaps because there were a lot of early-mid nighties high profile trials that sparked my interest. I soon learned that in order to become a judge you had to be a lawyer first, so that was my career ambition much to my mother’s delight for a few years.

In 7th grade, I started watching the Today Show on NBC before school and set my sights on broadcast journalism. I loved both the idea of anchoring the Today Show or being an MTV VJ. The more the 24-hour news cycle evolved the more I wanted to be a broadcaster, the round the clock coverage of Princess Diana's death was particularly memorable. While watching the Today Show I saw a commercial for Quinnipiac University (well at the time it was a College)’s new Ed McMahon School of Communications. Thus my love affair with Quinnipiac started.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I worked a lot in high school, plus my school was like 25 minutes away from home so I didn’t participate in extracurricular activities, even if I did there was a very limited “media” program - I think I only got a semester of “media” class in my junior year and I was never into print media so the newspaper wasn’t of interest either. However when it came time to start of Quinnipiac I started networking with the college radio station upperclassmen. I found myself doing the news for the daily morning show my first semester and then starting my second semester had my own weekly 2-hour radio show with a rotating cast of co-hosts over the years. I even did my internship at a top 40 station in New Haven. I was really torn when it came to graduation, but I took the safe route and got a free masters from the University of Connecticut in higher education and student affairs.

I start my post-college years working at UConn as a part-time hall director which meant free housing, free laundry, and a free meal plan plus a small stipend. It was a solid gig, but I definitely worked more than 20 hours a week. The summer between grad school years I did an internship in Alabama of all places at Auburn University. My goal was to move to California after grad school so I applied to 2 California schools, one in DC, FL, NC, and then Auburn almost as a joke, but I paper I really liked their program. After phone interviews with a number of schools, I also was shocked to realize that I really liked my interview with Auburn. Since I never studied abroad I thought why not spent 10 weeks in Alabama. Well, I loved it - much to my surprise!

When it came time to start job searching for my first full-time job out of grad school I had my eye on as I came to call it “the smile of the US” aka anything along a coast East, West or South. California was my top choice, but I knew I had to go where the jobs were. In addition to Cali, I was focused on warmer climates so the Southeast, particularly Florida were high on my list. I was also searching in North Texas since my Dad had just moved from south Florida to Dallas. I also kept my eye out for any openings at Auburn. I ended up having on-campus interviews at 2 schools in North Texas and one school in south Florida, plus an interview offer at a school in Savannah. I ended up choosing to work at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Which was about 2 hours north of Dallas and 10 miles south of the Oklahoma border. I really like the school, the job, and the prospect of being 2 hours away from my Dad. I did not, however, realize what a podunk town it was and what a fish out of water I was going to be. Thankfully I did find some friends and I really needed them after only 5 months of living in North Texas when my Dad died. After about 10 days out of the office, I came back to work and Texas which some folks didn’t think I would, but I quickly realized I couldn’t stand to stay there without him.

I started looking for jobs in spring while nursing my wounds back to health with a new puppy and watching season 7 of American Idol. I applied to one job in NYC thinking that maybe I should head home. However, I soon learned of a job opening back at Auburn in the office where I interned. I actually interviewed for the job on campus on my Dad’s birthday. It was comforting to interview with people who knew why I was leaving a job after less than a year and know my recent history. Auburn was a good “layover” of sorts. I loved my job and my office, but my social life left more to be desired. After a serious relationship started to bloom and I began to feel real pressure to put down roots in Alabama I knew it was time to leave. I needed to date in a city that I could live more long term.

My next stop was George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Mason was actually one of the schools I was seriously considering for my grad school internship. Unfortunately, this office was saddled with issues from the beginning, staff turn over, vacancies not filled, lack of direction. I also had a combative relationship with my eventual supervisor. I’m convinced there was some ageism involved, she thought I was climbing the ranks too quickly and saw me as a kid. Keep in mind she never made any attempt to try and know me. All she saw were my flaws and she refused to ever give me any of her time unless I begged for it. In retrospect trying to get her to “like me” or “respect me” or “be proud of me” led in part to my workaholism because I felt rejected and abandoned by an authority figure (only in hindsight and after a lot of therapy can I piece that all together). It was a slow burn of trauma, but traumatic nonetheless. I had spent a solid 18 months searching jobs in southern California, where my heart was set to go and the guy I was seriously dating (spoiler alert he's now my fiance) was also very interested in a Cali move, but the jobs weren’t right. I interviewed for three jobs out there and turned down the two I was offered. At this point, I couldn’t wait for California anymore. I was so burnt out that I started seriously applying for jobs outside of higher ed.

