Freecash and Swagbucks are two of the biggest GPT (get-paid-to) sites out there. They are both very popular and both offer the possibility to earn some extra bucks.

Let’s take a look at which of these two is best on a number of different aspects:

1. How to Join?
2. Earning Possibilities
3. Earning Potential
4. Other Rewards
5. Withdrawing
6. Trustpilot Reviews

1. How to Join?

Both Freecash and Swagbucks are available more or less worldwide. Especially with Swagbucks though, earning potential is much higher in some countries, because it has originally only served to a select group of countries.

Joining the GPT sites is in both cases straightforward. You will need a valid e-mail address and a password, or you can sign in using a Google account.

• Freecash has a sign-up bonus. If you sign up with this link, you will receive one free case ($0.05-$250). If you manage to earn $1 in the first 48h after signing up, you will receive 3 more of these cases. As you’ll see later in this article, earning $1 isn’t difficult.
• You can sign up for Swagbucks with this link. Swagbucks has no signup bonus currently.

Conclusion: Freecash is available worldwide and has a signup bonus. Swagbucks is available in most countries. Both are easy to sign up for.

2. Earning Possibilities

Before diving into the possibilities to earn, let’s quickly explain the monetary units of the two GPT sites.

• Freecash uses coins: 1000 coins = $1
• Swagbucks uses swagbucks (SB): 100SB = $1 / €1 / £1

So 10 coins on Freecash equals 1 SB on Swagbucks. Keep in mind that these amounts are approximate and depend on the method of withdrawal and withdrawal currency, more on that later.

Surveys

Both sites offer a lot of surveys that can earn you some money. Swagbucks has its own survey platform, there are generally a lot of surveys available on there. Freecash uses 3rd party services to provide surveys, you won’t run out of surveys very quickly there either.

Offers

Both Freecash and Swagbucks have multiple offer walls available. Some offers can pay very well, but these tend to be very difficult, so I suggest avoiding them as much as possible.

Cashback

This feature is currently only available on Swagbucks. If you’re shopping online, you can get between 1% and 10% cashback. This is available on many big sites like eBay, Amazon and Best Buy.

Conclusion: both sites offer a variety of surveys and offerwalls, Swagbucks also offers cashback, which is a plus.

3. Earning Potential

As stated before, both Freecash and Swagbucks have a lot of offers and surveys available. For the offers and offer walls, the payout is similar between Freecash and Swagbucks.

There isn’t really a big difference between the amount of money the surveys pay on Swagbucks vs on Freecash. Take a look at the screenshot below with some Freecash surveys on the left, and Swagbucks surveys on the right. A 4–5 minute survey earns you about 200 coins ($0.20) on Freecash, and about 20SB ($0.20) on Swagbucks. A 10–15 minute survey earns $0.75 on Freecash, as do they on Swagbucks.

Theoretically, you could be looking at making $4–7/hour filling out surveys. But in reality, you will get rejected from some, and not all surveys are as well paying.

Conclusion: The earning potential between Freecash and Swagbucks is similar since the number of offers and surveys and their pay-rate are about the same.

4. Other Rewards

Besides offerwalls and surveys, both sites have some other possibilities to earn coins/swagbucks.

• Swagbucks has a daily bonus system. If you earn more than about 30–50SB per day, your streak gets extended by a day. After 7 days you get a bonus of 25SB, after a month you can get a bonus of 300SB.

• Freecash also has a daily bonus system. Your streak gets extended if you earn at least 1000 coins per day. In contrary to Swagbucks, you get a bonus every day (not only at the end of the week). In total, you can earn an extra 2500 coins ($2.5) per week, this is more generous than Swagbucks, but the daily threshold is higher ($1 vs $0.3).

• Freecash also has another daily bonus ladder. Every day, you get a free ticket for the ladder, depending on your level you can earn some extra coins there. I tend to claim my coins immediately instead of betting for more, but you can try your luck climbing up the ladder.
• Lastly, Freecash has one final extra bonus reward, in the form of a daily and monthly leaderboard. There is a prize pool of $500 each day, split up among the 1000 people that earned the most that day. The same goes for the monthly leaderboard but with a $5000 reward.

Conclusion: it is clear that Freecash offers more extra bonuses than Swagbucks: daily rewards, daily ladder bonus, daily/monthly leaderboards and a signup bonus.

5. Withdrawing

Both sites have a variety of withdrawal options. Let’s take a look at which one has the largest variety and lowest fees.

Swagbucks has a ton of different giftcards available as a cashout option. You can buy giftcards from PayPal, Amazon, Payoneer, Steam and much more. The best thing is that none of these options have any fees attached.

Freecash has the same giftcards available as Swagbucks. The big difference is that you can also withdraw in crypto. Just like with Swagbucks, there are no fees for buying gift cards. For withdrawing to PayPal there is a 5% fee. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin have transaction fees, so when withdrawing crypto I suggest using Litecoin (no fee).

The minimal withdrawal for Swagbucks is $1 for Amazon giftcards and $10 for all other giftcards.

On Freecash, the minimal withdrawal for giftcards and PayPal is $5, and the minimum withdrawal for crypto is just $0.50.

Conclusion: Freecash has a wider variety of withdrawing options, but withdrawing to PayPal has a 5% fee. The minimum withdrawal is lower on Freecash.

6. Trustpilot Reviews

Both GPT sites have excellent reviews on Trustpilot. They both have about the same number of reviews, Freecash scores slightly higher than Swagbucks. But both have really good scores.

Conclusion: Freecash scores slightly better on Trustpilot than Swagbucks, but both have excellent scores.

Conclusion

1. How to Join: Freecash (available worldwide, signup bonus)
2. Earning Possibilities: Swagbucks (cashback offers)
3. Earning Potential: Tie (same amount of offers, same pay rate)
4. Other Rewards: Freecash (more extra (daily) rewards)
5. Withdrawing: Freecash (more withdrawing options, lower minimum)
6. Trustpilot Reviews: Freecash (slightly better reviews)

The winner is: Freecash.

