#20 years old with 8 thousand in the bank...................................

[2024skin]

My nb has been working nigh minimum wage his whole life and has had 2 cars but he showed me his savings account the other day and he has over $8000 in the bank 😭

[liatkolink]

For people still in denial whether Israel has committed war crimes, here is a comprehensive list of war crimes Israel has committed both before and after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the list being taken from the Wikipedia article of war crimes with some notable missing examples being the usage of chemical weapons, famine, disease and apartheid. The 7th of October attack did not occur in a vacuum, but is the product of decades of Israel not being held accountable for its war crimes.

Killing civilians:

Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians by Human Rights Watch on 15/Jul/2014

‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza �� The Guardian on 2/Apr/2024

Israeli attack on Rafah tent camp kills 45, prompts international outcry by Reuters on 27/May/2024

Intentionally killing PoWs:

Israel’s Hush-Up Machine in Action: Denying Story Israel Executed Egyptian Prisoners by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs on 8/Apr/2010

Torture:

Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians by The Guardian on 10/Feb/2000

Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests by Amnesty International on 8/Nov/2023

Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured by Human Rights Watch on 26/Aug/2024

Taking hostages:

Infographic: How many Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel? by AlJazeera on 17/Apr/2022

The thousands of Palestinians Israel arrests, tortures, holds even in death by AlJazeera on 17/Apr/2024

UN report: Palestinian detainees held arbitrarily and secretly, subjected to torture and mistreatment by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 31/Jul/2024

Unnecessarily destroying civilian property:

Israel destroys Gaza tower housing AP and Al Jazeera offices by Reuters on 15/May/2021

Israel targets infrastructure in Gaza to ramp up civilian pressure on Hamas, report claims by PBS News on 11/Dec/2023

Widespread destruction by Israeli Defence Forces of civilian infrastructure in Gaza by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 8/Feb/2024

Deception by perfidy:

Israeli soldier gives 74-year-old Palestinian woman water then shoots her in the head by Middle East Monitor on 20/Jan/2015

Israeli special forces disguised as doctors kill three militants at West Bank hospital by The Guardian on 30/Jan/2024

NBC News investigation reveals Israel strikes on Gaza areas it said were safe by NBC News on 26/Apr/2024

Wartime sexual violence:

Stripped, beaten and blindfolded: new research reveals ongoing violence and abuse of Palestinian children detained by Israeli military by Save the Children on 10/Jul/2023

Israel/oPt: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 19/Feb/2024

‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape by AlJazeera on 9/Aug/2024

Pillaging:

The Biblical Pseudo-Archeologists Pillaging the West Bank by The Atlantic on 28/Feb/2013

Jewish Soldiers and Civilians Looted Arab Neighbors' Property en Masse in '48. The Authorities Turned a Blind Eye by Haaretz on 3/Oct/2020

Israeli soldiers boast about looting from Gaza by AlJazeera on 14/Feb/2024

Any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings:

Netanyahu incites violence by casting protesters as clear and present danger by Middle East Eye on 30/Jul/2020

Israeli minister's call to 'erase' Palestinian village an incitement to violence, US says by Reuters on 1/Mar/2023

Netanyahu cites 'Amalek' Theory to justify Gaza Killings by Times of India on 29/Oct/2023

Database exposes 500 instances of Israeli incitement to genocide in Gaza by TRT World 4/Jan/2024

Genocide:

The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective by Center for Constitutional Rights on 25/Aug/2016

Genocide Warning: Israel & Palestine by Genocide Watch on 21/May/2021

A top U.N. court says Gaza genocide is 'plausible' but does not order cease-fire by npr on 26/Jan/2024

‘Reasonable grounds’ to believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, UN rights expert says by CNN on 27/Mar/2024

Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza? New Report from BU School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic Lays Out Case from Boston University Today on 5/Jun/2024

Ethnic cleansing:

UN Human Rights Council: ‘Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing’ by the European Union Parliament on 23/Mar/2011

Israel's ethnic cleansing in Palestine is not history - it's still happening by Middle East Eye on 22/May/2019

UN expert warns of new instance of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, calls for immediate ceasefire by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 14/Oct/2023

‘Plan for ethnic cleansing’: Israel’s north Gaza siege sets off alarms by AlJazeera on 22/Oct/2024

Granting of no quarter despite surrender:

White Flag Deaths Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead by Human Rights Watch on 13/Aug/2009

Investigators: Israel fired on Gaza civilians carrying white flags by The Electronic Intifada on 28/Jan/2015

3 hostages killed by Israeli soldier in Gaza were waving a white flag, Israel says by npr on 16/Dec/2023

A group of Palestinian men waving a white flag is shot at, killing 1 by NBC News on 24/Jan/2024

She was fleeing with her grandson, who was holding a white flag. Then she was shot by CNN on 26/Jan/2024

Two brothers shot by Israeli forces in Khan Younis, white flag ignored by AlJazeera on 29/Jan/2024

Conscription of children in the military: First one where I couldn't find anything. Way to go, Israel!

Flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity:

Israel violates the principles of necessity, proportionality in its attacks on Gaza by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor on 13/May/2023

Enough: Self-Defense and Proportionality in the Israel-Hamas Conflict by Just Security on 6/Nov/2023

War Crimes and Accountability: The Case Against Israel’s Military Operations in Gaza by JURIST News on 5/Jul/2024

[argyrocratie]

"According to the National Police of Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, about 8 thousand criminal proceedings have been opened in the country for evading mobilization.

(...)

A typical example from local social networks of how a summons to a unit can be issued looks like this: the day before yesterday, on Kibalchich Street, cops probably forced a 56-year-old man into a car and took him to the enlistment center, where he became fit for duty in 20 minutes. The next day he already had to show up with his things. Then such people join the ranks of refusers in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as our magazine told about earlier.

Since the beginning of August, the list of the first instance sentences under Art. 336 has been added by 12, and by 6 cases under Art. 408. During this time, the Leninsky District Court of Kharkiv set a record, sending five evaders to jail, despite one of the convicts has a minor child to support, another is a volunteer of the charity foundation Help Save Kharkiv, and the third explained his act by his reluctance to leave his elderly mother alone. There are no examples of suspended sentences under this article for the specified period in our region: everyone is given 3 years of actual imprisonment.

The Parliament of Ukraine is preparing for voting bill No. 10062 of September 18, 2023 on the creation of a unified electronic register of those liable for military service. According to it, the Ministry of Defense will have access to information about such citizens from all official databases, and the list of information that must be transferred to the register by various authorities will also be expanded. This was done taking into account the experience of Russia, where, together with the electronic register, the practice of sending summonses online is being introduced.

(...)

One way or another, everything is going to the fact that instead of a simple kitchen grumbling about the authority, Ukrainian workers will have to become real lifestyle anarchists. Not only to avoid official employment, as now, but to strive to sever all ties with the state and live cladestinely, including stopping seeking medical care, selling cars and resetting bank cards being ready to blocking for failure to appear on a summons. The ever-increasing blurring of the difference between the occupation and “their own” will affect the political atmosphere of Ukraine, where war fatigue and distrust of any government are already beginning to dominate, especially in the front-line regions. Although until a social explosion breaks out in Russia, of course, passive protest will prevail: maximal going to underground, withdrawal of assets abroad, flight from the country by any routes that are not yet blocked.

One of the main reasons for increasing mobilization, Ukrainian propaganda cites the fact that the Russian Federation monthly recruits tens of thousands of contract soldiers into the army, but at the same time, recruits are combined with those already serving. Contracts are signed by mobilized, by mercenaries of the disbanded Wagner PMC, and those who decided to renew the contract after expiration. At the same time, instead of the ideological component, the Kremlin is increasingly relying on money and hints to resume open mobilization if it fails to recruit enough contract soldiers.

(...)

The Russian liberal-pacifist Telegram channel ASTRA counted on October 24 at least 173 Russian military personnel placed in illegal camps for refusers in the occupied territories of Ukraine over the past 10 days. In their opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg – what they managed to establish through appeals to the channel. Messages came mainly from the Kupyansk direction on the Kharkiv-Lugansk borderland; they are full of the same complaints about drunken commanders, lack of ammunition, reconnaissance, artillery support, food and water. Some people do not want to fight at all, others refuse precisely to go to the slaughter. Most often, stories feature a torture basement in the village of Zaytsevo, which began to fill up en masse last fall, then was dispersed after publicity, and is now operating again. How many people are sitting there at the moment is unknown."

...

