Ingredients:

the Cookie
100 g egg whites room temperature 3 large eggs
140 g almond flour 1 1/2 cups
90 g granulated sugar just under 1/2 cup
130 g powdered sugar 1 cup
1 tsp vanilla 5mL
1/4 tsp cream of tartar 800mg

Macaron Ganache

260 grams heavy whipping cream
36 grams corn syrup
400 grams semi sweet chocolate
20 grams unsalted butter softened

Ganache
I make my ganache 24 hours in advance to give it time to set up. Bring the cream and corn syrup to a simmer over medium heat. Place your chocolate into a heat proof bowl. Pour the hot cream over your chocolate and let stand for 5 minutes. Whisk the chocolate and cream together until it's smooth. Add the butter and continue whisking until it's smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap touching the surface of the ganache and let it set up at room temperature for 24 hours.

Instructions
For the Macarons:
Sift the confectioners sugar and almond flour into a bowl. Add the room temperature egg whites into a very clean bowl. Using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites. Once they begin to foam add the cream of tartar and then SLOWLY add the granulated sugar. Add the food coloring (if desired) and vanilla then mix in. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Begin folding in the 1/3 of the dry ingredients. Be careful to add the remaining dry ingredients and fold gently. The final mixture should look like flowing lava, and be able to fall into a figure eight without breaking. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium round piping tip and you’re ready to start piping. Pipe one inch dollops onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Tap on counter several times to release air bubbles. Allow to sit for about 40 minutes before placing in oven. Bake at 300F for 12-15 minutes, rotate tray after 7 minutes. Allow to cool completely before removing from baking sheet.

For Assembly
Pipe your filling onto the back of half the shells. Form a sandwich and repeat. Macarons should be aged in the fridge for 1-3 days for best results. This allows the filling to soften the shells inside.

THE MERINGUE!!!! That meringue HAS TO BE STIFF! I had no idea French meringue could be whipped to such a thick marshmallowy consistency but all it takes is a bit of extra whisking. You'll notice the meringue start to fill the whisk when you're getting close to the right stage. Sift, Sift, SIFT! Those larger pieces of almond flour will mar the surface of your macarons. Best practice is to sift then whiz in the food processor and repeat two more times. Discard the larger particles, don't try to press them through the sieve. Use a scale if possible, accuracy helps with this recipe.
The mixing will take some practice, you will fold and fold the batter and then use the spatula to gently press the batter against the bowl. You want to remove some of the bubbles but not to many... Continue this until it reaches a thick "lava" consistency. It should slowly fall off the spatula in ribbons and be able to form a figure eight without breaking. Pipe the macarons perpendicular to the surface. If your tip is pointing a bit in any particular direction when you pipe the macarons might be oblong or malformed. Add your coloring to the meringue after it reaches the soft peak stage. When you are finishing the piping motion stop squeezing the bag and pull up with a circular motion. The macarons will be best after 2-3 days resting in the fridge.
If you over-bake the shells and they're too crisp, brush the bottom with some milk before assembly to soften them up.

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11

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Photo by Elena Popova on Unsplash

This month I celebrate the one-year anniversary of my joining the hobby circle of tabletop gaming. In my lived experience, this hobby, dominated by white, straight, cisgender men, has not lived up to its “all are welcome” sign. It has been challenging for my intersecting identities: queer, pansexual, neurodivergent, AFAB, woman.

In a few days, I will celebrate the one-year anniversary of joining my local Go Club and learning my now favorite game, Go. Commonly known in the West as Go, it is known worldwide by many names, including Igo (Japanese), Weiqu (Chinese), and Baduk (Korean).

Go is an ancient Chinese game, looking deceptively simple, with only black and white stones placed on the intersections of a grid of lines, but actually more complex than its younger, Western cousin, chess.

I am the only regular female attendee at the club, and as far as I know, one of only two regular attendees who do not fit the straight cisgender male bucket. This is my open letter to my local Go Club on this gaming “birthday” and life milestone.

Dear Local Go Club,

In a few days, it will be one year since I first came to Go club. I am a writer of prose and poetry, so please humor me while I wax poetic about Go for a moment.

I am proud of this game. I only lost by 3.5 points to a player ranked 17k to my 25k: https://online-go.com/game/77964114. And this one, which I posted for club review, where I also lost by relatively little to a player also ranked 17k: https://online-go.com/game/77908189.

(Non-Go-Player-Translation: my 2 opponents were each 8 ranks better than me, and therefore predicted to beat me by about 80 points each, but they only won by about 3 and 15 points.)

I submitted one of those games for online club review, and the result was the usual discouragement. No recognition of how well I did in the context of relative rankings. One vague, qualified reference to something I did well, And lots and lots of specific critical feedback.

