paper-bridge

Rosenberg Loses It On Police Officer Over Alton Sterling Killing #BlackLivesMatter #AltonSterling

SPECTRA, an LGBTQIA app is finally live on Kickstarter! But what is SPECTRA, exactly? SPECTRA is an app designed by members of the LGBTQIA community for the LGBTQIA community. At SPECTRA, we believe that our community deserves a Digital Home, a welcoming space to meet our needs in a non-judgmental environment. We exist to make you stronger. We are a network of businesses and people who get it.

So, what’s our mission? We plan to become an online resource center for our community, a space where your voice will not only be heard but where your voice will also help the members of our great family feel safe anywhere in the world. Here’s what we have in mind!

A Complete Resource Center For LGBTQIA People

SPECTRA is a movement emerging from a digital platform built for iOS, Android and the web. It is a network of LGBTQIA people and their allies fighting for a more inclusive future.

Because there are so many in our community that feel insecure and unsafe in unknown spaces. Because we found out that more than 70% of LGBTQIA youth said they felt more comfortable being themselves online than in the real world. Because SPECTRA is an opportunity to use the power we have online to rally our community together and find the safe spaces for us in the real world.

SPECTRA is an excellent opportunity to create an online resource center for the LGBTQIA community, where you will be able to know where to go, where to work and even where to live. SPECTRA has been created by a union of inclusive people, employers, and places. It is a movement towards social equality and will be available on iOS, Android and the web. Because we believe in a future where everyone can feel safe in the world. We invite everyone to get involved, especially allies!

How Will That Work?

We have designed three unique features to help you find the best friendly places to have fun:

Rainbow Ratings

SPECTRA Rewards

Rainbow Maps

The rainbow ratings will work similarly to YELP but for the LGBTQIA community! SPECTRA members will be able to rate businesses on how welcoming they are. These ratings will help other members of our community avoid spaces where they could feel unsafe, and encourage businesses where they are welcomed. The ratings are calculated based on actual interactions through user-generated reviews. SPECTRA is a global app, which makes it easy to find affirming businesses all over the world.

You will be able to avoid places with low inclusion ratings. Plus, in the near future, you will be able to look for window stickers on businesses with a HIGH inclusion rating!

As for the rainbow map, we plan for it to be a resource that makes it easy for you to plan a journey. You will be able to take safe routes around your city and anywhere in the world! Every SPECTRA object is pinned to the map for your convenience. You will also be able to filter businesses by several criteria such as:

Exclusive deals

Health & Wellness

Safe Spaces

Queer Spaces

Gender neutral bathrooms

Hotels & Hostels

Crossdresser Meet-Ups

Virtual businesses

LGBTQIA and POC owned

Clothing Swaps

Private Events

Pride Events

Finally, with SPECTRA rewards, you will be able to earn rewards at inclusive businesses and gain access to exclusive deals that are only available within SPECTRA Rewards! You can earn points as you shop with our partners and inclusive businesses all over the world!

There are so many more things we have in mind for SPECTRA and we need your help to make it happen!

We Are 80% Complete!

Due to some complications and homophobic forces in the world, we had to hide for the longest time that we were building an LGBTQIA portal. This secrecy resulted in extra expenses and longer development. SPECTRA was started in summer of 2017.

We are finally coming out and need your support to complete the development and refine, test and release SPECTRA in BETA.

Our Kickstarter campaign went online on February 19 2019, and our goal pledges is at only 10,000. Thanks to our several backers we are a little over 10% of our goal! We ask for your help to bring our project to fruition and we have planned several tiers and rewards for those who believe in us!

We invite everyone on Tumblr to Signal Boost us and help us reach our goal! Reblog, like, share it with your friends! It might seem like a small gest, but SPECTRA will be a revolution for LGBTQIA inclusion!

Be part of our future today!

LINKS:

Our Website: https://www.joinspectra.com/

Our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gospectra/digital-platform-to-build-safer-world-for-the-lgbt?ref=29fd7v

His skill has not changed, But the prize divides him. He cares He thinks more of winning Than of shooting – And the need to win Drains him of power.