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Thursday 7 December 1837

8 ½

12 20

snow

the ground white last night and ditto this morning with a thin cover of snow on the hills – grass seen on the low grounds ready in 1 10 hour – A- had breakfasted and had Mr. Horner about 9 ¼ - F33° now at 9 40 – and breakfast in about ½ hour – a few minutes with A- and Mr. Horner – then out – about – with Robert Mann + 5 at the low fishpond – could not do more at sodding the banks, so had turned the water in about 10 am – from there down the new bank to H-x met Greenwood – had him about ½ hour  at the hotel – will come here at 3pm tomorrow and bring me estimate of iron boiler (I have nothing to do with the copper) from the Bowling agent and from Mr. Pollet – knew nothing of Carrs’ having taken the white swan for 14 years – his son has enlisted a solider and Mrs. Carr drinks! then to the bank – left my banking book and got £50 – Mr. Davidson said the Directors would with pleasure advance me what I wanted (I had named a thousand) – then returned up the old bank and home about 1 ½ - Mark Hepworth waiting for me – supposed Mr. Harper had left an order for him (£60 or £70) no! paid him £5.9.0 for the 2 pigs t 37/. a piece and the cow 35/. given in exchange for one valued at £10 – surprised at Sharps’ asking 30 guineas for the brown horse – advised me never to spend above £10 for a orse that had not his tusks in his

SH:7/ML/E/21/0011

head i.e. above 7 years old – thought he could buy me as good a horse or better at Bradford fair for £20 – A- rode off to Cliff hill at 1 ¾ and was back at 4 – with Robert M- and ° he and Joseph have thought of  a plan for the coal – can make the water wheel pump the 13 yards at Listerwick pit by means of rods along the Low mine – to be talked over tomorrow – John Sunderland came to me at the low fishpond – would think nothing of his trouble if I would let him bring me a 16 hands light bay horse to look at – 4 off – price 40 guineas – said I did not intend giving that price – did not care to buy a horse before spring  - gave him no hope of buying his horse, but he so asked to bring him over, that I fixed 3pm tomorrow – backwards and forwards with the masons – 3 of them (an another about) at the present saddle room door now turned into the coach house court – finished tonight – Edward to being slating the coalshed tomorrow as Baldwin does not come and 2 of Robert Mann’s men to begin the Laundry court road drain tomorrow and the rest to be at the kitchen court – came in at 5 ¾ - dressed etc and read a little of Taylors’ history of the Decline of Rome till dinner at 7 5 – tea between 8 and 9 and sat talking to A- then wrote all the above of today till now 11 pm came upstairs at 11 ½ and F33 ½° and raining fast

[liatkolink]

Just to be clear, even if those hundreds of civilians had all secretly been Hitler instead, once you've zip-tied someone and stripped them naked, they're no longer a threat, and thus, running them over is a war crime.

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

– War Crime article from Wikipedia

But now that I've provided a list of things that are considered war crimes, let's see Israel's war crimes check list, and I will highlight in red the articles that are from before the Al-Aqsa Flood:

Killing civilians: * Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians by Human Rights Watch on 15/Jul/2014 * ‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza – The Guardian on 2/Apr/2024 * Israeli attack on Rafah tent camp kills 45, prompts international outcry by Reuters on 27/May/2024

Intentionally killing PoWs: * Israel’s Hush-Up Machine in Action: Denying Story Israel Executed Egyptian Prisoners by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs on 8/Apr/2010

Torture: * Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians by The Guardian on 10/Feb/2000 * Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests by Amnesty International on 8/Nov/2023 * Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured by Human Rights Watch on 26/Aug/2024

Taking hostages: * Infographic: How many Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel? by AlJazeera on 17/Apr/2022 * The thousands of Palestinians Israel arrests, tortures, holds even in death by AlJazeera on 17/Apr/2024 * UN report: Palestinian detainees held arbitrarily and secretly, subjected to torture and mistreatment by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 31/Jul/2024

Unnecessarily destroying civilian property: * Israel destroys Gaza tower housing AP and Al Jazeera offices by Reuters on 15/May/2021 * Israel targets infrastructure in Gaza to ramp up civilian pressure on Hamas, report claims by PBS News on 11/Dec/2023 * Widespread destruction by Israeli Defence Forces of civilian infrastructure in Gaza by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 8/Feb/2024

Deception by perfidy: * PalestineIsraeli soldier gives 74-year-old Palestinian woman water then shoots her in the head by Middle East Monitor on 20/Jan/2015 * Israeli special forces disguised as doctors kill three militants at West Bank hospital by The Guardian on 30/Jan/2024 * NBC News investigation reveals Israel strikes on Gaza areas it said were safe by NBC News on 26/Apr/2024

Wartime sexual violence: * Stripped, beaten and blindfolded: new research reveals ongoing violence and abuse of Palestinian children detained by Israeli military by Save the Children on 10/Jul/2023 * Israel/oPt: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 19/Feb/2024 * ‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape by AlJazeera on 9/Aug/2024

Pillaging: * The Biblical Pseudo-Archeologists Pillaging the West Bank by The Atlantic on 28/Feb/2013 * Jewish Soldiers and Civilians Looted Arab Neighbors' Property en Masse in '48. The Authorities Turned a Blind Eye by Haaretz on 3/Oct/2020 * Israeli soldiers boast about looting from Gaza by AlJazeera on 14/Feb/2024

Any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings * Netanyahu incites violence by casting protesters as clear and present danger by Middle East Eye on 30/Jul/2020 * Israeli minister's call to 'erase' Palestinian village an incitement to violence, US says by Reuters on 1/Mar/2023 * Netanyahu cites 'Amalek' Theory to justify Gaza Killings by Times of India on 29/Oct/2023 * Database exposes 500 instances of Israeli incitement to genocide in Gaza by TRT World 4/Jan/2024

Genocide: * The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective by Center for Constitutional Rights on 25/Aug/2016 * Genocide Warning: Israel & Palestine by Genocide Watch on 21/May/2021 * A top U.N. court says Gaza genocide is 'plausible' but does not order cease-fire by npr on 26/Jan/2024 * ‘Reasonable grounds’ to believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, UN rights expert says by CNN on 27/Mar/2024 * Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza? New Report from BU School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic Lays Out Case from Boston University Today on 5/Jun/2024

Ethnic cleansing: * UN Human Rights Council: ‘Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing’ by the European Union Parliament on 23/Mar/2011 * Israel's ethnic cleansing in Palestine is not history - it's still happening by Middle East Eye on 22/May/2019 * UN expert warns of new instance of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, calls for immediate ceasefire by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on 14/Oct/2023 * ‘Plan for ethnic cleansing’: Israel’s north Gaza siege sets off alarms by AlJazeera on 22/Oct/2024

Granting of no quarter despite surrender * White Flag Deaths Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead by Human Rights Watch on 13/Aug/2009 * Investigators: Israel fired on Gaza civilians carrying white flags by The Electronic Intifada on 28/Jan/2015 * 3 hostages killed by Israeli soldier in Gaza were waving a white flag, Israel says by npr on 16/Dec/2023 * A group of Palestinian men waving a white flag is shot at, killing 1 by NBC News on 24/Jan/2024 * She was fleeing with her grandson, who was holding a white flag. Then she was shot by CNN on 26/Jan/2024 * Two brothers shot by Israeli forces in Khan Younis, white flag ignored by AlJazeera on 29/Jan/2024

Conscription of children in the military: First one where I couldn't find anything. Way to go, Israel!

Flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity: * Israel violates the principles of necessity, proportionality in its attacks on Gaza by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor on 13/May/2023 * Enough: Self-Defense and Proportionality in the Israel-Hamas Conflict by Just Security on 6/Nov/2023 * War Crimes and Accountability: The Case Against Israel’s Military Operations in Gaza by JURIST News on 5/Jul/2024

[swldx]

BBC 0527 2 Feb 2024

6195Khz 0459 2 FEB 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from SANTA MARIA DI GALERIA. SINPO = 55233. ID@0459z pips and newsday preview. @0501z World News anchored by Stewart Macintosh. A huge gas blast in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, has killed at least two people and injured at least 222. A lorry carrying gas exploded in Embakasi district around 23:30 (20:30 GMT), "igniting a huge ball of fire", a government spokesman said. Earlier, the government had said the blast happened at a gas plant. The cause is still being established. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not be a "mass destroyer of jobs" and human workers will learn to work with new technologies, the governor of the Bank of England has told the BBC. Governor Andrew Bailey said while there are risks with AI, "there is great potential with it". All 27 EU leaders have agreed a €50bn (£42bn; $54bn) aid package for Ukraine, after Hungary stopped blocking the deal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the new funding, saying it would strengthen the country's economic and financial stability. "I think it will be an encouragement for the United States also to do their fair share," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. The case of a Canadian man accused of supplying a poisonous chemical to people who died by suicide will head straight to trial, an Ontario court has decided. Prosecutors have also upgraded the charges against Kenneth Law from second-degree to first-degree murder. Mr. Law may have sent more than 1,200 parcels containing lethal substances to around 40 countries, including the UK. The 57-year-old former chef from Toronto, is facing a total of 14 first-degree murder charges, as well as 14 counts of aiding and counselling suicide, for a total of 28 charges. Police clashed with protesters in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, on Wednesday as lawmakers discussed a controversial bill proposed by newly-elected president Javier Milei. The "omnibus bill" contains hundreds of articles which, if passed, will usher in sweeping free-market reforms. Mr Milei was elected in November on a promise to overhaul Argentina's crisis-hit economy and lower inflation. A ship carrying 16,000 sheep and cattle that had been stranded off the coast of Australia in extreme heat has returned to a Perth port. The vessel had remained at sea pending an Australian decision on whether the livestock could be offloaded. Officials cited biosecurity risks. The vessel in question was bound for Israel when it set sail from Fremantle in Perth on 5 January. The animals were among hundreds of thousands sent from Australia to the Middle East every year. The government says it told the ship to return to Australia on 20 January, citing the "exceptional circumstances" at work after a wave of attacks in the Red Sea. @0506z "Newsday" begins. MLA 30 amplified loop (powered w/8 AA rechargeable batteries ~10.8vdc), Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 185°, bearing 49°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 7877KM from transmitter at Santa Maria di Galeria. Local time: 2259.

[talithaferreira]

Bill Gates, creator of Microsoft

William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, is an American tycoon, businessman, CEO, investor, philanthropist and author, who became known for founding, along with Paul Allen, Microsoft, the largest and best-known software company in the world. in terms of market value. Born: October 28, 1955 (age 67 years), Seattle, Washington, USA. Children: Phoebe Adele Gates, Jennifer Katharine Gates, Rory John Gates. Spouse: Melinda Gates (from 1994 to 2021). 

