#170 million people just lost that

[iliterallydecepticanteven]

I just. Like fuck dude. 170 million users and it's gone. Like if you're someone who gloats about not using tiktok this post isn't for you so scroll on.

But like tiktok for all its flaws was incredibly useful for me and others. I learned about what maladaptive daydreaming was on tiktok and realized I'd been doing it constantly for escapism and how terribly it was impacting my life. I learned all sorts of fun recipes to try out and incorporate into my meal rotation. I learned about plasma donation as a source of supplementing my income and how it's not as scary as most people make it seem. I got tips on buying a new car and how not to screwed over with financing. I learned little ways to improve my cats' health and what to avoid for them and easy enrichment ideas. I found cheap outlet websites to buy overflow clearance items for cheaper than in store and save some money. I got an insight into how fucked the healthcare system is from the doctor's perspective and how to best handle that if I wanna go into that field. I found tons of fun music, movies, tv shows, anime, books, manga, video games, and crafts to try.

And it's all gone. Just like that.

This fucking sucks.

[hungermakesmonsters]

(Once Bitten) Twice Shy

Chapter Eight

Plot summary : Desperate to get away from your controlling family, you take a job in New York as a wealthy vampire's blood source. A million dollars awaits if you can make it through a year, but life with Billy Russo is not going to be as simple as you think.

Pairing : Billy Russo x Reader

Story Rating : R  Chapter Rating : R

Warnings : [This is a fic for 18+ only, minors DNI] Mention of periods (don't worry, we're not doing Saltburn), smutty behaviour, use of toys. More sickening cuteness. All chapters will contain mentions of blood. Please check the warnings on each chapter if you choose to follow this story. 

Word Count : 5k

A/N : It's not exactly a cliffhanger but I get the feeling people won't like where it ends... Oh also spoilers for Jane Eyre (but it's 170 years old so I'm assuming people know the twist?)

CHAPTER ONE | CHAPTER TWO | CHAPTER THREE | CHAPTER FOUR | CHAPTER FIVE | CHAPTER SIX | CHAPTER SEVEN

MASTER LIST

Chapter Eight

The gentle touch of his fingers on your cheek woke you and, for a few seconds, you weren’t sure where you were. Billy was crouched in front of you, smiling softly. Your eyes threatened to close again, feeling exhausted and like all of it was just a dream.

“Hey,” he muttered softly, his fingers still tenderly caressing your cheek. “Are you okay?”

Finally, you managed to wake yourself up enough to realise that you weren’t dreaming, and that you’d fallen asleep on the sofa beneath the yellow blanket Billy had bought for you.

“I’m fine, just tired,” you told him, slowly sitting up.

Billy remained crouched in front of you, tenderly cupping your cheek and looking almost concerned.

“Did you draw too much blood again?”

“No, it's not that. I did that hours ago. I'm just really tired.”

“Just tired?” He pressed the back of his cold hand to your forehead, checking your temperature.

“And my head hurts a little.”

“When is, uh -” he hesitated, almost looking uncharacteristically embarrassed, ��- when is your next period due?”

Your cheeks warmed with both the realisation and the fact that Billy had figured it out before you. That was why you felt so awful. “Soon, I think? I-I lost track of the days after I moved in,” you explained, “and I've never been very, uh… regular…”

Thankfully, Billy just nodded and sat himself beside you, an arm around you pulling you into his side.

“Do you need to go lay down?”

“No I - I want to spend time with you,” you told him, resting your head on his shoulder. “We didn't really get to finish talking last night…”

“Was there something else you wanted to say or ask?” Billy asked softly, shifting a little so you could get comfortable against him. 

You stayed silent for a few moments, thinking over all of the things you wanted to ask, wondering what you had the right to ask. “What causes it? What makes you feel like everything is... too much? I’ve only ever seen a vampire lose control from hunger...”

“Sometimes it’s hunger,” he offered reluctantly, “other times it’s just... I don’t know. Even before I was turned, I was never any good at controlling my emotions. And, now, I feel like I’m constantly fighting myself. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m drowning. Everything about you; your scent, the taste of your blood, the way your heart races... it’s a lot to try and ignore.”

Although the words were spoken to you, about you, you knew better than to read too much into them. It was the constant proximity, he probably felt that way around any human after enough time. It wasn’t because he felt anything for you.

“That sounds exhausting.” 

“It is,” he admitted, waiting for a beat before asking; “why did you apologise? I lost control but you apologised.”

“Because I -” you stopped yourself before the lie managed to leave your lips. It hadn’t been your fault, as difficult as it was for you to accept that fact, you knew it was true. “Because I’ve always been made to feel like it’s my fault when bad things happen to me. The night we met, you asked me what I was running from, and that’s part of it; I was raised to feel ashamed and believe I deserved everything bad that happened to me.”

You heard him inhale sharply before he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. He was silent a moment before speaking again.

“Who left you?” He asked softly. You lifted your head, frowning. “Last night when you asked why I was leaving you it just… you sounded hurt, like someone had left you before…”

“My sister,” you answered, “she left home when she was eighteen and my parents disowned her because of it. She said she'd come back for me, but she never did.”

“Why did she leave?”

“My parents wanted her to marry a guy she didn’t want to marry.”

“Is that why you left?” He asked and immediately seemed to regret it when your gaze dropped. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

A moment later, you snuggled back into his side and closed your eyes. “How long until you have to go to work?”

“I can stay another twenty minutes,” he told you softly, slipping his arm around you. He was silent for a few minutes, before letting out a slow exhale. “I’m not going to be able to see you for a few days, it’s not safe for me to be around you while you’re...”

He didn’t have to say it for you to understand and, as much as you wanted to argue with him, you knew it wouldn’t be fair to try and force the issue. Now that you had some idea of how he felt and how much of a struggle it was for him to be around you sometimes, you knew Billy needed space.

“It’s okay, I understand.”

You stayed that way for another twenty-five minutes until you gently reminded Billy that he was going to be late for work. He didn’t seem to want to leave you and it made your heart ache to think about why that might be. Though, rationally, you understood that it wasn’t you; he was just tired. You were finally starting to understand just how difficult and exhausting it was for him just to get through a day.

He gave you a soft kiss and told you that he’d see you again soon.

The next morning when you woke up cramping and feeling terrible, until you found that he’d left a gift basket in your kitchen, filled with things you might need over the coming days; painkillers, chocolates, a new smart-watch with a cycle tracking app, a heating-pad, various toiletries and a large teddy bear with a note pinned to his chest.

I thought you and Bill the Beagle might want some company.

Take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.

B.

Butterflies filled your stomach at the thoughtfulness of the gifts and, later that afternoon, when you left blood for him, you couldn’t resist leaving him a note of your own.

Thank you for your considerate gifts. William the Bear is a wonderful addition to my growing stuffie collection and the chocolates were lovely. Hope you have a good night at work.

xoxo

The next day you felt even worse but, again, you were pleasantly surprised when you managed to drag yourself to the kitchen to get breakfast and some coffee. There was another box of chocolates and another note waiting for you.

William is a terrible name for a bear. I didn’t expect you to get through the chocolates so quickly, remind me to stock up next month. I hope you’ve not been watching Black Sails without me.

Take care

B.

And, of course - of course - you had to reply, leaving your note with his blood again.

I happen to like the name William. I think it suits him. He looks like a William. I hope you’re not trying to shame me for enjoying the chocolates, truffles and caramels are my weakness. Don’t worry, I’ve not been watching anything without you, I’ve been reading. You were right, Jane Eyre was a very apt choice.

xoxo

His notes became your reason to get up in the morning, though they were a bittersweet reminder of his noticeable absence in your life. It filled you with a strange yearning and an uncomfortable sadness to think about him out there on his own. But that was a silly thought. You didn’t know anything about his life outside of the penthouse, about his work or his friends, maybe he wasn’t even noticing your absence.

(Or maybe he felt it just as much as you did.)

Okay, I have to ask; what does a William look like? Of course I’d never shame you for enjoying the chocolates, but now you’ve told me your weakness I might have to use it to my advantage. I hope you’re enjoying Jane Eyre more than you enjoyed Dorian Gray.

I hope you’re not feeling too bad. I miss our talks.

B.

Your heart stuttered as you read and reread those four little words; I miss our talks. He missed you. Maybe not quite in the same way that you were missing him but, still, it made you long for him even more.

Well, in my experience Williams tend to be cute and cuddly, even though they look a little dark and brooding at first glance. Oh no! Please don’t use my weakness for chocolate truffles against me!!! (The extra exclamation marks are so you read that in a sarcastic tone.) Yes, I think I like Jane Eyre more than Dorian Gray - Mr Rochester kind of reminds me of you.

I’m feeling a bit better today, I should be fine in a couple of days. I miss spending time with you too. I hope you’re not too lonely without me around.

xoxo

You doodled a little picture of the teddy bear he’d given you on the corner of the note but gave him a grumpy looking face and a tag that read ‘my name is William’. 

There was a strange feeling of embarrassment when you left the note and you almost changed your mind about it halfway back to your room, and you spent the rest of the evening wondering if it was a little too much.

So, the next morning, you felt a little reluctant to go into the kitchen, and had to take a deep breath before reading his note.

Dark and brooding?? I think you might have to elaborate, but I’ll let you save that for when I see you next. I hope that there will come a point in the book where Mr Rochester doesn’t remind you of me quite so much (I don’t know where you’re up to and I don’t want to spoil it).

I’m glad you’re feeling better. The penthouse isn’t the same without you. It’s strange, you’ve only been here a couple of months yet and it already feels empty without you. I miss you.

B.

P.S. Is the doodle supposed to be me or the stuffie?

It felt like your head was spinning as you read, reread, and read again. 

He missed you.

Billy missed you.

You spent half the day writing and rewriting your note to him, in one attempt confessing your feelings, in another acting completely blaise about his confession. Nothing you came up with felt right but the thought of not replying seemed worse.

I see what you mean about Mr Rochester... though I don’t know if I can completely rule out the possibility of you having a strange woman tucked away somewhere in the penthouse. It would certainly explain where all of the chocolates have been going.

I miss you too. I know what you mean, I feel the same way, like I’ve been here longer. But I suppose that’s how things feel when you get close to someone. Hope to see you tomorrow.

xoxo

P.S. I’ll never tell. An artist never reveals her secrets.

