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Manicure for nail biters – how to help your customers?

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Manicure for nail biters – how to help your customers?

Being a nail technician can be an incredibly rewarding job and requires a great amount of skill. However, no matter how many years of experience you have, it can be difficult to know how to manage clients who come in with very short, bitten-down nails.

Here are some tips on how to help with this situation and encourage better nail health and maintenance.

Talk to your client

Before tackling their nails, you should first start by explaining to your client why nail biting can be damaging to their health and how they could improve it by taking some small steps. Many people bite their nails due to anxiety or as a coping mechanism, so it is vital that you approach this subject sensitively.

Propose a nail routine

Weak nails are more tempting to bite so if your client has significant damage, then it can be good to advise them on how to improve their nail health to cut down on biting.

Having a nail routine is super important for nail biters.  A basic manicure will help anyone on the path to good nail and hand health, but especially for those who are more likely to gnaw at rough or ungroomed nails. You could propose a card where they get their 10th treatment for free as a way to encourage them to stick to regular appointments.

Make sure to also educate your client on how to look after their nails in between appointments too, from keeping their hands well moisturised to regularly oiling their cuticles. This will help them to build up strength and will make your life easier in the long term.

Acrylic nails

Acrylic nails are great for serial nail biters who have tried every treatment under the sun and are at their wits’ end. Acrylic sets into hard form, so when applied it will be very difficult to bite off which can help people to break the habit. Make sure to have some acrylic nail sets in your kit so you can give people this option should they want it.

Nail art

Nail art can also help fend off biting. Many people believe that they can’t get art done on short nails so make sure to photograph any designs you do on shorter nails and share these on social media to encourage those who bite to consider coming to you for their manicures. Balance this out with showcasing designs that can only be done on longer nails, to encourage people to keep growing.

Use elongated designs that flatter the length to reduce the temptation of doing anything that could reverse their hard work and take progress pictures of your client’s nails so that you can track their growth together and encourage them to stick to their new healthy routine.

Album Review: The Smashing Pumpkins, ‘ATUM’

Konstantinos Pappis
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Album Review: The Smashing Pumpkins, ‘ATUM’

The decision to roll out the Smashing Pumpkins’ new album over several months was a wise one. The first act of ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts was released all the way back in November 2022, while Act Two followed in January and Act Three arrived just last week. For most fans, all that new music would be more than enough. For the truly engaged, though, Billy Corgan also hosted a weekly podcast called Thirty-Three in which he premiered and dissected each song. That’s right: ATUM spans 33 tracks totalling two hours and twenty minutes. It’s billed as a sequel to 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God, but it’s also a trilogy in its own right. You have to hand it to the true defenders of the uncool for tackling a 33-track space opera in the year 2023, but you’d have to be crazy to take it in all at once, which is why that release strategy made sense. And yet, “crazy” being a better descriptor of my disposition than “devoted Smashing Pumpkins fan,” that’s exactly what I did.

Unless you want to spend an extra hour in Corgan’s company for each 3-5 minute song that you hear (there are some longer ones, but we’ll get to them), the narrative arc of ATUM will probably slip by you. It continues the story of Shiny, the main character who first appeared on Mellon Collie, and it begins with him being exiled in space. It’s not exactly a metaphor for Corgan and the band’s trajectory but it’s also not not about him. It’s self-aware but not in a way that forces you to participate in whatever narrativizing is taking place, which, again, is smart optics. Even for those willing to sit through the entire album, it’s sort of designed in a way that allows you to dismiss that whole aspect of it. “It’s actually hard-baked in there that I would assume that most people won’t follow the story,” Corgan said in an interview with Rolling Stone. (He also noted that his bandmates initially responded to the concept with “a big shrug.”)

If there’s a central conceit to ATUM, it’s not the driving force behind it. So what is? It’s hard to tell, which is one of the album’s biggest weaknesses; it often sounds like Corgan is throwing a million ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, or which songs stick better together. The ambition is always there, but not always the inspiration or follow-through. Though it’s far more guitar-driven and conceptually focused than its predecessor, 2020’s CYR, it suffers from the same problem of being merely serviceable even when it takes some risks. It’s just that ATUM tries a lot more things and pulls from a wider range of influences, so now we get an album that varies more in quality and style.