Bill Gates

Childhood and youth

 Gates was born into a middle-class Seattle family. His father, William H. Gates, was a corporate attorney, and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was a professor at the University of Washington and director of banks. Bill Gates and his two sisters, Kristanne and Libby, attended the best private schools in their hometown. Bill Gates, was admitted to the prestigious Harvard University, but dropped out of Mathematics and Law courses in the third year, to dedicate himself to Microsoft. At the age of 17, he developed, together with Paul Allen, software for reading magnetic tapes, with vehicle traffic information, on an Intel 8008 chip. With this product, Gates and Allen created a company, Traf-o-Data, but the customers gave up the business when they discovered the age of the owners.

Altair 8800

Rise while studying at Harvard, the young people developed a BASIC language interpreter for one of the first personal computers to be released in the United States — the Altair 8800. After a modest success in commercializing this product, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft, one of the first companies in the world focused exclusively on the market of programs for personal computers or PCs.

The first "personal computer" was the Kenbak-1, released in 1971. It had 256 bytes of memory and was advertised in Scientific American magazine for $750; however, it had no CPU and was, like other systems of the time, designed for educational use (that is, demonstrating how a "real computer" worked). In 1977 the first microcomputer as we know it today was launched.

In the 1980s, IBM, leader in the large computer market, decided to enter the microcomputer market with the PC, but the Operating System was missing. For this, it signed a contract with the newly created Microsoft. However, Microsoft didn't own the software yet. The young Bill Gates went to a small company that had developed the system for the Intel processor and decided to buy it, paid around US$ 50 thousand, customized the program and sold it for US$ 8 million, keeping the license of the product. This would become MS-DOS.

Microsoft headquartes

 It was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, then 19 years old, in partnership with Paul Allen. The company's first commercial product was Altair BASIC for the MITS Altair (Micro Instrumentation Telemetry System), produced in the same year. In 1980 the company took a decisive step by acquiring the 86-DOS operating system from Seattle Computer Products. In 1998 Gates promoted Steve Ballmer, a longtime friend, to the post of president of Microsoft and publicly took a less active role in the company's decision-making processes. On March 2, 2005, he was knighted Commander Knight of the British Empire. Bill Gates announced on June 16, 2006 that he would progressively step down as director of Microsoft until 2008, in order to be able to take charge of the charitable foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. On June 27, 2008 Bill Gates withdrew definitively from Microsoft to dedicate himself entirely to his philanthropic projects. Even having announced his retirement from Microsoft, in practice Bill Gates will continue to dedicate 20% of his time (one day a week) to matters related to Microsoft. He continues to serve as chairman of Microsoft and adviser on the development of key projects. He will just not be in the day-to-day decisions and will devote more time and energy to his work related to health and education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Reference: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates, accessed on 08/23/2023.

[packernet]

New Post has been published on https://www.packernet.com/blog/2023/07/19/brilliant-and-not/

Brilliant, and not

Jaire Alexander’s performance against Justin Jefferson last January is one for the ages. Holding the best wide receiver in the league to 1-catch for 15 yards is a career performance. Surrounded by my Viking fan in-laws, I was giddy for Alexander’s mocking griddy after he broke up a pass.

You have to respect Alexander as a player. Normally, I’m not a fan of a lot of jawing and strutting. But when you talk big, and deliver, I’m down with that.

Money for nothin’

This spring, Alexander chose not to attend a couple week-ends worth of team meetings, pad-less practices, and time in the Packers workout facility, known as “organized team activities” (OTA’s). To make that choice, Alexander passed on a $700-thousand-dollar workout bonus. Wrap your mind around that choice.

For the average Packer fan, it would take 5-to-15 years to earn what Alexander could have banked in 8-to-10 days. He could have put the money in his retirement account, donated it to charity, or blown it on whatever his heart desired. When asked about the decision he said, “I know what works for me.”  Who doesn’t an easy $700K work for?

Fame/fortune has an expiration date

5-10 years down the road, when Mr. Alexander is no longer cashing paychecks as the highest paid corner in the NFL, he may look back and regret that choice. Sure, we’ve all made foolish choices in our 20’s. Yes, he’s making plenty of money and should have a nice financial cushion for life. No matter, saying no to nearly three-quarters of a million dollars? To run around in shorts and lift weights for a few weekends?

I’d say his agent should be fired, but the agent must have begged him not to skip the bonus. They’re paid on a percentage of their players’ earnings, so Jaire’s choice likely cost his agent. As for his spouse, parents or loved ones, they must have asked him “what are you thinking?”

Raised by depression era parents, I’m old-school cheap. I’m bummed if I miss out on a $10 rebate or pay a nickel a gallon more than I had to for gas. This has little to do with the Packers or football. Honestly, as it pertains to the Packers we should be talking about the lousy leadership message Alexander sent by not showing up. Aaron Rodgers was widely criticized for the same decision last year. No, this take is about the money. I don’t get it. I’m awed at the mind-bending, incomprehensible foolishness, of youth.

[the-firebird69]

So we didn't piggy back their website this is a pain whoever own pictures memorabilia our own memorabilia and it works very well. We have our brand new website and the bikes are presented well we'll do a good job I see how it's presented in the past it was very nice some of the pictures were crappy but it's already been it's greedy it's down to earth that's where the rubber meets the road is real and a lot of these bike companies don't do it and these are so cheap you have to do that some of it you have to damn well do it that's what he said he said if you make it look too much money and say they're going to raise prices I won't be able to Ford parts and we'll lose customers so I made it pretty almost as good as the original it's just weird weird things in the pictures you have to have some weird things in the pictures. So send me a vision of Mack in the post office truck actually out of it in the background but far back there I said we don't need that stuff that he knows I know what he needs there's some guys turning and there's a heads turning and stuff and some weird car drive by that's it you just use the pic that's what they do they're looking right at the bike just like the race does and they're not looking at the other stuff and I said this this is a great sales effect it works on a lot of people it's realistic it's realism and it's not scary it's just how it is it made a lot of people smile because it's not in love with the bike they're in love with the atmosphere they haven't serious different these days but we had a banner day today we woke up and they were like 300 trillion orders between the two companies we think it's because of her company starting up and it is and BG is promoting it and he promoted it all over the place and he has a license and stuff no and he's getting money for it and he's getting money from ladies and they're paying him to do it and it's not big money he is getting around money and he's doing it because he has to you can't seem to get around and he sees what he's doing. Cuz I'm riding in the back of a sperm whale and VG to go out and struggle with it and he saw what he was saying and he showed up with the pagsta and he's going to anyways for a while. It'd be perfect for him he says when you change it on him she is smiling saying I know

Seriously sales it through the roof it is an unbelievable thing it's unbelievable okay that this many sales could be possible it's ridiculous. And on the website they don't show a shop or store no they do it's really small as this teeny office. So he says he wants to replicate it and we can do that and just make a little different so it's not obnoxious were are based in Canada. Things are going on smoothly and these bikes are going out the door at this rate and and I'd say that half of them sold in the states and the city at capacity is about 10 trillion Banks and that's all the way out to the outskirts and some of the suburbs and they have tons of bunkers but they use them inside the bunker what's the difference you can't see him but really topside is about a trillion . You see what we're saying there's a problem with the numbers so each area has like 8 trillion roughly and that's like New York State but that's really busy but an average of five to six trillion and it's 5,000 areas so 25,000 trillion top. So we had sales but they're like 20 billion and 40 billion and her company was first and I tell you that's a lot that is a lot and we're talking about billions of people and really that is a lot and the orders are going up and we'll probably have $300 billion by the end of the day and it's for all over the world but most of us States has thousands of trillions and probably three or four but still that's a good percentage and Yamaha sold that many in one year of one model. This is one day. So which island broke the old ones out and said they're all crap and none of them worked and he scrapped them and he was mad and he's going after the idiots.

You have enough going on but this is really good news I was trying to see why the pack still really lit it up that's paxter anyways the spelling it really lit it up and we're talking about a lot of people saw it and really got excited and said those bikes are like that and those bikes are like the Honda now rebel in the real cheap we can afford a lot of them and they have to buy them for the people you had a lot of people. We have a lot of them made we had like 10 billion paxter and we had about 20 billion hard knock but the Hard knock kicker 5150s were sitting around and she helped out and she knew it would work it's like get out of the house and get something to do fine I got my bike and I'm going so there's a ton of orders being placed and they're making fun of each other all around town and the guy on the trike and the girl on the hot rod chopper oh she bought a pagster and he bought a Hard knock kicker 5150 and he said they're easier to ride they bought a ton of them for their people and they bring them to the island now I know about it and we know if they're up to and they say they're leaving and they want to make nuclear bombs out of the motors they use them for centrifuge to purify uranium and we use it to get us there and it works very well and that's what we're up to

Thor Freya

Zues Hera

Olympus

[emikorin]

Who Is Higuchi Ichiyou? (Spoilers if you haven’t fully watched/read Bungou Stray Dogs)

Higuchi Ichiyou, a port mafia member and the one who commands the Black Lizards. She isn’t respected by the mafia, she isn’t useful to the mafia ability wise but why is she here?

Let us begin from the beginning.

Who is the real life Higuchi Ichiyou?

She was born on May 2, 1872 in a nagaya (row house) on the premises of the Tokyo prefectural office (present Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo Prefecture) in Uchisaiwaicho, Ichi shoku, Daini daiku, Tokyo-fu (Tokyo Prefecture). Her real name was Natsu HIGUCHI. Her father was Tamenosuke (Noriyoshi) HIGUCHI and her mother was Ayame, the fifth daughter of the Furuya family; Ichiyo was their second daughter. She had an older sister (Fuji) and two older brothers (Sentaro and Toranosuke), and was followed by a younger sister (Kuni). Making Higuchi Ichiyou the fourth child.