It could still be advantageous to use Swagbucks if you shop online often or want to avoid fees when withdrawing to PayPal.

You can also sign up for both Freecash and Swagbucks to maximise your earning potential.

If you want to sign up for Freecash and receive 4 free crates, use this link. You can sign up for Swagbucks using this link.

How Much Have I Earned with Freecash?

In the time I’ve been on Freecash, I’ve completed 260 offers (including surveys) and earned over $175.

You can read more about my experiences with Freecash here:

Freecash.com Review. Is it Legit, and How Much Free Crypto and Cash can you Earn?

This article contains affiliate links

Cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more valuable, but how can you earn free crypto online without a lot of skills. Luckily, there are quite some options to choose from, we’ll take a look into some of these easy ways to earn crypto online in 2022.

1. Freecash

Freecash is a GPT (Get Paid To…) site, it’s one of the most trustworthy and overall best GPT sites, with a staggering 4.6/5 score on Trustpilot. You can earn coins by completing tasks such as downloading apps and completing surveys. On top of that, you can earn coins by collecting your daily rewards.

You can withdraw your coins in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and Litecoin. Besides crypto, you can also buy giftcards using your coins. I managed to earn about $25 of free crypto in a week, without a lot of effort, read more about that in my full Freecash.com review:

Freecash.com Review. Is it Legit, and How Much Free Crypto and Cash can you Earn?

2. Coinbase

What’s better than earning free crypto while learning about it. With the Coinbase earn program you can watch videos and complete quizzes to earn some coins and tokens.

It’s very straightforward, but there are some catches:

• You will need a Coinbase account
• The program is currently selected to a few countries
• The opportunities are limited

3. Cryptoroyale

Cryptoroyale is a Play to Earn (P2E) game on the Harmony blockchain. Unlike most other P2E games, there is no need to buy their token before you can start to earn free crypto.

You can just start making money without any investment

The game itself is quite simple to understand, yet difficult to master. Payouts are currently quite low, but it’s a fun game to play.

Besides the game itself, there are skins you can invest in with your self earned ROY (their native token), and there are other game modes being developed as we speak.

You can swap your ROY for Harmony (ONE) on Viperswap, or you can HODL in the hope it will be worth more in the future.

4. Coinmarketcap Earn

Coinmarketcap earn is comparable to Coinbase earn, you can learn about cryptocurrencies to earn some tokens.

The differences between Coinbase and Coinmarketcap Earn are:

• You will need a verified Binance account for Coinmarketcap Earn
• There are more opportunities to choose from on Coinmarketcap
• Coinmarketcap operates on a first-come, first-serve basis, so you’ll need to be quick

5. Brave Browser

The Brave Browser is a Chromium browser, similar to Google Chrome. With Brave, you can earn their Basic Attention Token (BAT) by doing your daily internet activities.

Brave claims to be more secure than other browsers and has some Web3 features not present in other browsers.

Brave replaces ads with their own ads and they give you 70% of the revenue made by replacing these ads. You’ll need a KYC verified account to withdraw your BAT rewards.

6. Presearch

If a browser isn’t enough, you can also choose to switch your search engine. Instead of Google Search, you could use Presearch.

Presearch is a minimally designed search engine, which pays you in their native PRE token. Do note that you will need 1000PRE before you can withdraw.

It’s definitely an easy way to earn free crypto online. Just select the browser as your standard browser, and create an account, and you’re set to go for the rest of your time…

7. Write articles on publish0x

The last way to easily earn free crypto online is publish0x. Publish0x is a news outlet, where users can create their own articles. Based on the number of reads the article gets, the author is paid some amount of crypto.

Even readers can earn a small amount of cryptocurrency. It’s one of the more difficult ways to earn crypto on this list, but if you like writing, it’s the way to go. You can write about what you want, but most authors write about crypto-related stuff.

They paid out over $400K to their readers and authors to date.

Conclusion

These are currently the top easy ways to earn free crypto online. There is something for everyone: the gamers, the writers and people who want to give some time in exchange for cryptocurrencies.

Even people who don’t want to spend any time can passively earn some crypto by using the Brave browser and Presearch.

I wish you good luck on your journey to earn free crypto online!

The reason you’re here is probably that you want to try to make some money online. There are a lot of options, but most of them aren’t really viable. Let us take a deeper look into FreeCash, a pretty standard GTP (Get Paid To …) site. What are the advantages and disadvantages, is it even worth it?

What is FreeCash?

FreeCash is a typical GPT site. GPT sites offer a couple of ways to earn credits, which ultimately can be converted into real-world rewards. Other popular GPT sites include SwagBucks and InboxDollars.

Freecash vs Swagbucks: Which GPT Site is Better?

The company was founded and is still owned by Deb Hopkins. Freecash started operating in April 2020 and is registered in Germany. Since the company's birth, there haven’t been any significant outages.

What Offers are there to be Completed?

Like other GPT sites, there are a couple of different possibilities to earn coins. Freecash is transparent in its coin mechanism, 1000 coins = $1 all the time. It doesn’t change.

There are multiple offerwalls available where people can complete surveys, download apps and fill in quizzes to receive coins. These offerwalls include Ayet Studios, Offer Toro and Lootably, which can also be found on other GPT sites. There are also a couple of separate walls with only surveys, where you can choose a survey based on its duration and reward. Most of the time there are plenty of surveys available, but it can be slower during weekends and based on your demographics.

But how much do they pay? This really depends upon the offer, surveys generally pay decent, but there are also considerable differences between surveys. These are the most common survey rewards for my demographic:

• 5 min: $0.4 (400 coins)
• 15 min: $1.1 (1100 coins)
• 30 min: $2 (2000 coins)

But once again, every survey is different and pays a different amount. I once completed a survey that lasted only 4 minutes and which earned me 1290 coins. The difficult app offers on the offerwalls generally pay well, but rates are low compared to wages in Western countries. In developing countries, these rates can be worth it.

