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Category Archives: Startup

Pollution Guardian – The Motion Picture!

So much great work has been done in the Pollution Guardian project that telling the story has become more complex – we needed a simple way to tell our story which was engaging and scalable. So we turned to a professional film maker – Dave Savva of Alchemy Street to help tell our story in a series of short films.

The films created have different purposes: from a very short one to introduce us to a longer one (six minutes) which tells the whole story. They include appearances from our trusted collaborators at the University of Surrey Global Centre for Clean Air Research and Mark Mason from Design Thinking Ltd.

Filming started on a rare sunny day in late March 2021, extra B-roll and interviews were captured after that day and then the various films were polished up into what I am sure you will agree are extremely professional films. An example of a shorter film was featured in an earlier blog post. This blog post marks the completion of this polishing and announces the launch of our long film – the complete story of Pollution Guardian!

University of Surrey collaboration and Envilution air pollution test chamber

A while back, I wrote a post about testing an earlier version of the Pollution Guardian prototype in the University of Surrey’s Envilution® laboratory test chamber.

A key point of using the chamber was to be able to objectively assess how well individual particulate matter and gas sensors performed, compared to high quality laboratory measuring equipment, in the controlled conditions of the lab test chamber.

Pollution Guardian prototypes installed inside the Envilution® chamber at the GCARE’s Air Quality Laboratory

Pollution Guardian prototypes installed inside the Envilution® chamber at the GCARE’s Air Quality Laboratory

Any issues found with sensors in the lab, are likely to be more significant in real world testing. In fact, the Envilution® chamber has helped us triage some significant issues with gas sensors over the course of the project.

The collaboration with the University has extended beyond the lab into the on-road field testing activities. On multiple occasions we have tested a car loaded up with Pollution Guardian prototypes and high grade laboratory test instruments. This was in order to compare the performance of prototypes in real life conditions i.e. with rapidly changing levels of air pollutants combined with environment changes to the car interior via the action of the car air conditioning system.

High quality test gear installed in-car alongside Pollution Guardian prototypes

High quality test gear installed in-car alongside Pollution Guardian prototypes

In the video below, Professor Prashant Kumar, Founding Director of the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) summarises the status of the Pollution Guardian work and his team member, Dr. Hamid Omidvarborna, tells us about the Envilution® test chamber.

Pollution Guardian: update for UK’s Clean Air Day

Thursday 17th June has been nominated as “clean air day” in the UK so a good time for an update on the Pollution Guardian project.

Three mechanical concepts for the Pollution Guardian in-vehicle sensor

As mentioned in earlier blogs, the Pollution Guardian is our project to develop a low cost solution for monitoring and alerting road drivers to areas of high air pollution and so enable them to take counter measures. We have been working on this project together with the University of Surrey and it is supported by an Innovate UK grant to prove the concept and further develop prototypes.

We have now come to the conclusion of the current phase of work which has involved:

  • Construction and characterisation of 20-30 prototypes with an updated electronic and mechanical architecture
  • MVP (minimum viable product) development of a mobile app geared to consumer test
  • Cloud back-end development to support data capture and visualisation on the mobile app
  • Collaboration with a UK facility management business to run a solution trial in Q1/2021
  • Analysis of pollution data and user experience feedback to guide the next steps
  • Creation of short films to help us explain the project (see here)

A couple of credits here to the people who have been helping us achieve some of the above:

We will be creating a few more blogs and releasing some additional films covering the more recent work in the coming weeks, so watch this space.

Why bother with the Pollution Guardian?

Busy North Circular road

As we arrive in the final quarter of our Innovate UK sponsored project and with an ongoing Covid pandemic, it is worth us asking the question why are we bothering with the Pollution Guardian? Let’s start with the facts:

Thus, we have a significant health and air quality issue, made worse by vehicle use, but which is potentially most harmful to the vehicle users themselves. The obvious solution would be to get more people to drive less or drive more zero emissions vehicles but:

  • Changing habits and lifestyle is tricky to pull off.
    • Whilst we have achieved remarkable things during the pandemic, are we motivated enough to address the silent killer of poor air quality?
    • Unfortunately, the evidence is pointing otherwise as ride as a service and online to home delivery services can push up road congestion and air pollution
  • What about electric vehicles?
    • The UK government’s stated aim is to ban sales of new combustion engine vehicles starting from 2030/2032/2035 depending on whom you choose to believe.
    • This is a potentially worthy objective but there are big challenges: charging points, range anxiety and the affordability of electric vehicles.

So, what can we do about it now?

The Idea

Well, whilst in a car as driver or passenger, you can control your own ventilation by rolling up the windows and using the air recirculation button. This has been shown to have a big impact on exposure to poor air quality .  We took the view that it ought to be possible to make an affordable sensor to warn car occupants of poor AQ and so take countermeasures, if we could incorporate existing technology items, smartphones in fact, into the solution. Thus the pollution guardian project was born.

Now we are some way down the line since starting out, how can we assess if what we have been developing could work for people in practice? Our answer: to organise a real life trial incorporating real users, not associated with the project, and let them use the device for a few weeks and listen to their feedback.

  • Are they more conscious of their air quality whilst driving?
  • Has the use of the Pollution Guardian influenced their behaviour at all?
  • What do they like/dislike about the solution?
  • Can we show any differences over time from the data that we gather?

Thus we are engaged now in putting together a real life trial and the next blogs will focus on the various aspects around this.

What happened to the traffic in 2020?

Much has been made over the reduction in air pollution in 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic. Certainly, the first period of lockdown saw much reduced commuting activity as people were asked to stay at home or work from home and it was certainly my perception that the volume of traffic was less outside of the main commuting times.

Deserted A3 carriageway during lockdown

Deserted A3 carriageway near Guildford

However, this description and picture above are not accurate descriptions of 2020. Driving around West and South West London in August showed that there was indeed plenty of traffic and plenty of air pollution around.

Heavy traffic on Great West Road in London Aug 2020

Busy Great West Road in West London in August 2020

As this blog is motivated by our Pollution Guardian project, you might be interested to see what we observed on the route around West London. Below, some estimates of the Nitrogen Dioxide gas concentration taken en-route from inside the test vehicle over a 10-15 minute period.

NO2 gas concentration vs. time showing rapid change on West London drive

Pollution Guardian prototype NO2 gas level estimates (ppb) against time (s)

Note that whilst the Pollution Guardian prototyping work is still ongoing, the absolute numbers in the graph above were our estimates based on the individual prototype sensor outputs and algorithms at the time. They are however valid to look at as a high quality, lab grade, NO2 gas analyser on board our vehicle, also reported similar or higher gas concentration figures over the same time period.

What does this all tell us?

  • Despite the pandemic, traffic and pollution levels over the summer period in city/urban areas were not so much below the “business as usual” levels.
    • Indeed, the BBC reports that even in the midst of the January 2021 lockdown, motor vehicle traffic is already at 50% of normal levels.
    • This suggests traffic and its associated air pollution will be returning to normal in 2021 when the lockdown eases.
  • Air pollution levels can vary a lot from lower to higher levels of concern over relatively short distances i.e. hotspots are discrete spots.
  • The Pollution Guardian looks capable of following these fast changes in air quality and can be a useful tool to bring awareness and raise alerts on worsening conditions.

Lab testing with the University of Surrey air pollution chamber

As part of the Pollution Guardian project, our collaborators, the University of Surrey Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) planned to develop an air pollution test chamber for affordable sensor devices to be evaluated against high quality laboratory grade test measuring instruments.

The objective for the chamber was to be able to set up stable, predictable air pollution and environmental conditions to enable the replication of field conditions from ANYWHERE in the world.

In its first iteration, the chamber, subsequently branded “Envilution”, was capable of controlling:

  • Chamber air temperature
  • Humidity, including pre-filtering to create “zero air” as a baseline (dried and filtered air)
  • Particulate Matter (PM) levels, with options to create particulates from a variety of sources
  • Nitrogen Dioxide, NO2, gas concentration

By the end of the second quarter of the project, the chamber was ready to start testing with our Pollution Guardian prototypes.

The Envilution air pollution test chamber created by the University of Surrey

Figure 1: Envilution air pollution test chamber created by the University of Surrey

The chamber conditions:  temperature, relative humidity, particulate matter level and NO2 concentration were sampled from a port in the chamber using the same high quality instrumentation mentioned in the previous blog.

In our testing, we planned on exploring the behaviour of the prototype sensor units against changes in the levels of temperature, humidity, particulate matter and NO2 gas concentrations. Whilst some of these tests were more straightforward to set up, others turned out to be more tricky e.g. humidity testing.

Mostly when weather websites predict humidity levels, they actually refer to the “relative humidity”. This is a measure between 0-100% of how much humidity the air is capable of carrying, relative to the air temperature and pressure. As you get toward 100%, you can get a lot of condensation forming on surfaces and in warm conditions struggle to keep cool by sweating.

In our lab tests, we aimed to see how our sensors responded overall to the relative humidity in the range of 10-85%. The initial approach was to use an aquarium to generate the humidity and mix this with “zero air” (cleaned and dried) to achieve a target relative humidity.