Her father, Noriyoshi, was a peasant in Nakahagiwara Village, Yamanashi County, Kai Province (present Koshu City, formerly Enzan City). Her grandfather seems to have been familiar with creative writings such as haikai (seventeen-syllable verse) and keisho (the most important documents in Confucianism); it is said that Noriyoshi preferred academics to farming and, as his marriage with Ayame was not permitted, they practically eloped to Edo. Noriyoshi began as a servant in the Bansho shirabesho (a government-run Western studies education and research institute) and, by good fortune, became a jikisan (immediate retainer) of the bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun) by buying a kabu (a right to become doshin) of doshin (a low-ranked official) in 1867. After the Meiji Restoration, he became a low-level official and acquired the status of shizoku (a family or person of samurai ancestry), but was dismissed in 1876. After that, he made a living by working as a real estate broker and similar things.

As a young child, Ichiyo was raised in a family of moderate means, and she enjoyed reading from the time she was small; she read kusazoshi (illustrated story books) and it is said that she read through "Nanso Hakkenden" (a story of eight samurai and a princess of the Satomi family in the Nanso region) by Bakin KYOKUTEI when she was seven years old. In 1877, she entered Hongo Shogakko (Hongo Elementary School), but could not continue because she was too young, so she enrolled in Yoshikawa Gakko (Yoshikawa School), which had been established privately by Tomikichi YOSHIKAWA. In 1881, Toranosuke, her second older brother, set up a branch family and apprenticed himself to an earthenware painter. The family moved to Okachimachi, Shitaya Ward in the same year, so in November, she transferred to Seikai Gakko, a private school, in Ueno Motokuromoncho. She graduated from the fourth grade of the advanced course at the top of her class, but left the school without advancing to the upper grades. It is said that this was because her mother, Ayame, believed that studies were unnecessary for women.

On the other hand, it is said that her father, Noriyoshi, recognized his daughter's literary talent and let her learn waka from his acquaintance, Shigeo WADA. In 1886, she entered the waka school 'Haginoya,' run by Utako NAKAJIMA, through an introduction by Choan TODA, an acquaintance of her father from the days of the Tokugawa shogunate. In this school, besides waka, she studied classic literature and Japanese calligraphy of the Chikage school; dynastic style literature, such as The Tale of Genji, was the motif of Ichiyo's early works. During her time at Haginoya, Ichiyo met her close friends Natsuko ITO and Tatsuko TANABE and gave lectures as an assistant teacher. At that time, Haginoya was a waka school attended by the wives and daughters of the former regime's privileged classes - such as court nobles, former roju (senior councilor of the Tokugawa shogunate), and former domain lords - and of the Meiji government statesmen and military personnel. Although Ichiyo was shizoku, since her family had been farmers, she was treated as a commoner; she became introverted, and senior pupils from the upper social class called her 'monotsutsumi no kimi' (literally, close-natured person). When the first annual New Year's opening ceremony since Ichiyo had entered the school drew near, the topic of conversation among the well-bred young ladies turned to clothing and festive dress, well beyond the range in which the daughter of a low-class government official could compete. However, she quashed her feelings of inferiority and attended the ceremony wearing old clothes that her parents had borrowed.

Ichiyo's family moved frequently; Ichiyo moved twelve times in her life. In 1888, Sentaro, the first son and head of the family, died; Ichiyo inherited the family and became its head, with her father as guardian. In 1889, Noriyoshi's attempt to establish an association of draying contractors failed, and he died in July of the same year.

Ichiyo's engagement to her fiance, Saburo SHIBUYA, was cancelled. It is said this was due to the fact that, although the Higuchi family was left with a large amount of debt after Noriyoshi's death, Saburo HIGUCHI required a large amount of yuinokin (betrothal [gift] money). At the age of 17, Ichiyo was forced to support her family as its head and, in 1890, she lived in the house of the Nakajima family as a Haginoya apprentice. In September of the same year, she moved to Kikuzaka, Hongo (Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo Prefecture) and, along with her mother and younger sister, was obliged to live a hard life doing needlework and araihari (washing, stretching and drying various parts of kimono). It is said, however, that Ichiyo herself tended to disdain labor, and that the needlework and araihari were conducted by her mother and younger sister.

As Ichiyo's nearsightedness made her bad at detail work, she searched for other ways to earn income. When she learned that Kaho TANABE, a pupil in the grades ahead of her, had obtained a large manuscript fee for her novel "Yabu no Uguisu" (literally, Bush Warbler in a Thicket), Ichiyo made up her mind to write novels. At the age of 20, she wrote 'Kareobana Hitomoto' (Withered Grass). She used her pen name 'Ichiyo' for the first time in an essay written that same year. In order to make a living as a novelist, she also studied under Tosui NAKARAI, who reported on novels for the Asahi Shimbun, frequented a library, and published her first novel 'Yamizakura' (literally, Cherry Blossom in the Dark) in the first issue of the magazine 'Musashino,' presided over by Tosui. Afterwards, Tosui continued to take care of Ichiyo, who lived in dire poverty. Gradually, Ichiyo began to have amorous feelings for Tosui. However, a scandal about their relationship spread (although both were single, the customs of the time did not approve of such associations between a man and a woman without the intent to marry), and so she severed relations with Tosui. As if to emphasize the end of her relationship with Tosui, she published "Umoregi" (literally, Buried Wood), an idealistic novel in the style of Rohan KODA; it was completely different from her previous works, and it became the one that made her career.

Ichiyo became acquainted with Toson SHIMAZAKI and Tokuboku HIRATA, both of whom were well-versed in European literature; having come into contact with naturalistic literature, Ichiyo published multiple works including 'Yuki no Hi' (literally, Snowy Day) in 'Bungakukai.'

Her former fiance, Saburo SAKAMOTO (the Saburo SHIBUYA mentioned above) had become a prosecutor; around this time, he proposed to her, but she refused him. In order to relieve her straightened circumstances, she opened a variety shop which sold cleaning implements and penny candy in Shitaya Ryusenji-cho (present Ryusen 1-chome, Taito Ward), but closed the shop in May 1894 and moved to Maruyama Fukuyama-cho, Hongo Ward (present Nishikata 1-chome). Her experience on this occasion later became the subject of 'Takekurabe,' her representative work. She continued writing. In December, she published 'Otsugomori' (literally, New Year's Eve) in 'Bungakukai' and the next year, in 1895, 'Takekurabe' was published in seven installments, beginning in January.

Between the two works, she published 'Yuku Kumo' (literally, Going Cloud), 'Nigorie,' 'Jusanya' and others; the period from 'Otsugomori' to 'Uramurasaki' (literally, Purple on the Verso) is called her 'miraculous 14 months.'

In 1896, when 'Takekurabe' was published in its entirety in 'Bungei Kurabu,' it won great acclaim from Ogai MORI, Rohan KODA and others; Ogai MORI praised Ichiyo very highly in 'Mezamashigusa,' and many members of 'Bungakukai' began to visit her. In May, she published 'Warekara' (literally, From Myself), and 'Tsuzoku Shokanbun' (literally, Popular Epistle) in "Nichiyo Hyakka Zensho" (literally, The Daily Encyclopedia). Ichiyo had advanced tuberculosis and, when she was diagnosed in August, it was judged hopeless. On November 23, she died at the age of 24 years and 8 months. Ichiyo's life as a novelist lasted only a little over 14 months and in 1897, the year following her death, "Ichiyo Zenshu" (literally, The Complete Collection of Ichiyo's Works), and "Kotei Ichiyo Zenshu" (literally, The Revised Complete Collection of Ichiyo's Works) were published.

Her grave was in the annex temple of Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple, the Higuchi family's ancestral temple, and was later moved to the Wadabori byosho (mausoleum) of Nishihongan-ji Temple in Izumi, Suginami Ward. Her homyo (posthumous Buddhist name) in Jodo Shinshu sect (the True Pure Land Sect of Buddhism) is Choshoin Shaku Myoyo. Literary materials including handwritten manuscripts and other related materials are kept by the Museum of Modern Japanese Literature and Yamanashi Kenritsu Bungakukan (literally, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature). Since November 2004, her portrait has been used on the Bank of Japan's five thousand yen note.

Now that we know her real life counterpart lets review her anime/manga self.

As a mafioso, Higuchi proves ruthless and fearsome, not shying away from killing her targets. When confronted by the enemy, she has a distant atmosphere to herself, often strictly no-nonsense and showing little sympathy for them. Quick to act, she seldom tolerates disrespect and detests those who underestimate Port Mafia.

However, Higuchi's personality, as her boss and she herself notes, is rather unfit in the Port Mafia. Beneath her tough exterior, she is easy to upset, hesitant, and quick to question herself. She even contemplated leaving several times, despite the inevitable hardships defection foretold. As a result, her subordinates seldom show her respect, many following her orders out of fear of Akutagawa's wrath. An impulsive spirit also leads her to tend toward drastic measures, consequently going against orders.

Her biggest weakness is her intense, bordering obsessive loyalty to Ryunosuke Akutagawa, whom she obeys almost unconditionally. She often insists on filling in for Akutagawa, worried about his poor health. Unfortunately, her loyalty is met with a frustrated Akutagawa's abusive and harsh treatment, often being called "unnecessary" to him. Nonetheless, Higuchi remains loyal to him. Her instinct to tell Akutagawa everything she knows ends up a key component to luring Akutagawa to the Guild's Moby Dick. However, Higuchi makes up her weaknesses for having a strong resolve, and she refuses to turn away when allies, especially Akutagawa, are in danger.

Thankfully, her determined and honest nature earns her Black Lizard's respect. She proves reliable and incredibly brave, even if her judgment is easily clouded under pressure. Even if questioning her position in the mafia, Higuchi shoulders its burdens and responsibilities to this day, understanding its vital role in Yokohama's safety. She also makes it a point to not be unnecessarily cruel to her opponents, acting strictly professional in Akutagawa and Port Mafia's names.