I found myself in a few interview processes in the DC Metro corporate sphere. I kept my eye on Director level jobs in higher ed in DC, but given my specialty area they were far and few between. Imagine my surprise that while I was in the middle of a lengthy interview process with one company, my dream titled job came up in DC. The process moved quickly and I got the "dream" job. Year one on the job started off with a steep learning curve. I was trying so hard to do it all, to impress everyone, to come off confident and self-assured that I was burning the wick at both ends. And this was BEFORE 50% of my staff left. Okay in all fairness I run a two-person office, so when my one staffer left (and I 100% understand why he did, he was given a bigger shit sandwich than I was handed and he had to eat it longer). I was alone 6 months into the job as I approached my work's peak season. It was hell, I was drowning, and stupid me didn’t realize it. After years of learning how to survive nightmare situations, your reflexes kick in. I was in survival mode and I was surviving at all cost. The biggest collateral damage was on my mental health and my sleep. I had never slept 2-4 hours a night for weeks at a time and it was taking its toll.

When I hired my new staff member in the midst of this I made it a point to reintroduce myself after the storm had passed. I even quoted Fight Club saying “you met me at a very strange time in my life.” Strange = horrific, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge had bad it was and how much of it I let happen. Ultimately like most people in recovery, I felt like everything was happening TO ME, but I now know it was happening FOR ME. I needed to hit rock bottom particularly around my workaholism and lack of boundaries. The past year has been so much better for so many reasons, including a wonderful new supervisor who for the first time in a long time I know undoubtedly has my back. I don’t know how long I’ll stay where I am or in the field in general. I'm working all these side hustles and really digging into this project to see if I can achieve my dream of living a creative and connection-filled life on my own terms.

#MLabout #MLchanges #MLwork

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flauntpage · 6 years

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The World's Best Middle School Basketball Player is Toronto's Elijah Fisher

Walk through the halls of Crestwood Preparatory College in Toronto and you're likely to see one of two greetings being shared between students, coaches, and sometimes even teachers.

The first, a simple dap and chest-tap, has become a sort of Crestwood greeting for the roughly 465 students across grades 7 to 12 that attend the school. As the final bell rings and students file into any of the science labs, open-concept study halls, or student mentoring sessions before going home, it's not hard to catch the greeting being shared at lockers or in the hallway. It's in this environment that Crestwood has built its academic reputation, and it's here where Elijah Fisher is just another eighth grader trying to make honour roll.

The other greeting is less prevalent, at least until later. Once extra school time has been put in, Crestwood's basketball elite will assemble for practice. Here, a slightly more elaborate greeting—used primarily by players in the Grassroots Canada Elite program—is common, and it's here where Fisher stands out. Amid a strong girls program with four players to watch in the Canada Basketball youth system and a growing roster of boys talent, Fisher is currently the key to growing the school's ascendant basketball reputation.

After all, this is the best pre-high school prospect in all of Canada and, to hear him and head coach Ro Russell tell it, the best Class of 2023 recruit anywhere in the world.

"We're trying to change history. Elijah's in Canada. It's a little bit tougher for him, so he has to work even harder, and we have to go down to America that many times to show that he's No. 1," Russell, equal parts coach and advocate, told VICE Sports.

He recalls a recent challenge that Fisher couldn’t do a between-the-legs dunk, something that got Fisher to break with his normally all-business approach between the lines. "He's one of those guys that will prove you wrong and show you. He's driven by proving you wrong. He's going to show you you're wrong. That's what he's driven by: 'I'mma prove you wrong, I'mma show you that I'm that dude, and if you think I'm not and someone else is, then bring him and I'll show you that I am.' That's what he's driven by."

That's the goal, anyway, and it's one of several lofty ones that Fisher has. Outside of winning (and possibly going undefeated) in both leagues he plays in, Fisher will spend his weekends at elite camps and tournaments around the United States to continue to build his reputation among talent evaluators. Making those inroads for both Fisher and Crestwood is important now because the plan currently calls for Fisher to do something no other elite prospect has done: Be the No. 1 recruit in his class while playing his high school ball in Canada.

"Staying at home would be a big thing, because I can come home to my family, help support my brothers and everything," Fisher explained to VICE Sports. "It means a lot to me, to put my country on my back and show people, inspire young kids and show them that they can do what they want, they can be great. It's not always about the Americans, it's about them, too."

Canada has boasted a number of elite recruits in recent years, but all of them went to prep school in the United States. Those that did stay behind, like Jamal Murray, were strong recruits but not No. 1. Fisher and his camp want to change the thinking that as we enter the 2020s—where online mixtapes are prevalent, information disseminates easily, and elite Canadian programs can attend the bulk of the best US events, anyway—that a top Canadian prospect has to go south of the border to play prep ball.