Other Ways to Earn Extra Coins

FreeCash often hosts events, which enable you to earn extra coins. For example, there was an easter event during the month of April. When you earned 2500 coins, you could spin a wheel to win between $0.05 and $50. I doubt that the wheel was completely fair, I only won the lowest prizes. Maybe I’m just unlucky.

You can play the ladder game every day under the “rewards” section. Based on your level you can win coins. At level 1 you can choose to double 10 coins or just claim them immediately, at level 20 you can do the same with 50 coins. I generally claim them immediately, because I don’t really like the wagering aspect of it. I just don’t want to lose those precious coins.

Lastly, there are daily rewards. If you earn 1000 coins in one day, you can claim your daily reward. For me, this wasn’t a too difficult job. On the first day of your streak, you earn 25 coins, on the second day 50, then 100, 200, 400, and 800, and on the seventh day, you spin the wheel to win 100–50000 coins. Then you can start all over again. It’s a nice extra if you’re able to keep your streak.

Withdrawing your Coins

There is a variety of options to withdraw your coins. You can use PayPal or Bitcoin, but it is noteworthy that for these two there are fees to take into account. If you want to withdraw in crypto, I suggest Litecoin (LTC), there are no fees attached to it, and the exchange rates are reasonable. Furthermore, the minimum withdrawal amount is only 500 coins ($0.5).

The gift cards also don’t have any fees. There is a wide variety of gift cards, from Visa to Amazon and Steam.

My Earnings on FreeCash

I’ve been using FreeCash for a while now, and I’ve managed to earn 178,960 coins. Which comes down to an average of 3616 coins/day. I completed 45 offers, mostly surveys. These are my earnings split up into categories:

• Surveys: 79,792 ($79.8)
• Offerwalls: 69,043 ($69)
• Daily Rewards and Bonus Ladder: 9,925 ($9.9)
• Referral Earnings: 20,200 ($20.2)
• Because I signed up with a referral link, I could open up 4 cases containing free coins (use my referral link to get 4 cases for yourself)

Total: 178,960 ($179)

I mostly did quite simple offers, in total, I haven’t spent more than about 30h in total on Freecash. That means that I’ve earned about $6/hour.

I withdrew most of my earnings to my LTC wallet address. Sometimes my withdrawals needed to be approved by moderators, but this happened quickly. Make sure to verify your phone number to get your withdrawal approved. After some confirmations on the blockchain, I received my funds in my account after less than an hour. After that, I could swap Litecoin for other coins.

I’ve also withdrawn to PayPal, and this too worked without any issues. My funds were deposited in less than one hour.

Is FreeCash better than its Competitors?

FreeCash has wildly positive reviews on Trustpilot, with over 38,000 reviews, they average a 4.7/5. SwagBucks has an average of 4.3, and InboxDollars has a 4.1/5. FreeCash is clearly one of the most loved and trustworthy GPT sites. The amount of money you can earn is comparable to other sites, but due to the low withdrawal limit and helpful support, it is seen as one of the best. I fully agree with this, since I’ve only had positive experiences so far. I especially like all the little extra bonuses in the form of events and daily rewards you get for your hard work.

Conclusion

Is FreeCash legit? Yes, FreeCash consistently gets great reviews on TrustPilot. Furthermore, the minimum withdrawal amount is low and withdrawals are fast. They are transparent in their coin system and don’t have any hidden fees.

Is FreeCash Worth it? It depends, if you’re looking to earn a couple of extra bucks each week, it’s a viable option. But it’s not viable to replace your income in most countries. I’ve earned about $180 in 30 hours of work. The extra rewards that FreeCash gives out are also a big plus! Start off great with 3 cases ($0.05-$250) if you sign up with my referral link.

FreeCash is one of the best GPT sites out there.

This article contains affiliate links

Nowadays it’s an obvious and very normal thing that WASD is the standard for gaming. You will use W to move forwards, S to do so backward, and A and D to move left and right, respectively. There are countless combinations out there to use instead of WASD, but why does the standard setup of almost every game use WASD?

The Past

Long ago, when gaming was new and totally not mainstream yet, there was no such standard combination. Every game had its own controls. Most games used the arrow keys to move. In those games, the mouse didn’t have a major function. Right-handed people mainly controlled the arrow keys with their right hand.

Then in 1997, a new game was released, called Quake. Quake was an innovative game for its time, in the sense that it gave a major function to the mouse. You could now look around with the mouse, and it became such an important feature that people started using their left hand to control the arrow keys. But this wasn’t convenient.

The Rise of WASD

More and more people were encountering the issue, as more and more games used the mouse to move and look around. People changed their settings, and eventually, new games started using WASD as their standard moving keyboard combination. There isn’t an obvious reason that eventually WASD became the standard instead of any other combination. Most likely, those keys are at the far left of the keyboard is one reason. How much farther left, how more comfortable for your hands. And the ALT and CTRL keys were often used controls too, the WASD keys are near those keys, which made using those keys easier.

Left-Handed

Around 10% of the world population is left-handed. Most left-handed people use their mouse with their left hand. Just try using your mouse with your left hand for a minute if you’re right-handed, it will not be easy! If you use your mouse with your left hand, it is very cramped to also use the WASD keys. Some lefties change their moving keys to the arrows, IJKL, or another combination on the right side of the keyboard. This is of course not optimal since the CTRL and ALT keys are now again far away from your hand.

Is there a Better Combination?

Some people argue ESDF would be a better key-combination to use for gaming. But for most people, continuing to use WASD would probably the easiest thing. We are all used to it now, why would we change it?

Why is WASD the Standard for Gaming was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is a Niche Page?

The names explains itself, a niche page is a page where we post feed posts and stories about one subject. For example a page all about travel, golf or mountain biking. My niche page is all about food and cooking. The trick with this type of pages is that you only need to invest a minimal amount of time. Once you’re all set up, it’s only 2–3 minutes of work every day to keep your page growing and booming!