Her composure can often waver. Sometimes she is cool-headed and intimidating, other times easily unsettled and stressed out. Ultimately, she seems to excel more in covert operations than the frontlines, as a tendency to panic leaves her wide open in battle.

Higuchi however has some...strange relationship with the boss however. And this is mostly with what was already established above that the real life Mori Ougai had praised her work which made her very popular. So far in the anime there are three people who Mori Ougai seems close with;

Fukuzawa Yukichi, Yosano Akiko and Natsume Soseki.

Ogai MORI (February 17, 1862 - July 9, 1922) was a novelist, critic, translator, playwright, surgeon of the Imperial Army and Bureaucrat (Senior Official First Class). He was also Army Surgeon General (equivalent to Lieutenant General), Shoshii (Senior Fourth Rank), Order of Merit Second Class, Ko Third Grade, Doctor of Medical Science and had a doctorate in Literature. He is considered one of the great writers of the post-First World War Period ranked alongside Soseki NATSUME. His real name was Rintaro. He was born in Tsuwano Domain, Iwami Province (present Tsuwano-cho, Shimane Prefecture). He graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Medicine.

Shiyo Ho was born as the third daughter of Soshichi HO (father) and Tsune (mother) who ran a long-established Japanese confectionery shop 'Surugaya' in Kaino-cho, Sakai City (present-day Kaino-cho, Sakai Ward), Osaka Prefecture. One of her real brothers was Hidetaro HO who later became an electrical engineer. Shiyo entered a school of Sinology (the study of the Chinese classics) at the age of nine and also learned koto (a long Japanese zither with thirteen strings) and shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese banjo). After entering Sakai Girl's School (present-day Osaka Prefectural Senyo Senior High School), she devoured the Japanese classics such as "The Tale of Genji." In addition, she said, under her elder brother's influence, 'by the time I was twelve or thirteen, my greatest pleasure was reading literary magazines "Shigaramisoshi" (and later its successor "Mezamashigusa") and "Bungakukai" as well as novels by Koyo OZAKI, Rohan KODA, and Ichiyo HIGUCHI' ("Myojo" May 1906).

Around the age of twenty she started contributing her poems to magazines while she helped her family business. After participated in the Kansai Young Men's Literary Society, in 1900, she became acquainted with a waka poet Tekkan YOSANO at a poetry reading held at a Japanese-style hotel in Hamaderakoen and contributed her poem to "Myojo," an in-house magazine of Shinshisha (New Poetry Society) founded by Tekkan. In the following year she left her home and moved to Tokyo, and published her first poetry anthology "Midaregami" (Tangled hair) that expressed female sensuality in open fashion with which she established her style as a romantic poet. Later she married Tekkan.

In September 1904, she published a poem "Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare" (Thou Shalt Not Die) in "Myojo." In 1911, she contributed a poem that started with 'Yama no ugoku hi kitaru' (The day comes when a mountain moves) to the first issue of "Seito," the first female literary magazine in Japan. In 1912, Akiko followed Tekkan and moved to Paris, France. Ogai MORI helped her to raise money for going abroad with his wide range of literary works and large circle of contacts, and he also proofread "Shinyaku Genji Monogatari (New Translation of The Tale of Genji)" on behalf of Akiko to which he wrote the preface. On May 5, 1912, the Yomiuri Shimbun started a series of articles entitled 'Atarashii Onna' (New Women) with an article on Akiko's voyage to Paris, and on the following day the newspaper reported her departure (some 500 people including Raicho HIRATSUKA saw her off). The following June issue of the "Chuo koron" magazine ran a feature story on Akiko. On May 19, Akiko arrived in Paris via the Trans-Siberian Railway; during four months up to her leaving to Japan from Marseille, France on September 21, she visited England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands and so on.

The same like Higuchi Ichiyou, Fukuzawa was praised for his work and put on the Japanese bill. Fukuzawa is respected and is still friends with Mori as evident in season 3 episode 9 where he said after leaving Lucy “I’m going to visit an old friend”.

Despite the many things Fukuzawa witnessed Mori do (which includes mentally abusing Yosano to have her ability of usage for the mafia) Fukuzawa still sees Mori as a friend and that is seen back with how Mori and Fukuzawa fought.

They both went for the more vital points of their body. Making their death quick and painless so that one cannot suffer compared to the other. Even when Pushkin was caught, the two had one brain cell in that moment and both punched the virus ability user.

Why are Fukuzawa, Yosano and Natsume relevant you might ask? Well, let’s address the elephant in the room.

Let’s dissect season 1 episode 11 first (chapter 14 in the manga.)

We begin with how Mori Ougai is introduced, which is through Higuchi. After the failure that is capturing Atsushi and selling them for 4 billion yen/dollars Higuchi reports to Mori about their failure. This scene made me, a fan of the irl Mori Ougai’s work, open my eyes and ears to see how the two interact:

Higuchi: “I’m truly sorry for this.”

Mori: “Maybe he’ll never regain consciousness.”

Higuchi: “No way!”

Mori: “Don’t worry. You two have done you’re best. It’s true that you failed in the assault of the armed detective agency, erred during the capture of the man-tiger and sank the freighter along with our cargo. But you’ve done your best, and that’s all that mattered. Making effort is the most important. Results only come second, isn’t that right?”

Higuchi: “....”

Mori: “Oh, yeah. The trafficking company Akutagawa destroyed during the mission...the Remnants of Karma Transit seems to be recruiting. They’re probably planning to take revenge on Akutagawa.”

Higuchi: “what?”

Mori: “Listen, Higuchi-kun. The mafia is essentially an economic body that uses violence as its currency. It doesn’t matter at what got sunk or who got killed but if that violence is returned to us, all our expenses will become liabilities.”

Higuchi: “How could you call those liabilities? They were the fruits of of Akutagawa-senpai’s efforts up until now!”

Mori: “Indeed. Akutagawa-kun is highly capable. His violence is outstanding even in the mafia. **But what about you?** “

Higuchi: “....”

Mori: “Higuchi-kun. Have you ever wondered whether this job is really suited for you?”

From what we have seen so far, Mori doesn’t seem angry at her actions. In fact, he seems more disappointed but with a hint of worry. Knowing real life mafia bosses, Higuchi would either get fired or tortured for her failures, yet she is here standing without any injuries. This is the most seen in the anime where Higuchi clearly is talking back to Mori, talking back to the king of the underworld.

The next scene is with the Black Lizards.

Tachihara: “This bastard Gin is always put onto sneaky jobs like infiltration and assassinations. Slitting the throats of families and friends on the higher ups order is quite a usual task. If he had meant it, you wouldn’t even have the time to gape.”

Higuchi: “Did the boss say he wanted me dead?”

Hirotsu: “Not yet, but who knows what will happen in the future.”

Higuchi: *cold face* “So you have come here to mock me?”

Hirotsu: “We’re only here to warn you to stay alert. If I were you I would come up with an insurance plan before the hitman starts closing in. The higher ups aren’t the only ones who are after your head. You and Akutagawa are the Guerrilla Squad directly under the boss’ command, giving you the authority to mobilize us in the combat squad, so your technically our superiors. However we don’t obey you out of your authority, but out of fear and respect for Akutagawa’s ability. Higuchi-kun, now that Akutagawa is out of action what power do you posses to make us obey you?”

Throughout the whole entire scene they say that Higuchi, despite her position as their superior, has not much authority over them. The only reason why they follow her is because she is under Mori’s direct order, so she and Akutagawa are second closes to Mori next to the executives.

Yet why is she here if she isn’t that important to the mafia according to the Black Lizards?

In the next page we see that she is against Mori’s order. Higuchi is going against Mori’s orders. This is a giant red flag because she is directly not following Mori’s order; this is enough to get executed under mafia rules yet she isn’t. How? How is she allowed to go through with this?

Let’s look further:

“But the only reason I never actually did it...”

“It’s not easy to break away from the mafia, but it’s not impossible.”

Let’s take the first sentence. She never finished it. She never said the reason why she never left. All we see is her remembering Akutagawa. This could mean one of two things; 1, she is in love with Akutagawa and wants to protect him or 2. She admires him for him using his ability more efficiently compared to her.

You might be asking, how did we go from Akutagawa to Higuchi’s ability? That’s simple.

Let’s remember Tachihara for example. At first we thought he wasn’t an ability user like Gin but it was later on revealed that his ability, Midwinter Memento, allows him to manipulate metal. While it has nothing in common, the name and the ability itself, this can be the same for Hirotsu.

Which means that authors have abilities, and Higuchi Ichiyou isn’t just some author. She is the first ever female author that got so high as being on a yen bill. So her not having an ability is rather suspicious.

Not only that but let’s look at how the novel 55 minutes describes her:

The novel described Akutagawa as an ability user, how would Higuchi not be described as a non-ability user? Because she is an ability user.

⁠Which brings us back to the first take. Many mafioso’s would get in trouble for going against Mori’s word. With Higuchi  it is differently; in season 1 episode 11 you see that Higuchi was talking to Mori on a rather even note, her eyes shined a few times which means that she appreciates the praises but she still went against his word by saying “Akutagawa has done so much to be considered a liability.” She talked back against the boss, that would be considered a punishment in the underground yet Mori kept her. This is also shown in the manga where in the mall, Higuchi talked once again back against him but Mori warned her as if she was a child that wants to know more about her birthday present.

Compare this to how he talks to Hirotsu; a mafioso who is longer in the mafia compared to Mori.

He talked back to him and he got a glare and was questioned “what do you want to say?” In a threatening type of way. Knowing Mori, it isn’t because of the former boss because Mori doesn’t care about him anymore nor is it about Dazai taking his place, that is his main goal.