Watch VICE Sports' documentary on the rise of basketball in Toronto

They can't exactly control how the recruiting rankers make their adjustments for Fisher playing his regular-season games against competition in the improving Canadian ecosystem, but they're hoping to break at least one major barrier in the process of achieving No. 1 recruit status.

"We have a whole plan of him being the first-ever Canadian to be No. 1 his senior year and also play in the McDonald's All-American Game," Russell says about the prestigious high school basketball event. "Right now, the way it stands is, the rule is that you have to play high school ball in America your senior year. But if someone is going to all the best tournaments in high school, playing against the best teams, the best players, going to the top camps in America, playing in the best AAU tournaments, and you're ranked No. 1 in America, they'll have to change the rule.

"It'll make no sense to have the No. 1 player in that class not play in the game."

Russell estimates that Fisher will play upwards of 80 games this year between all of his commitments, and perhaps as many as 100. That's in addition to practices, work with an individual trainer, and the relentless time Fisher puts in on his own time, studying the footwork of Kevin Durant or the passing of LeBron James and then taping his workouts to see where he can better replicate the stars.

This past summer, Fisher shifted to more of a combo-guard role despite standing 6'5" with a 6'10" wingspan, and that additional work on the perimeter should only help his development even if he winds up closer to his projected 6'8" or 6'9" height, where he'd likely be a wing or a forward. Some scouts have noted that Fisher looks less remarkable when he's not dominating in his age group, and trying out those new point guard skills against more developed high school talent will be a focus this season.

"Elijah has no interest in video games. All he wants to do is play basketball. ... He's just really super hungry for this sport."

"It's a challenge I look forward to, playing with competition, put my talents against them," Fisher says. "I feel like it's more of a good fit for me. I can get my shot off, get different moves to go. At my age, I'm always killing 'em. So when I play up, it's more hard-nosed defense and I have to use my IQ more. It's better for me because I get to use the IQ that I have. I was used to catching the ball in the high post and then scoring. Now I get to bring up the ball, look for different options, be more of a point guard."

All of that work is aimed at being the top recruit, as Fisher is eager to prove it can be done. Realistically, it is a little early to narrow in on prospect rankings. While there are specialized sites that will rank players before they reach high school, the primary trusted outlets—ESPN, Rivals, 247 Sports, and so on—will withhold judgment just a little while longer. NBA teams struggle to project how seasoned college players will continue to develop; trying to get a handle on what a 14-year-old will become as a player seems too tall (and probably unnecessary) a task.

Those that do endeavour largely agree: If Fisher is not the best recruit in that class (Mikey Williams from California is another huge talent atop the rankings), he's among a small handful that includes LeBron James Jr., and he stands as good a chance as being The Next One for Canadian basketball's ever-growing pipeline of talent.

It was no accident that when R.J. Barrett announced his decision to attend Duke this coming season that Fisher was on hand to take in the television special, spending the day around Barrett's family and friends. Barrett, the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2018 and the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft at this moment, has taken on a de facto big brother role for Fisher, the latest in a lineage of pseudo-torch passing in the program. Where Andrew Wiggins would take Barrett under his arm—figuratively and literally—as an under-ager in the program and at marquee Canadian events, Barrett is doing the same for Fisher, who is already eager to pay it forward by stopping to pose for pictures or as a volunteer helping out with children. As Fisher begins what can be a stressful process for a teenager, he'll have Barrett as a sounding board and confidant, and the support won't stop there.

Elijah Fisher. Photo by Reel Motion Image, courtesy Ro Russell

The audience the night of Barrett's announcement included Barrett's father, Rowan Barrett, the executive vice president and assistant general manager of Canada Basketball's senior men's program. As Canada Basketball has continued to grow and produce more NBA-level talent, the program has begun to take a more long term and nuanced approach to developing Canadian players, and Fisher will be among the first to grow up completely in that new system. The targeted athlete strategy identifies the country's best players at each age group and gives them an individual performance plan tailored to their game, and Fisher is ahead of schedule coming into the incubation program before high school.

Players like Barrett, Simi Shittu, and Andrew Nembhard have accelerated well past their age groups in the international program and, if his development continues on course, Fisher figures to do the same. Last summer, he joined the Under-17 team for training camp as they prepared for the FIBA U-17 World Cup (they'd place fourth), and he figures to be a big part of the Under 16 team's FIBA U-16 Americas tournament next summer.

"I think it's way too early to start talking about what he's gonna be. He's a boy. But definitely we've seen good trending, a good attitude and the mental part of it with him, and obviously there's athleticism," Rowan Barrett says. "We're gonna continue to support his growth and his development and hopefully as he continues to grow, he'll continue to be able to rise to the different levels of our program."