————–

Im Gabe, Im a disabled trans man living w my disabled enby partner. Rents due in 5 days & we have $40 in the bank. I’ve been unemployed for 2 months, & my only job offer requires I own a car (which I do not). Anything helps. (link: http://PayPal.me/gabrielmcgrath) PayPal.me/gabrielmcgrath #TransCrowdFund

http://PayPal.me/gabrielmcgrath

————

FIX YOUR SLEEPING SCHEDULE (1-2 months)

Try to wake up earlier every day. Like 5 - 10 min earlier than the day before. Until you wake up any time before 8am or so…

If you struggle with waking up & snooze button is you bff:

Put your alarm clock as far away from the bed as possible.

Drink a glass of water right after you wake up.

Pour another glass of water on yourself right after you wake up.

Prepare some coffee the night before, leave it by your bedside, drink it after you wake up.

Have your blinds/curtains open, so that it’s bright after you wake up.

Try to go to bed 5-10 min earlier than the night before.

Track how many hours of sleep you’re getting. Aim to get at least 7h per day or 49h per week. 

Increase your sleeping hours incrementally. Aim to get at least 1h of sleep more than the previous week. For example, if this week you slept for 41hrs, aim to get an extra hour of sleep next week, so it’s 42h.Once you get enough hours of sleep and wake up early-ish.

Try to keep your sleeping schedule consistent. It is really important to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.  Even if it’s weekend. Or even if that means, you getting less than 7hrs of sleep that day. I’d say waking up at the same time everyday is the most important step, which will help you the most with fixing your sleeping schedule.

START EATING HEALTHY (1-2 months)

This step really depends from person to person, but firstly I suggest you take some blood tests to see if you have any deficiencies, etc. Especially, if you struggle with cravings.  

Try intermittent fasting, if you struggle with binge eating or overeating. As it will help you to learn to listen to your body better: when it’s hungry, when it’s full, etc. It’s really simple, there are many methods of Intermittent fasting, but I’d suggest 16/8 for the beginners. (Google it for more info)

DRINK ALL THE WATER. Again, if you’re not drinking enough water, try to level up your water game incrementally. Download some water tracking app on your phone to help you. Drinking water will make you more energetic, increase your metabolism, and decrease you appetite (among many more benefits).

Track what you eating. I would really suggest tracking your meals for around a month. Because, most of the time people have no idea that what they’re eating is unhealthy. Again, download an app to your phone for that.

Make your own meals once in a while. Not only this will save you money, but it’ll help you to see what’s really going into your body.

Eat less meat and more veggies/fruits. Go to your local market and buy some veggies/fruits, you have never tried before. I’m sure you’ll find your new favs. Eat/buy less meat. Not only it’s good for the environment, but it is good for you, too. Get a veggie burger instead of the beef one, etc.

Cut dairy. Find your new favourite milk substitute. Advice: Oat milk is really good with the tea and oatmeal/porridge; hazelnut milk is amazing on it’s own; cashew milk goes well with cereals.

Learn more about nutrition in general. It will help you to make better food choices and it will make eating healthy much easier in general, because once you understand all the chemistry behind the food and what it does to your body, you kinda don’t want to make yourself feel worse. Here are some free resources: - Human nutrition course from Alison.com - Crash course Metabolism&Nutrition: Part 1 and Part 2 - The Health Nerd’s YouTube Playlist about nutrition - What I’ve Learnt YouTube Playlist - Human nutrition course from Alison.com - Crash course Metabolism&Nutrition: Part 1 and Part 2 - The Health Nerd’s YouTube Playlist about nutrition - What I’ve Learnt YouTube Playlist

GET PHYSICALLY FIT (2-6 months)

Define your goals. Do you want to lose weight, do you want to get stronger, gain weight, be able to climb stairs without losing breath, run 5k?

Remember - you’re half-way through. Being physically fit has a lot to do with what you put into your body. So, if you fulfilled the previous step of eating healthy - you are half way through!

Make a plan. A Reasonable plan. Be honest with yourself.