My theory is that Higuchi’s ability is that big of a liability that she is Mori’s secret weapon.

In season 1 episode 11 she keeps saying “it is difficult to leave the mafia but the reason I stayed is because...”

She never finished her sentence. She never told the full reason why she stayed. In the manga we are shown that she isn’t respected, that subordinates walk over her. Yet even with these facts, Higuchi isn’t fired.

She also says “it is difficult to leave the mafia but it isn’t impossible”

That is a lie because as we have seen with Kyōuka it is impossible. How does Higuchi have such privilege? Because Mori knows she will come back. The reason why in her monologue it showed Akutagawa is because she admires him for being able to control Rashoumon, the same way how Atsushi finds Akutagawa amazing for being able to control Rashoumon.

Mori favors her, and this is shown in a panel in Wan where Higuchi does an impression of Mori when he is with Elise yet instead of being angry at Higuchi, Mori directs his glare to Chuuya and Tachihara. There is also a chapter where Tachihara, Higuchi, Akutagawa and Gin destroyed the Black Lizard hideout but instead of punishing Higuchi (who was the source of the accident) he punished them all.

Let’s look at another thing; how close is Higuchi with Mori?

Season 2 episode 8 where Mori was stabbed by Fyodor. It was brief but we see Higuchi together with the boss. Out of everyone in the mafia; Kouyou, Chuuya, Kajii hell even Akutagawa could  (but he was busy looking for Nathanial) it was the least respected mafioso. Not only that but Higuchi back in season 2 gave information that the boss gave personally to Higuchi to send to Dazai.

This could have also been done by Hirotsu or Gin who know Dazai the longest. But something caught my attention. Higuchi said “I researched your history.” This wouldn’t seem bad was it not that Mori keeps Dazai’s executive position open for him to return, so Dazai is still technically an executive. ONLY EXECUTIVES are allowed to learn the history of the other executives. Gin, Hirotsu, Akutagawa, Kajii, Chuuya and Kouyou know about Dazai because they have an actual history with him but Higuchi is an outsider of this. She is like the other mafioso who aren’t related to Dazai yet she did research on him, which isn’t allowed.

Now this might sound as if Higuchi is special but let’s look at something or more someone who also didn’t look special but actually is special; Tachihara Michizo.

On the surface, Tachihara is an arrogant, impulsive, rash individual, more than willing to solve problems through sheer brute force and his dual guns. A violent temper leads to frequent conflict between him and other mafiosi, namely Gin, whom Tachihara views as creepy and frequently insults, leading to arguments, and Hirotsu, who often shuts Tachihara's temper down by threatening him. Tachihara's self-preservation prompts him to obey Hirotsu in the end, albeit reluctantly. An apparent thirst for battle and arrogance fuels Tachihara's temper. He's often seen with a rather feral smile on his face whenever fighting. He seldom considers the weight of a mission over the rush of eliminating his targets. He shows no hesitation nor remorse in murder, in fact sometimes urging to just eliminate a troublesome person if he finds their baggage more than they're worth.

A prideful man, Tachihara despises being underestimated and belittled. This is a surefire way to get oneself shot.

His rebellious side doesn't negate how he values orders, seeing them as an utmost system. Due to this, he attempts to dissuade Higuchi from saving Akutagawa against Mori's orders, even suggesting an alternate plan that wouldn't disobey these orders. Furthermore, he maintains his composure when dragged into shopping with Elise, and tolerates her putting bows in his hair. Despite guards laughing at him, Tachihara doesn't snap. Despite his rough exterior, Tachihara is capable of thinking rationally, just not in the heat of the moment in the Port Mafia. He can recognize danger quickly and finds himself on edge over how nonchalant Mori, Kōyō, and Chūya's meeting went. Tachihara has a proficient understanding of how to deal with the enemy, alluding to a much more cunning side of his true nature.

Much of Tachihara's details of joining the Port Mafia are unknown, however, it is a ruse. His identity as the fifth Hunting Dog reveals a much more clever, driven man. Unlike Ango Sakaguchi, Tachihara always intended to infiltrate the Port Mafia, using his position in the Hunting Dogs to operate as a spy. His confrontation with Yosano is devoid of any rage, depicting a cold, blunt side as he explains his grudge against her for "killing" his brother. Regardless of who he is working for, Tachihara cares deeply for his comrades. He was first to try to stop Higuchi when she tried to save Akutagawa on her own and has been seen visibly harboring guilt for when he cut down Hirotsu and Gin for the sake of his mission as a spy. He has also been seen caring for Teruko when she showed she was heavily injured from going against a plane head-on. He's also notably patient with those who are spoiled, including letting Teruko sit on her shoulders with little protests of being her "slave" and letting Elise put a bow on his head.

Beneath a lot of Tachihara's rough and punk-like exterior is a strong sense of incompetency and inferiority compared to his elder brother who was praised as being "perfect" while he was deemed by his family as being inferior, even being questioned as to why he didn't die instead of him. These things have driven Tachihara to act out and live a life of delinquency and ruthlessness by affiliating with gang activity, but despite these things, he still couldn't shake off these negative feelings. His insecurity and desperation to escape his brother's shadow was so strong, that Tachihara took on the first "order" that allowed him to become someone "not like his brother or his opposite" and joined the Hunting Dogs and infiltrate the Mafia to get revenge on Yosano for "killing" his brother, even when he knew and acknowledged that all of it was an excuse to appease his own negative feelings.

Many didn’t think much of Tachihara next that he was a commander of the Black Lizards and just someone who is close with Chuuya in Wan, however in the current arc we learn that he is a member of the Hunting Dogs with his ability Midwinter Memento being perfect for to lure Yosano to him, and in his fight with Fukuchi we learn that Mori giving him the order to kill Fukuchi was perfect for him.

Tachihara’s ability is named after his famous poem;

*Neither pursuing nor being pursued,

I stand under a barren tree. I'm watching

my silhouette, now marooned on a spotless snow....

(My pale shadow somberly takes shape.)

I'm listening. Yes! I certainly

am listening to what my shadow sings....

In a plaintively nasal voice it sings tunes of long-gone

summer flowers never to return.

Without responding, "That's a bunting, that's a siskin,

that's a white fir

—that's me...I a siskin, I a fir...," my shadow and I

eye each other as though these statements once were true.

My shadow listens to my heart at song.

Like the hubbub of that old arrowing brook,

it listens to tears at song...on the snow.*

This poem is seen mostly how Tachihara lives in the shadow of his brother, how much he listens to what others have to say because he himself can’t find a reason to do something.

As we already had established, Higuchi Ichiyou is a famous female writer. And the characters based on the authors and their books have an ability.

However there are two (three) categories: Name based abilities and non-name based abilities.

(Three being a non-abilities)

Non-abilities: The Great Old Ones and Ultra-Deduction.

Name based: Beast Beneath The Moonlight, Doppo Poet, All Men Are Equal, Lemon Bomb, The Great Fitzgerald, Thou Shalt Not Die, Gone With The Wind, I Am A Cat, A Feast in Time of Plague, Anne of Abyssal Red, Moby Dick, Time Machine, Yesterday’s Shadow Tag, The Grapes of Wrath etc.

Non-name based abilities: Vita Sexualis, Midwinter Memento, Another, An Inherent Drop, Black Cat in the Rue Morgue, Little Woman, Demon Snow/Golden Demon, Flawless, Futon, Plum Blossom in Snow, Priceless Tears, Undefeated By the Rain, No Longer Human, For The Tainted Sorrow etc.

Higuchi Ichiyou’s famous short story Takekurabe (Growing Pains) could be her ability based on that Mori Ougai had praised her for it, which eventually became they key to her success;

“ * [Higuchi Ichiyō’s] ‘Growing Pains’ was acclaimed as a masterpiece, especially when the entire work was republished in a single issue of the popular magazine Bungei Kurabu in April 1896, Mori Ōgai… lavishly praised its every feature: … (Ōgai): It is not especially remarkable that this author, a member of a literary circle in which the Naturalist school is said to be enjoying a vogue should have chosen to set her story in this place [the Yoshiwara district]. What is remarkable is that the characters who haunt this area are not the brute beasts in human form - the copies of Zola, Ibsen, and the rest - presented by the assiduous imitators of the so-called Naturalist school, but human beings with whom we can laugh and cry together… . At the risk of being mocked as an Ichiyō-idolater, I do not hesitate to accord to her the name of ‘poet.’ It is more difficult to depict a person with individual characteristics than a stereotype, and far more difficult to depict and individual in a milieu than a special person all by himself. This author, who has painted the ‘local coloring’ of Daionji-mae so effectively that one might say it has ceased to exist apart from ‘Growing Pains,’ without leaving any trace of the efforts such portraiture must have cost her, must truly be called a woman of rare ability.* “

(Credit to Donald Keene, Dawn to the West.)

But what could Growing Pains do if it was actually an ability? For most we need to understand what an actual ability needs to have in common.

For this we will take For The Tainted Sorrow and see how this ability is related to gravity?

With literal names based abilities we look at Atsushu. Atsushi has the ability to transform into a white tiger. At first, he doesn't seem to have much control over the transformation, likely due to the fact, or caused by, his unawareness of his state as an Ability user. After becoming an official member of the Agency and under the influence of All Men Are Equal, he gains more control over his transformations - as shown during his second fight with Akutagawa, when he breaks the transformation on his arms to escape.

My theory is that Higuchi’s ability allows her to paralyze her enemies.