There was no end to your relief the next morning when you woke up finally feeling better, knowing that you’d be able to see Billy again. Part of you expected not to find a note, but there it was, waiting for you on your kitchen table, just like the others had been.

I can think of a less mysterious explanation for the disappearance of your chocolates, little hummingbird.

I’m not used to missing people. I’m not used to being close to them either. Some days I feel like my whole life has turned upside down since I met you. I can’t wait to see you again.

B.

P.S. I think it’s magicians that never reveal their secrets, not artists.

Again, he left you searching for deeper meaning in every word, your heart aching for a man who seemed so lonely and alone, a man who didn’t deserve that life at all.

After breakfast you showered and washed your hair, wanting to look your best when you saw him again.

Slowly but surely, over the course of the day, your nerves started to eat away at you; what were you going to say to him? Were you going to pretend that the notes hadn’t happened and that their contents was just idle talk to help the other feel less alone?

You couldn’t sit still as you waited, counting down the hours before sunset, perched on the edge of the sofa and watching his door. The moment it started to open, you were on your feet.

Before he had the chance to even realise that you were there, you’d cleared the distance between you, throwing your arms around his waist and pressing your face against his chest. Billy let out a breath but, for the life of you, you couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of relief or simply because you were squeezing the air from his lungs.

“Hey,” he muttered, his arm slipping around you and holding you almost as tight as you were holding him.

A minute or two passed, neither of you moving or saying anything, until he pressed a kiss to the top of your head and your grip on him started to loosen. You didn’t pull away, but gave yourself enough space to look up at him, smiling shyly as your cheeks started to warm.

“Hi.”

“Hi, hummingbird.”

Neither of you seemed to know what to do or where you were supposed to go from there so, again, you both fell silent, still holding each other. Finally, you dared to reach for him, placing your hand on his cheek. His eyes closed and he leaned into your touch, and butterflies began to swarm in your stomach. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you lifted onto your tiptoes and pressed your lips to his.

It was a soft, chaste kiss, nothing at all compared to some of the kisses that you’d shared, but you felt his lips pull into a smile against yours before his eyes finally opened again.

“I missed you,” he admitted in little more than a whisper. 

His hand moved to rest on your neck and you found yourself glad of his cold touch after what seemed like so long without it.

“I missed you too,” you confessed, “I - I missed you more than I probably should have.”

If Billy understood what you were trying to tell him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just shook his head and smiled before kissing you again.

You sank against him letting him deepen the kiss and turn it into something else, something new. Normally when he kissed you it felt explosive and desperate, like he was laying claim to you, but this kiss was tender and filled with longing, like he was savouring being with you again. It stole the breath from your lungs.

“I missed you,” he muttered again.

“You already said that.”

“I know, I just -” his head shook, and he let out a huffed laugh, “- this has felt like one of the longest weeks of my life.”

“Have you been okay? Was it -” you hesitated, not sure you wanted to ask the question, “- was it easier without me around?”

Billy pulled back a little, frowning. “Why would it be easier?”

“The other night, you said you feel like you’re drowning when you’re with me,” you shrugged a little, letting your gaze drop for a moment.  

Before the notes, you’d assumed that everyone made him feel that way, that it was just part of being a vampire for him. But, now, after his last note and after that kiss, part of you longed for him to admit that it was more, that it was you, that he felt something for you, that he cared.

“I was wrong,” he told you, waiting until you looked up again to continue, “I feel like I’m drowning without you.” 

“Oh.” Whatever you’d expected, it hadn’t been that.

“It’s a lot. I know it’s a lot -” 

“No,” you shook your head, “no, it’s not.”

“I wish I could’ve met you in another life. I wish it wasn’t like this.”

The words caused your chest to ache, understand what he was saying and why because you felt the same way; the situation was a mess and all either of you could do was make the best of it.

There was more you could say - more you wanted to say - but it didn’t feel like the right time, and it wasn’t fair for you to try and push anything when you had every intention of leaving him once you’d finished your year. So, instead, you pressed yourself against him and hugged him tight.

Once you’d managed to pull away from each other, you spent the next hour sitting with him on the sofa, talking while he drank, trading gentle touches and kisses until he needed to leave. You followed him to the elevator, not sure if he was keeping hold of your hand or if it was the other way around. 

It took a couple of weeks for things to start to return to some sort of normal between you.

Karen noticed the first time she saw you, mentioning that you seemed distracted as you walked through Central Park together (thankfully with no sign of Madani in sight), but she didn’t bring it up until you were sitting together a week later, having lunch in a little coffee shop.

“Is everything alright with you and Billy?” She asked, deciding to just go for it.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” you answered. And it was fine. You were happy. You just could stop thinking about what he’d said to you and how you wished that things could be just a little bit different so you could both be happy.

“I know Billy’s my friend and you don’t really know me all that well, but you can talk to me if something’s bothering you. Or if he’s done something to bother you.”

There was something in her voice, something knowing that you really didn’t like. But how could she know what was going on with you and Billy, when you didn’t even know yourself?

“Everything’s fine, honestly. It’s great, actually. We’ve been really getting on lately; we’ve been hanging out talking about books and I’ve been making him watch Black Sail on Netflix,” you told her.

Karen nodded, though it didn’t look like she believed you, but she let it drop, leaving you with the sneaking suspicion that she knew a little more about the way Billy was than she wanted to let on.

Your quiet evenings with Billy slowly started to become a little more physical again, though neither of you seemed in a rush to try and push for sex again. Instead, most evenings he’d end up with his head between your thighs, or you’d slip your hand into his pants while you made out. And, even though you found yourself longing for more, you didn’t want to push him. No, you wanted to take things slowly, wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t get overwhelmed again before you took that next step.

Time seemed to fly by and it wasn’t long before the whole penthouse was being turned upside down in anticipation of Billy’s big party; live music, caterers, decorators and, of course, more blood than you felt comfortable seeing in one place. The whole place was transformed over the course of three days and, when the night finally came, you felt almost sick with nerves.

Even Billy had a strange energy about him, checking and double checking every little thing, including a security team from his company whose presence he seemed reluctant to explain to you. You watched from the sofa as he led them around the apartment, explaining where he wanted them and which areas of the penthouse were off-limits. He introduced you to one of them, a human man called Curtis who would be spending the night near the door to your quarters if you needed any help during the night (and, again, Billy didn’t explain what that meant).

A couple of hours before the guests were due to arrive, you went to shower and draw blood before doing your hair and makeup, and getting changed into your dress and shoes. For a few minutes you found yourself staring at your reflection, hoping to find some of the confidence you’d had that night in the dressing room with Billy.

When you stepped out into the penthouse, it only took a moment for his eyes to find you, his jaw threatening to drop as he took in the sight of you. His appearance had the same effect on you; his well tailored tux had you biting your lip.

“Wow, Russo, you really know how to pick them,” Curtis called across the penthouse, earning himself a withering look from Billy and causing your cheeks to heat.

Billy made his way towards you, not bothering to hide the way his eyes were taking in every inch of you. When he reached you, he placed a hand on your hip and kissed your cheek.

“I got you a present,” he told you, using his hand to start guiding you towards the library, pausing momentarily to tell Curtis and his team that they could go take a break before the party started.

Your heart was hammering in your chest as he led you into the library and towards the seldom used desk by the window. Waiting for you were three boxes, each beautifully wrapped in silver paper and tied with black ribbon. Without thought, you found yourself gripping Billy’s arm as your legs threatened to turn to jello beneath you.

He smiled softly, picking up the first box and handing it to you.

“Open it,” he instructed, managing to sound as excited as you felt about this whole exchange.

It felt wrong to destroy the immaculate wrapping, so you took your time, carefully untying the ribbon and peeling open the paper to get at the box. You removed the lid and there, in amongst black tissue paper was an ornate black and silver mask.

“It’s for the party tonight,” he told you when you looked at him for clarification, “we wear the masks until midnight and then take them off. It’s supposed to symbolise vampires being seen by society, but really it’s just an excuse to have fun while no one knows who you are.”

You laughed, head shaking. “Thank you, it’s beautiful.”

But he didn’t give you time to linger, gently taking the box and mask from your hand before offering you the next present, seeming to get more eager with each passing second. He was practically vibrating with excitement.

Your breath caught as you opened the second box. It was a beautiful choker style necklace with diamanté detailing - at least, you assumed that it was diamanté because you couldn’t even start to imagine how much it would have cost if they were real diamonds. For a few seconds you were lost for words.

“Here, let me,” he offered, pulling the necklace from the box before you even had the chance to answer him. Billy stepped behind you, gently draping it around your neck and fastening it for you.

Your fingers immediately reached up to touch it; it felt a little heavy around your neck and you’d never had a choker style necklace before, but the feel of it would be a constant reminder of Billy and you loved that. 

“Thank you, Billy,” you finally managed, turning and wrapping your arms around him before pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“There’s one more.” He reached for the last present but seemed a little more reluctant to hand it to you. 

And once you’d opened it, you understood why.

“Oh...” said somewhere between shock and confusion. 

You weren’t sure what you’d been expecting, especially not after the mask and the choker, but a new sex toy certainly wasn’t it. Your cheeks heated as you looked at the box, trying to make sense of it, the words discreet and remote play only confused you more.

“I want you to wear this for the party,” he told you, a hint of nervousness in his voice, “if you want to, I mean. If it’s too much, I get it. I just - I thought we could have some fun. And there’s going to be so many people, I guess I want to know you’ll spend the night thinking about me...”

Your cheeks continued to burn, part horrified by the notion, but a much larger part couldn’t help but find the idea interesting, arousing even. And, after everything that had happened between you, part of you was still longing for more.

“You want me to spend the night thinking about you?” You asked quietly.

“More than anything,” he answered in little more than a whisper, like he knew it was something he shouldn’t say.

It felt like your heart leapt into your throat for a few seconds and you struggled to swallow around it. All you could think about was that night a couple of weeks ago, how he told you it felt like he was drowning when he wasn’t with you, and you knew that you couldn’t say no to him. (You didn’t want to say no to him.)

“Okay,” you finally answered, “how do I...?”

“Let me,” he offered, perhaps a little too eagerly, taking the box from your hand, muttering something about how he’d cleaned it and charged it ready before wrapping it.