I considered posting the other game for review with a note about what kind of feedback I was seeking, but somehow ended up writing this letter instead.

I hesitate to even post these games because I don’t feel that my club is anywhere near as proud of me as I am of myself, as I would also be of another beginner who has overcome the same obstacles. And I don’t feel we as a society make enough space to be proud of our individual accomplishments.

But I am proud of myself.

In the greater world, and in our local club, I am part of several marginalized groups, both in visible (female) and nonvisible (queer, neuro-divergent) ways. I have an auditory processing delay and ADHD, which make it harder to absorb the almost exclusively oral instructions. I have a spatial intelligence deficit, which makes it more difficult to learn the patterns and concepts the game demands.

I have social anxiety to levels most of you would be surprised at due to self-protective masking. And I have rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which often comes with the intersection of CPTSD and neurodivergence, and that exacerbates the social anxiety.

And despite all of those obstacles, I have stuck with this new game, new rules, new venue, and new people, ’til week 52, when some members expressed surprise that I came back week 2. I have gotten to the point where I can teach newcomers, spot patterns, hold my own in online games with tough opponents, and even — the ultimate goal of the padawan — come out ahead (with a handicap, of course) against my Go mentor, Dan Dan 6 kyute!!

(Non-Go-Player-Translation: This nickname emerged from my youngest daughter’s adorable confusion about Dan’s impressive 6 kyu rank — kyu being pronounced like “cute” without the “t.”)

If October is my Go birthday, the gift I would most like to receive is the gift of more open minds. I have said this to several in this group, and I think it bears saying to the whole group:

I speak from the perspective of a beginner and a woman who has watched other beginners and women come and go, and talked with them, and often considered leaving myself. I think one of the reasons more beginners, women, and other minorities don’t stick around is that it’s hard to have fun and not feel discouraged when you almost always lose, and you almost always get far more critical than positive feedback.

Instead of getting recognized for how well we did against a stronger opponent, instead of having our good moves reinforced, we usually get a long list of all the ways we went wrong and need to do better. It feels like turning in an essay you worked hard on and are proud of, that demonstrates well your current ability, only to have it returned bleeding red ink.

It’s hard to have fun when literally everybody is better than you, and also telling you how to get better in mostly negative ways. And then when you ask for positive feedback, they deflect to, “it’s only a game, just have fun, don’t take it so seriously.” I think that is an inherent contradiction used conveniently to protect people from having to re-think their entrenched mindsets.

Educational psychology research has shown people need something like a 7-to-1 ratio of positive to “constructive” feedback to learn most effectively. That is how humans learn best. It is ineffective and inefficient, as well as inhumanly disheartening, to expect people to function with the reverse, with a 7 critical for every 1 positive ratio, against their own human nature.

Neuroscience research has shown that positive reinforcement forms new neural pathways, allowing us to learn better and faster. We need to reinforce the good strategies, as well as change the wrong strategies. And we need to do both with more balance.

When I have pointed out the human side and spoken about my very human discouragement, the responses I have gotten have been too often along the lines of “that’s how we/gaming do(es) things,” “you can’t be upset,” and “you need to specify what kind of feedback you want.”

And I have far too rarely been asked the questions that come to my mind to ask if someone who looked and thought differently than me was brave enough to come to, and stay in, such a homogenous group. Not just attend, but honor me with the trust of vulnerability about their struggle to feel like they fully belong, or are fully welcome.

Questions like these: What are we doing well? What could we do differently? What could we do better?

I recall only one person ever asking me those questions, and that felt too little, too late, since it was only after I pressed the topic persistently. The reaction was much like the positive-to-negative ratio of game feedback: I witnessed little if any of my feedback being applied, and numerous excuses were given as to why what I was asking for was considered unreasonable, inefficient, impractical, and unwelcome. In the club that still touts its “all are welcome” sign.

As a beginner, a woman, an intersectional feminist, and a scientist, I don’t agree with the entrenched status quo mindset. A mindset that tends to use statements like the ones I quoted above as shields that lean away from dialogue, more than it uses questions as doors that lean into opening dialogue.

As we know more, we do better. And I challenge this club to use the information and perspective I am offering to do a bit better.

Next month will be a year since I started playing Go. I wish I could say I’ve stayed because of the game and because of the players. But I can only honestly say this: I’ve stayed because of the game, because of the friendship of the players, because of my own tenacity (Dan might say stubbornness!).

But I’ve stayed in spite of the critical voices of the other players, and in spite of the dismissal and invalidation I faced when I spoke up about the critical voices — a second layer of closed doors that felt more disheartening to me than the criticality itself.