Choosing a Niche

The first thing you will need to do is choosing a niche. There are a lot of niches out there. I suggest choosing a niche that interests you. If the niche is interesting to you, you will not give up as easily. Don’t just choose for the niches that are the easiest monetizable, you need to love what you’re doing. Another key in choosing a good niche is by finding the right balance between too niche and too broad. If your niche is too broad (for example fashion, cars, sports) you will have difficulties to stand out and attract people. But if your niche is too niche (for example blue jeans with holes or Scandinavian flowers), you might have difficulties finding your audience. The chance that there is a big audience for such a small niche isn’t that big. When I chose the food/cooking niche, I niched down to the foodart niche, I will not post a general hamburger with fries, only the finest and most beautiful food.

Creating your Account

There are some important factors that you need to keep in mind when you’re creating your account to stand out from the rest.

Instagram Handle and Name

You will need a clear and preferably simple Instagram handle. How easier it is to remember, how better. Here are some tips:

• Do not use dots or underscores (only if it makes your name more clear. For example golf.masters is acceptable, but go.lfmasters is not good)
• Make your niche clear in your handle, if your page is about brown cats, for example, use brown.cats instead of thebest.cats.

I chose (at)cookingbeauties as my handle, it describes my pages is all about cooking and food. And not only all food, but mostly about beautiful food.

For your name, I suggest choosing other words than that you’ve used in your handle. This will increase your reach if people are searching for something. I suggest choosing two or three main keywords for your page in your name. I chose Foodart, Gastronomy and Chefs. These are three great words because they are different from my handle and belong to my niche.

Bio

Your bio is an important part of your account, I recommend keeping it simple and elegant. Add an emoji that belongs to your niche, then add a separator (| or /) and write a short sentence that describes your page. Do not write to long sentences and do not write more than 4 lines, because otherwise, people will need to click on “show more” if they would want to see your full bio. You can include a call for action, but do it at the end of your bio. The call for action could be: “Follow for more” or “Send in your content by tagging us”. I’ve added the latter, every single day I get around 5–10 pictures where I am tagged in.

Logo

Such as the handle, name and bio, your logo or profile picture needs to be fitting with your niche and not to complicated. You can just make a simple logo on Canva.

Posting

You don’t need to make the posts yourself, that’s the big secret behind these pages. Reposting content is good for everyone, it’s great for you because it’s easy and fast, and it is great for the original creators because they get access to a new free audience.

Finding Content

Go to Instagram and search for a hashtag that has to do with your niche, for example, for my page, I would search for #foodart. Go to the most popular posts and go to the pages that post these. There is a big chance that these pages are niche reposting pages too. When on these pages scroll through the posts and select the best-performing ones. I recommend saving these posts, by clicking the bookmark icon.

Reposting

To repost content you will need an app on your phone or a program for your computer. I use Combin Scheduler for PC. I like this software because it’s totally free and it’s easy to use.

For the description, first, give a little description of the picture or video. Then, and this is very important, you will need to credit the author. You could also tag the author. Then you could add a call to action.

To largen your reach, it’s important to add niche-specific hashtags. To find this hashtags you can use hashtag suggesting sites or just go to similar pages and take inspiration from them.

Getting your First Followers

Getting your first followers is the most difficult part. I struggled with it too. If it’s not working from your first day, do not lose hope. It took me about 7 days to reach my first 100 followers. By just posting posts, you will not reach a big audience. There are two methods that you can use to get your first followers, you can use them both if you want. You will need to

Engaging

This one will take some time to do, you will need some more than 2 minutes a day. This tactic relies on being active in your community, comment on posts of original authors of the content. People will see that you’re active in the community and they will potentially look at your account and start following you.

Follow for Follow

This strategy is controversial, but I used it, and it did work for me. It works as follows:

1. Go to a page that is similar to you
2. Go to their most recent post
3. Follow people who liked that post

But be careful: do not follow or unfollow more than 50 people each day, or you might get action blocked. You will also need to take time to unfollow people, otherwise, you will end up with a ton of people that you follow. I made that mistake, I ended up with around 2,500 accounts I followed. This isn’t attractive, and to the day of today, I am still unfollowing people.

Don’t Give Up

it’s not a lot of work: posting once a day and following and unfollowing some people. But it may be tiring and boring work. You may not see results immediately, but one of the most important things to do is posting consistently.

In October 2020, I fell still. I wasn’t posting anymore for a couple of weeks in a row. And it hurt my account. No new followers came in, my account was almost dead. But in November I tried again, and from then on I haven't stopped.

Organic Growth

Around mid-November, I hit a point where I stopped doing Follow for Follow, because my account was starting to grow fully organic, and it was doing better than ever. From my experience and from the experience of other people I’ve spoken to, the point when you will start to see organic growth is around 1,000–2,500 followers. This needs to be your first goal, from there on, the only way is up!

How I Grew an Instagram Niche Page to 12.2K Followers in 6 Months was originally published in SYNERGY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And why should you even care?

Why should you even try to understand weather charts?

Being able to read weather charts is of course not that essential to succeed in life. You can always just pop open a weather site that will exactly tell you what the weather is going to be for any location. But I think there are a lot of benefits that come with being able to visually understand these charts. Not only because you will now be able to understand the weather and make a forecast yourself. From my experience, the biggest benefit of learning to understand weather charts is the “learning to learn” aspect. Reading weather charts has an almost perfect balance between theory and exercise, and the learning curve for reading weather charts is pretty gentle. When I started, I didn’t know anything about the weather, but I was still able to understand the basics pretty easily. Now I can’t live a day without looking at the charts.

The most important chart

In meteorology, there are a lot of different parameters. Most of these have their own chart. But there is one type of weather chart that is used everywhere, it’s the single most important weather chart. You’ve probably seen it already, it is used in almost every weather forecast on TV. This type of chart displays the position and movement of low pressure and high-pressure areas. With this single chart, you will be able to determine most of the general weather parameters like the chance of rain, wind speed and direction, and the general temperature.

High and low pressure

This is a little of the theory that you will need to understand before we move on to the actual weather charts. The main unit that is generally used for air pressure is hectopascal (hPa). One hectopascal is one thousand Pascals. If the air pressure is above 1013hPa, it’s seen as high pressure, if the air pressure is under 1013hPa it is low pressure.