You bit your lip, watching as he pulled the purple silicone toy out of the box, knowing that he could hear your heart pounding. Then he kissed you, slipping his tongue between your lips and enjoying you for a few moments. When he pulled back he began to trace your lips with the tip of the toy before slipping it into your mouth, causing your cheeks to burn hotter.

You watched him suck his fingers, leaving them glistening with saliva before dropping to his knees and slipping them beneath your dress and into your panties. His free hand nudged your knee and you parted your trembling legs a little further while his fingers stirred between your folds, wetting you before slowly slipping into you.

You moaned softly as his fingers slowly started to pump inside you, twisting and bending, easily finding that special spot. 

Your hands gripped his shoulders, feeling like your legs were going to give out. Another soft moan escaped you when he looked up at you, holding your gaze as his fingers filled you, over and over. You clenched around him as he licked his lips, knowing that he was imagining the taste of your arousal on his tongue.

“You can come whenever you need to,” he told you, smiling up at you like he was in awe of you.

“Billy...” you moaned, your voice muffled by the toy in your mouth, hating how close you were to falling apart.

Your walls clenched and tightened around his fingers again, but you were already so wet that you couldn’t hold onto him or make him slow. There was something about all of this that seemed so obscene, so dirty, and it just made you want it ever more. His fingers hit that sweet spot one more time and it was enough to push you over the edge. Your legs started to tremble and your thighs pressed together, trying to keep his fingers inside you.

And, all the while, Billy smiled up at you.

A needy whine slipped out when he pulled away his hand, but you soon fell silent when he took the toy from your mouth. Your eyes fixed on the bookshelf behind Billy as he inserted the toy, suddenly feeling embarrassed despite everything you’d just let him do. Once he was done, he straightened your panties and made sure your dress was perfect.

Shifting your weight between your legs, you tried to get used to the feeling of the toy while Billy stood up and took out his phone.

“Let’s give it a little test,” he said with an almost mischievous grin on his lips that caused you thighs to clench. Something told you he was going to enjoy this. A lot.

A sudden whimper was pulled from you as the toy started to vibrate.

Billy’s grin grew as his finger swiped on his phone, causing the vibrations to intensify. As good as it felt, a mixture of shame and concern threatened to ruin the moment.

“What?” Billy asked, stopping the vibrations the moment he noticed your discomfort. “If it’s too much, you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” you answered shyly, a little embarrassed by just how much you wanted to, “It’s just... what if someone realises?”

He offered a soft smile, placing a hand on your cheek. 

“They won’t,” he told you with confidence. “It’ll be too noisy for anyone to hear it, and you’ll be good; you won’t come until we’re alone together and I give you permission.”

His thumb tenderly caressed your cheek as he leaned in to kiss you, his tongue slipping between your lips and wiping away any misgivings you might have had. You wanted to do this. You wanted to give Billy the comfort of knowing that you were thinking about him all night. And you wanted to do it for yourself too. You’d wanted to have new experiences and this was definitely new for you.

“Come on,” he said, slipping his hand into yours, “let’s go have a glass of wine and wait for the guests to arrive. It’s going to be a long night...”

Chapter Nine

End Note : So, originally, this chapter and the party were going all be one chapter, but then I got carried away with the cute notes between reader and Billy. That means next week will be a whole chapter of party shenanigans.

As always, thanks for reading/commenting/liking/reblogging, hope you're enjoying this as much as I'm enjoying writing it! Have a great weekend!

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

A near-majority of American voters willingly reelected Donald Trump. This harsh reality is a collective moral failure, but it’s also not a choice made in sound mind. Consider that voters believed Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a Carter-level catastrophe. It’s an upside-down Bizarro World view that ultimately played a key role in dooming Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 2024 platform was rooted in an obvious lie — that the nation under Biden’s leadership is a flaming dumpster fire and everyone was much better off when Trump was president. Democrats challenged this false reality with facts, but they ultimately lost the messaging war. Their best efforts were no match for the most powerful weapons in Trump’s propaganda arsenal — a timid press and a right-coded social social media environment. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that the Harris campaign’s own internal polling revealed an alarming trend: “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency — even if they saw these things negatively — were his fault.” According to exit polls, Trump decisively won the questions “who do you trust more to handle the economy?” and “who do you trust most to handle a crisis?” Of course, in reality Trump utterly botched the 2020 pandemic response, which researchers concluded resulted in 40 percent more deaths than necessary. And yet swing voters are willing to risk it all again in hopes of cheaper eggs and cruelty against outgroups.

Disinformation on demand

Legacy media shoulders significant blame for their “sanewashing” of Trump’s incoherency and deteriorating mental state. Voters believed Trump could fix a steadily improving economy despite his promotion of inflationary tariffs. The media even presented Trump’s rants as cogent discussions of economic theory.

It’s worth noting, however, that an NBC poll from April revealed that voters who received news primarily from legacy media (newspapers, cable news, etc.) still overwhelmingly supported Biden. Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network “brainwashing” their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades. TikTok, which Trump joined in June, has 170 million users in the United States, and according a Pew Research survey, more than half of them said they regularly get their news from the platform. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2020. This is a serious concern because the far right uses TikTok to advance unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

[...]

Lower income Americans, particularly young people, do spend more of their income on groceries, rent, and gas. That’s why Republicans were so laser focused on the price of eggs. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of liberal content countering the negative vibes. Of course, explaining the post-pandemic economic recovery is complex and requires more than a punchy one-minute video can convey. Although people might idly scroll TikTok all day, consuming 60-second quick hit videos like potato chips, they will balk at reading an extensive, well-reported news article. That’s too filling a meal.

According to a University of Oregon study, 40 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d become more conservative from their TikTok usage. Half of the Democrats surveyed said they’d grown more liberal, but a lot of far-left content on TikTok is downright alienating and can sound like MAGA’s idea of a strawman leftist. For instance, one user boasted that she “didn’t care” if liberal economic and social policies “hurt the economy,” thus conceding that those policies are in fact harmful to economic progress. TikTok’s artificial “vibecession” dominated the discourse, while abortion-related content was actively suppressed even while pregnant women were bleeding out in parking lots. Users of the platform resorted to disguising the word “abortion” as “aborshun” or “ab0rti0n” in order to reach an audience. TikTok has a longstanding policy against promoting abortion services, which it classifies as “unsuitable businesses, products or services.” However, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta have allowed users to spread and monetize anti-abortion misinformation. Studies have shown an interesting gender gap in where young people receive their news on social media: For most women, it’s TikTok, while most men learn about the world from YouTube, X, and Reddit, all of which have become havens of crude masculinity.

On YouTube, 56 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that researches extremism, conducted a four-part research project this year that determined YouTube’s algorithm consistently steers users to rightwing and Christian content. The algorithm does this even with seemingly apolitical search terms, like “male lifestyle guru,” which YouTube reflexively associates with conservative ideology. Rightwing news content was also more frequently recommended, including anti-vaxxer videos. As far back as 2019, both YouTube and Facebook’s autofill search boxes would return content that promoted anti-vaccine misinformation.

[...]

Why rightwing content has the edge

When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper told her listeners, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators often avoid politics for fear of turning off their right-leaning fans. Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports don’t bother with such apologies when they have rightwing guests because it doesn’t compromise their brand. They are rightwing cultural influencers. Liberal podcaster Hasan Piker recently commented on the impact rightwing influencers have on young men of all races.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces. Everything is completely dominated by rightwing politics,” he said. “If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to [the] Trumpian right. Everything they see is rightwing sentiment.”

Rogan and Portnoy might not present as overtly political as Walsh and Shapiro, but their edgy, hyper masculine personas are pure MAGA. Even billionaire CEO Elon Musk likes to present himself as a “disrupter,” an agent of change who boldly confronts the status quo. Anyone who’s seen the more popular indie films of the 1970s would realize how compelling this narrative is to young men. The subtle way that Rogan and Portnoy infuse politics into their personas presents a contrast with left-leaning social media content. The liberal TikToker or YouTuber who releases videos about home makeovers might endorse Democratic politicians during election season while wearing their “just voted” sticker, but rightwing influencers prime their audience on a daily basis. Young men marinate in a stew of rightwing sentiment and end up resenting the libs.

Stephen Robinson wrote in Public Notice a very valid case that a right-coded media environment gave Donald Trump the decisive boost to get elected, such as praising the disastrous Trump reign as a “success.”

Social media algorithms heavily favored right-coded and pro-Trump content, despite the never-ending whining about “censorship” from conservatives.

[starlit-writer]

i just saw someone post complaining about the “tik tok refugees” saying that they have been here on tumblr for years and that the “tik tok people” are just going to ruin this website, etc. etc.

listen. that is NOT what we need right now.

yes, i get that they were probably just venting, and i get that tumblr hates tik tok (for a lot of valid reasons), but even if you personally never got on tiktok, 170 millions americans did. that’s literally HALF of the united states total population. 1 out of 2 people in america alone used tik tok everyday.

we, as in everyone on tumblr, should be understanding and welcoming. yeah, the new users might be a little lost at first, do some faux pas, but they are desperate for understanding and a place to be themselves after tik tok was ripped away. people are REELING from this. they have lost their communities, something that brings them joy in the hellscape that we currently live in, and now it’s gone.

not even to mention, this ban is an overt attack on democracy, plain and simple.

so, if you truly don’t want the “tik tok refugees” here on this app, you should be calling your state’s congress members and demanding them to overturn the ban.

[louisupdates]

Louis Tomlinson - does it ring with this name? As a singer of the British boy group One Direction, he was successful in the years 2010-2015. Together, the band decided to take a break. It has remained so to this day. In 2016, however, Louis began to take his own path. On his solo paths, the singer-songwriter has developed a style that takes up influences from British rock, alternative and indie pop. His music is often melodic, with catchy guitar riffs and a rather down-to-earth sound reminiscent of British bands of the 2000s. Already his first single Just Hold On sold 1.8 million copies. In 2020 and 2022, he released his two albums Walls and Faith In The Future. This was followed by two incredible world tours with over 170 concerts in 47 countries on 5 continents.