Fisher is already eager to pay the same treatment players like Barrett have given him. At school, Fisher is just another student, with friends in and outside of basketball. Around basketball, though, he's keenly aware of the impact he can have on others and already looks to pose for pictures or take time out and help kids on or off the court. His parents refer to him as a gentle giant and seem as excited about Elijah the person as Elijah the player. That's the case at home, as well, where Fisher spends what little downtime he does have playing with his three younger brothers.

The youngest, Daniel, is already excited for the chance to come at Eljiah in the driveway the same way Elijah did with the oldest of the five brothers. Still just three years old, it's difficult to keep Daniel off the court at Elijah's games and practices, and given the head start he'll have—parents who are 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-2, an older brother taking early steps toward an NBA future, and surely a place at Crestwood—there are already tongue-in-cheek projections that Daniel will be The Next Next One. Where Elijah wants to be the best Canadian since Steve Nash, the joke is that Daniel will want to be the best since his older brother.

Photo by Reel Motion Image, courtesy Ro Russell

That's about all Elijah jokes about when it comes to basketball. Fisher is mature and focused beyond his age, and while his parents occasionally prod him to be more of a normal teenager, this is normal for him.

"For Elijah, his mindset is different," Elijah's father, Rohan, told VICE Sports. "He knows that he's on a mission and he wants to accomplish certain things, so he knows that his path is gonna be a lot different from regular kids [his age]. So even though I try to remind him and try to tell him, 'Hey, go play some video games,' or 'Go do this,' Elijah has no interest in video games. All he wants to do is play basketball. Any time he gets a chance to practice or workout, that's it. Even when we're in the house and we want to have family time, he always has one of those small Fisher Price basketballs in his hand.

"Basketball has consumed Elijah. I played back in the day but I wasn't as hungry for it as he is. He's just really super hungry for this sport."

The hunger comes naturally, fuelled just that little bit extra by any suggestions that there's anything Fisher can't accomplish on a basketball court, from a ranking to an East Bay dunk to any other limitation you want to try to put on him.

"We really stay in the gym. We don't need to take a break. School and basketball and at home with my brothers," Fisher says about his life. "Right now, I don't pay attention to rankings. This coming season my goal is to win (our league), win all the tournaments we go into, and show the world wrong."

Watch episodes of The Way We Ball by VICE Sports, a series that explores basketball culture around the world.

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports CA.

The World's Best Middle School Basketball Player is Toronto's Elijah Fisher published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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xicanation · 7 years

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Efrén Paredes, Jr. was a 15-year-old honor student in St. Joseph, Michigan who was who was wrongly convicted by in a majority White jury in Berrien County, Michigan, a community with a history of white supremacy. There was no evidence whatsoever linking young Efrén, who had no previous criminal record, to a murder and armed robbery. He was given two life sentences without parole and another life sentence with possible parole.

Efrén has now served almost 28 years an is now 43. He is also a longtime activist and advocate who has opened unimaginable doors and touched communities far outside his cell.

Efrén needs our support: Ways to help

1. Sign the petition: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016 2. Donate: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

The controversial case has gained international attention, been condemned by veteran investigators, city councils, been addressed at the United Nations, and by numerous reknown activists and academics, including:

His story is also part of a few documentaries:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/185104498

and the Natural Life film.

According to 4efren.com:

Several notable scholars and activists across the country support Efren’s release including Dr. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice, author, and activist; Dr. Carlos Munoz, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, author and activist; Dr. Rodolfo Acuna, historian, educator and Chicano studies scholar; Dr. Jorge Chinea, Director of Chicano-Boricua Studies Department, Wayne State University, author and activist; Dr. Martha Grace Duncan, Professor of Law, Emory University, and author; Favianna Rodriguez, political printmaker, digital artist, activist; Juana Alicia, muralist, printmaker, educator, and activist; Elena Herrada, Director, Centro Obrero, Detroit Public Schools Board Member, and writer; Elisha Miranda aka E-Fierce, filmmaker, writer, and activist; Dr. Walter Garcia-Kawamoto, Journal of Adolescent Research, Manuscript Consulting Editor; and others.

Efren also enjoys the support of world renowned wrongful convictions expert Paul Ciolino, a veteran private investigator. Ciolino is the author of numerous articles in professional publications and the book, “In the Company of Giants: The Ultimate Investigation Guide for Legal Professionals, Activists, Journalists and the Wrongfully Convicted.” In addition, he co-wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed textbooks “Advanced Forensic Criminal Defense Investigations” and “Advanced Forensic Civil Investigations.”