Set up to deliver zero air and combine with water vapour from an aquarium

Figure 2: Zero air combining with water vapour from the aquarium

As we discovered, it was quite hard when starting off with zero air to turn this into high humidity air without also having condensation issues within the ducting leading to the test chamber. The GCARE team were however quite resourceful when coming to practical techniques, and we managed to explore the other parts of the humidity range using a combination of a nebuliser to create small water vapour particles and the higher end range of humidity through rearrangement of the sets of connections into the chamber.

I will tell a bit more about the performance of our sensors in the chamber in subsequent blogs whilst briefly mentioning the results from our temperature sensor during a temperature test.

Set of temperature sensor responses during lab test

Figure 3: CP1 prototype temperature responses during a lab heating/cooling experiment

The CP1 prototype units’ temperature sensor responses were generally well correlated with one another, but slightly higher than the chamber temperature recording. This was attributable to the internal heat dissipation of the prototype, when in operational mode.

Pollution Guardian: roadside experimentation together with the University of Surrey

One of the first activities together with the University of Surrey’ Global Centre for Clean Air Research, led by Professor Prashant Kumar, was to join a live field campaign to measure the air pollution next to Stoke Road in Guildford, Surrey. The University of Surrey’s campaign measured roadside (pavement) air pollution using both high-end specialised air pollution instrumentation along with more affordable devices.

Stoke Road can be a busy road at peak times and is closely connected to the A3 slip road for London and the South East as well as the direct connecting route to the nearby town of Woking.

Traffic on Stoke Road Guildford

Figure 1: Stoke Road during a morning rush hour.

The setup involved measuring the air pollution at a height of approximately 1.5meters above the pavement, a comparable height for pedestrians breathing in roadside air. Thus the need to brush off some old woodwork skills and create a container and support platform for our units.

Bird box platform for Pollution Guardian sensor units

Figure 2: “bird table” box for holding pollution guardian units

Why measure pollution on Stoke Road? There is a children’s playground right next to Stoke Road, so monitoring pollution levels there is of real interest and also the University has a co-located air pollution measurement station, using sensors from the iSCAPE project. With the support from the Guildford Borough Council, this site is being continuously used by GCARE team as a part of their iSCAPE’s Guildford Living Lab activities.

Now whilst we are designing the Pollution Guardian for measurements in the car, it was of some interest to us to obtain an early view of how our own “CP1” version prototypes performed compared to the specialised air pollution equipment made by GRIMM and more expensive particulate material testers such as Dylos devices.

stoke road air pollution testing campaign site

Figure 3: Roadside setup next to Stoke Road

What were the learnings?

Good results are possible for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) measurement:

  • After aligning measurements in time, we are able to obtain a correlation of 0.8 between Pollution Guardian units and the high-end particle spectrometer.

However, NO2 pollutant gas measurement is difficult in the field:

  • Pollution Guardian NO2 sensor readings were well correlated with one another but..
  • Even after warm-up, we can only obtain 0.3 correlation with a reference measuring unit
    • Some NO2 spikes detected by Pollution Guardian units were ignored by the reference NO2 detector and vice-versa.
  • One effect we could feel and could see in the “spikiness” of our NO2 readings was the impact of a Northerly wind blowing along the road.
    • We would go on to look at how to better protect our units against wind gusts, whilst not compromising our key use case of the car environment.

So, whilst the reasons for lower correlation on NO2 gas readings were not yet clear, this was something we were obviously keen to explore in the planned lab testing with the University of Surrey’s GCARE Air Quality Lab where we would have better control over the environmental conditions.

Update on our first prototype & air pollution on BBC news again

BBC London ran a recent story on air pollution exposure during commuting:

It now seems a long while since our last blog post, but air pollution is barely out of the news with the latest BBC story about air pollution exposure during commuting. This topic is fairly close to our hearts with the pollution guardian activity inspired by the fact that air pollution exposure is highest within motor vehicles.

Earlier on this year, we put together our first prototype pollution sensor containing a particulate sensor for PM2.5 measurement and a Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2 ) gas sensor. PM2.5 refers to the measurement of very small particles, less than 0.0025mm in diameter which can go deep into the lungs and containing a variety of payloads e.g. road, brake or tyre dust or chemical compounds from combustion. Nitrogen Dioxide gas can exacerbate respiratory conditions and at street level is mainly produced by diesel vehicles.

How does out first prototype look?

Close up photo of our first protoype unit

Why did we make this first prototype?

  • to create a self-contained sensor unit with its own internal power supply to enable easier bench and field (car) testing
  • to shrink the volume of air trapped within the unit in order to keep the unit responsive to the current air conditions
  • to enable experimentation with parameters to find the best balance of sensitivity versus stability

We will write a bit more about the “infrastructure” of the prototype and surrounding app and cloud solution in later blogs, but the main question we had when we put the hardware unit together was does it work?

Well, the good news was that the prototype actually worked as expected across a range of functional areas with only one bug with battery charging which was solved by a simple hardware modification to the units.

How well did the units work compared to our initial cardboard prototypes? Pretty good in practice:

  • having “always on” internal power meant that the sensors could be ready to start work within a couple of seconds; previously the sensors could require several hours from being powered up to being ready to measure
  • fast responsiveness to Nitrogen Dioxide gas e.g. able to pick out smelly vehicles passing by

NO2 measurement against time

And where does that spike of air pollution correspond to? A smelly van on the southbound slip road of the M25/A3 junction…

Map of NO2 air pollution hotspot on M25/A3 southbound sliproad

Smart Phone Applications for the Pollution Guardian Project

Most Internet of Things (IOT) products are associated with using very efficient protocols such as MQTT over a special purpose radio link like LoRa. However the IOT solution we are building in the Pollution Guardian project is quite different for the following reasons:

  • As a consumer device we need interaction locally in real time.
  • Our aim was to produce hardware which could be purchased for the minimum cost to the consumer and so offer benefits to as many people as possible. This meant a minimized UI on the device itself.

These drivers brought us to the following decisions: we would build a device which reaches the internet via a smart phone bridge. We would therefore use Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate between the device and the phone.

We have chosen to build our prototypes using Android as this offers a lower cost to start up than using IOS in terms of devices and computing facilities, we have been careful however throughout the project not to lock ourselves into Android-only infrastructure solutions.

As a roadmap we realized that we needed two versions of the application: first an ‘engineering’ application optimized for our testing in laboratory and in technical field test and second a ‘consumer’ application which would deliver the experience design for a real customer.

The engineering application was the first target since it was the means to learn about our sensor package and how it reacted to changes in pollution conditions. Even for this application we have stuck to the principle of cloud data storage as the most effective means to leverage the value of the data collected – so no memory cards or local only databases were to be implemented. Because our background was in device-side development rather than infrastructure, Firebase Real Time Database emerged immediately as a very good candidate for data storage.

Further benefits of using Firebase emerged for authentication with code snippets available for sign-on and sign-up. Firebase also handles ‘beneath the hood’ all the buffering, reconnecting and error handling needed for practical operation with a mobile device where connection to the internet may or may not be available at any moment in time.

For the engineering phase, extraction of measurement results files for further offline analysis is essential and Firebase’s admin API library enabled this in a python environment. The data could then be further analyzed with data science tools in Jupyter notebooks.

So far we have extracted data from hundreds of miles of road-test and hours of static testing – the tool set works well and extremely reliably for us. Future posts will share more about the Engineering App and how we further developed our application and cloud designs.

Pollution Guardian: Measuring air pollution with cereal packet prototypes

As mentioned in the previous blog, we put in a lot of preparation work over summer 2018 in order to be able to quickly start work on the Pollution Guardian project and de-risk certain areas. One of the first items to be actioned was the creation of a custom circuit board to explore the performance of our selected, affordable Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) gas sensors and the type of electronics needed to setup, amplify and filter the output of these sensors. We called it our “bench test” circuit board as we thought it would only get used indoors on the bench..

Bench test circuit board

With the bench test board, we designed a couple of options for the electronics solution:

  • to provide a backup option, in case the one circuit failed to perform
  • provide us alternate options based on relative performance
  • to enable optimisation of the bill of materials cost

Designing & making the circuits went relatively smoothly,  but it is not until you receive circuits that you can really see what is going on. Some mistakes we discovered quickly, whilst others took a period to debug. Mostly our mistakes were due to the misinterpretation of and assumptions on the component specifications; our first solutions to these issues actually went on to compound our problems.

After a period of investigation and debugging, we were finally able to identify and solve the underlying issue. As part of this work, we lashed these prototype circuits together with an off-shelf development board (TI cc2640R2) all contained in a cereal packet wrap for protection. We called our first units  Dougal & Zebedee and took them out of the lab and into the car:

Dougal and zebedee prototypes

What we found when we started testing out the units was that whilst our units appeared quite sensitive to temperature change, they were actually capable of detecting low levels of NO2 inside the car.

The picture below shows a trace of NO2 measurements whilst traversing the one way gyratory system in the centre of Guildford – note that a decreasing level on the graph trace implies a higher NO2 concentration:

Air pollution on Guildford gyratory system

So, at the conclusion of our cardboard proto work, we knew we had the right potential sensitivity toward NO2 which we could work with on the next prototype to calibrate and try to get consistent between test units.