If there is a high-pressure system in your area, you can expect a calm weather type with no rain and not a lot of wind. Most of the time it goes together with sunshine.

Low pressure on the other hand brings clouds and rain. Depending on how deep a low-pressure area is, it will bring less or more wind and rain. A low-pressure area that has a pressure of 970hPa will bring much more wind and rain than one that is only 1000hPa in its core.

One other key thing to understand is the Coriolis effect. I am not going to go into deep detail, but in short, it means that air (and thus wind) is turning around low and high-pressure zones. In the Northern Hemisphere, the wind will go around low-pressure zones anti-clockwise and the wind goes clockwise around high-pressure zones. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the other way around.

The atmosphere is also always trying to get itself into a balanced state. That’s why the air is going from the high-pressure zones to the low-pressure ones. It’s like filling a lake up with all the earth of a mountain so that all the land becomes one flat plane. In reality, the atmosphere is not able to get itself into a balance, that’s why we have low and high-pressure zones.

The first chart

It isn’t a weather chart yet, but it’s a great first exercise. We are standing in point X, to the west of our position there is a low-pressure system, to the east, there is a high-pressure one. We are in the Northern Hemisphere, so the wind goes around a high-pressure zone clockwise and anti-clockwise around a low-pressure system. In point X, the wind is thus coming from the south.

The real deal

This is a typical weather chart that displays the isobars (white lines) and the geopot values (colors). The colors indicate the temperature, but it’s just an indication. You are not able to read the exact temperature on this chart. For now, we will ignore the colors and look at the white lines.

The isobars connect the points with equal air pressure at sea level. On those lines, there are numbers displayed, that indicate the air pressure. Let us take a look at the left side of the chart. At the bottom we see a high-pressure system (H), the highest isobar indicated 1025hPa, which’s above the 1013hPa low-high pressure border. To the north of that high-pressure system, we see a low-pressure system (L). It’s important to not fixate on the colors, high-pressure systems aren’t always yellow or red, and low-pressure systems are not always blue or purple.

Interpreting a chart

On this type of chart, there are some things you can determine:

• Wind direction
• Wind speed
• Chance of rain
• Cloud cover
• Temperature

The first two are the easiest to derive from the charts, so let us start with them.

Wind Direction

In point 1 there is a low-pressure zone to the north and a high-pressure one to the south. As you’ve learned, the wind goes around a low-pressure system anti-clockwise. The wind in point 1 is thus coming from the west.

In the second point, there is a high-pressure zone to the east and two low-pressure cores: one of the west of Spain and the second one to the northwest. The wind always follows the isobars, in this case, they are positioned in a north-south manner. But now we will need to figure out if the wind is coming from the south or north. With low pressure to the west and wind going clockwise around low-pressure systems, we can visualize that the wind is coming from the south, not the north. If the high and low-pressure system would have changed place or if this chart would have been for the southern hemisphere, the wind would have come from the north.

In the last point, there are no isobars in the area. This means that there is almost no wind. We thus can’t see where the wind is coming from.

Wind Speed

You can visually see how strong the wind is at a point on a pressure chart. How closer the isobars (white lines) lay next to each other, how stronger the wind field. Most of the time you will find isobars that are close to each other near a low-pressure system. The most extreme examples are hurricanes. Hurricanes are relatively small but very extreme low-pressure systems, because of their scale and low pressure, the isobars lie close to each other, which means that there is a lot of wind.

We will compare the wind speed in the three points. The point with the lowest wind speed is point 3, there aren’t even isobars in the area, so they are in fact not at all close to each other. There won’t be a lot (if any at all) wind in point 3. In points 1 and 2 there is wind. In point 1, the isobars lie a little closer to each other than in point 2. So there will be more wind in point 1. If you take into account that point 1 is located at sea, you can be even more certain that there will be more wind in point 1. At sea there is a lot less drag than on land, the air thus moves faster (=stronger wind).

Chance of rain

This is one of the more difficult things to interpret from these charts. We can’t determine the exact location of the weather and rain fronts. What we can do is look at the location of the low and high-pressure zones. If a point is under the influence of a high-pressure zone, like in point 2, the chance of rain is minimal. The pressure in point 2 is around 1020hPa, so this is high pressure. If a place is under the influence of high pressure, the chance of rain is small.

In point 3 (Ireland), the wind is blowing from over the sea. The wind from over the sea is humid, so the chance of rain will be bigger. Point 3 is also under the influence of the low-pressure system to the south of Iceland. So the chance of rain will be pretty big in point 3.

Point 1 is under the influence of the strong low-pressure zone to the east of it. Because the point is located so close to the core of the depression (=strong low-pressure system), the chance of rain (or in this case maybe snow) is very high.

For the cloud cover, we could use the same principle, how closer to a low-pressure zone, how more chance that there will be clouds. The opposite is true for the high-pressure areas. If the wind blows from the sea or ocean, the chance of clouds will be bigger too.

Temperature

The last parameter that we will cover is temperature, and it’s also one of the most difficult parameters. It’s not in all situations and all times of the year the same.

There are two main factors that determine the temperature:

• Wind direction
• Onshore or offshore wind

In the beginning, I said we wouldn’t be looking at the colors for a while, but now we will. The colors are the geopot values, these indirectly indicate the temperature. It is not smart to just depend on these colors to determine the temperature, but they can help you.

If the wind comes from over the sea or ocean, like in point 2, the temperature will be more temperate. In the summer it will be cooler than if the wind would come from overland, in winter it will be less cold. In point 2 the wind is coming from over the land, but in this case, it won’t be colder in winter. The fact that the wind is coming from the south, indicates that it takes hot air with it. We also see that the colours are more in the range of orange, which indicates that the air is hotter. The wind direction is in some cases more predominant than the on/offshore wind, that’s where the colors come in handy.

In point 1, the wind is coming straight from the North Pole. In this case, the temperature will be quite low because the cold air is coming straight from the pole.