For this, an idea matured - a live album should be created, but a very special one. Thus, individual songs were recorded during the tour. On the 25th In April, the result was surprisingly published digitally. 14 songs have been released. Each of them was recorded in a different city. So the listener at home can also mentally go on a small trip around the world while enjoying the individual songs. Now the physical versions of the live album also followed, which make the concert feeling in the living room perfect. These include four more, exclusive tracks. In addition to the double CD, a double picture vinyl edition is available and it has it all!

The vinyl edition contains a special tour book. Fans were able to submit personal impressions about their concert experiences. And these are now included in this extra booklet. Louis decorated the recordings with individual hearts, smileys or crosses and handwritten the first names of the respective fans. This recorded, mutual appreciation is truly a magical highlight. The 28-page, regular booklet is no less lovingly designed. In addition to the lyrics, you will encounter the London set list, high-quality backstage photos and touching recordings made during the concerts.

Louis is happy about this release: "I have been lucky enough to tour the world twice in the last 3 years. The feeling I get when sharing these live moments will accompany me forever. The opportunity to record these songs anywhere in the world and release them as an album is something very special and a real tribute to the fans, who make every single show a unique and incredible experience. Thank you! Enjoy!"

Right at the opener The Greatest, you seem to be in the middle of the action with your eyes closed. In addition to the live sound, the fans can also be heard clearly. Louis invites them to tune in with him: "Sing it with me!" And they do! The spirited mood comes across clearly. In the meantime, the fans also get the space to sing alone. You get used to the choruses and the delighted shouts from the audience very quickly. In Bigger Than Me, the British singer gives space for personal growth and self-reflection. In the song, Louis describes how he deals with the changes in his life and realizes that life is bigger than himself. He talks about taking responsibility for his actions and decisions, especially with regard to his career and the people who support him. The song contains a powerful perspective on growing up and taking responsibility.

Holding On To Heartache puts the fans in great excitement. screams welcome the gentle song. This is about how difficult it is to let go of the pain after a breakup. It's about holding on to grief because it's connected with the memories of lost love, and it's not easy to finally finish with the past. The single We Made It is powerful. In the booklet, the single was translated into Filipino - after all, the recording comes from the concert in the Philippines. Although Louis sings the title in English, this hidden greeting is really adorable. By the way, this approach can be found several times in the booklet. For example, All This Time/She Is Beauty We Are World Class, the titles played in Munich, were also translated into German, for example.

High In California, for example, can only be found on the physical editions of the album. This lightness that the song contains is clearly noticeable. This is about escaping everyday life and getting lost in a state of freedom and lightheartedness. The lifestyle and atmosphere of California make you forget your worries and problems for a moment - just as is the case with Louis' concerts. Here you feel protected and can escape all negative thoughts.

Common People is about the appreciation of ordinary people and their experiences. The song deals with life in everyday life and how important it is to connect with the "ordinary" people and understand their perspectives. Challenges and struggles that many people experience should be taken seriously instead of romanticizing them. It is his tribute to the authenticity and reality of life. It therefore becomes gently rocking with All This Time/She Is Beauty We Are World Class. Here you rock with real fun from the sofa. The groovy guitars do the rest:

In Walls, delicate strings underline the song about emotional barriers and the struggle to show themselves vulnerable. Louis addresses the need to dismantle one's own walls in order to enable real connections with other people. It is an honest and personal song about vulnerability, love and the desire for closeness, despite the difficulties that can be associated with it. Louis calls on his fans: "Here we go! Scream" and together the fans sing with their idol: "But these high walls, they came up short. Now I stand taller than them all. These high walls never broke my soul. And I, I watched them all come fallin' down. I watched them all come fallin' down for you."

Out Of My System is then reached harder into the guitar strings. The drums are also picking up speed. With the fast track, the good mood is at a peak. This is about the internal conflicts and the difficulties of freeing yourself from the emotional burdens, while at the same time trying to find yourself and your identity. Overall, it is an energetic track about the process of leaving the past behind and starting over. In Paris, Louis is impressed by his crowd: "This looks fucking amazing!" With a warm voice, he performs Saturdays - a song that clearly reminds you of Oasis.

Silver Tongues is accompanied by a lively piano playing and you can really imagine how the euphoric fans on site shine with shere joy and rock them together again. "Krakow, you have been absolutety incredible tonight. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sing this next one with me, here we go... as loud as you can!” And the crowd settles in: "You and me until the end. Wakin' up to start again. You and me until the end. Wakin' up to start again. There's nowhere else that I would rather be."

The record ends with Kill My Mind from Santiano. Louis sings of a roller coaster of emotions in a passionate, but also chaotic relationship. It's about the challenge of letting yourself be overwhelmed by the feelings and the inner struggle that arises when you are trapped in a relationship that is both exciting and stressful.

Louis Tomlinson and his crew have succeeded in a truly remarkable work. What is actually the advantage of a live album? You are not terribly sweaty, the way home is not imminent and you do not fall into the aftershow blues like a real gig afterwards, but can simply start all over again. 🙂

Louis Tomlinson's album Live was released on 23.08.2024 as a CD and vinyl via the label BMG.

Tracklist LOUIS TOMLINSON - Live (Vinyl Edition)

A

01. The Greatest - Live from London, 17.11.2023

02. Face The Music - Live from Nashville, 07/18/2023

03. Bigger Than Me - Live from Vancouver, 26.06.2023

04. Holding On To Heartache - Live from Barcelona, 06.10.2023

05. We Made It - Live from Manila, 16.07.2022

B

06. Chicago - Live from Chicago, 15.06.2023

07. High In California , Live from Amsterdam, 15.10.2023

08. Fearless, Live from Rio, 27.05.2022

09. Common People, Live from Sheffield, 10.11.2023

C

10. All This Time/She Is Beauty We Are World Class, Live from Munich, 22.10.2023

11. Walls, Live from Buenos Aires, 21.05.2022

12. Only The Brave, Live from Milan, 03.09.2022

13. Written All Over Your Face, Live from Budapest, 15.09.2023

D

14. Out Of My System, Live from Brisbane, 30.01.2024

15. Saturdays, Live from Paris, 14.10.2023

16. Silver Tongues, Live from Krakow, 10.09.2023

17. Kill My Mind, Live from Santiago, 15.05.2022

Tracklist LOUIS TOMLINSON - Live (2CD Edition)

Disk 1

01. The Greatest, Live from London, 17.11.2023

02. Face The Music - Live from Nashville, 07/18/2023

03. Bigger Than Me - Live from Vancouver, 26.06.2023

04. Holding On To Heartache - Live from Barcelona, 06.10.2023

05. We Made It - Live from Manila, 16.07.2022

06. Chicago - Live from Chicago, 15.06.2023

07. High In California , Live from Amsterdam, 15.10.2023

08. Fearless, Live from Rio, 27.05.2022

09. Common People, Live from Sheffield, 10.11.2023

Disk 2

01. All This Time/She Is Beauty We Are World Class, Live from Munich, 22.10.2023

02. Walls, Live from Buenos Aires, 21.05.2022

03. Written All Over Your Face, Live from Budapest, 15.09.2023

04. Out Of My System, Live from Brisbane, 30.01.2024

05. Saturdays, Live from Paris, 14.10.2023

06. Where Do Broken Hearts Go, Live from Tallinn, 05.09.2023

07. Silver Tongues, Live from Krakow, 10.09.2023

[snippydippy]

While I'm still on this Tiktok thing

It is also worth noting that alongside Facebook creating a verified Tiktok page after six years of being staunch competitors, Tiktok got a few UI updates that look suspiciously similar to Facebook/Meta's features. Instagram also reformatted to make your page look like a Tiktok account a few days ago.

Meta is 100% the company who either merged with, or bought Tiktok to "save the app", and only right on time to make Trump look better.

TikTok was only down for 10 hours. Which, suspiciously again, is the amount of time it would take for a highly trafficked app to switch over servers if company hands were changed.

It did not go down because of the ban deadline. It happened early, and lasted as long as it did to distress its American users and give time for server maintenance while these changes took place.

FB's algorithm is known to have been designed to enrage you, rather than show you things you enjoy. Research has shown that being angry keeps a user engaged with an app more so than being happy.

Meta has taken this and ran with it to make sure their engagement is as high as possible.

Personal anecdote on this; I only use Facebook once every other week or so for this exact reason. The moment I go onto my timeline there, all I see are posts from the opposite political party, bad faith opinions on art I enjoy (music, shows, movies, etc), and blatant bait looking to make people argue. It's been this way for years, and why I stopped going there except to drop a drawing and life update here and there. I don't engage with my timeline because I recognized the damage it was doing to my mental health (and my blood pressure lol) a long time ago.

TikTok has worked on the opposite principle. Their algorithm is based on dopamine. It shows you things you find funny, interesting, or is related to the things you already enjoy. It keeps user retention based on enjoyment. This comes with its own set of problems, of course. Addiction and dependency can stem from this, but imo it's less damaging to a person's psyche overall than rage bait.

With Meta taking over (and I will absolutely eat my shoe live on camera if I'm wrong about this), I fear Tiktok's algorithm will change to fit what Meta does. I feel it may already be happening, with my FYP today being almost entirely about the ban/return rather than my usual artwork, edits, gaming clips & funny sketches.

We may have effectively lost Tiktok anyway with all of this.

170 million Americans is a demographic any politician of any party would literally ki11 for. If anyone doubts that everything surrounding Tiktok's ban was anything other than an elaborate plan from the beginning...idk what to tell you. It may not have gone exactly the way it was intended, but the result is the same regardless.

It's my belief that those who voted for this ban, the vast majority of which having shares in Meta, did so because it was a threat to one of their biggest financial investments. They wanted to back TikTok into a corner and force them to make a move that benefited THEIR wallets, all the American people they screwed over in the meantime be damned.

While it looked to us like Tiktok wouldn't budge and would call their bluff, taking the ban rather than selling out to an American company only to find a solution in the last moments, this was obviously not the case. They did sell. They sold to the very company most threatened by its success to Zuck's benefit, the senators and representatives with shares in his company, and to the benefit of a politician with the absolute most to gain with an abysmal approval rating, and an audience of half the country who just got a notification expressing gratitude to him for "saving" an app he actively campaigned against for four fucking years.

Taking away something you enjoy, and giving it back to earn your praise is textbook psychological manipulation.