Pollution Guardian: From competition win to prototyping

BBC cartoon programme Magic Roundabout characters

Magic Roundabout characters

Feasibility projects like the Pollution Guardian imply a certain level of risk and it was critical for our business to secure some grant support from Innovate UK to help us mitigate those risks.

Looking back, it seems a long time since we made our application for funding, but considering the risks ahead, we prepared ourselves in order to get started quickly in case of a positive outcome of our bid:

  • Working on the system architecture, driving decisions on the hardware and software platforms to use within development
  • Further research on the key components
  • Talking to collaborators and contractors to re-check availability
  • Re-planning the market research

Now, many academic papers point to the difficulty in using affordable sensors e.g. around variability, stability and accuracy, so one of our biggest challenges in the project is to put together an affordable solution based on these sensors. Our approach was to tackle this issue head on, building a very early prototype and using a minimum “data gathering platform” around it to understand the pitfalls & performance issues.

This early work cut across several disciplines:

  1. Electronics, designing a custom circuit to best interface with affordable gas sensors
  2. Firmware, building on a development platform to gather and share sensor data over wireless
  3. Mobile app, customised to gather the local sensor data & upload it to a data store
  4. Mobile backend, a real time database to capture the data streams and tools to help explore the data
  5. Mechanics, how to wrap this early prototype for real world use
  6. Early system testing & validation approach

We will be adding a few blogs to the site to cover progress on the above items; suffice to say the first mechanical housing for the unit followed the “breakfast cereal box” approach. After wrapping up the first sensor unit, its looks gave us the name for our prototype, Dougal, after the dog character from the programme, “The Magic Roundabout”.

Dougal, the Pollution Guardian cereal box prototype

Is it worth entering Innovate UK competitions?

We, at All about the Product, consider ourselves blessed to have won a grant from Innovate UK in the Open March 2018 competition along with our collaborators at the University of Surrey. Thus we are have now embarked on our “Pollution Guardian” Startup project. To help others considering such a bid we thought it might be useful to write this blog.

Why should you do it?

  • Investment: Quite simply the grants from Innovate can be the difference between properly exploring a business idea and letting it wither on the vine. We have found that the grant we received has made it possible not only to buy materials and hire specialist contractors but also to spend the time to unlock the potential of our own competences and experience.
  • Collaboration with academia: This benefit was not immediately obvious to us when we started our journey but has become a key component our activities as we execute our project. The good thing is that universities can attract 100% funding as a collaborator and with that you can get not only world class know-how in a certain field but also a different world view which will enrich your project no end.
  • Support from Innovate: You have a Monitoring Officer appointed who will review your project every quarter. While some may regard this as an examination to pass in order to get your funding released, we have found this discipline useful to keep structure in the project and facilitate periods of reflection on progress. Of course having the backing of ‘Supported by Innovate UK’ also opens doors and helps convey immediately that this project already has gone through a lot of scrutiny.

How do you win?

The simple answer is that we do not know. We had more than one attempt for different applications and through those attempts we did change our proposition significantly. So you could argue immediately that the application process in itself forces you to improve your idea and so is a worthwhile exercise in its own right.

Choosing the right competition to enter is often cited as very important with the idea that you should enter the most specific competition to your idea as possible. Since we won the Open Competition after failing in the Emerging and Enabling competition we cannot perhaps be considered a typical case.

Learning from previous bids and listening to feedback is important – you do get scored feedback on any bid you make. However winning is not simply getting the highest score since Innovate do consider the portfolio of investments they are making. You are only allowed to make the same application twice so do learn from previous feedback but do not give up too easily.

 What happens if you do win?

You get the email and read “We are pleased to inform you that your application has been successful” – so what now? In our case this was 3 months after we submitted our application and 5 months after the competition opened. You are not able to start the project immediately and there are quite a few more hoops you need to jump through before you get your all-important offer letter – in our case this took another two and a half months.

So you find yourself starting a project which you planned at least 6 months ago and in this time you may find contractors you had identified are no longer available so you will probably need to do some re-planning – things change after all.

Is it all worth it?

Our experience is that it is for the reasons outlined above. It is not necessarily a fast process for a start-up eager to get moving but if you hang in there it can be very rewarding.


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B wiv Deece – Ritual Law EP

Do your daily rituals sometimes leave you feeling as though your stuck in a monotonous living hell? As a western society our ritual law comes in many packages; high school, university, weddings & mortgages that lock us in our 9 to 5 prisons. ‘Ritual Law’; the title track from our current EP, was born out of these frustrations, in a bid to break a shackle or two. Take a second of your boss’s time to watch this clip, take a long lunch and hell knock off early….It is Friday!

You may notice two new faces in this clip belonging to Joel Taylor (drums) & Casey K (bass). These lads have joined forces with us in our live format to build on the energetic heavy hip hop experience that is B wiv Deece.
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Ritual Law Video credits: Featuring Steve Walshe, Jenni Kellett, Peter Flaherty, Maundz, G Force, Natasha Samartzis and introducing Fat Ho. Directed and Shot by Thomas Elliott, Edited by B wiv. Big thanks to Emma And Thomas Elliott from Little Green Light Films.

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Team 10

Team 10 – just as often referred to as Team X or Team Ten – was a group of architects and other invited participants who assembled starting in July 1953 at the 9th Congress of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture and created a schism within CIAM by challenging its doctrinaire approach to urbanism.

About Team 10

Jake Paul-founded team of social media influencers on YouTube who became a part of the incubator and management company of the same name. The group's YouTube channel has earned more than 2.5 million subscribers.

Achievement of Team 10

Chance Sutton and Tessa Brooks earned the nickname of Chessa. Jake Paul and Erika Costell became known as Jerika while Jake and Alissa Violet were known as Jalissa. The group was a Shorty Award nominee for YouTube Ensemble.

Top Facts You Did Not Know About Team 10

1960s architecture.. 1970s architecture.. 1950s architecture.. Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne members.. Architecture groups.. Architectural theory.. Architectural theoreticians.

Latest information about Team 10 updated on July 28 2021.


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Free World Cup update for FIFA 18 is now available

4.5/5 - (516 votes)

EA recently announced that they would release a free update to the World Cup for FIFA 18. That update has made the publisher available this afternoon and can now be downloaded.

Instead of being downloadable content that you have to download via the PlayStation Store, the World Cup content is added through a game update. This update is 5.9GB in size and allows you to experience the complete championship virtually.

This update adds a number of new modes, different official stadiums, the right kits of the country teams and more. Ultimate Team has been provided with new maps with this update.


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Happy Sussex Independence Day to all of the petty, racist & salty haters out there

Happy Sussex Independence Day. April 1st, 2020, the start of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new life, unbound by nitpicking courtiers and racist royal reporters. They are in California now and the British press are still up in their feelings about all of this. To celebrate Sussex Independence Day, I’m choosing to highlight the Daily Mail publication of a hysterical screed by Sarah Vine, wherein she suggests that Harry and Meghan are lazy, irrelevant, sad and… much needed in Britain. Because reasons!

Ordinary people are having to endure the unimaginable; yet this is a couple who barely gave their relationship with the British public 18 months before chucking in the towel. No wonder, as the royal biographer Penny Junor put it, they now seem ‘pretty irrelevant’. For months, other members of the Royal Family, not to mention friends, advisers and those of us in the Press reckless enough to incur the wrath of the pro-Meghan trolls, have been urging them to get some perspective. Now events have done that for them and their decision to abandon Britain in favour of life in LA has been exposed for what it is: ill-judged, premature — and, in many ways, rather sad.

…Luckily, Prince Charles has said he will fund Harry in the short term. But the Duke will have to get a job, as will Meghan. I don’t imagine she will have any trouble. But Harry? Even assuming he can get a Green Card to live in the States permanently, he has never known anything apart from the Army and royal patronage.

Now he is thousands of miles from home, surrounded by people not renowned for their sincerity or kindness — while his own people, the British public, face the greatest challenge of a generation and are crying out for that chutzpah and cheek we used to love.

Harry may be many things, but he is not a shirker. His unique capacity for empathy, inherited from his late mother, would have proven invaluable in boosting the morale of frontline staff. Instead he is reduced to spouting Americanised platitudes on the pair’s Instagram feed and communicating via emoji. I can only imagine the shame he must (surely) feel as he watches his brother consider returning to work as an air-ambulance pilot to help the NHS, while he’s loafing about on the other side of the Pond. One day, when he’s all grown up, Archie may ask Harry: ‘What did you do in the war against Covid-19, Daddy?’ The answer, dearest Harry, is up to you.

[From The Daily Mail]

This is the most “HOES MAD” take, and you can just feel the petty jingoism pulsating through the column. The British press which spent two years (much longer, actually) smearing and abusing Meghan and Harry now wants us to believe that they alone truly understand Harry and how sad and pathetic he will be in California. And what’s with the shade towards LA, “surrounded by people not renowned for their sincerity or kindness”? As opposed to ENGLAND? Jesus Christ, these people! Anyway, I hope Meghan and Harry enjoy their well-earned independence. I hope they write books and give interviews and do amazing charity work and develop documentaries and make lots of money. That will really make these hoes mad.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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Body Camera Shows Officer Lied to Motorist About Radar Accuracy Check

The following article is Part 6 of an investigative series by AllOnGeorgia into the Brooklet Police Department under the authority of Former Police Chief Doug Meyer (also known as Max Meyer & Clifford Meyer). The series looks into Internal Affairs investigation reports, a series of body camera files, and details over a dozen incidents during Meyer’s tenure in which citizens allege harassment, retaliation, and false imprisonment by Meyer and a few of his officers. All documents contained in the article below were obtained by way of an Open Records Request filed on May 29, 2018.

