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Most recently published stories on Vocal.
Brass Ring Chapter 10: Bruno Gets Back In The Saddle
Bruno loved the Reubens at the Loaded Swallow, and he savored his sandwich. Well, the one he had to order after my idiot boyfriend was gone. He was also scrolling through the paperwork for the Blue Card Program. He also checked to make sure that Paul was still listed as part of the program; while officially it was set up to make life easier for CAPES members, unofficially it was created to fuel a certain speedster while in the field. It was something he was happy to do; nothing was worse than a hungry speedster in an enclosed space. He had found that out when Paul was trapped by Tintran the Terrible several Christmases ago.
By Jamais Jochim17 days ago in Chapters
Sexualized Barbies
I recently watched the Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig, and it stayed with me far longer than I expected. Barbie has long been a cultural symbol that represents unrealistic beauty standards and heavily sexualized ideals of womanhood. For decades, she has been portrayed as the image of who women are supposed to be. The ideal woman we blindly allow kids to play with and look up to as role models, the representation of a “perfect women”. I have never agreed with the Barbie standards, and avoided the movie refusing to promote a movie that continued to encourage these ideals. I finally gave in, and to my surprise this movie completely destabilized pre-dispositioned views and standards of what the Mattell company has always promoted. What surprised me about this film was how intentionally it challenged and reversed that image. Instead of reinforcing traditional expectations, the movie reconstructs Barbie as a way to explore the emotional, social, and psychological struggles women face, while also acknowledging the pressures placed on men.
By Jessica Alexander17 days ago in Journal
How Bad Are Energy Drinks for Teens, Really?
You go to school and look at desks that have pencils, textbooks, computers, and energy drinks? Students in schools now have cans of Monster, Celsius, Bang, among others, which are even sold in vending machines in many schools. Teens usually buy these drinks for energy after a lack of sleep or just for the temporary satisfaction, even with their overall bad reputation with older adults, but what does the science actually say about this?
By Seliyan Selvakumar17 days ago in Humans
Image-to-text technology, also known as Optical Character
Image-to-text technology, also known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), has transformed the way we interact with visual information. It allows machines to extract text from images, enabling various applications across multiple industries. From digitizing printed documents to reading text from scanned images, OCR plays a vital role in making printed content accessible, editable, and searchable. The need for such technology has grown exponentially with the increasing reliance on digital data and the rapid shift from physical to digital content in nearly all sectors of life. As the digital world continues to expand, image-to-text technology has paved the way for more seamless workflows, enabling businesses and individuals alike to save time, effort, and resources.
By Alexander Jackson17 days ago in Education
What is Affiliate Marketing: A Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based online business model that generates over $12 billion annually in the U.S. alone and continues to grow as e-commerce expands. At its core, affiliate marketing allows individuals to earn commissions by promoting products or services created by other companies. Affiliates share unique tracking links through websites, blogs, social media, email lists, or videos, and earn a percentage of each sale or action completed through those links. Because affiliates don’t handle product creation, inventory, payment processing, or customer support, it’s one of the most accessible ways to monetize an online presence.
By Mohammad Sufyaan17 days ago in Education
What if the Inhumans Were Never Missing?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never suffered from a lack of ideas. What it has suffered from, increasingly, is congestion—too many concepts competing for narrative oxygen, too many histories forced to coexist without the space to breathe. Few properties exemplify this problem more clearly than the Inhumans, a civilization introduced with enormous mythological potential and then effectively abandoned, left dangling somewhere between canon and apology.
By Jenna Deedy17 days ago in Geeks
The Method That Turns Action Into Accuracy
For most of our lives, we are taught a simple rule for success: Ready, Aim, Fire. Prepare carefully. Plan extensively. Wait until the target is perfectly clear—then act. On paper, this sounds wise and responsible. In reality, it often leads to hesitation, overthinking, and missed opportunities.
By Fred Bradford17 days ago in FYI