One could probably make the case that there is a positive progression throughout the three acts, but each section nevertheless feels like a mixed bag. Act One sets the tone by easing us into the theatrical scope of the album with a collection of songs that are different but not exactly dynamic, straightforward but not particularly catchy or impactful. Vaguely alluding to ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’, ‘Butterfly Suite’ disappoints by having too much sparkle and little resonance, while ‘When the Rain Must Fall’ is a romantic ballad with all the yearning stifled. You get the sense that the band is willing to let more light into their sound but falls short of materializing it: ‘Hooray!’ is goofy in a way that might translate if you’re actually watching the band perform it, while the radio-friendly ‘Beyond the Vale’ – an early sign that the heaviest tracks on ATUM rely on chugging more than actual riffs – ends up sounding rather anonymous. By contrast, songs like ‘The Gold Mask’, which concludes Act One, and ‘Avalanche’, which kicks off the next one, glisten with real conviction, from Corgan’s sincere delivery to a stunning solo from James Iha on the latter.

One of the synthier cuts on ATUM, ‘With Ado I Do’, is actually richer and more affecting than a lot of the songs on CYR. But even when they return to a more familiar rock sound, the album is too often marked by the same robotic production that hindered that album. While ‘Neophyte’ achieves the expected grandeur, its repetitiveness becomes cloying; ‘Beguiled’ is a fine single, but it strangely lacks the hint of weirdness that would set it apart (‘Empires’ does the no-frills rock thing much better). Fortunately, Act Three serves as LP’s most spirited and adventurous stretch, with both of the 8-plus-minute tracks offering enough to keep you engaged even if you have no investment in the album’s lore. The band even pulls off a decent experiment in power-pop with ‘Spellbinding’, which proves they can take the lighthearted synthpop route without sounding too dull. Overall, the strange thrill you can get from listening to the Smashing Pumpkins isn’t entirely absent on ATUM, but sometimes it felt like I could get the same feeling just by seeing Billy Corgan react to Yeat and save myself a couple of hours. Dig through the muck, though, and you’ll find the parts that shine.

Arlo Parks and Phoebe Bridgers Team Up on New Song ‘Pegasus’

Konstantinos Pappis
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Arlo Parks and Phoebe Bridgers Team Up on New Song ‘Pegasus’

Arlo Parks has teamed up with Phoebe Bridgers for ‘Pegasus’, the latest preview of her sophomore album My Soft Machine. Following previous cuts ‘Weightless’, ‘Impurities’, and ‘Blades’, the track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Bedroom at Compulsory Film. Check it out below.

“‘Pegasus’ is about experiencing the warmth and lightness of good love for the first time,” Parks explained in a press release. “It also explores how the absence of chaos and the presence of real connection can be a little bit terrifying after a long time of not having it.”

“The desert landscape has always had a special place in my heart, the scorched land, the dust, the sense of absence,” Parks added of the video. “Films like Gerry, My Own Private Idaho, and Paris, Texas all use the desert as its own character representing isolation, nostalgia and the journey to a place outside of yourself. Bedroom did an incredible job of meshing surreal dreamscapes with real intimacy to make one of my favourite music videos I’ve ever made.”

Beach Fossils Share Video for New Song ‘Seconds’

Konstantinos Pappis
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Beach Fossils Share Video for New Song ‘Seconds’

Beach Fossils have released ‘Seconds’, the latest offering from their new album Bunny, which is due out June 2 via Bayonet. It follows previous cuts ‘Don’t Fade Away’, ‘Dare Me’, and ‘Run to the Moon’. “‘Seconds’ is a song about realizing you love somebody more than they love you,” frontman Dustin Payseur said of the track. Check a video for it below.

yeule Signs to Ninja Tune, Shares New Single ‘sulky baby’

Konstantinos Pappis
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yeule Signs to Ninja Tune, Shares New Single ‘sulky baby’

yeule, the project of singer-songwriter and producer Nat Ćmiel, has signed to Ninja Tune. To celebrate the news, they’ve shared their first single of 2023, ‘sulky baby’, along with a video directed by Jaxon Whittington. Check it out below.

“‘sulky baby’ was like a 2000s alt-rock shoegaze hybrid tinted in sad satire,” yeule explained in a statement. “I felt like I was talking to a younger version of me, stopping her from crying, looking back at the ways I betrayed and neglected that innocence from myself. I failed to protect her and I felt like I needed to go back in time and fulfill what she was starved of. So that she could return to my side. So that I can smile like a little kid again.”

“The song gives quite vivid descriptions of a depression I felt with almost a burning passion, yet I tried to give it a light-hearted tone,” they continued. “I think romanticizing is not always that bad. It helps to do it sometimes when you’re dealing with a repressed memory. I think it is called an advantaged delusion? Sometimes, that’s the only way I can remember parts of me I don’t want to remember, so that I can lay her to rest and heal. My mother used to tell me as a child, not to sulk all the time. I guess that’s why sulking is so special to me.”

yeule released their latest album, Glitch Princess, last year.

feeble little horse Release New Song ‘Pocket’

Konstantinos Pappis
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feeble little horse Release New Song ‘Pocket’

feeble little horse have unveiled another track from their forthcoming album, Girl with Fish. It’s called ‘Pocket’, and it follows previous entries ‘Steamroller’ and ‘Tin Man’. Check it out below.