Part 1 — Fmr Chief in Brooklet acknowledged citing business owner for speaking out against PD
Part 2 — VIDEO: Fmr. Brooklet Chief to Motorist: ‘I’m going to work to get you fired’ during speeding-related traffic stop
Part 3 — VIDEO: Brooklet PD secured warrant day after man filed complaint about traffic stop
Part 4– Documents show Brooklet Council teetered on officer discipline despite findings of wrongdoing
Part 5 – Brooklet Chief Retroactively Issued Citation to Motorist after POST complaint filed

Footage from the body camera of a former Sergeant with the City of Brooklet shows the officer was not honest about calibrating the radar gun during a traffic stop after a motorist requested the check before receiving a citation for speeding..

Sgt. John Baker initiated a traffic stop on February 3, 2018 on US Hwy 80 with a motorist who shall be referred to as “B.M.” Baker informs B.M that he clocked the vehicle traveling 66 mph in a 45 mph zone.

Baker asked B.M. if she would like to have an accuracy check performed on the radar. B.M., after having the check explained, said she would, indeed, like one conducted.

When Baker returns to his vehicle, he can be seen pressing the button for an internal test (the sound with the beeps), which ensures the computers and circuits are working appropriately, however, the use of tuning forks is the only mechanism that will ensure calibration is correct and the devices are not seen in the video.

Tuning forks look like this:

Image result for tuning fork test radar

This is a sample video of what tuning forks look like and sound like when they are testing a radar gun:

At the 1:55 mark, Baker appears to reach for something in his door panel, but ultimately returns to clicking on the computer to fill out the citation. For the next three minutes, Baker completes the traffic citation boxes. The video does not indicate an accuracy check was ever performed.

Baker proceeds to finishing the citation and returns to the window of the motorist where he says, “Okay, [B.M.], the accuracy check passed on the radar. I wrote you a ticket.”

The citation, which can be seen below, indicates that Baker checked the box for the “Driver requested accuracy check” and just below the violation section of the ticket is the detail of the supposed radar check, which is not evidenced in the video.

Baker citation radar

(This citation above is not signed by the motorist or the officer because it a copy from the electronic ticket system – not a carbon copy of the citation. It was obtained through an Open Records Request on June 4, 2018)

The video shows B.M. was not informed that signing a citation is not an admission of guilt, only proof of receipt as is required by state law – O.C.G.A. 40-13-2.1

B.M. ultimately paid a $229 fine to the City of Brooklet. Had the motorist not been a student and had she challenged the ticket it court, the outcome may have been different given that Baker issued a traffic citation with false information.

You can view the video of the traffic stop here. (Video totals just under 6:00 minutes).

Jessica Szilagyi is a former Statewide Contributor for

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All Things Norfolk Directory

All Things Norfolk Directory - Entries tagged with Where to Stay in Norfolk

Cliff Avenue
Village, Town or City: Cromer
Postcode: NR27 0AN Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Contact Name: Shaun or Martin
Phone number: 01263 512398
Website: Website Title

The Virginia Court Hotel in Cromer North Norfolk is an independently owned 23 bedroom seaside hotel, offering overnight accommodation to suit everyone’s needs.

This stunning Norfolk Hotel offers suites, superking bedded, twins, doubles and single rooms on either a bed and breakfast or dinner B&B basis all located in a converted gentlemen’s club house in the centre of Cromer.

This former club house was reportedly built to entice Edward VII to continue to frequent Cromer, located on the prestigious tree lined avenue opposite North Lodge Park (which overlooks the sea), Virginia Court Hotel is a stone’s throw from both the town centre and the North Norfolk seafront.

Since becoming a hotel in the 1920s the hotel has gone through several re-iterations and updates and now offers fabulous accommodation, delicious food, a sun trapped garden and ample free parking. This North Norfolk hotel is also fully wifi enabled, ensuring connection in both public areas and your bedroom. And its free of charge!

Virginia Court Hotel in Cromer is set amidst the beautiful surroundings of North Norfolk. You’ll find plenty to do here including walking along the North Norfolk coastal path, birdwatching at Cley, visiting Sandringham and the halls at Blickling, Felbrigg, Holkham and Houghton. Take a boat trip to see the seals at Blakeney point or explore the Norfolk Broads. Additional activities include exploring the local villages and towns. Holt is a pretty Georgian market town packed with unusual shops and galleries. There’s also a country park and steam railway nearby.

Cromer itself is famous for its delicious, sweet (but small) crabs and when in season between May and September there is nothing better than to eat in our Dining Room restaurant and feast on local crab. Our seasonal menu includes crab served in a variety of ways including; crab crostini, potted crab, crab cakes, salads and thermidor to name a few!

Basing yourself in Cromer allows you to easily explore the town; watch the fishermen land their catch directly on the beach, visit the Henry Blogg and lifeboat museums, catch your own crabs off the pier and take in the famous Seaside Special Shows on the award winning Cromer Pier! For those with a little more energy try a walk up to the Cromer Lighthouse or even play a round of golf at Royal Cromer Golf club.

For a relaxing leisure break by the coast in stylish Cromer accommodation you will enjoy the Virginia Court Hotel.

With its modern hotel rooms the Virginia Court Hotel in Cromer offers a comfortable relaxed experience where you will receive friendly but professional service from all our team. So sit back, relax and enjoy a refreshing drink before sampling the delights of our evening menu featuring a variety of locally sourced foods including the famous Cromer Crab (when in season).

You will find Virginia Court Hotel in Cromer is the most ideal of Norfolk Hotels for all types of breaks; awaydays, microbreaks and short weekend breaks or for use as a base for longer stays.

  • Bar
  • Restaurant
  • Parking
  • Children Welcome
  • Groups Allowed
Main Image: thumb_virginiacourtmainnewsite
34 High Street
Village, Town or City: Overstrand
Postcode: NR27 0AB Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Phone number: 01263 579237
Website: Website Title

We are a seaside pub set on the North Norfolk coast with two aa rosette restaurant and 4 star accommodation set in the village of Overstrand minutes from the beautiful Overstrand beach. We have a great emphasis on local produce including our real ales, the kitchen team have principles of in house cooking from their home baked bread to pasta and ice creams.

We offer eight individually designed en suite rooms to suit all types of residents from families to dog lovers.

We also offer other facilities that we feel a traditional pub should offer like our large lawned beer garden equipped with children’s play area, games room with pool table and sky tv coverage in the bar.

In 2012 we renovated our old barn to be able to host weddings, birthdays, business meets and other functions.

  • Bar
  • Restaurant
  • W-LAN / WiFi
  • Outside Seating
  • Children Welcome
  • Pets Welcome
Main Image: thumb_whitehorseoverstrandmainpic
95 Overstrand Road
Village, Town or City: Cromer
Postcode: NR27 0DJ Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Contact Name: Chris Graveling
Phone number: 01263 512412
Website: Website Title

The Grove Cromer provides quality hotel accommodation both B&B, holiday cottages and glamping within walking distance of the North Norfolk coast.

A family-run guest house since 1936, The Grove is only half a mile from Cromer town centre, and more importantly, it is just a short walk, through its own private entrance into the woods, from the cliffs and beach.

Alongside a choice of ensuite rooms in the beautiful Georgian country house, we have six self-catering cottages in the adjacent barn conversions.

Our fabulous two rosette restaurant serves a full English breakfast, afternoon teas, Sunday lunch and dinner throughout the week. The restaurant is split into two rooms, with the original dining room available for private dining.

There is plenty of space to unwind both for adults and children, whether splashing about in our indoor heated swimming pool, knocking a table tennis ball around, exploring our three acres of gardens with their tree-house and trampoline, or putting your feet up with a cup of tea in our beautiful lounge or new orangery bar. Further afield, a children’s play area is just a few minutes’ woodland walk away.
All the activities of Cromer are reachable either by car or on foot. You can walk entirely off-road along the cliffs through our own entrance into Warren Woods at the top of the garden.

From the day it was built, The Grove has been a family house, a place of welcome, relaxation and security for more than two centuries. Through the guest house and cottages we aim to extend that welcome to all who visit us. We wish our guests to experience the warmth and comfort that has been infused into the house by many generations of people, and we have built on this legacy to create a place where you can come in and immediately relax.

The Grove are proud to announce that Sundown will be opening on May 17th 2021 serving Norfolk tapas, lobster, pizza and ice-cream, in our giant tipis on the lawn. The Grove have been lucky enough to have had financial help from New Anglia LEP with Sundown.

We look forward to welcoming you to The Grove Cromer.

Main Image: thumb_thegrovecromernewsitemain
College Road
Village, Town or City: Thompson
Postcode: IP24 1QG Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Contact Name: Katharine Wolstenholme
Phone number: 01953483318
Mobile Number: 07930470619
Website: Website Title

College Farm is a medieval house situated in the village of Thompson three miles from the market town of Watton.  It was built by Katharine's ancestors in 1349 as a College of Priests to serve St Martin's Church and the villagers of Thompson.   The college was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1541 when it then became a private house.