Ciolino is the former chief investigative advisor to Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Medill School of Journalism, and DePaul University Center for Justice in Capital Cases. In 2003, when former Illinois Governor George Ryan granted clemency and pardons to 167 death row inmates, he cited Ciolino’s investigative work, which helped free five innocent men, as one of the reasons for the en masse commutations.

According to Ciolino, “There is not one shred of credible evidence to suggest that Efren was involved in the murder. No weapon, no eyewitnesses, no physical evidence, no motive, no prior conduct to suggest that a 15-year-old student athlete, and honor role student with zero criminal background, would have planned, participated in or committed this murder. The community and jury were sold a bill of goods based on the words of drug dealers and thieves.”

Juvenile Life Without Parole

There was no physical evidence linking Efren to the crime, no eyewitnesses to the crime, and Efren was home with his parents and two brothers when the crime was committed.

Efren had no juvenile or adult criminal record previous to his arrest on March 15, 1989. In a rush to judgment, and efforts to allay community concerns of criminals committing further acts of violence, he was tried and convicted only three months after his arrest by a jury comprised of 11 White jurors and one Black juror.

Efren received illegal two life without parole (LWOP) sentences for one homicide and a parolable life sentence for the armed robbery. The prosecutor charged Efren under two alternate theories of murder — premeditated murder and felony murder — and his trial judge, Zoe Burkholz, sentenced him for both counts of murder.

The Berrien County Court is located St. Joseph, MI, the same city where the crime occurred. St. Joseph had a racial composition of being 95% White at the time. The judge, prosecutor, all the investigating police, and the victim in the case were all White. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Berrien County ranks among the top 25 most segregated metropolitan areas in the country.

All but one of the youths in Berrien County who have received life without parole (LWOP) sentences have been children of color. Efren is the only Latino youth in the county’s history to receive the sentence.

Efrén Paredes, Jr.

Efren has since been actively involved in community issues and amplified his message of non-violence and criminal justice reform. According to his site, “He has appeared on various radio stations and podcasts across the nation to discuss criminal justice issues. Some of the stations include National Public Radio (NPR), Michigan Radio, Central Michigan University Public Radio, the Jack Ebling Show, La Raza Chronicles, KPFA Radio, Detriot Superstation 910 AM, Thousand Kites, Juvenile Justice Matters, Youth Radio, and others.

“Articles about Efren have been featured on ColorLines, RaceWire, The Progressive, The Michigan Citizen, South Bend Tribune, TelesurTV, Latina Lista, The Nation, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Lansing State Journal, MLive, Associated Press, 99% Invisible, The Theory of Everything, AlterNet, and other web sites. In 2015 Latina Magazine named Efren as one of four Latino prisoners in the U.S. deserving of clemency.

“Efren has taken his message of non-violence and criminal justice reform to other countries as well. He spoke to a large audience of youth at a basketball tournament in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) and has appeared twice on TelesurTV, a station based in Quito, Ecuador.

“During his incarceration Efren has raised money for underfunded classrooms, youth summer camps, and breast cancer awareness. He also applied for and received grants from a corporation to build a weight training area and fund the purchase of library books, encyclopedias, and a learning resource center at a prison he was formally housed at.

“Efren has been invited to speak at various religious services and cultural organization events throughout his incarceration. He has been a keynote speaker at Cinco de Mayo, Latino History Month, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Black History Month events, just to name a few.

“He has also developed proposals and received approval by prison administrators to host numerous members of the public who have visited prisons to speak on an array of subjects. Some of those people have included professors, state representatives, poets, authors, psychologists, lawyers, and social justice advocates.

“During the course of his incarceration Efren has received commendations from prison Wardens for the positive work he has done assisting the prisoner population through his work serving over 14 six-month terms as a member of the Warden’s Forum at various prisons. He also has the support of a retired Michigan Braille Transcribing Fund Executive Director as well as current and retired Michigan Department of Corrections staff.

“Efren is currently the subject of an immersive audio project being created by a New York-based podcast producer and Columbia University graduate student. An Emory University law professor is also devoting an entire chapter to him in an upcoming book she is authoring about prisoners sentenced to life without parole sentences when they were juveniles.

“In September 2015 Efren was among 20 prisoners selected to help develop a prison outreach component of the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) program based at Michigan State University (MSU). MBK is a program that trains people to become mentors to at-risk African-American boys, Grade 6-8, in the Detroit Public Schools. Upon successful completion of the program training Efren will receive an MBK Mentor Internship certification from the MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.”

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Xica Nation first heard about this story from Maria Luisa Zavala, Efren’s wife, who had these words to share:

How did you two connect? Why did this matter speak to your heart?

