YOU CANT JUST CASUALLY LEAVE THIS IN THE REPLIES AS IF THIS ISNT A CRUCIAL ELEMENT OF THIS HARROWING STORY

On this day in 1980, an oil drilling rig contracted by Texaco to probe the rock formations beneath Lake Peigneur in Louisiana, accidentally penetrated a salt mine 1,300 feet below the lake bed. As a result, one of the largest whirlpools in American history was created and the entire drilling rig and 11 barges were sucked down into the vortex. No lives were lost either on the surface or within the mine, but the lake, which had been an average of 11 ft. deep, now included a 1,300 ft. chasm beneath its surface and a permanently changed ecosystem in and around the lake.

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*Filling in for ms621 tonite…I’ve actually written this post probably ten times already.  I just keep deleting it because it’s so personal.

There’s more than a casual relationship between bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression) and the creative arts.

In an exhaustive study, it was found that 50% of writers and poets (FIFTY!!!), 20% of sculptors, 18% of painters and 17% of architects had bipolar disorder…and in 38% of musicians as well.

What is it and why would this resonate so much with creative types, and especially musicians?  Well, I can only speak for my own manic depressive experience, but here’s my theory…

WARNING:  There’s some very dark, very heavy personal stuff below…I won’t be offended if you skip to the comments.

“Sup sluts” – General Douglas MacArthur, October 20th, 1944

Two and half years after fleeing the Philippines on orders from President Franklin Roosevelt as Japanese invaders descended on the island nation, General Douglas MacArthur waded ashore ready to kick ass and take names.

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What a time to be alive. Hydrate this weekend friends, if need be get a pacifier. 

On this day in 1307, members of the Knights Templar were arrested throughout France, tortured, and forced to confess to various crimes, both religious and civil. Under pressure from the French King Philip IV, Pope Clement V disbanded the Templars and transferred all of their assets, which were significant, to another military order, the Knights Hospitaller. The Templars were accused of idolatry, denying Christ, and spitting upon the Cross, as well as fraud and financial embezzlement. In one motion, the Templars, among the most powerful orders in Christendom ceased to exist.

Week 1 Gambling Account Balance: $124.99 Week 2 Gambling Account Balance: $151.48 Week 3 Gambling Account Balance: $160.56 Week 4 Gambling Account Balance: $195.16 Week 5 Gambling Account Balance: $231.35 Week 6 Gambling Account Balance: $220.44 Week 7 Gambling Account Balance: $261.42

Season: 19 -4 

The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can’t flood out the memories. - Tom Dempsey

Disclaimer: Gambling on hurricanes may bring condemnation from pearl clutchers which risks embarrassing you in front of your money. 

I AM THE GREATEST GAMBLER OF ALL TIME. LIKE THE KENYANS OF DISTANCE RUNNING YOU CANNOT OUT-GAMBLE A DRUNKEN UNEMPLOYED IRISHMAN. 

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Welcome to Cousin Yuri’s Dacha of Style.

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On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched and placed into Earth-orbit the first artificial satellite in history; Sputnik 1. Sputnik, and it’s R-7 rocket were not, however, the first man-made objects in space. That distinction instead goes to the first successful German V-2 rocket test, which was launched exactly 15 years and 1 day earlier on October 3, 1942. Nonetheless, the launch of Sputnik, and the ability of radio receivers around the world to pick up on its “beep-beep-beep” signal, signified a triumph for the Soviet Union and their scientific community. It also proved a shock to the American public as it appeared to shatter the belief that the United States was the technologically superior nation, triggering the so-called Sputnik Crisis and kicking off the Space Race between the world’s two superpowers.

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On this day in 1928, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming isolated a particular mold which appeared to have anti-bacterial properties, thus deriving the first true antibiotic from the Penicillium notatum mold. This drug, which effectively cured diseases which had plagued mankind for centuries, was discovered completely by accident.

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On this day in 1983, the world as we know it nearly ended. That’s not hyperbole either. But for the actions and good sense of Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet Air Defense officer on duty in an early warning bunker outside of Moscow, the Soviet Union would have launched a massed attack with all available nuclear weapons against the United States. All that the Soviet high command needed was word from Petrov, but Petrov said nothing and, by inaction, prevented the deaths of hundreds of millions of people based on a misunderstanding caused by a computer glitch. 