This whole thing just fucking reeks to me, and I wish billionaires would keep their fingers out of politics, and that politicians of all kinds would stop meddling in every single fucking thing that we do.

This country is run by money, and money alone.

I'm so mad about this whole thing, man. Angrier still at the "it's just an app, stop being dramatic" takes I'm seeing on my FB timeline (aforementioned rage baiting in action lmao). It's NOT just an app. It's a platform of One Hundred and Seventy Million God Damn People that, up until this point, has been an unprecedented tool in connection and information accessibility. A platform that now runs the risk of showing half the country only what one company wants to show them based on its ideas for how the app should work, and with a bias towards political ideals like funneling content that only pushes you harder to one side or the other, maintaining and deepening the rift between political parties that benefit Meta and the reps/senators invested in it.

Yeah it's an App that shows you funny videos and dances but PLEASE I'M BEGGING FOR ONE CRUMB OF CRITICAL THOUGHT ON THE SIZE OF THIS FUCKING THING ALONE

[inaccuratelybiblicalangel]

Full Lana Del Rey Playlist :

( Lmk if i missed anything ) ( in no particular order)

1. Kill Kill

2. Queen of the Gas Station

3. Oh Say Can You See

4. Gramma (Blue Ribbon Sparkler Trailer Heaven)

5. For K, Pt. 2

6. Jump

7. Mermaid Motel

8. Raise Me Up (Mississippi South)

9. Pawn Shop Blues

10. Brite Lites

11. Put Me in a Movie

12. Smarty

13. Yayo

14. Born to Die

15. Off to the Races

16. Blue Jeans

17. Video Games⁹

18. Diet Mountain Dew

19. National Anthem

20. Dark Paradise

21. Radio

22. Carmen

23. Million Dollar Man

24. Summertime Sadness

25. This Is What Makes Us Girls

26. Ride

27. American

28. Cola

29. Body Electric

30. Blue Velvet

31. Gods & Monsters

32. Bel Air

33. Burning Desire

34. Cruel World

35. Ultraviolence

36. Shades of Cool

37. Brooklyn Baby

38. West Coast

39. Sad Girl

40. Pretty When You Cry

41. Money Power Glory

42. ***ed My Way Up to the Top

43. Old Money

44. The Other Woman

45. Honeymoon

46. Music to Watch Boys To

47. Terrence Loves You

48. God Knows I Tried

49. High by the Beach

50. Freak

51. Art Deco

52. Burnt Norton (Interlude)

53. Religion

54. Salvatore

55. The Blackest Day

56. 24

57. Swan Song

58. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

59. Love

60. Lust for Life

61. 13 Beaches

62. Cherry

63. White Mustang

64. Summer Bummer

65. Groupie Love

66. In My Feelings

67. Coachella – Woodstock in My Mind

68. God Bless America – And All the Beautiful Women in It

69. When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing

70. Beautiful People Beautiful Problems

71. Tomorrow Never Came

72. Heroin

73. Change

74. Get Free

75. Norman F***ing Rockwell

76. Mariners Apartment Complex

77. Venice Bitch

78. F*** It I Love You

79. Doin’ Time

80. Love Song

81. Cinnamon Girl

82. How to Disappear

83. California

84. The Next Best American Record

85. The Greatest

86. Bartender

87. Happiness is a Butterfly

88. Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have - But I Have It

89. White Dress

90. Chemtrails Over the Country Club

91. Tulsa Jesus Freak

92. Let Me Love You Like a Woman

93. Wild at Heart

94. Dark But Just a Game

95. Not All Who Wander Are Lost

96. Yosemite

97. Breaking Up Slowly

98. Dance Till We Die

99. For Free

100. Text Book

101. Blue Banisters

102. Arcadia

103. Interlude – The Trio

104. Black Bathing Suit

105. If You Lie Down With Me

106. Beautiful

107. Violets for Roses

108. Dealer

109. Thunder

110. Wildflower Wildfire

111. Nectar of the Gods

112. Living Legend

113. Cherry Blossom

114. Sweet Carolina

115. The Grants

116. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd

117. Sweet

118. A&W

119. Judah Smith Interlude

120. Candy Necklace

121. Jon Batiste Interlude

122. Kintsugi

123. Fingertips

124. Paris, Texas

125. Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing

126. Let the Light In

127. Margaret

128. Fishtail

129. Peppers

130. Taco Truck x VB

131. Young and Beautiful (Demo)

132. Black Beauty

133. Florida Kilos

134. Behind Closed Doors

135. So Legit

136. Riverside

137. You Can Be the Boss

138. Kinda Outta Luck

139. Velvet Crowbar

140. Wait for Life

141. I Talk to Jesus

142. The Lullaby

143. Summer of Sam

144. Jump (Demo)

145. Hollywood's Dead

146. Maha

147. Queen of Disaster

148. My Best Days

149. Life is Beautiful

150. Gramma (Blue Ribbon Sparkler Trailer Heaven) (Demo)

151. Burning Desire (Demo)

152. In the Sun

153. Butterfly

154. X-Cops

155. Planet of the Apes

156. Red Hot

157. Afraid

158. Tropico (Demo)

159. Chuck's in Love

160. The Other Woman (Demo)

161. Flipside

162. Queen of the Gas Station (Demo)

163. Run With Me

164. Old Money (Demo)

165. The Big Bad Wolf

166. I Will Wait

167. Stars in the Sky

168. Alligator

169. So Strange

170. Dancing with the Devil

171. Wildflower

172. Pretty Little Miss

173. F*** You (Lana Del Rey)

174. GO GO Dancer

175. Beautiful Player

176. This is what makes us girls (Demo 2 & 3)

177. Meet me in the pale moonlight

178. Boarding school

179. Ridin (ft. Asap Rocky)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Bernie Sanders: America Must Confront Its Long COVID Crisis - Published Aug 15, 2024

As the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP Committee), I have heard from Americans of all ages about their struggles with Long COVID and the challenges they face are absolutely heartbreaking.

In America today, far too many patients suffering from Long COVID have struggled to get their symptoms taken seriously. Far too many doctors and medical professionals have either dismissed or misdiagnosed those who have contracted Long COVID. Far too many people with Long COVID have found themselves stuck at home, unable to socialize, unable to work, unable to spend quality time with their families, unable to get out of bed and desperate for help.

That is unacceptable and that has got to change.

Long COVID is real. It is negatively impacting tens of millions of people throughout the United States and the world. We can no longer ignore it or sweep it under the rug.

Earlier this year, I chaired a hearing on the Long COVID crisis. It made me more determined than ever to address this ongoing public health emergency. This is what we heard:

A former athlete from Los Angeles told us that her chronic Long COVID symptoms of insomnia, brain fog, confusion, sleep apnea, heart palpitations, fever and severe migraines prevent her from socializing with friends and leaving her house on most days. Adding insult to injury, her initial symptoms of blood clots, mini strokes, brain swelling, seizures, severe shortness of breath, and numbness in her face, hands, and legs were brushed off by her doctors as just a case of anxiety.

A human resources director at a community college in Southeastern Virginia told us that Long COVID forced her to leave the job she loved three years ago and that she continues to experience extreme fatigue, chronic pain, headaches, and dizziness. These debilitating symptoms have made it difficult for her to just get out of bed and she is no longer able to lead an active life with her children.

A mother in rural Virginia told us that before her 16-year old daughter came down with Long COVID she received straight A’s and was an active member of the school’s marching band. Today, she struggles with extreme fatigue, low blood pressure, an increased heart rate, severe joint pain, nausea, vomiting, a severe inability to concentrate, and depression. Her daughter is now isolated, struggles to do her schoolwork and is slowly working on her GED from home.

Sadly, they are not alone. In America today, nearly 18 million adults suffer from Long COVID. And, despite what you may have heard, Long COVID does not just impact adults and the elderly. It impacts people from all ages and all backgrounds. In fact, nearly 6 million children in our country have been affected by Long COVID.

Further, recent studies have found that only 8 percent of people who have Long COVID have been able to recover from this debilitating disease after 2 years.

What is deeply concerning to me is that Long COVID can affect anyone who has tested positive for COVID—from those who experienced mild symptoms to those who were severely ill. Furthermore, although you may not have Long COVID after your first COVID infection, each reinfection can substantially increase the risk of developing it.

This escalating danger, particularly for those who have suffered repeated infections, poses a severe threat to public health that demands our immediate and focused attention.

Let’s be clear. The impact of long COVID-19 is not just a health issue. It’s an economic one as well. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million Americans are out of work due to long COVID-19. The annual cost of those lost wages alone is about $170 billion a year.

In my view, the time has come to start treating the Long COVID crisis as the public health emergency that it is.

Read the rest of the article at either link!

[fatehbaz]

The 1830s saw an explosion of railway lines built up and down the length of Great Britain. The first to open for passengers and freight with a set time table was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. Scotland’s first line opened a year later when the Glasgow and Garnkirk Railway started bringing coal from the Lanarkshire pits to the growing city. 

Railways were private undertakings that were authorised by acts of Parliament. They required large sums of finance in order to pay for the land, materials and labour for construction. Investors poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the start-up railway companies – an amount that would equate to billions in today’s money. 

Were these railways funded through slavery? Not directly, as slavery was banned in the British Empire in 1833. However the owners of the enslaved people received compensation for their lost ‘property’ in 1834, which amounted to over £10 million pounds. Much of that money was then re-invested in other industries. Over 61,000 people received compensation through this fund, many of whom went on to invest in the new railway companies springing up everywhere.

University College London (UCL) has been conducting in-depth research into these compensation claims and offers a searchable database of the applications, claims approved and some of the investments made by the claimants. A search using the ‘railway’ filter brings up over 170 such investments, many in Scotland. Just one example is the West Indian Merchant (i.e., slave owner) Thomas Dunlop Douglas (1776–1869) of Glasgow. He was awarded over £15,000 in compensation for almost 400 people held in bondage in British Guiana. The UCL project lists details of fifteen investments he later made in Scottish railways. Many of these were local Glasgow lines but he was also one of five beneficiaries of slavery compensation who invested over £130,000 in the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which opened in 1842.