I challenge this club — if you truly love the game and want to see more people learn to love it and stick around, if you want to grow as a human in the greater game of life, get unstuck from your default, your learned habits. Consider current research, and new habits. Consider forming your own new neural pathways and training yourself to notice and speak about the positive as much as the negative, in Go and in life.

I think having stuck around for a year should earn me the right to challenge this club. And if that doesn’t, then the fact that I have now finished the book I have been writing this year. A book about my nearly half-century of observing how male-dominated spaces like the church, IT, and gaming are still steeped in subtle patriarchy, and how it still seeps out into their words and actions.

A book about crying on the way to, and the way home from, gaming. A book about loving the game, and wishing I could respect the players more. But I cannot fully respect those who show me in words and actions that they close their minds to perspectives that challenge their own.

There are many (carefully anonymized to protect privacy and dignity) quoted conversations from Go club, and gaming in general, in my book. And before I send it off for publication, I would love nothing more than to write one final chapter about how one group set an example of how things could be different. An example for the larger gaming world.

I would love nothing more than for that one group to be a Go club, gathered around a game transplanted here from a place that does not look or sound like most of our club. A place that has a rich and ancient cultural tradition — 160,000 weeks of Go to my 52 — and that therefore deserves the dignity of diversity over compliance and complacency.

I would love nothing more than for that one group to be MY Go club, my gaming family gathered around the table of my favorite game out of all the games.

Thank you for reading.😊

This article is published in Women Write Publication. A growing, strong community built by women for women. All thoughts are welcom

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How to Train Mobility When You Have No Idea How to Train Mobility

The basics of getting out of pain for good

Mia Lazarewicz

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16 min read

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Oct 15, 2025

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Welcome to part three of our introductory series about the basics of cardio training, strength training, and mobility training. These three modalities are the pillars of fitness and all three need to be practiced if you want to get maximum results from the gym.

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photo by author of side-lying shoulder CARS

Mobility training is the modality that allows for optimal cardio and strength workouts, and it’s also the modality that people understand the least. It sounds like basic stretching, it sometimes looks like basic stretching, but if basic stretching worked, we’d all be pain-free by now. To re-train your tissues and get out of pain, your body needs more targeted work than passive stretching. Mobility training uses concepts like segmentations, rotations, isometrics, and PAILS and RAILS, to train your body in a completely new way.

Fair warning: mobility training can be rough. It’s not intuitive, it’s often boring, and many of the movements are so small and targeted that it feels like they’re not worth anything. But this is exactly why it changes people’s lives. It homes in on the specific restricted areas that are causing problems.

Mira stood at her window watching smoke rise from the south end of the village. She remembered that street not as a battleground, but as the place where she and Arun, her closest friend since childhood, used to race each other barefoot. Arun, who now wore the red insignia of the Resistance. Arun, who had once sworn he would never raise a weapon. They had grown up in the same home of laughter and shared festivals. The valley had never divided them until the nation itself split in half.

Her father said the civil war began because of politics. Her mother said it began because of pride. Mira believed it began the day people stopped recognizing one another as neighbors and started seeing only enemies.

She spent her afternoons in the makeshift clinic, binding wounds from strangers who carried anger like armor. Some wore the government’s crest, others the Resistance’s red band. They arrived equally broken, equally terrified. When they slept, their hands sometimes twitched, reaching for something they could no longer protect.

One evening a patrol brought in a young soldier pale from blood loss. Mira’s heart stalled. Arun. His uniform was ragged and fire ash clung to his hair. He tried to sit up when he saw her, but pain forced him back.

“You chose their side,” he said, voice thin as a thread.

“I chose to heal,” she answered.

He looked past her, at the others in the room who did not share his cause. “You help them. You help those who burned our homes.”

“They are someone’s children too,” Mira replied. “Just like you.”

Arun turned his face away, but tears escaped despite his effort to hide them.

Days passed. Arun’s strength slowly returned, though war still weighed on his shoulders. Before leaving, he paused at the clinic doorway.

“Mira,” he said, “do you think there will be a day when we stop fighting?”

She studied his face, once full of mischief, now hardened by conflict. “Yes,” she said, though doubt tugged at her voice. “When we remember who we were before we chose sides.”

Arun stared at the ground, then nodded. “I hope you are right.”

As he walked back into the broken streets, Mira held on to a fragile truth. Civil war did not begin with weapons. It began with forgetting humanity. Its end would require remembering.

That night, the bells of the old market street rang again. Faint at first, like a memory trying to survive. Mira listened, imagining the sound someday returning without fear beneath it. The valley deserved peace. Arun deserved it. They all did.

The first step would be choosing to believe peace was still possible, even while surrounded by ashes.