On this day in 1963, a time bomb–made up of several sticks of dynamite attached to a crude timing device–exploded at 10:22am under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The mass of the concrete stone steps directed the blast inward to the basement of the church. It was a Sunday and several young girls were preparing for choir practice at 10:30. The blast killed four of them: Addie May Collins (14), Carol Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). In addition, Addie May’s 12 year old sister Sarah had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face, causing permanent blindness in one eye. The eldest Collins sister, 16 year old Junie, escaped serious injury. Along with the death of Emmett Till in 1955 and the murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner in 1964, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church is considered one of the many watershed moments in the Civil Rights Movement.

Yes I am this petty. 

Also this is a real post. 

Let’s say someone is looking for porn and they put “wife caught her husband cheating,” into Google. There are a lot of porn sites (and some news sites) with that title. So Google has to decide which order to show them in, because most of the time, people pick something off the first few pages of Google.

Google wants to have the very best “wife caught her husband cheating” (or whatever else you search for) sites on the first page of the search. Google has several ways to try and decide which site are the best, but one of them is that it looks at how popular it is by seeing how many other websites link to it. If a lot of other sites are linking to it, it was probably useful to them, so Google will put it on the front page.

So if I’m a sleazy pornsite owner, I could create like a thousand websites and make them all link to my “wife caught her husband cheating” site, and act like a whole bunch of different websites thought it was pretty great. They’d be like “xdfgt .com”, “xdfgy .com”, “xdfgh .com,” just nonsense addresses nobody else was using, or whatever. I’d try to make Google think my site was awesome, because all these other websites are linking to it.

But Google has already caught on to that. Google would know “xdfgt .com” was a crappy fake website, because nobody else is linking to “xdfgt .com”. Any website that is only linked to by crap websites is also crap, as far as Google is concerned. Google won’t put it on the first pages of search results.

So instead let’s imagine the sleazy pornsite owner creates a thousand fake tumblrs instead, like “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and “xdfgy.tumblr .com” and “xdfgh.tumblr .com” and just puts one or two posts on them to add links to the “wife caught her husband cheating” porn site. Google can still tell those tumblrs are crap websites, because nobody else is linking to them. But the difference is … on tumblr, the sleazy pornsite owner can make your website link to him.

Let’s say your tumblr is “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com”. If “xdfgt.tumblr .com” likes one of your posts, there’s link on your blog to “xdfgt.tumblr .com.” Somewhere on “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” it will say “xdfgt liked this” with a link from your blog to “xdfgt.tumblr .com.”

Google’s bot looks at “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” and it sees that your blog is a good website. People are linking to it (talking to you or reblogging from you), you write like an actual human being, you have nice pictures, you update sometimes, you aren’t a bot. So Google decides your blog isn’t a crappy scam website. Then it sees the link to “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and it thinks “oh hey, a nice website with good stuff written by a real human linked to this “xdfgt.tumblr .com” I guess maybe “xdfgt.tumblr .com” is a decent website too.”

Then it looks at “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and it sees the link to the porn site with “wife caught her husband cheating”, and it says, “well, I guess that “wife caught her husband cheating” site is a good site. I know that because there’s a good site linking to it here at “xdfgt.tumblr .com.” I know “xdfgt.tumblr .com” is a good site because “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” linked to it, and I know “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” is a good site because it is updated and writes like a real person and people talk to it and link to it.”

So basically the porn bots are using the fact that you have a good blog to make themselves look better and to try and trick Google’s bot into thinking they’re very popular and it should put them at the top of its list when people search Google for porn.

It’s really annoying! It would be really nice if the people running tumblr figured out a way to not be free advertising for every sleazy porn site on the internet

Stats below are taken from the website Moz which everyone uses for SEO. Our main site has a page authority of 27/100. A higher score is better. 

Now my personal page. 

All that page does is share content from our website but Google thinks it is a more relevant. 99 domain authority is from Tumblr.com, but the page authority is derived from getting links from racingtoaredlight.com. Bit more complicated than that but that is the gist of it.