The UCL database continues to be updated and more research is required to pinpoint direct connections, but there can be no doubt that some of the funds paid for the ‘property’ of the enslaved Africans went to building our railway system. And everyone who takes the train between Scotland’s two major cities is travelling over one of the impacts of Glasgow’s links with the slave economy.

---

Image, caption, and all text above by: John Messner. “Glasgow’s railways ... funded by slavery?” Legacies of Slavery in Glasgow Museums and Collections. An online resource published by Glasgow Museums. 1 December 2021.

[beardedmrbean]

ATLANTA (AP) — The ex-wife of R&B singer Usher is calling to drain Georgia's largest lake, where her son was fatally injured 11 years ago.

Fashion designer Tameka Foster has collected more than 2,500 signatures for her online petition imploring officials to “drain, clean, and restore” Lake Sidney Lanier, to allow for safety improvements and the removal of hazardous debris and other obstructions.

Kile Glover, her 11-year-old son with Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover, died in July 2012 after a personal watercraft struck the boy as he floated in an inner tube on the lake.

“Draining, cleaning, and restoring Lake Lanier is not only necessary but also an opportunity to honor the memory of those who have lost their lives and prevent further tragedies,” Foster wrote in her change.org petition, which she has also promoted on her Instagram page.

Located roughly an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta, Lake Lanier covers nearly 60 square miles (155 square kilometers) and has waters up to 160 feet (49 meters) deep. It's far from just a getaway for millions of boaters, anglers and other yearly visitors.

The lake provides drinking water for about 5 million people, according to the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper conservation group. And Buford Dam at the lake's southern end generates hydroelectric power for the metro Atlanta area.

The Army Corps of Engineers constructed Lake Lanier in the 1950s. The Corps' district office in Mobile, Alabama, which still operates the lake, did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Thursday.

Heavy traffic on the lake has resulted in hundreds of boat collisions in the past three decades, according the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The agency reported more than 170 boating and drowning deaths between 1994 and 2018.

Foster and Usher married in 2007 and divorced two years later.

[hessdalen-globe]

Election Results in Cellano

The state of Cellano includes the city of Cellano, and is Daskosa's smallest state but most densely populated state with about 4 million people calling it home.

The state has 23 ridings, 15 of which are within the city limits. Each riding is made to represent about 200,000 people each.

Unlike most western countries on Earth, Daskosan cities often favor conservatism. This is reflected in the voting patterns of Cellano, which went against the rest of the country in 170. While the other states voted in and gave the NAC a majority, Cellano remained a stronghold for the right-leaning conservative and monarchist parties. But just barely.

Many of the ridings that voted blue and purple were close races with NAC candidates, handing the victors slim victories with the NAC in second place by just a few percentiles.

The inner city remained strongly DCP and PDC, while the more industrial sections leaned more heavily into the NAC.

The green party lost its one seat in the city, as did the independent incumbents. The 170 election was highly polarized and partisan, with most independent and third party voters choosing a side: red or blue.

[newstfionline]

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Canada’s maple syrup in a sticky situation (BBC) Canada’s maple syrup reserve—the world’s only—has reached a 16-year low, raising questions about the future of a globally loved sweet staple in the face of climate change. The reserve, located in Quebec, is designed to hold 133 million pounds of maple syrup at any given year. But in 2023, the supply fell to 6.9 million pounds (3.1 million kg). Experts link the shortage to both a rise in demand and warmer weather, which has disrupted production. Canada’s billion-dollar maple syrup industry accounts for 75% of the world’s entire maple syrup production.

Crew aboard Dali all survived bridge crash ‘by God’s grace’ (Washington Post) The director of a Baltimore ministry heard a loud boom in the wee hours of Tuesday and figured it was thunder. Then he woke up, turned on the radio and learned that the noise had been the sound of a catastrophe—the crash of a ship into a bridge that involved merchant sailors he had seen just hours earlier. Andrew Middleton, director of the local Apostleship of the Sea, texted a seafarer aboard the 985-foot container ship Dali. “Is everyone on board safe?” he asked at 6:03 a.m. Five minutes later, the crew member replied. “Yes. By God’s grace.” Their exchange is the first publicly reported communication from a mariner aboard the vessel, which lost power and slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

South Carolina has $1.8 billion but doesn’t know where the money came from or where it should go (AP) South Carolina has collected about $1.8 billion in a bank account over the past decade and state and private accountants are still trying to figure out where the cash came from and where it was supposed to go. “It’s like going into your bank and the bank president tells you we have a lot of money in our vault but we just don’t know who it belongs to,” said Republican Sen. Larry Grooms, who is leading a Senate panel investigating the problem. It’s the latest trouble with the state’s books and the two agencies, typically led by elected officials, that are in charge of making sure government accounts stay balanced.

Fleeing violence in Haiti (Foreign Policy) France airlifted around 240 people from Haiti on Wednesday as gang violence escalates in the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 170 evacuees were French citizens and around 70 others were foreign nationals. Paris’s decision echoes other nations’ efforts to evacuate their citizens, including a Canadian flight to the Dominican Republic on Monday and U.S. flights the same day to Miami, Florida. The evacuations come amid a surge in armed attacks over the past month on key infrastructure across Port-au-Prince by gangs that have repeatedly targeted police stations; released thousands of prisoners; and closed roads, hospitals, and Toussaint Louverture International Airport. Mired in an ongoing political crisis, the country has been unable to stop the violence.

Spraying manure and throwing beets, farmers in tractors again block Brussels to protest EU policies (AP) Farmers threw beets, sprayed manure at police and set hay alight on Tuesday as hundreds of tractors again sealed off streets close to the European Union headquarters, where agriculture ministers sought to ease a crisis that has led to months of protests across the 27-member bloc. The farmers protested what they see as excessive red tape and unfair trading practices as well as increased environmental measures and cheap imports from Ukraine. “Let us make a living from our profession,” read one billboard on a tractor blocking a main thoroughfare littered with potatoes, eggs and manure. As the protests turned into violence again, police used tear gas and water cannons to keep farmers and some 250 tractors at bay. Authorities asked commuters to stay out of Brussels and work from home as much as possible.

Ukrainian navy says a third of Russian warships in the Black Sea have been destroyed or disabled (AP) Ukraine has sunk or disabled a third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea in just over two years of war, the navy spokesman said Tuesday, a heavy blow to Moscow’s military capability. Ukraine’s Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told The Associated Press that the latest strike on Saturday night hit the Russian amphibious landing ship Kostiantyn Olshansky that was resting in dock in Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea. The ship was part of the Ukrainian navy before Russia captured it while annexing the Black Sea peninsula in 2014. Pletenchuk has previously announced that two other landing ships of the same type, Azov and Yamal, also were damaged in Saturday’s strike along with the Ivan Khurs intelligence ship. He told the AP that the weekend attack, which was launched with Ukraine-built Neptune missiles, also hit Sevastopol port facilities and an oil depot.

Anti-Christian Attacks Surge as Hindu Nationalism Grows (Christianity Today) The number of violent anti-Christian incidents in India jumped to 601 in 2023 compared to 413 the previous year, according to a new report from the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s Religious Liberty Commission (EFI-RLC). India is home to about 28 million Christians, or about two percent of the country’s population of 1.4 billion. The majority of attacks on Christians were categorized as threats and harassment (201) followed by 146 instances of false accusations and subsequent arrests. The report follows and reinforces the narrative of the 2024 World Watch List released earlier this year by Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors, which ranks India at number 11, noting the sustained rise of Hindu nationalism: “Any Christian who does convert from Hinduism is most likely to come under intense pressure or even violence. They can face constant pressure to renounce their new faith, face job loss/discrimination, endure physical assaults, and even be murdered. Church leaders are also in danger in many parts of India: extremists target them (along with their families) to create fear and chaos in the Christian community.”

South Korea doctors’ strike widens as medical professors join protests (Guardian) South Korea’s doctors’ strike is widening as medical professors across the nation say they’re going to join the collective action, which currently only involves trainee doctors who are protesting pay disparities and a government plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. The head of the Medical Professors Association of Korea said that medical professors would begin their strike by scaling back outpatient treatment to focus on patients with critical needs, while some professors are expected to turn in their resignations soon. The professors will be backing trainee doctors’ claims that adding 2,000 additional medical students per year will degrade the quality of Korea’s medical services.

Hong Kong official warns online criticism could breach new national security law (Guardian) Hong Kong’s justice minister has warned that posting and sharing criticism of the city’s newly enacted national security law could be in breach of the legislation, which lays down harsh penalties for sedition. Secretary for justice Paul Lam said in a televised interview on Sunday that a person might commit an offence if they reposted online critical statements issued by foreign countries and persons overseas, depending on their “intention and purpose”. The Article 23 legislation, which came into force on Saturday, includes penalties of up to life imprisonment for five categories of crime including treason, insurrection, espionage, sabotage and external interference. It also expands the British colonial-era offence of “sedition” to include inciting hatred against China’s Communist party leadership. Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang said in the same interview that additional evidence such as “what you keep at home and what other acts you have done” would have to be collected to facilitate prosecution. “As I often said, if you breached the law, I will definitely find evidence against you,” Tang said.

7 Lebanese and an Israeli killed in an exchange of fire along the Lebanon-Israel border (AP) An Israeli airstrike on a paramedics center linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group in south Lebanon killed seven of its members early Wednesday and triggered a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed one person in northern Israel, officials said. The strike on the village of Hebbariye came after a day of airstrikes and rocket attacks between Israel’s military and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group along the Lebanon-Israel border, raising concerns of further escalation along the frontier that has been active for the past five months of the Israel-Hamas war. The airstrike after midnight Tuesday hit an office of the Islamic Emergency and Relief Corps, according to the Lebanese Ambulance Association. It was one of the deadliest single attacks since violence erupted along the border. The paramedics association listed the names of seven volunteers who were killed in the strike. It said the strike was “a flagrant violation of humanitarian work.”

Israel Presses On With Strikes in Gaza After U.N. Cease-Fire Resolution (NYT) The Israeli military pressed on with its bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, signaling that the passing of a United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire for the holy month of Ramadan the day before had not shaken Israel’s determination to keep fighting. The military said its fighter jets had struck “over 60 targets” in Gaza over the previous day. It added that its forces were also operating in central Gaza, where it said they had killed “a number of terrorists.” Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, said Tuesday that the Israeli military had struck residential homes and buildings and that dozens of people were killed. In a statement, the Israeli military added that it was continuing its “operational activity” around Al-Amal Hospital and the town of Al-Qarara, in the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza, adding that its forces were “eliminating terrorists and carrying out targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure.”