Other charts

This isn’t the only type of chart, there are dozens of other types. From simple temperature or rain charts to complicated charts like wind shear or vorticity. There are charts for everyone, and for any level. And there is more than enough room to grow.

Now you know the main chart and the basics of meteorology, it’s up to you. If you are interested in more practice and up your level, you can use wetterzentrale to access the weather charts for anywhere in the world, I recommend using the GFS and or ECMWF weather models, those are generally the most reliable. If you select GFS, you can choose other parameters like precipitation, to get a more accurate look at where it could rain.

I hope you learned something. Now you know the fundamentals, practicing is the most important thing to do.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Aristotle

And last of all: just enjoy the beauty that the weather gives us.

How to Read Weather Charts? was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As the population rises and we are building more and bigger, a lot of the previously green land is replaced by concrete, asphalt and houses. This is not only bad because of the disappearing nature, but on large scale it can lead to water shortages.

To understand the problem we will first need a little more information about the water cycle.

When it rains (or snows), a portion of the water will flow via rivers to the sea or ocean. But this accounts for only a small portion of the fallen precipitation (around 10%). The biggest percentage of the precipitation evaporates on land, accounting for around 60%. The last 30% is going in to the ground, to the groundwater reserves.

In most of the world there are two ways of getting the water that flows trough your tap. The first one is getting tap-water trough rivers. The second way is getting the water by pumping it up from the groundwater reserves.

Imagine that you have two places with rain. One place is in the middle of a forest and the other is in a urbanized area or city.

In the forest the rain drops can flow via rivers to the sea, evaporate or go trough the layers of soil to the groundwater. All three possibilities as described in the water cycle are possible here.

In the urbanized area or city, if rain falls, there is a big chance it’s going to fall on a road or roof. Here the water can still evaporate. But most of the remaining water will drain trough drainage systems, whether or not filtered, to rivers or the sea. In the city the chances of water going into the soil and to the groundwater reserves are very low, only where there are no roofs or paved roads, water has the possibility of going in to the ground.

So with a world with an increasing amount of these water blocking roofs and paved roads, less rainwater is going to go to the groundwater reserves. And in most regions the groundwater is one of the main ways of getting water to your tap.

Les water in the ground means less water from your tap.

Less is not more in this instance and it’s already becoming a problem. Especially with the often longer dry periods due to climate change, when river levels are low and water usage is high, there is a chance you will not have access to water. Even in well developed countries.

But not all hope is lost, we can still face a green future. Everyone can help fighting against this evolution, even you.

We an still face a green future

If you have a house, the water that falls on your roof will probably drain to the drainage system and end up in rivers. But that doesn’t need to be the case, if you install a water reservoir, you can store all the water that falls on your roof. Later you can use it to water your plants, or even connect it to your toilet, to flush your toilet with rainwater. This saves up the amount of tap-water you use. In some countries new build houses are already required to have a water reservoir and often it’s already normal to flush your toilet with rainwater.

Even if you do not have the budget of a water reservoir you can help the water to drain in to the soil. By minimizing the surface covered with paved material on your property.

Climate change and the developing and urbanizing world is giving the human kind a lot of problems. But humans wouldn’t be humans if we didn’t came up with ways to solve them. Every contribution of a more green planet makes a difference, how small it even might be. So let’s make the planet green again.

How the increase in concrete and roofs is leading to water shortages was originally published in Age of Awareness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Belgium is a relatively small, but divided democratic country in West-Europe. It’s a part of the European Union and NATO. Belgium has a very complicated political structure. It’s so complicated that even some Belgian people do not understand it. There are large economical, political and cultural differences between the different regions of Belgium, with the consequence that after the elections of 2010, it took 541 days in negotiations before the new ministers of the federal parliament were chosen. The battle between two different communities in one country: Belgium.

The Six Parliaments

Belgium is divided into communities and regions. In the north, comprising Flanders and Brussels is the Flemish-speaking community. In the south, Wallonia and Brussels form the French community. And you have a small German-speaking community in the east. In the Brussels Capital Regions, there are two communities in power. Each community has its own parliament. These parliaments go over subjects that are close to the people, like education, culture, sports, and well-being.

Next, we have the regions, there are three regions: the Flanders region in Flanders, the Brussels Capital Region in Brussels and the Walloon Region in Wallonia and the German-speaking part of Belgium. Each region has again their own parliament. The regions take care of all topics (at the regional level), except the topics of the communities. Flanders is a bit different, in that they have fused their two parliaments.

The sixth and final Belgian parliament is the Federal Parliament. This parliament rules over the whole country on a federal level.

The 2019 Elections

The 2019 elections were one of the tensest elections in Belgian history. The results of the federal elections were almost opposite between Flanders and Wallonia.

Flanders

1. The most votes went to the right party of NVA. With 26 % of the Flemish votes, they lost 8% of votes in comparison to the 2014 elections.
2. Second came the relatively new political party: Vlaams Belang (Flemish Importance). This party is extremely right and nationalist Flemish. With 19% of the votes, it saw a 13% rise in comparison to the 2014 elections.
3. Next came the neutral party CD&V, with 14% it lost 5% of its votes.
4. The central-right party of Open VLD also secured 14% of votes, with a slight decrease.
5. The first left party, SPA, collected 10% of the votes with a decrease of 5% since the last elections.
6. Second, to last came the left party of Groen (Green party), with a little less than 10% this election, they got a slight increase in votes.
7. With 6% PVDA, the extreme left party came last (of the big parties). But the number of votes did increase by 4% since the last elections in 2014.

Conclusion: 60% of Flemish people voted right, 14% voted neutral and the remaining 26% voted left. The increase in votes for the extreme right party of Vlaams Belang stands out the most.