College Farm sits in 17 acres of lawns and woodland on the edge of the village and is the perfect secluded venue for your wedding reception or private party.  B&B accommodation is also available in our 3 newly refurbished en suite rooms.

Our Jacobean dining room is available for hire for private lunch or dinner parties and we also serve traditional cream teas in the garden (weather permitting) or by the fire in the dining room if it's too cold to sit outside.College_Farm-131.jpg

We are currently converting some derelict barns next to the house and will be able to offer a new one bedroom unit which will be perfect for self-catering staycations or wedding accommodation, as well as a barn with loos, a shower and kitchen adjoining a party room suitable for smaller weddings and functions.  Both will open out onto a private west facing courtyard.  The new accommodation should be ready by Summer 2021.  Please keep an eye on our website for progress with this exciting new project.

  • Restaurant
  • Parking
Main Image: thumb_college1132
Hall Farm
Village, Town or City: Horning
Postcode: NR12 8NJ Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Contact Name: Hannah
Phone number: 01692 630385
Mobile Number: 07825 833920
Website: Website Title

Hall Farm Cottages offer a wide range of high quality self-catering, bed and breakfast and holiday cottage accommodation in the Norfolk Broads. Our spacious Norfolk Broads Holiday Cottages are situated between the villages of Horning and Ludham a short drive from Wroxham, an ideal base for your holidays and exploring the North Norfolk Coast.

Our aim is to provide you with luxury accommodation at affordable prices in the heart of the broads. These holiday cottages provide disabled access, with dog friendly accommodation available upon request. There are also options if you are on holiday with the children, of any age. If you have a specific requirement please tell us, if we can’t help, we’ll know a man who can. The Hall Farm team will be pleased to help you anytime.

Our luxury self catering cottages include - WiFi Internet access available from your holiday cottage. - Spacious lounge with comfortable furniture and colour Flat Screen TV (Freeview). - Dining room with pine furniture. - Fully fitted kitchen with Microwave and Dishwasher. - Downstairs bedroom (twin or double) with roll-in en-suite shower room and WC. - One or two further bedrooms on first floor (twin or double). - Bathroom with shower and WC on first floor.

On your doorstep, just a stone’s throw away from your accommodation are pubs on the river, boat hire, shops, churches, fishing and an adventure playground to name but a few.. You can hire our holiday cottages for as little or as long as you desire.

Please feel free to contact us anytime. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

  • W-LAN / WiFi
  • Parking
  • Disabled facilities
  • Children Welcome
  • Groups Allowed
  • Pets Welcome
  • Smoking Area
Main Image: thumb_hallfarmmainnewsite
20 Tombland
Village, Town or City: Norwich
Postcode: NR3 1LB Please use CAPITAL letters
County: Norfolk
Contact Name: Christine Malcolm
Phone number: 01603 209955
Fax Number: 01603 613688
Indie Voucher Title: The Maids Head Treat
Indie Voucher Details: The Maids Head Hotel "Allthingsnorfolk" offer. Book a room at the Maids Head Hotel and enjoy a chilled bottle of Prosecco with chocolates in your room on arrival, a three-course dinner in the AA Rosette awarded restaurant & full English breakfast from
Website: Website Title

The AA 4 Star silver Maids Head Hotel is renowned for being the oldest Hotel in the UK.  The site has been providing hospitality since the early 12th century. With its long history of famous guests, including Edward the Black Prince, Catherine of Aragon and Queen Elizabeth I and tradition of service to the local community, the hotel is filled with character that sets it apart.

As an independent hotel we pride ourselves on excellent service, attention to detail and flexibility making our guests feel welcome and at ease whilst staying with us.

Our Chefs understand that every guests needs are different and whilst creating our mouth-watering menus of local produce they will be happy to look after any dietary request.

Our restaurant and bar staff are on hand to recommend the perfect wine to match your meal and will do so by course as required.

In addition to our bedrooms and restaurant the hotel we can cater for up to 120 guests in our versatile event rooms.

Since 2015, the Maids Head has received a multi-million pound makeover, and this has also included investing in Maids Head Experiences. These range from a fine dining experience in the 2 AA Rosette WinePress Restaurant, to a complimentary spin in one of two vintage Bentleys, to borrowing a Bobbin Bike to explore the City at leisure.

All of our event rooms have individual character, combining this with our flexible approach to events we can tailor make bespoke events to match our customers' needs.

The Maids Head Hotel were also winners of the Best Independent Hotel and Investing in Future Tourism Awards 2019.

  • Bar
  • Restaurant
  • Parking
  • Disabled facilities
  • Children Welcome
  • Elevator
Main Image: thumb_maidsheadnewmain1132

© All Things Norfolk 2008 - 2022
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Snake Lady Tattoos: From Myth to Your Skin

Snake ladies have been around for centuries, and we’re still fascinated with their beauty and danger. We know they exist as towering Greek statues, paintings on Japanese woodblock carvings, medieval paintings in France and throughout Europe, words and paintings in ancient Chinese texts, and of course, as beautiful tattoos. The four snake ladies we’re going to take a look at today are Medusa, Nure-Onna, Bái Sùzhēn, and Mélusine, though more cultures have their own as well. For many modern feminists, snake lady tattoos have become a common motif, which is not surprising given their subject matter. These mythological snake ladies all have their own beauty, and danger, and that danger is aimed towards those who would harm them.

Left to right, Mélusine by Julius Hübner, Nure-Onna artist unknown, Medusa by Luciano Garbati, and Bái Sùzhēn artist unknown

According to research by Max Plank, humans have an automatic fear of snakes, dating back to our cavemen ancestors for pretty obvious reasons. Stay away from things that bite you! But snakes in the myths of many cultures are not just evil creatures, they are also symbols of fertility, hence why we have so many snake “ladies” throughout history. Granted many snake ladies are also described as twisted and horrible monsters, but they are almost always wronged by men in some way, and are just trying to live their best lives, even if it means killing and/or eating the occasional man (relatable though, right?). Even the Christians jumped on the snake lady bandwagon when Michelangelo depicted Satan not as a man in his painting “Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve” in the Sistine Chapel in the 1500’s, but as a snake with the torso of a woman. So why do people keep getting these snake lady tattoos if they’re often depicted negatively?

Michelangelo’s Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve.

Let’s have a look at our first snake lady Medusa, and why people might get snake lady tattoos of her. Medusa is immediately recognizable and is seen in all kinds of pop culture. At a glance, Medusa looks like a terrifying monster, but her character is much more complicated than that. According to Ovin’s Metamorphoses, Medusa wasn’t always the monster that she’s usually seen as. Medusa, one of the three Gorgon sisters, and the only mortal one, was extremely beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that she caught the eye of the god of sea, earthquakes, and horses, Poseidon. Turns out Poseidon was a real scum bag and actually raped Medusa in the temple of Athena. When Athena found out what had happened in her temple, she got angry at the wrong person and cursed Medusa for desecrating her holy space.

Medusa head by Ian Saunders
Medusa head by Frederico Rems
Full Medusa back piece by Zhuo Dan Ting

This curse turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, making her so horrible to look at that any who did would be instantly turned to stone. Medusa went from being written about like this, “Medusa once had charms; to gain her love. A rival crowd of envious lovers strove. They, who have seen her, own, they ne’er did trace. More moving features in a sweeter face. Yet above all, her length of hair, they own, in golden ringlets wav’d, and graceful shone.” To this, “In the middle is the Gorgon Medusa, an enormous monster about whom snaky locks twist their hissing mouths; her eyes stare malevolently, and under the base of her chin the tail-ends of serpents have tied knots.” So Medusa was forever transformed into a monster, one that could even get a hero some street cred if they were to slay her. Enter, Perseus. Perseus was the son of Danae, a mortal princess, and Zeus, mightiest of the gods. When Perseus grew up he was sent on a quest by King Polydectes, to bring him the head of Medusa. This was a trick though, as old King Poly really just wanted to sleep with Perseus’ mother, and was expecting Perseus to be killed by Medusa. But Perseus is the son of a god, so of course he’s not going to fight a monster empty handed and without a few tricks up his toga. He was given an invisibility cap from his uncle Hades, a pair of winged sandals from Hermes, a reflective bronze shield from Athena, and a new sword from Hephaestus. Our story of the poor cursed Medusa ends here, as Perseus was triumphant and snuck up on her while she was sleeping and chopped her head off.

Realistic Medusa half sleeve by Loren Miller
Black and grey Medusa head by Marisol Teran
Neo traditional Medusa head done by Claudio Erzi

For many people, Medusa is a relatable character, so it’s no surprise that when you search for snake lady tattoos, she’s going to be one of the first examples you see. Medusa was wronged by someone more powerful than her, but was then given the power in the form of a curse to keep people from hurting her (unless you’re Perseus). Medusa tattoos can be seen as a kind of armour, as Medusa turned people to stone with her gaze. If you rock a Medusa tattoo, she can handle glaring at that weirdo on the bus for you.