“For me ‘Pocket’ was a song about being single and not knowing what to do with myself,” the band’s Lydia Slocum explained in a statement. “I got in the habit of showing someone affection and I liked it but then that ended and I just had all these kisses and hugs burning a hole in my pocket! I felt locked out often and like I was just stuck haunted by my old love and it felt like a dead man that wouldn’t leave me alone because the thoughts of it were so intrusive and repetitive.”

“‘Pocket’ had many different iterations but started as a straight Lydia song,” Ryan Walchonski noted. “We tried over and over to get it to its final form but I’m very happy with what we ended up with.” Jake Kelley commented that “the drums were super fun to record and the song itself is super weird in the coolest ways,” with Sebastian Kinsler adding, “Right now our problem is I wrote and recorded the guitars while on post-surgery painkillers so we have no idea how to play it live.”

Girl with Fish will be released on June 9 via Saddle Creek.

Jenny Lewis Shares New Single ‘Giddy Up’

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Jenny Lewis Shares New Single ‘Giddy Up’

Jenny Lewis has released a new song, ‘Giddy Up’, taken from her upcoming album Joy’All. It follows the previously shared track ‘Psychos’, as well as the early single ‘Puppy and a Truck’. Give it a listen below.

Joy’All, Lewis’ first album since 2019’s On the Line, is set for release on June 9 via Blue Note/EMI Records.

How to Evaluate and Improve Your Online Casino Game Strategies

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How to Evaluate and Improve Your Online Casino Game Strategies

Across the United States and other parts of the world, there is a cost of living crisis. More people than ever before are unemployed and inflation rates are through the roof. The coupling of these things has led many people to bankruptcy’s door. If you are one such individual (or you are just short on money) then you do have options. One of these is to start gambling. Gambling when you are already broke might seem counterintuitive but it can actually be a very good way of making money as long as you are cautious.

Developing, evaluating, and improving casino gaming strategies can be a good way of maximising your returns. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not have careful attitudes when it comes to gambling and instead rush into it. Rushing into gambling can be one of the worst things a person can do as it’s just as easy, if not easier, to lose money as it is to make it.

But how are you supposed to develop casino strategies and what even are they? This post will answer these questions so that you can turn a handsome profit for yourself.


Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/V3qzwMY2ak0

Developing a Strategy

So you want to start gambling? If the answer’s yes then your main priority should be the development of a strategy. Of course, it does need to be noted that it is difficult to strategize when you are playing automated games with randomized outcomes. Most experts advise playing live games because at least you can use your skill and expertise to win when you play them. Because it is hard to predict the outcomes of casino games (even live ones) your strategy’s main focus should be self-control.

If you are not in control of yourself then you won’t be able to gamble as effectively. People who lack self-control have a tendency to spend more than they can afford to lose. If you are not in control of yourself as you would like to be then you should set your own limits. Most casinos allow users to do this. Setting one’s own limits is essentially just restricting the amount of money one has to play with. Setting your limits could be an extremely effective way of limiting the amount of money you play with and, as a consequence, lose.

Finding a Reliable Casino

Once you have developed a strategy or at least gotten control over yourself, think about finding a reliable casino to use. The experts from Lucky Creek Casino are an example of a good casino as they have a huge array of games for users to choose from and positive reviews. Games and reviews should always be taken into consideration when you are looking for a casino to use. Reviews should take up most of your attention though. If a casino has good reviews then it is a clear sign that its users enjoy its service.

When looking for a reliable casino make sure that you also consider its star rating. Casinos with low star ratings should be avoided because they tend not to be very popular with users. Bear in mind also that sometimes casinos have no reviews whatsoever and you might be surprised to learn that that can actually be a good thing. You see an absence of reviews can mean that a casino’s users have nothing negative to say about it. If a casino’s users have nothing negative to say about it then that logically means the casino itself can be trusted and is worth using.

Using Casino Bonuses to Play

Did you know that you do not technically have to use any of your own money to gamble if you do not want to? It’s entirely possible to play exclusively using casino bonuses. If you are new to gambling and do not know what casino bonuses are then they are essentially monetary payments given to the users of casinos in order to get them hooked so they then begin playing with their own money. However, if you are sensible then you can use casino bonuses to your own advantage and play using them and never use any of your own money.