Wallonia

1. A quarter of the people in Wallonia voted for the political party of the PS (a brother party of the Flemish SPA). This left party did lose 4% of the votes in comparison to the elections of 2014.
2. The right party of MR (related to the Flemish OpenVLD) collected 20% of the votes with a 6% loss.
3. The first party to increase their votes, with 8% is Ecolo (Green party, related to the Flemish party of Groen). 18% of the votes went to this left party.
4. The extremely left party of PVDA who was voted on the least in Flanders came fourth in Wallonia. This party increased their votes too, with 10% to 15%.
5. The neutral party of cdH came fifth with 13% and lost 4% since the last elections.
6. The central party of DéFl got 6%, with a slight loss.
7. The right party of PP, which is now no longer active got 3% of the votes.

Conclusion: only 23% of Walloon's voted right, 19% central and the majority, with 58% voted left. In Wallonia, the biggest unexpected riser was, in contradiction to Flanders, the extreme left party of PVDA.

The problem

Flanders is voting right, Wallonia is voting left. Flanders (extreme) right voters want to be independent of Wallonia. Wallonia’s extreme left voters want more economic support from Flanders and want to remain as one country.

To know from where these differences come, we need to look a bit deeper at the culture and history of both Flanders and Wallonia.

In the times of the industrial revolution, the economy in Wallonia was booming. The underground in Wallonia is rich in coals and metals. Big factories were set up, which brought in lots of money. In 1984 the last mine closed its doors. The economy in Wallonia wasn’t thriving anymore, it was difficult to switch on from an industrial economy.

At that time Flanders economy was growing. There were a lot of employment possibilities in the new businesses that started all over Flanders.

Today, the average annual income in Wallonia is 12% lower than in Flanders (Statbel — 2017). The unemployment rate in Wallonia is with 7.6% more than 4% higher than in Flanders (Statbel — Last quarter of 2019).

But the differences aren’t only economical, there are cultural differences too. Only 19% of Walloon’s speak Dutch fluently (University of Louvain-la-Neuve) most Walloon children do not even learn Dutch in school. In Flanders, 53% of people speak French fluently. And in school, you are obligated to learn French for 8 years from the age of 10 (Normal education). A lot of people in Flanders, therefore, do not understand why they need to learn French for eight years, while in Wallonia they don’t even make an effort to teach Dutch.

Right Flemish parties, like Vlaams Belang and NVA, want to create an independent Flanders, so they can stop financially supporting Wallonia and stop the upcoming Frenchification.

And Brussels…

Brussels forms another big problem.

• The Brussels Capital Region is the poorest region of Belgium (Statbel — 2017) and has the highest unemployment rate (Statbel — last quarter of 2019).
• The region has two official languages: Dutch and French. But in reality, most people speak French. 95% of people in Brussels are able to fluently speak French, only 59% can speak fluent Dutch (University of Louvain-La-Neuve). The regions in Flanders around Brussels are Frechificating, with more and more people only speaking French, instead of Dutch. Of course, Flanders (and especially the right parties) do not want this change.

There’s another big problem with Brussels. Who will get it, if Belgium divides?

• The right parties of Flanders, want Brussels to be a part of independent Flanders, as it’s geographically completely located in Flanders.
• Some people think Brussels needs to be a European District (like Washington DC), as most of the European Union buildings are located in Brussels.
• Brussels suggests that the Brussels Capital Region could be a more autonomous region, under the wings of both Wallonia and Flanders.
• The last possibility is that Brussels will be a part of Wallonia since the most spoken language in Brussels is French.

Is Belgium going to Separate?

Even though the support for nationalist, right Flemish parties raised in the aftermath of the last elections. Opinion polls show that (only) 20–30% of Flemish people actually want to separate from Wallonia. There are no official numbers for Wallonia, but we can assume that the percentage of Walloon’s that want to separate from Flanders is very small.

Realistically, the chances of Belgium separating in the next 10 or 20 years seem small. Even though differences between Wallonia and Flanders are growing and the support for extreme right parties in Flanders is growing too.

Belgium, an always divided country is becoming more divided. But even with the problems of today, the chances of the 180-year-old Belgium actually separating in the near future seem very small. They just need each other too much, for the separation to happen.

Left Versus Right: the Separation of Belgium was originally published in Dialogue & Discourse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A cat with hunting skills superior to a wolf

One of the, if not the most popular pet in the world, is the cat. If you don’t own a cat, you probably know someone who does. Cats are not the only species of its kind. Like dogs are related to wolfs, cats are related to, among other things, the Lynx.

Lynx in a nutshell

Lynx are a species in the family of the felines, joined by cats, lions, and tigers. Lynx are only native to the northern hemisphere. There are four species of Lynx:

1. The Canadian Lynx (which lives in Canada)
2. The Red Lynx or Bobcat (which lives mostly in the United States but also South-Canada and North-Mexico)
3. The Eurasian Lynx (living in Asia and Europe)
4. The Iberian Lynx (only living in small areas on the Iberian Peninsula and is an endangered species)

Lynx look almost the same as cats, but bigger. Lynx come in a range of colours, from brown, to goldish, to white or beige. There are some differences between species of lynx. The Red Lynx and Canadian Lynx are within 70–100cm (28–39 inches), which is smaller than the Eurasian and Iberian Lynx; who average about 80 to 130cm (31–51 inches) head-body length. For perspective, a cat averages around 46cm (18 inches) in length.

Lynx species

The Eurasian Lynx is the largest in size of the four Lynx species. The Eurasian Lynx is the third largest predator in Europe, after the Brown Bear and the Grey Wolf. The Eurasian Lynx is a strict carnivore, with a diet of around 2kg of meat each day. They have relatively short brown hair during the summer and in the winter, their coat is replaced by thicker greyish hair.

The other species of Lynx residing in Europe is the Iberian Lynx, this is an endangered species. Environmental activists and the Spanish government have succeeded in protecting the Lynx from extinction; the state was changed from critically endangered to endangered. The population Lynx has more than tripled from 2000 to 2015.

The Iberian Lynx is a little smaller than the Eurasian Lynx, with an average length of 90cm (35 inches). This species of Lynx has a short yellowish coat.

The Canadian Lynx lives in Canada, Alaska, and some other northern states of the US. Their territory overlaps partially with the Red Lynx. This species of Lynx has big paws to support their weight on the snow. The mostly yellowish-brown coat is coloured uniformly. In Newfoundland, the hair of the Lynx can be more brown. In the winter the coat turns grey or whitish.