Angry snake lady by Adam Ruff

Our second snake lady and corresponding snake lady tattoos, Nure-Onna, comes from Japan. The name Nure-Onna means, “wet woman.” As such, I’ll give you three guesses as to where she lives, and the first two don’t count. Quite simply, the water; coasts, rivers, and lakes. Really any body of natural water that can fit a giant snake lady. Traditionally she is native to Kyushu, Japan’s south-westernmost of the main island’s. But she can also be found as far north as Niigata and farther east in infamous Fukushima. Now unlike Medusa, Nure-Onna was never human, she’s pure creature, though not necessarily “evil.” She’s described as being large enough to flatten trees with her tail, strong enough to overpower men and eat them, and is quite a fast swimmer. In some legends she has arms like a human, and in others the only human thing about her is her head, plopped on top of a snakes body. Though all legends describe her face as quite snake-like, forked tongue and all. According to some legends, she really just wants to be left alone as she’s quite solitary and goal oriented. Usually coming ashore to wash her hair and eat. Her diet consists of both blood and entrails (delicious), but not specifically human blood and entrails, though don’t piss her off and test that. Now even though she’s way stronger than you or me, she doesn’t like to rely on brute strength when she is in the mood for some man meat. She’s smart and tricky. Nure-Onna uses magic to disguise herself as a distressed woman carrying a crying baby. She herself cries out for help from passing fishermen, sailors, or anyone unlucky enough to be passing by. If someone does stop to help her, she convinces them to take the baby, just for a moment, to let her rest. If she gets that far, the fake baby magically becomes extremely heavy, and she changes back into a snake lady, drains their blood, and eats their guts.

Nure-Onna snake lady tattoos are another design that can be worn as a kind of armour, as we now know Nure-Onna is a force to be reckoned with! She’s also more creepy looking than Medusa, so for horror aficionados she’s a cool choice. For those who also enjoy Japanese tattooing, Nure-Onna can be paired with Japanese flowers, and background such as waves or clouds as she is a creature from the sea.

Nure-Onna back piece by Lesha Sbitnev
Nure-Onna leg sleeve by Harriet Street
Nure-Onna rib piece by Giorgio Gun

Our third snake lady and her tattooed form is more of a romantic one than our first two. Bái Sùzhēn is a snake spirit from The Legend of the White Snake, one of Four Classic Folktales from China. These are old written works of historic and literary significance. Bái Sùzhēn was born as a magical sea snake that, after practicing Daoist magic, learned how to transform herself into a human. So, still a snake lady. This story takes place in beautiful Hangzhou, and begins with a boy named Xǔ Xiān, who accidentally purchases immortality pills that make him sick. He’s so sick that he throws up the pills into the lake. Bái Sùzhēn just happens to be swimming in the lake and swallows the immortality pills, but because she’s a spirit, she’s able to digest them. She is so happy and gracious that she immediately falls in love with Xǔ Xiān.

Bái Sùzhēn by Ssab
Bái Sùzhēn by Weber Duan
Bái Sùzhēn by Jason Eisenberg

Bái Sùzhēn acquires a sidekick of sorts while traveling in human form. She sees a green snake being hurt by a man, and saves her by transforming her into a human as well. The green snake, now named, Xiǎo Qīng, swears to follow Bái Sùzhēn until the end of time. By huge coincidence, the two snake ladies come across Xǔ Xiān again, and shortly after their chance encounter, they get married. Years after their marriage, a jealous turtle spirit also turned human named Fa Hai, sabotages the marriage by telling Xǔ Xiān that his wife should try realgar wine during a festival. This wine repels spirits and and harmful creatures, and as soon as she drinks it, she is transformed back into a giant snake, giving her husband a heart attack that leads to his death. Loyal as ever, Xiǎo Qīng helps Bái Sùzhēn take Xǔ Xiān’s body to a sacred place to revive him. So happy to be revived he declares his love for his wife again, not caring that she’s a snake lady. Fa Hai of course finds out that his plan didn’t work, and he ends up, after various unsuccessful attempts to capture or kill the trio, manages to trap Bái Sùzhēn in the Leifeng Pagoda after her and Xǔ Xiān’s son Xǔ Mèngjiāo is born. Many years later, Xǔ Mèngjiāo passes the extremely difficult and competitive imperial exams with flying colours. He returns home with the title of top scholar, and is now a pious Confucian. He visits the Pagoda where his mother is trapped, to pay his respects. The heavens are so touched with his filial devotion that they finally free Bái Sùzhēn and allow the family to reunite. Another story featuring a bunch of men trying to bring a snake lady down.

Nude snake lady on the ribs by Clare Von Stitch

Snake lady tattoos aren’t just for those who love the gritty and gruesome stories, they can also be for romantics. Though Bái Sùzhēn is a snake lady, she’s also a true romantic, falling in love Disney style (ridiculously fast), and fighting for her family. If you’re wanting a snake lady tattoo with a bit of a romantic flair, but still has a strong fighting spirit, you can’t go wrong with her.

American traditional snake lady head by Matt van Herten
Full bodied snake lady by Dawn Smith
Witchy snake lady head by Tyler Howard

Our fourth and final snake lady is another familiar one to all, though you may not know it. Her name is Mélusine, and while she is often described as a snake lady, she’s also sometimes more like a mermaid, but with two tails. If you’re starting to get an image in your mind, you might think of one of the most well-known coffee logos in the world. Starbucks uses the effigy of Mélusine on their cups, a smiling two tailed mermaid, or snake lady. In some myths she is described as a witch, but in many she’s more of a fairy. Mélusine was a French mythological creature coming out of the late 1300’s in France. She is the daughter of the fairy Pressyne and King Elynas of Albany.

Mélusine done at La Rose de Jericho
Mélusine by Mel Mauthe
Mélusine by Pcla Ink

Now Mélusine was perfectly normal in appearance, despite being part fairy, except on Saturday’s. On these days she unwillingly transformed into, you guessed it, a snake lady, usually described with the two tails and a bit more fishy than strictly serpentine. One day Mélusine met a young man named Raymond in the forest nearby. As most fairytales go, they were married extremely quickly, in this instance, by morning. But Mélusine had one condition, Raymond was not to see her on Saturdays. The couple had many children, but each child was born with a different deformity, including mismatched eye colours, an ear larger than the other, only one eye, and even a son who was born with a lion’s foot growing out of his cheek and another with a great tooth. This was of course because of her fairy blood, but Raymond didn’t know that. One day Raymond’s brother visited, and made him suspicious of his wife’s lonely Saturday’s. So of course Raymond betrayed his wife’s trust and spied on her the next Saturday, and though he was horrified at seeing her in the bath with her two serpentine tails, he didn’t say anything. Until their one son with the great tooth attacked a monastery seemingly unprovoked, and killed one hundred monks. Raymond then accused Mélusine of passing on her serpentine blood to their children, and of course alerting her to the fact that he had betrayed her trust. So distraught, Mélusine turns into a 15 foot snake, circles the castle three times, wailing loudly, before flying away. She continued to visit her children, but only at night.

Snake lady head done by Mark Cosgrove
Traditional snake lady head done by Capilli Tupou
Huge neo traditional stomach snake lady done by Timmy Howe

This story has something for everyone, as Mélusine is also a romantic, but her child is also a murderer, and she’s still a giant snake lady.  As a snake lady tattoo, we can see she often looks more like a mermaid then a snake, but 3/4 of these stories feature water as a common theme, so that’s not too surprising. Mélusine also makes a great snake lady tattoo if you’re a fan of Starbucks, but you don’t want that classic “death before decaf” piece! She’s a bit more subtle than that, and only true Starbucks fans (and anyone who reads this) will know who she is.

American traditional snake lady head done by Frank Ball Jr
Black and grey realism meets red neo traditional snake lady by Jared Bent
Colourful neo traditional snake lady done by Jamie Santos

While these snake ladies might seem like monsters, they’re really just women wronged by men, and stories of feminist power. So guys, don’t be assholes! And when in doubt, get yourself a snake lady tattoo. They look badass, and they might just protect you from unwanted advances if they’re scary enough.

American traditional snake lady head done by Brad Andrew Snow
Neo traditional snake lady head done by Jason Reed Brownless
Snake lady back piece by Devx Ruiz
Black work snake lady done by Giulia Luconi
Realistic full sleeve of a snake lady with her pet done by Tophe Tattoo
Subdued colours in this neo traditional snake lady head done by Javier Franco

Which snake woman is your favourite?

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Clown Tattoos

Love them or hate them, clowns have been around a long time. As court jesters in medieval times, to circus performers, theatre actors, street performers, to movie stars, great Cirque Du Soleil acrobats, and children entertainers. Clowns are meant to be a happy, exuberant, silly performer, but lately have been much more active in the horror department. From books and movies like Batman’s “Joker” character, Stephen King’s “It”, Rob Zombie’s “Captain Spaulding” and “31”,and  American Horror Story’s “Twisty, clowns are now pretty terrifying. Some pop culture horror clowns are unfortunately based on real people who were killer clowns, such as John Wayne Gacy. Now, in 2016, North America and parts of Europe are experiencing what the media is calling “killer clown attacks”, where people are dressing up as creepy clowns and chasing, staring at, and harassing people all in the hopes of scaring them, or in some more serious situations, worse.

Whether you think clowns are funny or scary, they make some great tattoos.