MZP: “In 2000 -2001 I was working at a nonprofit that started in SouthWest Detroit that later moved to Lansing Michigan. It was called the Xicano Development Center (X..D.C.). One of our board members had a relative that was incarcerated.

“In Michigan when prisoners want to start any type of cultural group on the inside they have to find an organization on the outside that will sponsor them.

“We had no idea what was required of a sponsoring organization. So, another board member and I went to find out. It was very simple, we just had to send a representative once a month to sit in on their meetings and make sure they were making positive plans and putting on cultural programs that benefited the rest of the inmates. So we signed on to sponsor L.A.S.S.O. (Latin America Spanish Speaking Organization). As the word got around in the facilities that the XDC had provided sponsorship to L.A.S.S.O. and then we got request from other facilities and from H.A.S.T.A. (Hispanic American Striving Towards Achievement). We also made contact with I.N.U. (Indians Nations United).

“In 2003 I started to attend the LASSO meeting in the Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson Michigan. This is where I met Efren Paredes Jr. He was the chair of the group. Efren, the LASSO Board members and I worked hard to prepare Xicano, Mexican, Latin American educational events and programing. I worked closely with Xicano/Latino professors at Michigan State University, community activities, and community leaders to go into the facility to speak and teach.

“I would say that maybe a year into the work that we were doing I became curious as to why someone like Efren (he was/is very well spoken, educated, eager to learn, caring, mentor, and well written (blog) would be serving three life sentences. So, I became interested and he gave me information about his case so that I could learn on my own why he was in there. He did not explain it to me, he wanted me to come up with my own conclusion after reading his court documents and learn details of his case.

“As for what motivated me to get involved in this matter I would say that after going through numerous court documents, and speaking to his family I am convinced he is innocent. The injustice that was committed upon a teen boy and his family was a terrible tragedy. I offered to help in any I could.

In college I learn to be a community organizer by being a member of MEXA, I was involved in a 6 day hunger strike, fought for xicano studies, increase hiring of xicano professors, increase recruitment of xicano latino students, and working on retention of those students. After college I we started a Brown Beret Chapter in Southwest Detroit in the late 1990’s. After learning of this injustice committed upon this family perhaps I could be of some assistance.

“I don’t want to sound cheesy but the words that resonated with me are “an injustice to one is an in injustice to all”. I also learned of the injustice committed to many youth getting waived into adult court to be treated, sentenced, and incarcerated as if they are grown. They can’t defend themselves, they can’t plead out because they do not know how to navigate the criminal system. Even adults that can understand the system get railroaded every day. So, this was an opportunity to help an individual get his case some attention locally, nationally, and internationally. Perhaps get him some justice.

“I helped him and the family launch a Free Efren campaign that went strong for many years, and we were even able to get a public hearing that would inform the Michigan Governor weather she should commute him or not. The hearing was attended by over 300 supporters. Unfortunately, the hearing was in front of the Parole Board, which informed him that they could not recommend to the Governor weather he should be commuted because up until this day, they are not charged with hearing cases of innocence.

“We have joined the national movement of changing laws of Juvenile Lifers With Out Parole (JLWOP), and prison reform. As a grassroots group we helped at times with informing ACLU and legislators of Efren’s case. Now as you have read laws have changed in favor or his release, but we still have a long way to go before his release.”

Efrén needs our support: ways to help

1. Sign the petition for resentencing: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016 2. Donate directly to Efrén at: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

Links to more information

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Free.Efren/

Online petition: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016

Donate: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

Efrén’s accomplishments: www.TinyURL.com/EfrenCV2016

Blog: www.4Efren.blogspot.com

Web Site: www.4Efren.com

Free Efrén: 15-year old honor student, wrongly charged 3 life sentences, spends 27th year changing the world from inside a cell Efrén Paredes, Jr. was a 15-year-old honor student in St. Joseph, Michigan who was who was wrongly convicted by in a majority White jury in Berrien County, Michigan, a community with a history of white supremacy.

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mastcomm · 4 years

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Kobe Bryant Saw His Greatness Mirrored in Gianna

The N.B.A. on Thursday is scheduled to announce the players chosen by Eastern and Western Conference coaches as All-Star Game reserves. On the internal calendar I keep, this is traditionally the ideal time to unveil my unofficial All-Star selections.

That won’t be happening this time.

In the wake of the horrific helicopter crash on Sunday that killed the legendary Kobe Bryant and eight others aboard, normal operations have been pretty much suspended for anyone who has anything to do with the N.B.A.

Bryant’s worldwide stature is obviously a huge part of that. He was one of the giants of this game, an immense figure globally, revered by the overwhelming majority of current N.B.A. players — and incomprehensibly struck down at the age of 41. Grief like this will not fade quickly.