Let’s look as too why I think this and use the summary of Takekurabe as an example; The main characters are children living on the edge of Yoshiwara, the only district of Edo that was licensed for prostitution. As they grow up, they find themselves assuming their family professions and losing the freedom they enjoyed as children. Next we have Nigorie translated into English as Troubled Waters and Muddy Water, is a Japanese short story written by Higuchi Ichiyō in 1895. It depicts the fate of a courtesan in the red light district of a nameless town during the Meiji era. Nigorie centers around Oriki, the most popular courtesan at the Kikunoi, a brothel in the red light district of an unspecified town, and a group of people connected to her, during the summer Obon festival. Through her conversations with other prostitutes, and Oriki's accounts in the presence of new customer Yūki Tomonosuke, the reader learns that a previous customer, Genshichi, a futon salesman of moderate affluence, was addicted to Oriki and spent all his money at the brothel. Now that Genshichi has been reduced to the hard labor of a construction worker, forced to move with his wife Ohatsu and his young son Takichi into a smaller flat in a run-down section of town, Oriki rejects seeing him despite his pleas. Tomonosuke repeatedly questions Oriki during his visits. She reminisces about her poor upbringing, which she cites, together with her profession, as the reason for not wanting to marry, although she had contemplated the possibility. She recounts a childhood incident when she was seven years old, sent by her mother to buy rice for supper. On her way back, she slipped on the frozen ground, spilling the rice into the gutter, leaving the family starving for this day. Meanwhile, Ohatsu scolds Genshichi for his ongoing obsession with Oriki and the family's poverty, which she tries to mitigate by doing piecework. When Takichi comes home with a piece of cake, which he received as a gift from Oriki (whom he refers to as "the demon-lady"), Ohatsu angrily throws it away. Genshichi, furious about her ongoing accusations and behaviour, demands that she leaves him. Ohatsu begs him to let her stay, as she has no relatives she can return to, but finally leaves, taking their son with her. At the end of the festivities, the dead bodies of Oriki and Genshichi are found. While it seems obvious that Genshichi committed suicide by seppuku, the cause of Oriki's death stays unclear. The passerbys speculate about her fate; while one assumes a shinjū (double love suicide), another one reasons that the wounds on Oriki's body make a murder after her attempted escape more plausible. It is left to the reader to determine the true circumstance of her death.

From these famous stories we can already determine that Higuchi’s stories are centered around the concept of one-sided attraction. This is something she and Akutagawa have, a one-sided attraction. This is the most in season 3 episode 5 where Higuchi doesn’t seem to find her way of trying to confess that she loves Akutagawa or that she thinks she admires him. And what is there not to admire about Akutagawa? He has an amazing ability, he is reliable in many ways but is just stubborn. So with this in mind, Higuchi’s (if this theory is correct) ability comes in this form; Higuchi’s ability is a mix of a non-name based ability and a name-based ability. The ability of paralyzation has the meaning of that she is paralyzed by fear with job as a mafioso but also her fear of being rejected by Akutagawa and that it is the greatest liability Mori has in order to protect Yokohama-This idea comes more in mind in the manga, Chapter 41, where we briefly see Higuchi’s little sister. This may not mean much to you but Higuchi is the only confirmed character with a little sister who isn’t based on a book (Gin=Ogin and Naomi=Naomi). Which leads me to the reason why she doesn’t use her ability anymore or is restricting herself- and the second is the meaning of Growing Pains ; Growing pains are often described as an ache or throb in the legs — often in the front of the thighs, the calves or behind the knees. Growing pains tend to affect both legs and occur at night, and may even wake a child from sleep. Although these pains are called growing pains, there's no evidence that growth hurts.

There could have been an incident in which Higuchi accidentally used her ability on her little sister which resulted in her little sister being paralyzed. She could have met Mori and knowing Mori he manipulated in keeping her ability a secret and for repayment let her join the mafia. This idea is further proven with how he was with Yosano; after the death of Tachihara’s brother Mori manipulated Yosano into thinking that this is her fault, almost making her join the mafia out of guilt was it not for Ranpo.

6. Maybe Higuchi wasn’t as lucky and thought that what Morti  said was true and joined the mafia out of guilt, which leads me as to why she fell in love with him. The nightingale effect; The Florence Nightingale effect is a trope where a caregiver falls in love with their patient, even if very little communication or contact takes place outside of basic care. Feelings may fade once the patient is no longer in need of care. Higuchi fell in love with Akutagawa not out of admiration but out of care for him. That guilt of not being able to take care of him could be because of her little sister and the fear that Higuchi one day paralyzes Akutagawa, as to why she isn’t using her ability. After all, this isn’t the first time there was a character who hid their ability to do things without it; Fyodor and Tachihara.

And the last thing that might confirm Higuchi’s importance is the way she acted in Wan and the Onsen drama CD. While Wan is merely a comedy it does call out the characters for their flaws and unique personalities, meanwhile the Onsen drama CD is like a filler but adds information about certain characters and their relationship; Higuchi included.

1. ⁠She stalks Akutagawa at first out of fear that other organizations might attack him, but at this point she stalks him with a mix of worry and not being capable of walking up to him.

2. ⁠She is rather open to nudity as shown that she said to Chuuya “it is my job to help Akutagawa even it means being naked” (or something along those lines).

In a certain chapter however where the Port Mafia had to disguise themselves as Mori, Higuchi was up and while she failed to look like Mori because she is very feminine she then used another tactic which is acting like Mori when he is with Elise. For most, Mori would have either glared at them and give them punishment, he glared at Chuuya and Tachihara (who were the closest next to him) instead at Higuchi. Higuchi broke many Port Mafia rules, many times she failed and has unintentionally mocked him yet she is still here.

so what do you guys think? Is this theory plausible?

[whatdoesshedotothem]

x Wednesday 26 September 1832

7 ¼

11 ½

incurred a cross last night thinking of Miss Walker - very fine morning F70 ½° at 7 ¾ - breakfast with my father at 8 55 - or rather downstairs at that hour - read over last night’s paper (the king of Spain died) then breakfasted with Marian and came upstairs at 9 ¾ - wrote and gave authority to Joseph Pickles of Halifax to pursue and kill game and rabbits for and during this present season of hunting and shooting and to proceed against all persons found trespassing on the estate in my name and on my behalf - out at 10 ¼ - called at Lightcliffe – Mrs Priestley out – then called to inquire if Miss Walker was returned – yes! last night - sat with her from 12 50 to 2 20 – she had brought me a press-paper from the marble works at Kendall very civil  our conversation quite confidential and we really get on very well  yet she said she could not go to Italy   they give old Washington seventy pounds a year and young ditto the same  for the management of the property - in returning called at Lower brea - Mr Wilkinson had fallen and hurt his head - not well so did not meet George R- on Monday about the water – we went into the daisy bank – going to be another land slip – Pickles to see about it, and to go tomorrow to see about getting water – to make a sough in the old line of brook to carry off George R-‘s cellar drain that runs down the garden into the brook - then with the workmen and did not come in till 5 20 – went in to my aunt – found Miss Walker’s servant had been for her books – came upstairs and wrote a note to go with them by John tonight dated 5 ½ pm Wednesday 26 September  ‘Ten thousand apologies’ – know what a disappointment that sort of thing is about books – sorry and annoyed – thanks – ‘may I keep History of Paris a little longer?...... I find myself very busy on the estate on my return from having played truant so unexpectedly long with you – besides, you always give me so much to think of afterwards, that it is long after I have actually left you, before my mind seems disengaged - perhaps had this been less true, I should have been at home sooner - Do pray forgive me before morning - Jameson, ii. 493 ‘Ancient or antique marbles’ May I beg for my press-paper – now that you have given it to me, I am impatient to have it – very truly yours, A. Lister’ sent off this note 2 2/3 pages of ½ sheet by John at 7 ½ with the books and bill Jameson 3 volumes 8vo Edition 3 Edinburgh 1820 56/. and Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of gardening edition 5 London 1828 very large thick 8vo 40/. and James’s Sunday school teacher’s guide, edition 12 London 1830 2/. that I have never looked into – read to p. 83 vol. 3 Jameson, and to p. 61 Loudon – Dinner at 7 ¼ in ½ hour went into the little room at 7 ¾and staid till 8 50 then returned to the drawing room Pickles and his brother and son George and William Greenwood at the new cut – John P- Charles and James H- working for my father putting up the entrance mended yesterday and painting that and 6 other gates – William Green brought 2? loads ashes – all the corn got in this morning – Dick working for me by day – widening the new walk done yesterday and getting on and spreading ashes – sleepy – came to my room at 9 ¼ at which hour F71 ½° very fine day -

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Event Listings: Monday, December 6 – Sunday, December 12, 2021

This is the most recent compilation from the Radical Events Ottawa (REO) List. The REO List is a public announcement list for radical events, meetings, protests, and other activities in Ottawa, Ontario, on unceded Algonquin territory. The Punch Up Collective collects submissions and produces this curated weekly compilation of upcoming activities.

Due to COVID-19, we’ve expanded the list of events we would typically include to feature more online activities and actions, including some that are not specific solely to the Ottawa area. 

Would you like to see your event included in the next REO list? Submit it through this form by the Friday before! Find out more about our submission guidelines and how to subscribe or unsubscribe here.