Clown tattoos are usually done in American traditional, realism, and black and grey styles. They are either happy, fun clowns, sad, crying clowns (often done as “tramp” clowns), or horror clowns.

Matching American traditional clowns by Dan Santoro.
Crying traditional clown by Jonathan Reina in Gran Canaria, Spain.
Creepy American traditional clown by Kujo at Clipper Ship Tattoo in Atlanta, GA.
Sad traditional clown by Josh Adams in Canonsburg, PA.
Outline of a happy looking clown by A. Perry at Gentlemen Tattoos in Youngstown, Ohio.
All black crying clown by Jason Donahue at Liberty tattoo in Seattle.
Creepy black and grey realistic horror clown by Ukix Asmirantika at Luxury Ink, Bali.
Menacing Joker tattoo by Andrey Stepanov in Russia,
The Killing Joke, Joker by Sophie Adamson at The Projects Tattoo in Plymouth, UK.
Realistic black and grey Joker by Tom Caine at Holy Mountain Tattoo in the UK.
Realistic Rob Zombie’s Captain Spaulding by Alex Wright at Grindhouse Tattoo Productions in the UK.
Realistic Stephen king’s “It” tattoo by Sam Barry in Belfast.
Realistic American Horror Story’s “Twisty” the clown by Evan Olin at Powerline Tattoo in Cranston, RI.

Do you love them or fear them…?


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Easy Summer Style

Easy summer style via A Lo ProfileEasy summer style via A Lo ProfileEasy summer style via A Lo ProfileEasy summer style via A Lo ProfileEasy summer style via A Lo Profile

Is there an easier outfit than a romper? The saying ‘one and done’ perfectly applies to this outfit. It’s so easy on these hot summer days! I’ve worn this romper with sneakers as seen here for running around during the day or out to a quick and casual dinner. It’s also so easily dressed up with either wedges or heels for an easy summer night out look.

Shop the look below:

Also, if you rent this from RTR the be sure to use this code/link for $30 off your first order: http://refer.renttherunway.com/x/YFy7PA

This romper (made by Equipment) runs a little big and I could have definitely sized down in this romper (maybe even two sizes if available). But, that made it all the more comfortable. I loved that the length was kind of on the longer size, as it made it good for so many occasions without having to worry about the appropriateness of the shorts. If you’re unfamiliar with Equipment, they have the most amazing, easy basics. They have so many great things for work and I love the simple, classic style of their designs! Equipment pieces are an investment (in my opinion) but because of how classic they are, your CPW (cost per wear) will end up being a great deal. I’ve been eyeing quite a few pieces for the Fall, so I’ve linked those below for you to shop, too!

My Wishlist

  1. 8.27.16
    Kelly said:

    What a cute summer look, I love the waist detail!

    xx Kelly
    Sparkles and Shoes

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Entertainment Music Rain Sword - Summer Breeze

Rain Sword – Summer Breeze

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What was expected of her was the same thing that was expected of Lara Stone: to take a beautiful picture.

The main thing that you have to remember on this journey is just be nice to everyone and always smile.

The model is talking about booking her latest gig, modeling WordPress underwear in the brand latest Perfectly Fit campaign, which was shot by Lachian Bailey. It was such a surreal moment cried she admitted.

Emotional discomfort
Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds.

So simple, yet so essential, the white shirt is the foundation of any wardrobe. It’s also the most multi-functional item, taking you from work to play with just the quick unfastening of a couple of buttons.

There was a time in the industry not too long ago, when it seemed that the high fashion world was using plus size models as a headline-grabbing gimmick see the groundbreaking cover.

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Sweets And Passionate Dominican -mail Order Wedding brides On-line

If you’re joyful, your lover could be by your side to help you to know how much she’s pleased with you. You need to understand that web courting necessitates economic investment. They usually are not, however, as huge as people who occur in real life. We attempted to judge the unavoidable expenditures of Dominican brides to be dating online. Of course , the helpings will change according on your and your girlfriend’s tastes. For starters, let’s take a look at a quite widespread system applied on marriage websites – month-to-month subscription.

That’s how come they make the first transfer and invite single guys to talks. In simple, women’s activity is common in marriage businesses. When you’re getting ready to get married to a Colombian girl, it’s critical to incorporate a face-to-face encounter in the online dating cost range. The trip will value between 1500 and 3 thousands dollars, even so, there are a quantity of strategies to lower your expenses. For example , buy tickets in front of time, stay in a less expensive resort, or perhaps cook at your home. After that, you intend to begin having your -mail bride.

  • These young women never consider cleaning, decorating, and preparing food as a chore they hate to do.
  • There are lots of methods and locations that you may meet attractive Dominican Republic ladies with no having to disrupt a perspiration.
  • A Dominican mail purchase bride will be your loyal associate, dependable close friend, passionate mate, and highly effective supporter.
  • Also, it’s quite inspiring to possess a look at the the one that is passionate concerning the issue she is talking about.

These Dominican marital relationship have an amazing capability to steadiness their lives between do the job and home. Introduction program for solitary men considering correspondence with single Dominican women. Aval, or a dish with 13 gold cash, might be handed from a younger man guest in the marriage for the minister, that will bless the coins and present them to the soon-to-be husband. The bridegroom will then present the arras to the woman as a custom logo of his want to talk about every little thing along with her. Getting married in the Dominican Republic means enduring a variety of this and fresh traditions first hand. In some ways, a Dominican marriage ceremony will help remind you for the Catholic wedding ceremonies, however you will find additionally a quantity of distinctive concerns about Dominican nuptials.

Tips about Dating Dominican Women

They know how to put together dinner properly, and also take pleasure in cleanliness and order. Therefore , you will actually feel more comfortable and comfortable heading back residence every evening. This is why a Dominican solo lady is a perfect alternative for that mature West man who is excited about beginning a family and bringing lovely youngsters for the world.

Attention-grabbing Facts About Dominican Brides On the web

Dating a Dominican daughter on-line will certainly open up new horizons for you personally. Once you’ve began trying to find an greatest American lover, remember that it has slightly little more complicated getting married to a dominican lady than marrying a north american. Most American males have to get as much flexibility and comfort simply because potential the moment marrying a overseas bride-to-be. They don’t constantly need to be pushed into marital relationship and a lot of want the independence and freedom to visit, work, and live her personal existence. If you guess you have what it takes to gain the guts of the attractive dominican girl, then it’s the perfect time to start making ready. Join 1000’s of joyful males who been successful of their desire to win attractive Dominicanbrides’ minds on overseas on-line courting sites.

You can always ask the bride regarding her position to this or that state of affairs and can definitely get a genuine reply. She’ll rarely misinform you and additionally will demand trustworthy and sincerity from beloved one. Hot Dominican women like to focus on all their pure magnificence with stunning garments, accessories, and skilled cosmetic. The type of Latina brides comes with at all times been very feminine and seductive. These brides are hoping on flashing skinny denims or outfits that present all the gorgeous body figure of a alluring Dominican woman. The most preferred holidays of your foreign girlfriend are Christmas and Easter.

Dominican females love mingling, assembly fresh individuals, partying, and whatever sort of fun that you may imagine. Apart from this, Dominican ladies could be incredibly faithful to men who current themselves for the reason that reliable and financially protected. Don’t dash off to into dominican women dating considering they are gold diggers, although.

You could have seen content articles utilizing the time period ‘buy a bride, ’ but you may be wondering what it usually means are all expenses related to seeing a foreign woman up to the marriage stage. So that you aren’t paying for a woman as well as to a girl on the other hand only pay for companies of dating websites, journey and legal expenditures. If you are considering assembly a wonderful Dominican spouse, you will be a part of a trustworthy specific dating webpage. With respect to Dominican ladies, the decision to locate a overseas hubby is commonly motivated by their unsatisfactory life at residence, yet it’s not the sole reason why they’re doing it. Dominican ladies intended for marriage currently have a particular pair of qualities they’re looking for in men, associated with their experience, Western guys often have all of them. In some methods, Dominican girls possess a steadier and more secure life than many different Latina American women.

Tell just about everything because it is, even though it’s not so spectacular. Shall we begin with numerous a 50 % of Dominican gals for marital life. Girls from this republic happen to be fantastically participating.

The Dominicans’ character mainly features a wonderful zest forever. They say the quickest method to be trained the local dialect of Spanish is to get acquainted with a Dominican girl. These types of ladies speak so much and continually discuss many points with close people. Dominican ladies with respect to marriage are very open in communication. In this nation, really to ask issues on private life and family at the first interacting with. Love for youngsters can be described as attribute characteristic of every Dominican woman.

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The Attkisson Law Firm

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The Attkisson Law Firm In Dayton represents personal injury victims involved in car accidents, wrongful death, premises liability and dog bites. The Attkisson Law Firm has the capacity to represent most personal injury victims with very promising results.
Attorney Kevin Attkisson is a personal injury and wrongful death attorney in Dayton, Ohio, who is devoted to representing injury victims against insurance companies. When clients need guidance to submit a claim or need represented in court to ensure they get the justice they deserve, Mr. Attkisson provides the services the clients need. Being injured in an accident can put a financial, physical, and emotional burden on anyone. The one-on-one legal services offered to injury victims in Dayton by the law firm help them get compensation that will help reduce the burden of an injury.