Majority of Americans Disapprove of Israel’s Actions in Gaza, New Poll Shows (NYT) A majority of Americans disapprove of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, in a pronounced shift from November, according to a new poll released by Gallup on Wednesday. In a survey conducted from March 1-20, 55 percent of U.S. adults said they disapproved of Israel’s military actions—a jump of 10 percentage points from four months earlier, Gallup found. Americans’ approval of Israel’s conduct in the war dropped by an even starker margin, from 50 percent in November, a month after the war began, to 36 percent in March. The findings are the latest evidence of growing American discontent with Israel over the course of the five months in which it has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including nearly 14,000 children, according to local health officials and the United Nations. Israeli officials say roughly 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.

A decade of documenting more than 63,000 migrant deaths shows that fleeing is more lethal than ever (AP) More than a decade ago, the death of 600 migrants and refugees in two Mediterranean shipwrecks near Italian shores shocked the world and prompted the U.N. migration agency to start recording the number of people who died or went missing as they fled conflict, persecution or poverty to other countries. Governments around the world have repeatedly pledged to save migrants’ lives and fight smugglers while tightening borders. Yet 10 years on, a report by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project published Tuesday shows the world is no safer for people on the move. On the contrary, migrant deaths have soared. Since tracking began in 2014, more than 63,000 have died or are missing and presumed dead, according to the Missing Migrants Project, with 2023 the deadliest year yet. “The figures are quite alarming,” Jorge Galindo, a spokesperson at IOM’s Global Data Institute, told The Associated Press. “We see that 10 years on, people continue to lose their lives in search of a better one.”

Vinyl (The Verge) For the second year in a row, vinyl records outsold CDs, with people buying 43 million vinyl records and just 37 million CDs. Vinyl accounted for $1.4 billion worth of revenue compared to just $537 million from CDs. Streaming dwarfs them all—$14.4 billion in revenue—and scored 84 percent of the music revenues in the U.S.

[bigworlduk]

Norebo Case: Ex government official wanted for fraud surfaced in London at 37 Golden Square

For me, the effort of very closely accounting for every single food item consumed is what would keep me honest. Czech filmmaker Milos Forman, whose American movies “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus” won a deluge of Academy Awards, including Best Director Oscars, died Saturday. “log in to” or “log into” or “login to” – English Language & Usage … Koganovich also owns a 50% stake in Ashton Rose Ltd. and a 49.9% stake in Liberty, Georgia’s third largest bank.

And to top it all off, we’ve read several reviews from people saying that their elderly relatives lost their lives’ savings to these sales tactics. One common complaint from former LimeFX customers is that their “LimeFX advisors” behave more like salespeople than actual advisors. They call on a daily basis, sometimes more than once, which just isn’t normal unless you’re investing tens of millions of dollars or more. After taking one glance at LimeFXs review page, it’s clear to see that a majority of individuals are very unhappy with their services. That said, in the interest of fairness, we should point out that LimeFX actually has reasonable spreads and leverage, and that this information is easily available. The spread information can be hard to find on many brokers’ websites, and it’s nice to at least have some transparency as to what your cost is going to be on each trade.

In addition, he managed to get into trouble with the law even after serving his sentence.

After taking one glance at LimeFXs review page, it’s clear to see that a majority of individuals are very unhappy with their services.

Remember how LimeFX’s parent company sets its rates and prices?

Remember, that it was almost impossible to get a British visa for Tugushev, who had a criminal record. In addition, he managed to get into trouble with the law even after serving his sentence. For this, according to the TASS agency, Tugushev was arrested in absentia in Russia and put on the international wanted list. The criminal past of the official, which supposedly was an insurmountable obstacle in obtaining a British visa, had the opposite effect.

Remember how LimeFX’s parent company sets its rates and prices? This allows them to virtually guarantee a profit on their derivatives trades, which guarantees that their investors lose money. LimeFX claims to be an online LimeFX broker like any other. They offer managed LimeFXs in forex funds, stocks, bonds, commodities, and contracts for difference , or derivatives as scammed by limefx they are often called. In all, LimeFX claims to offer trades in more than 170 different assets, including cryptocurrencies and market indexes, and all of these assets can be used as underlying assets for a derivative. Email Beef industry fights for “meat” labels The nation’s largest cattle industry lobby group is fighting to defend the traditional meaning of the word “meat.”

This very address mysteriously unites Tugushev, who is trying to seize part of Orlov’s company in a London court, and those who are considered to be the true beneficiaries behind the trial. The trial, known as the “Norebo Case”, in which the heirs of the Russian criminal structures from the 90s are trying to get hold of one of the largest fishing companies in the country. Investing in forex and derivatives is like spearfishing in a sea full of sharks. The rewards are bountiful, but you’ve always got to be looking over your shoulder. Because these LimeFXs are complex and take some study to understand, they’re fertile ground for scammers, who can easily confuse inexperienced investors into handing over their money.

We’ve talked about this in some other reviews, but it bears repeating. Be wary of any forex traders who are headquartered in Belize, Estonia, or Vanuatu. These countries have very loose financial regulations and are known as headquarters for numerous international scammers. Thus, according to the Panama papers, Gurinov is listed as a beneficiary of several offshore companies. Punch LimeFXs Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands in September 2011, Arcor Holdings Inc and Hercules Impex Ltd – both with registration in the Bahamas.

In Panama papers these companies are mentioned as important repositories of Gurinov’s offshore assets. Apparently, these companies receive the assets that Gurinov manages to “grab” along the lines of Ruric acquisition scheme. In order to assess the scale of New End Development business, it is enough to look at the company’s financial statements. For example, in 2019 alone £140 million passed through the accounts of the parent company and two of its subsidiaries, Halamar Golden Square Ltd and Halamar Chancery Lane Ltd. As already mentioned in an expose by Novye Izvestia, Tugushev is more of a nominal holder of the “Norebo case,” a kind of front man for organized crime.

The minute I am able to not log some foods, it opens the door to cheating and/or getting lazy about paying attention to the minute details of my consumption.

The above in it of itself doesn’t prove that they are a scam.

Nevertheless, the property was arrested, but a year later the arrest had to be lifted.

Remember, that it was almost impossible to get a British visa for Tugushev, who had a criminal record.

Not only was Bitcoin Revolution itself a fraud, but the link in the ad actually led to LimeFX.

He began his business by importing food products, then switched to clothing and then to money transfers. In 2003, he suddenly got a job at Sibur Company , the general director of which at that time was Alexander Dyukov, who in the 90s headed the port of St. Petersburg, which is an export gateway for Russian oil. In 2011, Gurinov became the head of Sibur-Russian Tyres, a subsidiary of Sibur.

In business

Not only do their “advisors” use pushy sales tactics, but they consistently steer their investors towards CFDs. Of all the negative feedback we’ve seen about this company, at least 90 percent of it is related to this tactic. According to our knowledge, the name of Gurinov appeared in the scandalously known Panama papers In particular, it was stated that he acquired most of his assets from 1991 to 2015.

Another thing many users have reported is deceptive advertising. There was a – since removed – ad campaign on Facebook for a trading platform called Bitcoin Revolution. Not only was Bitcoin Revolution itself a fraud, but the link in the ad actually led to LimeFX.

Post navigation

The owners of the offshore are Malik Ishmuratov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, and Denis Korotkov-Koganovich, currently residing in Great Britain. Simply put, Gurinov ditched his Swedish partners, appropriated the company, took all its assets out of it, and then sold the shares of the wrung dry company again. It is the latter, Vadim Gurinov, who constantly resurfaces next to Tugushev in one way or another and seems to play a key role in this case. It turned out that the luxury apartments in London, where Tugushev is hiding, belong to the New End Development company, and one of the beneficiaries of the company is Vadim Gurinov. Meanwhile, 40 million rubles is clearly not enough to live in a posh area of London, or to pay court fees. According to experts, Tugushev’s court costs for the “Norebo case” up till now are estimated at about 20 million pounds.

If you do a Google search for “LimeFX review”, the first several links read more like an advertising brochure than a review. They spend a lot of time talking about LimeFXs, platform features, and potential returns, but they don’t address any of the scam allegations. With a CFD, you’re simply placing a bet on whether the asset will lose or gain value.

As we hope we’ve made clear by now, it’s not a good idea to invest your money with this company. At best, you’ll be dodging pushy sales calls and questioning the legitimacy of their platform. At worst, you’ll find yourself swindled of your hard-earned savings. Worse, we see near-constant reports of pushy advisors who ask for more money on a daily basis or claim that customers need to invest additional funds in order to make such-and-such a trade. These kinds of push sales tactics are a good indicator that a broker is not acting in your best interest.

By the way, Gurinov did not forget about the Ruric development projects either. To get an idea of how Mr. Gurinov started doing business in the company, suffice to remember the notorious conflict with one of the largest clients of Ruric – the Ministry of Defense. The Swedes signed a contract with the military department back in 2006. At that time it was supposed that Ruric would move the Military Transport University from the center of St. Petersburg to Peterhof.

The assets of this JSC are estimated at approximately 400 million pounds. The other half of New End Developments LTD is owned by Oracle Capital Advisors. This company specializes in consulting services for Eastern European oligarchs trying to obtain legal status in the UK.

This is important since Bayline itself isn’t licensed in CySEC, only Hoch. In other words, the parent company isn’t licensed to do business in Europe. LimeFX is a company that’s been doing business in the foreign exchange market since 2012. The fact that they’ve been around since 2012 may seem like a strong point and one may argue that it is. However as we cover more aspects of this 8 year old company we’ll see just how strong they are.

Nevertheless, the property was arrested, but a year later the arrest had to be lifted. And what was left for the judge to do if Orlov’s lawyers clearly demonstrated that their client was a public person who did not plan to hide https://limefx.biz/ or hide his assets. The London address at 37 Golden Square, where the fugitive official and ex-partner of Vitaly Orlov, the owner of the largest fishing holding Norebo, lives, truly is golden—both literally and metaphorically.