Start small. Like, 5 min exercise in the morning. Or doing 10 sit ups per day. Don’t do anything overwhelming, like running 5k everyday if you haven’t run for the past 5 years.

Make sure that you kinda like what you’re doing. If you absolutely hate running - don’t do it. Hate doing sit ups in the morning? Try some yoga instead.

Explore until you find what you like. You don’t have to go to gym to get fit, especially if you hate it. Find a type of exercise, which you actually like. Maybe it’s dancing or hiking, taking your dog for a walk. Sign up for several trial lessons of various sport clubs. Ditch ‘em if you have them until you find something that you love. Stick with that.

Do the small changes in your everyday life. Stairs>Escalator, Walk>Drive, Do some squats while brushing your teeth, switch from regular desk to standing desk, etc…  Find ways to incorporate being active into your everyday life

Track your effort instead of your progress. You cannot really control your progress that much (especially if your goal was to lose weight). However, you can always control your effort. So track it instead. This will leave you more motivated. As you will be able to see that you can do more and more everyday. Whereas, if you tracked your progress, you may not always get the result you hoped for, which might demotivate you and make you upset, wanting to quit.

BEAT DEPRESSION

Do the previous 3 steps and you’re half way through.

See a therapist/doctor. Depression is an illness, requiring medical treatment. So, get it. Remember: there is absolutely no fucking shame in having a mental illness.

Get some extra support. Talk to your friends or family. Or maybe someone on the internet.

Write it out. If you don’t want to talk - write down your thoughts. It can be just as helpful. It’ll help you to understand yourself better, see problems in your thinking, etc.

Distract yourself from yourself. Get someone/something to take care of, so that you can, for a moment, stop thinking about yourself and focus on something else. E.g, get a plant, or a dog, or a fish.

Self-care day. Dedicate at least one day per week for self-care. Take yourself out, either to a museum or some fancy cafe, do some stuff you like, whatever your hobbies are, do some physical self care: bath, face mask, manicure, etc., listen to some nice music, watch a film…..

STOP PROCRASTINATION

Celebrate your victories instead of mourning over your loses.So the only thing you’ve done today was write one sentence for your 20 page essay? Amazing! Buy yourself a candy for that!! I mean, you could’ve done nothing, but you didn’t - you wrote that one sentence and that’s worth celebrating.

Do it for only 2 minutes. If there’s an important thing you’ve been putting off for a while, tell yourself that you will only spend 2 minutes on doing it. If after 2 minutes you don’t want to do it anymore, great, stop it. However, after 2min. you actually might want to do more. No pressure either way.

Track your productivity. Track how much time you’ve been productive that day. Try to increase that time by a little bit every day.

Always forgive yourself. So, it’s been a week and you’ve done nothing? Don’t sweat it. Let it go. Blaming yourself will bring you absolutely nothing. Nothing good will come out of your negativity on yourself. So stop it. Forgive yourself and start again. And again, if you need to. Never stop trying. Always pick yourself after you fall. Beating procrastination and increasing your discipline is a skill. And all skills can be build on. There is nothing in you stopping you from changing. Remember that.

LEARN HOW TO DO TAXES (1h - 1 day)

Go to google.com.

Type in: “How to do taxes *the name of the country you’re living in*”

Read the results.

GET MENTALLY STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE PHONE CALLS

Remember that just as with beating procrastination, making phone calls is a skill. And, again, skills can be learnt.

Get a new SIM card.

Top it up.

Dial some random numbers and pretend to be a salesman, selling whatever you like.. E.g., trying to sell broadband, cable tv, trying to get people to donate for some charity… Or whatever really… Me and some friends used to pretend we’re selling kittens or wood logs. Alternatively, you can pretend that you dialed a wrong person and talk about whatever, e.g. “Hey, Jess!! You wont believe what I saw today!! *start telling a made-up story*…”

If you get uncomfortable - just drop the call. No consequences whatsoever.

Repeat until you build up your game and your phone-call anxiety starts to diminish.