The last type of Lynx, the Red Lynx or Bobcat, is found in the southern part of Canada, the continental US, and northern Mexico. This is the smallest Lynx species. The Red Lynx is a predator that is able to find their prey almost everywhere. Unlike the other species, Bobcats are able to hunt outside of woodlands. Their coat colours vary a lot, with often patterns used as camouflage. In the north, the coat colours are darker, while in the south, their colours are lighter.

Lynx vs wolf

Encounters between Lynx and Wolves happen rarely. But who would win if a brawl?

Strengths of the Wolf:

• Most Wolves are heavier and bigger than Lynx. Grey Wolves for example can grow up to 120–200cm (47–79 inches). Lynx only grow up to a maximum of 130cm (51 inches).
• The Wolf has more bite power than a Lynx. The Grey Wolf has a bite force from about 1200N, the Bobcat for example only has 500N. For each kg the Lynx is more than twice as powerful as the Wolf.

Strengths of the Lynx:

• The Lynx has a lot more experience with hunting. One individual can hunt down a Roe or Deer. Wolves mostly hunt in groups, in groups they too can tackle Roe and Deer, even Moose.
• Lynx are very cunning, they hide behind trees or rocks until prey come close enough. Wolves are more active; they do not have the patience of a Lynx. It’s almost the same as the differences between a dog and a cat.
• The maximum speed of a Lynx is with 80km/h (50mph) greater than that of the Wolf, which has maximum speed of 60km/h (37mph). If it comes to a fight, the Lynx will be able to flee if necessary.

It’s difficult to say who would win in a battle between a Lynx and a Wolf. Both animals wouldn’t try to hunt each other down, because the risk of injury or death is too big. But in a hypothetical scenario, if the Wolf and the Lynx are face to face; the Wolf will probably win if the Lynx doesn’t run, because the bite power of the Wolf is greater. The Lynx does have the ability to hide or run if it heats up too much. However, the skill of the Lynx is very commendable, so you never know, crazier wins have happened.

The Lay of the Lynx was originally published in Creatures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The wolf, long ago this species was a common sight in the Benelux. It is a native species that took care of the balance in the food chain. But the wolf didn’t last. Wolf hunting in the Benelux and surrounding regions, meant the end for the species in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg.

1897: The last official observation of a wolf in the Benelux, in the town of Heeze, The Netherlands. Nobody knew this would be the last wolf seen in the Benelux for the coming 100 years. The wolf population was already descending in the past decades.

1982: At the convention of Bern, a majority of European countries agreed to protect the wolf, together with some other endangered species. From then on, the wolf started to make his way back to the Benelux from East-Europe and South-France.

2011: The first report of a wolf in Belgium and the Benelux since their disappearance. A camera trap captured a wolf in the High Fens, the highest and most forested part of the Benelux. Sadly this individual was a loner, no other wolves where seen in Belgium in the coming 5 years.

7 March 2015: Officially the first wolf ever spotted in The Netherlands after 133 years of absence. The wolf was spotted by a driver at the side of a road in the town of Sleen, Drenthe. Coming from Germany, where wolves had settled not far from the border.

5 July 2017: The wolf re-invades Luxembourg, the first wolf was spotted by a farmer late in the evening on his field in Leudelange in the south of Luxembourg. The wolf came from North France.

Later in 2017, another wolf was spotted in the Veluwe area in The Netherlands, coming from Germany.

11 January 2018: The first wolf in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. The wolf, which was equipped with a GPS transmitter, came from Germany trough The Netherlands, and settled in the forests around Leopoldsburg, Limburg. The wolf was given a name (almost all wolves in Flanders get a name): ‘Naya’. This is the start of a very busy wolf year.

The rest of 2018:

In 2018, in total 13 wolves came to the Benelux including Naya, this in contrast against only 3 wolves in the 7 years before. Five of them are certainly still in the Benelux (as of July 2020).

One individual who settled in the High Fens in the east of Wallonia (Southern part of Belgium), a couple: Naya and August in Limburg, Belgium. August came all the way from the north of Germany, trough The Netherlands and Naya and August are now mates.

The Netherlands got in total 9 visits of different wolves, two of them settled in the Veluwe area.

September 2019: Tragic news from Limburg, the now mother wolf: Naya, which probably just got cubs, was shot on purpose by hunters. Naya and the cubs are all killed. The hunter, who had a permit to hunt in nearby areas, moved his way to the area of the wolf with his jeep and killed the wolfs. The father wolf August wasn’t killed or hurt. Belgian nature movements and the ministry of nature couldn’t understand how this could have happened.

2019: The two wolves in the Veluwe are now a couple and got 5 cubs. A wandering wolf is seen in the province of Antwerp, but no name was givven. And a new wolf, given the name “Noëlla” was seen in the area of August. These two are formed a couple. August his second wife, after the death of Naya.

2020 (up to July): A half year past and August and Noëlla are still together, experts expect babies in the fall. In Belgium, 5 new wolfs were spotted, two of them, who settled in the Ardennes, are from the French-Italian line, it are the first wolves from the south of Europe who visited the Benelux. In Antwerp, Belgium a wolf was spotted and killed some sheep, the wolf is named “Billy”, now he also settled in the area around August and Noëlla. In Brabant, The Netherlands there was also a wolf seen.

The Benelux is welcoming the wolf, and the wolf is happy to be back. The Benelux is on his way to becoming the intersection for the wolves of the east and the wolves of the south. In one of the following years or decades, there will probably be an historic encounter between these two sorts.

It’s clear that human impact means life or dead for some species. The wolf in the Benelux is a perfect example for how the human can force some animals to extinction in some areas. But also how with human protection, species can re embrace there native grounds.

Thank you for reading,

Cumulonimbus

Sources:

WelkomWolf (Belgium)

WolvenInNederland (The Netherlands)

How wolves re-invaded the Benelux was originally published in Naturesc on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.