CySEC followed the request of the FCA and has suspended Hoch Capital LTD. AKA LimeFX and TradeATF.com. As of this update LimeFX is no longer considered a regulated broker.

Golden Square

The only reason for a company to advertise itself as another company is if they know people won’t want to deal with them under their own name. Almost all of the 4 and 5-star reviews look similar and are written in broken English. That’s a sure sign that LimeFX has been using bots or fake accounts in an attempt to boost their overall review ratings. This means that LimeFX essentially creates its own rates and pricing. This is fishy because it indicates that they’re likely a market maker. First is the fact that Hoch Capital, owner of the iTrade brand, is owned by a parent company in Belize called Bayline Trading Limited.

[d3mon-ology]

On Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Finding Roaches in Your Apartment During a Black-Out:

This is the third time this year I have lost power for multiple days. For all of Metro-Detroit, our energy is serviced by a singular company: DTE Energy. As of August 25th, their stock prices went up by 0.47%. Their yearly revenue is approximately 19 million dollars. This summer, they decided to raise their rates. There is no other choice for us — it is DTE or bust. We were still vocal about the hike in prices, commenting on the proposal’s official posting, You want to raise our bills because you’ve already fixed our infrastructure? Then why did I spend almost a week without power this February? Or something of a similar rhetoric. This summer, some people reported that they began paying 4-digit monthly bills. Personally, my bill jumped from $50 to $170.

For those who do not live in Michigan, please know our summer has been the mildest and weirdest one I’ve experienced. It is August, typically the hottest, most humid time of year, and it has been overcast, wet, and cold, like it is November already. The past two days have brought us terrifying, violent storms where lightning cracked. I thought we’d lose power that first night. Instead, it was the strip of apartments facing ours. I remembered thinking, Finally! This winter, my strip of apartments lost power first and was fixed last. I thought it fair, almost, that they lost power and we got to keep ours. Our neighborhood, clearly zoned for low-income housing and apartments, was always the last to get power back, but instead of paranoia about this resonating me, it was the idea that DTE chose to bless the other apartments. As though a couple hundred dollars in rent per month was the determining factor of who deserved heat in the winter or light in the summer.

So I rejoice our luck — we got to keep our light, our air. Until yesterday morning, when I woke in a sticky sweat to silence and a depthless black. Having always been afraid of the dark, I scrambled for my phone. I tried my lamp, though I knew exactly what had happened. I got up to look out the window at the rain, and I grumbled at the sight of the other strip’s twinkling porch lights. I couldn’t help but resent them, which my neighbor noted later when she lent me her flashlight.

I reported our outage on my DTE app. I tried to go back to bed, but I am in the midst my biannual, irrational fear that mice and cockroaches were infesting my kitchen. Making homes out of my stove or the empty pizza box we left out because we didn’t want to throw it out in the rain. The pitch black only worsened this, so I waited for the sun to rise with my phone’s flash light on and my battery draining. It occurred to me then how soft and plushy I was, how I would not survive long without the accoutrements of my life. Or maybe I would, I thought, and I would have to just get over myself. Become a heroine of my own design.

So my mind wandered in the early morning, looking out for the first sign of light. Eventually, before I fell asleep, I thought of the book assigned for this semester’s course: Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie.

The lives of Ifemelu and Obinze have been eye-opening and a delight to read. Their romance was, in my opinion, a bit spottily rendered, but I didn’t care about their romance. I enjoyed Ifemelu’s portrayal. Adichie avoided a pitfall many Western authors, even the most bra-burning, Bechtel-testing, still fall prey to: the madonna-whore complex. Ife was a woman who was sexual, who had desires beyond men but who saw them as another delight in the wealth of life’s bounty. Following her middle-class Nigerian life and her immigration to America and then return home, I thought Ife so refreshing to read, relatable but also wholly unique in her perspective. She was human, but there was also something a bit invincible about her. It was not that she was able to overcome anything, but rather that she never once wallowed in her weakness. She found something else to sustain her, and I admired that quality. It made her my favorite character, honestly. Reading her story was like reading the life story of a family friend you considered an older, more enlightened aunt who had traveled the world and treated you like a sister.

In particular, she was unfazed by roaches during her first night in Brooklyn, noting that if she had been at home in Lagos she would’ve gotten the broom and killed the fucker without much thought at all. But she didn’t, claiming this American roach as different, as though the weight of a new country had softened that brazen edge to her.

This moment in the book came to me when I finally gave up on sleep. I dressed in the dark, and I decided I was going to drive around. My phone was nearly a corpse, and frankly, I just wanted to sit somewhere and watch my Webkinz iceberg video in peace. I didn’t want to think about mice scratching to escape my pillowcase, roaches emerging from under my sink, or bed bugs, which my coworker recently got and who I, selfishly, worried had given them to me. More so, I was tired of that unhinged feeling that repeated intrusive thoughts instills in me. Like if I did see any of these things, I would be hallucinating, and it would go beyond just idle superstition into a territory where in-patient seems mighty necessary.

So needless to say, I lost it when I walked into my kitchen and saw a cockroach, grasping a small crumb in between his pinchers. He’d just left the pizza box and was ambling across the floor. Much like Ifemelu, I did not kill it. Unlike her, it was not because I felt defeated or so out of place that to interact with my environment felt sinfully wrong. It was because I had never had to. Despite my history of infestations, roaches had never actually crossed from the ephemeral into the real.

Aristotle, who I fucking hate but has a few things of real merit, said that wisdom comes from experience. That’s why it is so valuable in learning virtue. Having lived on my own at 17, half homeless and without any adult supervision, I have grown to see adulthood as a list of first experiences that are necessary but ultimately shift one’s paradigm with each “first.” When I totaled my first car, I learned the wisdom of not leaving your car in the impound lot for five days, of how it is okay to trust scrappers on occasion when they are sweet boys who give you an extra hundred because they recognized struggle and pitied it when they saw it, and of getting back into a car after you realize how fucking stupid you and other drivers are. Dealing with roaches is another one of those “first” experiences, accompanied by a growth spurt, but much like totaling my car, it’s not one I want to learn how to overcome.

So I panicked. I woke up my partner, told him to come quick, annoyed when it took him a minute to clamber up. By the time he followed me into our small kitchen, the roach was gone. This was when I burst into tears, feeling all the weight of the past 48 hours — the sleeplessness, Ifem’s first days submerged in Americanah, the weeks of paranoia that had crescendoed to a singular moment that confirmed all my worst fears. I had felt inspired by Ifemelu’s resilience, balmed by her depression in those first few American months. Adjusting to a new country and being an adult are such disparate experiences that the Venn diagram between them is two circles, but it is a testament to Adichie’s writing that I found connections nonetheless. Learning the nuances of American English follows the same structure of learning a new “first”: you learn by a series of experiences. I calm down, I stop crying, and I think with hope and dread that this is life. After all, Ifemelu has to relearn the nuances of Lagos life after returning to Nigeria. And the same applies to each reoccurrence of a “first.” Life is a series of wisdoms being gained, and I think this is why I admired Ifemelu’s resilience.

So I look at the roach’s mangled body. I hug my partner, tell him we’re getting a closed-top garbage can tomorrow. “Some spray, too,” I add. I put down some diatomaceous earth. I turn off the flash light, and I watch the window. The sun comes up, and I go to sleep.

[media-pa-complex]

Neighborhood in Media, PA

Looking to relocate to Media but need help determining where to live? There are plenty of neighborhoods to choose from based on your preferences. Rose Tree is a great option for families on a budget, with affordable apartments and plenty of parks. Conversely, Moylan is a more upscale and prestigious neighborhood with well-maintained homes and educated residents. If you're looking for a blue-collar area, consider Garden City, which offers older and newer housing options, a large park, and plenty of activities for children. If you're 62 and above and want to enjoy a stress-free retirement lifestyle, the Riddle Village is an excellent community in the neighborhood. You have the freedom to live your life on your own terms, whether staying active and busy or taking it easy and relaxing.

Independent living in Media, PA

If you are looking for independent living in Media, PA, Riddle Village LifeCare Community is the best choice. With a variety of senior apartments that cater to different styles and preferences, their design team can help you customize your apartment with luxurious options such as granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, high-quality cabinets, custom paint colors, and personalized closet designs. Check out their diverse floor plans from one bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom apartments, and use their interactive floor plan styler to visualize each apartment's unique features. Riddle Village offers worry-free retirement living, so it is the top option for those seeking a fresh start.

Brick & Brew 

The Brick & Brew has opened their second location on State Street, located in the heart of Media. This cozy Gastropub has a seasoned chef, expert mixologists, and friendly staff, making it a hometown favorite. With an extensive selection of craft beers, an award-winning scratch menu, and unique cocktails, Brick & Brew offers the perfect combination of character and comfort. The restaurant has a distinct underground distillery feel and even features an outdoor patio. Whether you're celebrating a special occasion or just looking for a great meal, Brick & Brew is the perfect spot. So when you're in Media, PA, never miss visiting the Brick & Brew. 

Narcotics bust nets $1.5 million drugs and arrests 175

Around 200 people were arrested in Kensington during Philadelphia’s Task Force’s drug crackdown operation. Mayor Jim Kenney announced the results of the sweeping multi-agency effort that unfolded in Kensington last week. According to NBC10, the three-day blitz operation saw 170 people taken into custody, more than 25 guns confiscated, and about $1.4 million worth of drugs taken off the streets. Mayor Jim Kenney then went on to express his concern for the senseless violence in Philadelphia as it has hindered us from being naturally engulfed in all of the beautiful things this city has to offer. I really believe that what’s happening in Kensington is unacceptable. A life lost to gun violence or an overdose is one too many, and we cannot allow the continued operation of a drug market that exploits and endangers the residents. Mr. Kenney was right in saying so on Monday. Read more.

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Driving Direction

Brick & Brew

26 W State St, Media, PA 19063, United States

Take S Olive St to W Baltimore Ave

1 min (0.1 mi)

Take E Baltimore Pike to Access Rd/Granite Run Mall Rd in Lima

4 min (2.1 mi)

Continue on Access Rd/Granite Run Mall Rd to your destination

2 min (0.4 mi)

Riddle Village LifeCare Retirement Community

1048 W Baltimore Pike, 

Media, PA 19063, United States