OH NO HAHA It’s definitely not done manually I think I’d cry doingthat for every line.. It’s a layer effect that I learnt about from another artist! I drew those in Clip studio but I’m pretty sure you can do the same in photoshop with a gradient map layer

1) Go to Layer > New correction layer > Gradient map

2) This will open up, and you can set whatever colours you want for the gradient. More colours = more shifts as you draw. I use a pink-blue one bc I like those colors together! IT IS IMPORTANT that you use a brush with opacity enabled, bc the shift in colours won’t work with a solid color. So for this set of colours: If I press hard I’ll get black-blue and if I press gently I’ll get yellow-pink

If you draw on a white canvas: set the lightest colour as white, or it will change the colour of your canvas

3) Arrange your layers like this: 

and you’re good to start drawing on the sketch layer!!! IT works best if you use a dark colour to draw! 

Caduceus is the one who gets to truly see and react to their invisible world, but Molly is there. His roots are far deeper than Clay’s. Every once in a while Taliesin will call him forward because of something someone said or because there’s something Taliesin knows he would have liked to see, but for the most part Molly may only sit and watch.

It’s not terrible, and yet it is. Every week Molly listens to the story his friends are weaving and his heart aches because he’s not there to add his thread. He wants to reach out and touch them, hold them, laugh and cry and fight with them. At least he knows they’re okay. Caduceus is taking care of them. He and Molly don’t talk much. Taliesin keeps them separate so they don’t rub off on each other. Caduceus is kind to him in the rare moments when they interact, when a member of the Mighty Nein looks to Taliesin and calls him by the wrong name. In those moments Molly wonders if his friends can tell he’s watching.

There’s another in here, a human. He comes out during fights every so often. He carries a rifle against one shoulder and lends his knowledge about attacking from a distance. Caduceus thanks him for the advice every time, whether he uses it or not. Taliesin lets Percy rest for the most part. Sometimes his mind will wander to a castle filled with the sounds of children or the logistics of a clock tower, but that tale is told. It was supposed to be Molly’s turn. Deep in a place Molly avoids is the possibility that it might be again someday.

While Fjord has always been an interesting character, I found that I liked him quite a bit more since they left the Menagerie Coast, and particularly in episode 50. Some of that is surely from the improvement in the whole group’s dynamic since Caleb and Nott finally opened up a lot with everyone (as other meta writers have pointed out, Fjord was probably most affected by this, as he was the one who knew the least about all the other party members before that). But what this has also made me realize is that I’ve always liked Fjord, and the person I actually don’t like is Vandren. 

Travis has said before that Fjord feels very uncomfortable in a leadership position, and when thrust into one with the Mighty Nein, fell back on what he remembers of Vandren’s leadership to inform his style. This makes a ton of sense, because Fjord is also copying Vandren’s accent as a method of grief, comfort, and stability. He admired Vandren, so he feels braver and more capable when he puts on a mask of him. In a way, Fjord’s whole character is about masks. He doesn’t feel comfortable as himself, and he’s searching for a version of himself who can be the powerful and strong protector he aspires to be.

So, it makes double sense that the leadership style we saw in “Captain Tusktooth” was also copied from Vandren. But…I know I personally didn’t like that guy (or at least, not as much as I like relaxed “member of the Team” Fjord). Things that Fjord did as the captain, ways he talked to the others or gave orders or how he acted when they raided the merchant ship: that version of Fjord has been absent since they left the ocean. That version of Fjord, that leadership style, is a little condescending, dismissive, prone to not taking others’ feelings into account. When he’s not wearing the mask of what he thinks of as good leadership (the only leadership he’s probably ever had!) Fjord cares a lot about what his friends feel and think! His apology to Nott in episode 50 was earnest and genuine, and not only born of the new information he now has about her life (and death) - I think it also came from Fjord reflecting back on his time playing “leader” and realizing that style didn’t work with everyone. Certainly Fjord’s journey on the ocean made him realize he’d been looking at Vandren with rose-colored glasses in a lot of other respects, but I think away from the stress of having to be In-Charge, Fjord might also be realizing that being Vandren instead of himself isn’t as much of a failsafe, or a shield, as he thought it was.