It is doubly true in this case because Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was on that helicopter with him.

Beloved by members of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball program, which she dreamed of joining someday, Gianna received a moving tribute from the team on Monday when it placed flowers and a UConn jersey bearing her No. 2 on the bench for an exhibition game against the United States national team.

“Mambacita is forever a Husky,” the school posted on Twitter, referring to the nickname that Kobe Bryant, the self-styled “Black Mamba,” had given the second-born of his four daughters.

Also on board were two of Gianna’s teammates from the AAU squad coached by her father: Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester. The lives of three teenage girls with so much to look forward were taken in the crash, along with those of Bryant; Alyssa’s parents, John and Keri; Payton’s mother, Sarah; Kobe’s assistant coach, Christina Mauser; and Ara Zobayan, who piloted the helicopter.

The list gets sadder every time it is recited.

Kobe Bryant was 17 when I met him, then freshly acquired by the Los Angeles Lakers. On Monday, I wrote about how he was convinced, from the first minute of his pro career, that he was bound for the Hall of Fame.

Bryant was equally convinced that Gianna was likewise destined for greatness. She was his ever-present companion at countless games in recent years — to watch her W.N.B.A. heroes, or the Huskies, or maybe on a special trip to see her favorite N.B.A. player: Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks.

Perhaps by now you have seen the clip of Kobe from his visit to the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show in 2018, telling the world that Gianna bristled any time she heard a fan suggest to her father that he and his wife, Vanessa Bryant, needed to have a boy to uphold Kobe’s legacy.

“She’s like, ‘Oy, I got this,’” Bryant said of Gianna, then 12.

The last time I saw Kobe, on Dec. 29 at Staples Center, he had never looked more joyful. Wearing a bright orange hoodie and a green ski cap to rep his hometown Philadelphia Eagles, Bryant was sitting courtside beside Gianna as they watched — make that studied — the Lakers’ LeBron James and Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks going head-to-head.

Also in the building that night was God Shammgod, whose extraordinary dribbling ability made him a New York playground legend. Despite the briefest of N.B.A. playing careers, Shammgod has landed on the Mavericks’ staff as a player development coach — yet he remains so revered for his ball handling that, even in a coaching role, he has his own Puma signature shoe.

Days after that Lakers/Mavericks game, never realizing the sorrow that was looming, Shammgod told me some moving stories of his workouts with father and daughter — how he had the extraordinary opportunity to coach them both.

“I knew him when he wasn’t this Kobe,” Shammgod said. “He knew me when there was no Shammgod moves.”

In their high school days, Shammgod — then known as Shammgod Wells — wound up at an ABCD youth camp with Bryant in New Jersey. Kobe had spent some of his formative years in Italy, where his father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, was playing professionally, but Shammgod said Kobe’s fellow campers knew only that he had mostly played abroad somewhere.

“The boy from France,” Shammgod said. “That’s what we called him. After the first game, guys were saying, ‘Who’s this guy who actually thinks he’s Michael Jordan?’ He’s walking like Jordan, he’s doing every Jordan move, shooting all the balls.”

Bryant was clearly a special talent, but his ball handling was a weakness. Joe Bryant had noticed Shammgod’s slick handles and asked the 16-year-old if he could help Jellybean’s 15-year-old son.

Shammgod told the elder Bryant that he would be happy to work out with Kobe — at 6 the next morning. “I was thinking, ‘He’s not going to show,’” Shammgod said. “I get there and he’s already there.”

A bond was forged, and the two remained close. The friendship endured even as Bryant rose to stardom and his dribbling mentor was forced to scour the globe for jobs (in Poland, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Croatia) after an N.B.A. career that lasted just 20 games with the Washington Wizards in 1997-98.

During the All-Star break last February, Shammgod received an urgent summons from Bryant to Southern California. Kobe was now coaching Gianna’s travel team and wanted to introduce her and the rest of the squad to the move known in hoop parlance as “The Shammgod” — which requires the dribbler to bring the ball to the side with one hand to get the defender off balance, then snatch it back with the opposite hand to execute a crossover dribble. Oklahoma City’s Chris Paul and the Nets’ Kyrie Irving are two of the most accomplished modern practitioners.

Shammgod spent two days at Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

“When I say that’s all he wanted to do is dribbling, that’s all he wanted to do,” Shammgod said. “From 10 to 12 in the morning, then from 2 to 4. These girls were dribbling four hours straight without shooting the basketball.”

One-on-one tutorials with Gianna would soon follow. Shammgod said they had worked out about a dozen times over the past year. Kobe wanted to fly him in more often, but Shammgod said he had to remind him occasionally, “I work for the Mavs and I can’t leave.”