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Wayne and Gill Watson.
Alpine Experience
Alpine Experience

Off Piste & Back Country Skiing Specialists

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Wayne's Photos of the Day >

Pilates Anyone???

Is anyone out there interested in working on your posture, alignment, mobility, flexibility and core strength?

I’m available for on-line Pilates Zoom sessions, which is effective and a very convenient way of fitting it into your schedule. I’ve been teaching Pilates for over twenty years and qualified through Body Control Pilates.

If you are interested, send me an email at wwatson1955@gmail.com or phone me on 07952 882 518. (Doug says my email address contains way too much information but it’s too late now!)

Stay tuned!


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Patient Information

How do I pay for services?

AltaPointe accepts most major commercial insurance as well as All Kids, Medicaid and Medicare. We also provide services to people who are uninsured, depending on their symptoms and needs. For patients who meet the criteria, financial assistance and/or a reduced fee schedule may be available.

You can call (251) 450-2211 or (888) 335-3044 for information on all of our programs and services.

Billing Questions
The AltaPointe Finance & Accounting Office can assist you with your billing needs. In order to assist you, please click here to complete and submit a form with your questions and information to our business office. If you prefer to speak to someone in our business office, please contact us at (251) 450-5916.

What should I do if I am in a crisis?

If you are experiencing a life-threatening emergency, call 9-1-1. If you are in a psychiatric crisis situation that is not life-threatening, call AltaPointe at (251) 450-2211 or (888) 335-3044.

What if I need directions to the office?

Patients visiting AltaPointe or one of its hospitals for the first time may need written directions to their appointment destination. We have provided a complete list of offices and hospitals with addresses, written driving directions and a map for the convenience of our patients and their caregivers or family members.

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Featured Altarists for You

Isn’t it fun to see what others are creating?

Perhaps you find yourself stumped on how to begin?

Let’s explore together all the ways you can begin to invite the shifts you desire or need into your life.  The growth or ease or simply the way to be that feels right to you.

As a visual person who best learns by seeing firsthand, I am sharing with you clever, creative and cool women’s altars through images and interviews that includes their professional offerings to help you see for yourself how inspiring and potentially life changing taking on this practice or tool can be for you.

Every few weeks I will share a new Altarist.  (After launch when I will share a handful up front to help with your initial exploration to see what may draw you in or prefer for you own needs and interests)

It is my hope that you will be inspired to begin building your own altars in your home or work space, begin treating your body as an altar when you dress or prepare for a special event and finally with every breath you life your life as an altar – worthy, valued and always enough just as you are in this moment.

As I am not here to teach you each step (because each of you will want to go about this in your own unique way and I believe you will evolve over time in your approach) I wanted to provide you with a global circle of powerful women who are healers and wisdom keepers.  Creatives through art and dance, therapy and music.  Aromatherapy, Earth Medicine, shamanic practitioners.  The offerings are vast and varied and hopefully you will find them diverse and supportive to your wants and needs.

I want you to be aware of all these women and their offerings.  To pull in the ones that call you and find ways to work with them to help you along your spiritual path.

May you join this circle and let your life be an altar.  For you are sacred and we are grateful for you.

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There’s an App for That! Earthquake Early Warning Is Here.

October 31, 2019
by Robin Estrin

On the 30-year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Governor Gavin Newsom stood near the Oakland entrance of the Bay Bridge, a portion of which collapsed during the quake, and announced the launch of MyShake, the United States’ first earthquake early warning system.

“The price of admission for living here is preparation,” Newsom said. “Today we are making a big leap forward.”

Had an early warning system existed when Loma Prieta erupted beneath the Santa Cruz Mountains 30 years ago, UC Berkeley seismologists believe that ShakeAlert, the app’s underlying earthquake early warning system, would have detected the shaking and generated a warning within five seconds of its onset. Just four seconds later, MyShake would have pushed the warning to app users across the Bay Area. San Jose would have had five to eight seconds to take cover before shaking intensified. San Francisco’s Marina District, where four people died, would have had 20 seconds before the most destructive tremors wreaked havoc on the neighborhood.

Bay Bridge earthquake damage

Bay Bridge damage from the Loma Prieta Earthquake // Photo courtesy of Joe Lewis, flickr / CC

Earthquake early warning has the potential to provide life-saving seconds to millions of Californians. But the system is imperfect, and statements from its developers have been clear—as users, we need to manage our expectations accordingly.

“It’s inevitable that as we go forward we will make mistakes,” said Richard Allen, MyShake developer and director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. “But I think we can go through a process of educating everybody about what’s possible, and educating [ourselves] about what people want, and then we will have a system that really is effective.”

MyShake is designed to deliver notifications generated by ShakeAlert, a network of seismic sensors developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and its university partners, which include Berkeley, Cal Tech, the University of Washington, and the University of Oregon. ShakeAlert detects shaking, estimates an earthquake’s location and magnitude, and generates an alert—all within a matter of seconds.

Whether or not those alerts are delivered to the public depends on a third-party messenger: an app.

Early this year Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti delivered on his promise to bring early warning to Los Angeles by launching the mobile app ShakeAlertLA. The app made headlines in July for failing to notify users after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake ruptured beneath the small desert town of Ridgecrest, rattling the homes and nerves of many 100 miles south in Los Angeles.

Multiple reports stated that ShakeAlert generated an alert as programmed, but that it wasn’t sent out because the app’s notification threshold was set too high, a story Newsom reiterated at the press conference.

“We are much closer to having a system that people will see as effective now than we were at the time of the Ridgecrest earthquake,” Allen said. But still, there is much to be learned.

But according to the Seismology Lab’s website, the system didn’t send out an alert because ShakeAlert underestimated the magnitude of the second large quake, generating a warning for a magnitude 6.3 earthquake, rather than what it actually was: a 7.1. If the initial magnitude estimate had been accurate, the shaking intensity threshold would have been met, and people in downtown Los Angeles would have received a warning, and 49 seconds to prepare.

That may not seem like a lot of time, but just a few seconds are enough for a person to dive under a sturdy desk or for a surgeon to, say, lift a scalpel from a patient’s eye.

Part of the problem was that seismologists, not social scientists, designed ShakeAlertLA’s notification thresholds. App developers thought people would want to be notified of shaking strong enough to cause harm or structural damage; they learned that people expected notification any time they felt shaking.

“The failure of Ridgecrest was a failure of understanding users’ expectations,” Allen said, reflecting on the Independence Day quakes.

After a strong public outcry, the USGS and the city moved quickly to lower the app’s notification thresholds, a change mirrored with the MyShake app. ShakeAlertLA and MyShake users will receive notifications when an earthquake erupts at a magnitude 4.5 or greater, and produces shaking at an intensity three or higher on the Modified Mercalli Scale (which measures how an earthquake is experienced by people at different distances from its epicenter).

“We are much closer to having a system that people will see as effective now than we were at the time of the Ridgecrest earthquake,” Allen said. But still, there is much to be learned.

Developing a system that can accurately measure an earthquake’s intensity and location is no easy feat; neither is creating a mobile app capable of pushing notifications to millions of users in just a few seconds. The apps developers believe the system is ready for public use, but Ridgecrest may have revealed some of its potential weaknesses.

“People think that ShakeAlert is going to be the panacea, and it’s not. If you have bad building codes, ShakeAlert is not going to save you.”

At the time of the 7.1 quake, the algorithm responsible for estimating its magnitude did so with just four seconds of seismic data—not enough to capture its full intensity. In previous tests, four seconds had been enough to produce an accurate estimate, but Allen said the Ridgecrest miscalculation has pushed researchers to explore the use of more data.

But more seconds of data could come at a cost—fewer seconds of early warning.

The system of seismic sensors that undergirds the early warning app is not fully built. According to USGS national ShakeAlert coordinator Robert de Groot, a dependable system would require almost twice as many sensor stations as there are today. Magnitude estimates will likely improve as more are installed, said de Groot. But until then, errors like the one that occurred during Ridgecrest are just what MyShake users should expect, Allen said. Shaking might be significantly stronger or significantly weaker than the system anticipates. Warnings may arrive after shaking is felt, or if the system underestimates the magnitude, not at all. (And those closer to an earthquake’s epicenter than the nearest sensor won’t receive early warning.)

As we contend with the unpredictability of the next big one, USGS social scientist Sara McBride said that Californians should do their best to reframe their thinking about the early warning system. It may reduce risk, but in earthquake country, it won’t eliminate it.

The USGS predicts with 99.7 percent certainty that a quake of magnitude 6.7 or greater will strike California in our lifetime. No amount of warning can prevent that likelihood, or slow down the speed at which seismic waves travel through the earth’s crust.

The launch of a statewide early warning system is an achievement, McBride said, but it’s one that should be viewed as a part of a wider ecosystem of earthquake resilience tools. Knowing what protective actions to take—and stocking a disaster supply kit—are just as important as the newest technology.

“People think that ShakeAlert is going to be the panacea, and it’s not,” de Groot said. “If you have bad building codes, ShakeAlert is not going to save you.”

So, if you download the app, remember that technology can only go so far. It’s ultimately up to us, the users, to get prepared before the big one strikes.

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