Unfortunately, though some casinos have started cracking down on bonus users, labelling their activities “bonus abuse.” You can avoid detection by withdrawing funds as soon as you win them and then depositing them in another casino or back in your account in a different denomination, i.e., if you win $50 then withdraw it and deposit $10 or alternatively $60 and put in $10 of your own money. Increasing the amount you withdrew when you re-deposit can make you look like you are using your own money and the casino you are using will be less likely to ban you. You can use casino bonuses to play live games too.

Playing More Live Games

As mentioned earlier on in this post it is actually easier to win from live games than it is from programmed ones that rely on machine algorithms and odds. The reason for this is that live games tend to involve more skill. Poker is the most popular live game there is. If you want to start playing more casino games then consider learning as much as you can about poker and then playing it live against other people. Playing poker against other people can be a great way to pass the time and keep yourself entertained.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they do not need a lot of experience to play poker but that’s not true. You will find upon playing poker online that the individuals you come up against are highly skilled. Some of the world’s best poker players are online. Because of this, you need to educate yourself about poker before playing otherwise you could end up losing more money than you perhaps need to. There are various courses you can take online that teach you to become a better poker player than you are.

Gambling can be a fun way of making money. If you are short on cash then use this post’s guidance to devise a strategy and start playing more expertly. You can achieve financial independence from gambling if you take it seriously enough.

Frank Kozik, Graphic Artist Behind Queens of the Stone Age and Melvins Album Covers, Dead at 61

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Frank Kozik, Graphic Artist Behind Queens of the Stone Age and Melvins Album Covers, Dead at 61

Frank Kozik, the prolific artist who designed posters and album covers for bands including Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, the White Stripes, and Melvins, has died. According to a statement posted on his social media pages, Kozik passed away unexpectedly on Saturday, May 6. He was 61.

“Frank was a man larger than himself, an icon in each genre he worked in,” the statement reads. “He dramatically changed the industry he was a part of. He was a creative force of nature. We are so beyond lucky and honored to have been part of his journey, and he will be missed beyond what words could ever express. He loved his wife, his cats, classic muscle cars, mentoring others, and Disneyland. His forceful presence will be missed by all who knew him. His legacy, like all great masters, will live on through his art and our memories of him.”

Born in Spain and raised in Sacramento, Kozik was a self-trained artist who started designing flyters and posters for punk bands while living in Austin, Texas in the ’80s. After moving to San Francisco in 1993, he launched his label Man’s Ruin Records, which would release more than 200 records by bands such as Melvins, Kyuss, Nebula, and High on Fire.

Kozik designed many album covers, including Queens of the Stone Age’s self-titled album, Melvins’ Houdini, and the Offspring’s Americana. He also directed the music video for Soundgarden’s ‘Pretty Noose’ and worked with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Butthole Surfers, and Helmet. Kozik folded his label in 2001 to focus on fine art and the designer toy movement, collaborating with Kidrobot, where he served as the chief creative officer, and other boutique toy companies.

 

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MTV News Is Shutting Down

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MTV News Is Shutting Down

MTV News is shutting down after 36 years, Variety reports. The company has been shuttered as part of larger layoffs at parent company Paramount Global that saw 25% of employees across MTV Entertainment Studios, Paramount Media Networks, and Showtime laid off on Tuesday (May 9).

In a memo to staff, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks president Chris McCarthy wrote that despite “success in streaming, we continue to feel pressure from broader economic headwinds like many of our peers,” and that “senior leaders in coordination with HR have been working together over the past few months to determine the optimal organization for the current and future needs of our business.”

McCarthy added: “This is a tough yet important strategic realignment of our group. Through the elimination of some units and by streamlining others, we will be able to reduce costs and create a more effective approach to our business as we move forward. Today we will notify employees whose positions are being impacted with leaders communicating the news directly to those teams/or individuals. These meetings will be followed by individual 1:1s with our HR partners.”

MTV News launched in 1987 with one show, The Week in Rock, hosted by veteran journalist Kurt Loder. Correspondents like Loder, Tabitha Soren, SuChin Pak, Gideon Yago, Alison Stewart, and others reported for the outlet as it expanded into pop culture, politics, and other areas, bringing a youthful perspective that served as an alternative to established media. On April 8, 1994, Loder confirmed the death of Kurt Cobain, an event that led MTV News to break into regular programming.

In 2015, MTV News made a major investment in online coverage, with an added focus on longform journalism, but in 2017 many of its writers were laid off as the company began to emphasize more on video and short-form content.

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