When the trio huddled at that Dec. 29 game at Staples, Gianna excitedly told the story of how she “did the Shammgod on this girl” in a recent game.

“She was so locked in,” Shammgod said. “Her mind-set was just like his mind-set.”

That was evident in a 2019 glimpse of Gianna on camera with the Las Vegas CBS affiliate during a trip to watch that season’s opener for the W.N.B.A.’s Las Vegas Aces. Explaining her fascination with film study, Gigi could not have sounded much more like her father when she said, “More information, more inspiration.”

Those of us who were there for the start of the Kobe Bean Bryant experience and watched him grow up can’t help but flash back to those early days now. Even though the journalism handbook says we’re supposed to be detached and unemotional — even at times like this — Bryant’s sudden death has been a gut punch for many scribes like me who covered him closely over the past two decades.

What messes me up most, though, is when I start thinking about Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, her two teammates on that chopper and the shattered families that have to try to move on without them.

Gianna, Alyssa and Payton — gone at an age just a few years younger than Kobe was upon his league-shaking arrival in the N.B.A. So, so unspeakably cruel.

This newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.

In tribute to Kobe Bryant and his second of two jersey numbers, we present a 24-item assemblage of standout statistics from his career with the Lakers.

Bryant was the youngest player in N.B.A. history when he made his regular-season debut for the Lakers on Nov. 3, 1996, at 18 years and 72 days old. A future teammate with the Lakers, Andrew Bynum, eventually became the youngest player in league history at 18 years and six days old when he made his debut in 2005.

Only four players — all big men — made the jump directly from high school to the pros before Bryant and Portland’s Jermaine O’Neal were selected in the 1996 N.B.A. draft. Those four predecessors: Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, Bill Willoughby and Kevin Garnett. Shawn Kemp sat out a year after graduating high school in 1988 before he was drafted in 1989 by Seattle.

1,346

Both of the Lakers’ rookies selected in the first round of the 1996 N.B.A. draft — Bryant (1,346) and Derek Fisher (915) — rank in the top five in club history in games played.

Bryant started only seven games in his first two N.B.A. seasons.

Bryant’s four air balls in a 1997 playoff game in Utah — one at the regulation buzzer and three in overtime — came against the same Jazz franchise he riddled for 60 points in his final N.B.A. game on April 13, 2016.

The Lakers’ championships in three consecutive seasons — 1999-2000, 2000-01, 2001-02 — represent the league’s only three-peat this century. The Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls had three-peats twice in the 1990s (1990-91 through 1992-93 and 1995-96 through 1997-98).

38.3

A conversion rate of 38.3 percent in 2002-03 marked Bryant’s most successful season from the 3-point line.

35.4

Bryant’s highest single-season scoring average was 35.4 points per game in 2005-2006, the Lakers’ second season after trading away Shaquille O’Neal.

16,866

Bryant scored 16,866 points and won three of his five championships wearing No. 8 through his first 10 seasons.

16,777

He scored 16,777 points and won two championships wearing No. 24 over the final 10 seasons of his career.

Bryant’s 20 consecutive seasons with the Lakers left him one shy of the N.B.A. record for playing with only one team: Dirk Nowitzki’s 21 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks.

No other Laker played more than 14 seasons (Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).

Bryant scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006.

Bryant’s eruption against the Raptors, the second-highest scoring output in league history behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962, came just 33 days after Kobe scored 62 points in three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks.

220

Bryant appeared in 220 career playoff games, which equates to more than two and half seasons of extra wear and tear.

The Lakers missed the playoffs in each of Bryant’s last four seasons.

35.6

Bryant averaged just 35.6 games played over his final three seasons following his torn left Achilles’ tendon in April 2013.

The 60 points Bryant scored in his farewell outing beat the previous record for an N.B.A. player in his last official season by 11 points. Boston’s Larry Bird scored 49 points on March 15, 1992.

Bryant is the only player in league history to have two jersey numbers (No. 8 and No. 24) retired by one franchise.

Bryant’s 18 N.B.A. All-Star appearances are one shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record 19.

Bryant was voted in by fans as an All-Star starter in his third season with the Lakers and in each of the subsequent 17 seasons.

$328,238,062

The value of Bryant’s contracts over 20 seasons with the Lakers, according to Basketball Reference, was nearly $330 million.

Bryant and LeBron James never met in a playoff game. James has made nine trips to the N.B.A. finals, winning three titles.

5-2

Bryant posted a career record of 5-2 in the N.B.A. finals, winning five championships in seven appearances.

Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@marcsteinnba). Send any other feedback to [email protected].

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