CONTENTS

1. Join Santa to Reunite 3-Year-old Baby Afnaan with her Mother: Separated over 25 Months! – Tuesday December 7, 10:45-1PM 2. Rally for a People’s Budget – Wednesday December 8, 9AM 3. ACORN End of the Year Party! – Thursday December 9, 7-9PM 4. Human Right to Housing and Gender Based Violence – Friday December 10, 12PM 5. Prison abolition issue: Listening party and reflective writing workshop – Sunday December 12, 3-5PM 6. 20 Years of the Anti-terrorism Act: The Legacy of Canada’s War on Terror – Monday December 13, 12-1:30PM 7. Ottawa premiere of My Mom’s Co-op – Monday December 13, 6:45-8:45PM 8. Book Launch – Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance – Wednesday December 15

DETAILS

1.Join Santa to Reunite 3-Year-old Baby Afnaan with her Mother: Separated over 25 Months! Tuesday December 7, 10:45-1PM Wellington and Elgin

Join us at the Prime Minister’s Office (Welllington and Elgin intersection, facing northeast) with Afnaan’s mother, Nasro, and supporters who are coming from Brockville, Ontario to present a petition with over 12,500 signatures to reunite Nasro with her baby Afnaan and husband Liiban. It is unacceptable they have been kept apart for over 25 months. It is unacceptable that the Canadian government has refused to prioritize family reunification for hundreds of thousands of families. We will be respecting all public health guidelines, including distancing and masking. If you cannot attend in person, you can email the Immigration Minister and call their office as well. Details TBA.

You can also sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/reunite-baby-afnaan-3-separated-for-2-years-from-her-mom-in-brockville-ontario

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/389528339564787

2. Rally for a People’s Budget Wednesday December 8, 9AM Marion Dewar Plaza

This is a budget that will see an increase in $14 million for police at the expense of services like childcare, funding for community organizations and Ottawa Public Health. Earlier in November, the Ottawa Coalition for a People’s Budget released an alternative municipal budget showing what could be possible if our City put residents first. We’re calling on all residents throughout Ottawa to come out before the vote next Wednesday, in front of City Hall to demand better from our elected officials and to vote for a budget in the public interest because we know better is possible.

You can RSVP for the rally here: https://tinyurl.com/2e5pvny3

Speakers TBD.

*All COVID-19 procedures will be in effect.

Organized by Ottawa Coalition for a People’s Budget, Ottawa ACORN and Ottawa Black Diaspora – Coalition.

3. ACORN End of the Year Party! – Thursday December 9, 7-9PM

ACORN Ottawa and Gatineau is hosting our end of the year party to celebrate all of our members’ hard work this year! There will be party games, awards, and a whole lot more so JOIN US to get in the holiday spirit with your favourite social justice warriors! The party is a fundraising event to support our campaigns in the new year for affordable housing, no displacement, internet for all and fair banking. Money is no barrier so pay as much or as little as you like!

Suggested donation is $10-15 for members and $25-30 for community allies. You can purchase tickets for yourself or sponsor tickets for someone else here: https://acorncanada.org/ottawa-year-end-tickets-2021

Join the party Thurs Dec 9th at 7pm by registering/clicking this link here: https://bit.ly/ACORNParty

4. Human Right to Housing and Gender Based Violence Friday December 10, 12PM

Ask Women Anything is partnering with OCTEVAW to bring you a conversation with experts on the human right to housing and gender based violence.

Check back with us as we reveal the experts who will be chatting with Erin Leigh in International Human Rights Day, December 10th at noon.

Please pick up your free EventBrite link and join us! https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/human-right-to-housing-and-gender-based-violence-tickets-211783057827

5. Prison abolition issue: Listening party and reflective writing workshop Sunday December 12, 3-5PM

One of the basic goals of a prison is to isolate prisoners and cut their ties to the outside world. Yet prisoners have always found ways to build connections with creative and political communities outside of prisons, and raise their voices in the struggle for liberation. In keeping with the long tradition of prisoner writing, in September 2021 Briarpatch Magazine, in collaboration with Free Lands Free Peoples and the Inreach Committee of AbolitionTO, published a special issue on the topic of prison abolition. It featured the writing, art, and poetry of people imprisoned across Turtle Island: https://briarpatchmagazine.com/issues/view/september-october-2021

Please join us on Sunday December 12, 2021 from 3-5 p.m. ET as we collectively listen to the pre-recorded voices of some of these authors, either reading excerpts from their Briarpatch publications or speaking about writing while imprisoned. After listening to the audio recordings, workshop participants will be invited to write a response to a specific author, or a message of solidarity to all the authors. Briarpatch will then collect and mail these responses to authors. We hope to build concrete connections with prisoners and share with them the immense value and importance of their writing.

REGISTRATION Please register for this event on Eventbrite. After you register, you’ll be sent an email with a link to join the Zoom meeting: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/prison-abolition-issue-listening-party-and-reflective-writing-workshop-tickets-218825000467

6. 20 Years of the Anti-terrorism Act: The Legacy of Canada’s War on Terror Monday December 13, 12-1:30PM

December 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Canada’s first Anti-terrorism Act in 2001. This panel will reflect on the ongoing impacts of the ATA and the so-called War on Terror, including the need for accountability for human rights violations, the intersections with Islamophobia and systemic racism, and the expansion of national security laws to police and criminalize Indigenous land defence and assertion of sovereignty. This event will also give us the chance to look forward, towards alternatives to expanding and entrenching anti-terrorism law in our efforts to address other societal challenges.

This event is virtually hosted from the unceded territory of the Algonquin People.

Register to get the zoom link at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtc–qqTorHdHOFZS1BYXbhVK-lYO8oS1h

Organized by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group – CSILC

7. Ottawa premiere of My Mom’s Co-op Monday December 13, 6:45-8:45PM Bytowne Cinema

The Sandy Hill Housing Co-op is pleased to present the Ottawa premiere of My Mom’s Coop (La coop de ma mère).

Written and directed by Quebec filmmaker Ève Lamont, this charming, heartwarming film follows the challenges and joys of the 42 members of Gatineau’s Co-operative d’habitation St-Louis, including the filmmaker’s mother.

“I’ve wanted to take a look at the cooperative housing model for a while,” explains Lamont, who has tackled many social justice issues during her 30-year career making documentaries. “When I focused my camera on the St-Louis co-op, where my mother lives, I saw a particular kind of multicultural, multigenerational melting pot – a better way of living together.”

At a time when Canada is facing escalating housing prices, co-operative housing offers a viable, democratic and sustainable solution to the affordability crisis. In the Ottawa region alone, there are 65 housing co-operatives providing 3,600 homes for people with low and moderate incomes, including seniors, families, newcomers and those living with a disability.

Tickets $10: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ottawa-premiere-of-my-moms-co-op-tickets-212566119987 For pay-what-you-can, e-mail us at tickets@sandyhill.coop

8. Book Launch – Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance – Wednesday December 15

Join Krys Maki in conversation with Carrie Lynn Poole-Cotnam and Aimee Van Vlack.

Fernwood Publishing in collaboration with Novel Idea, The Department of Sociology Queen’s University, and the Surveillance Studies Centre presents the launch of Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance. This event will feature a discussion with anti-poverty activists Aimee VanVlack and Carrie Lynn Poole-Cotnam and author Krys Maki.

The speakers will draw on their own lived experiences of poverty, activism, and frontline casework and reflect on the impacts of welfare surveillance on the lives of low income mothers and their everyday and collective acts of resistance.

Register through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/book-launch-ineligible-single-mothers-under-welfare-surveillance-tickets-217024164117?aff=erelexpmlt

[okay-victoria]

Random Personal Rant

For anyone somehow here not from the original thread, this started off me getting asked what finishing school is and me getting shit off my chest that is only mildly relevant about how I could both be of the social class that gets sent to finishing school and grows up on welfare.

With an understanding that in many parts of the world it wouldn't qualify as so, as far as the US goes, my dad is from what counts as a very old money family from Baltimore & Philadelphia. Both his siblings went to college and one now owns a major hedge fund, and his sister is married to a C-level executive at a huge conglomerate. His parents went to college. His grandparents went to college. All eight of his great grandparents went to college. My dad...did not go to college. He was not about that life, and while I don't mean it as an insult, when I say his primary occupation until I was ~5 was a drummer in a mediocre band I mean that he opened for a lot of great acts, and if you lived in the Boston to Atlanta area in the 80s you may have heard him play, but he was never a huge national name. But he wasn't an amateur band playing for free at some random local gig either.

My mom grew up on a chicken farm in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania but also completely rejected her heritage and became a model, sort of like my father, of mediocre status. Not Giselle Bundchen, but had national contracts and if you have a Graco ad/box from 1990-1993 you might see both me and her on it. They met because my mom's friends placed bets, one each, on who could sleep with a member of their favorite local band first and my mom picked my dad and...my mom was actually supposed to go be a model in Tokyo and found out she was pregnant with me and couldn't go 😂

So, after my parents had two kids back to back with a third on the way and determined they needed lifestyles more in line with having three children, they became much poorer than they originally were because my mom stopped working and my dad, with a barely-passed-high-school education but needing a true "day job" worked day labor in construction. My dad's father was too proud to give us money/help if my dad didn't beg for it; despite having eventually four young children my dad never did so we ended up on all the state assistance programs one could imagine. My grandma jokes that dinners at my parents house were BYOC - bring your own chair, because we didn't own any.

My mother and paternal grandmother had no such pride issues and I live in eternal gratitude that my welfare childhood was not as crappy as it should have been because my grandmother would have my mom accompany her on grocery runs and buy us food without my father or grandfather knowing, and every Christmas and birthday my grandparents/godparents could give us the one big ticket gift all the kids wanted that year. But, on the other side, I once got stung by a bee inside my mouth because my brother threw a hairbrush through a cracked window at me and broke it and we couldn't afford to fix it for about two years and a hornet got in one day and rested himself in my coke can (my parents were the very American type that fed me coca-cola in baby bottles at age 8 when I was jealous of my younger siblings lol).

It is hard not to believe in "toxic masculinity" when two men warring over dumbass pride issues would rather their children/grandchildren go without food than suck it up and decide 'help' isn't the worst word in the English language, and you know you've only been saved by two women who came from totally different backgrounds and entirely disapproved of each other but reached out the hand to shake when it came down to toddlers getting the short end of the don't-bend-the-knee stick. It wasn't that either of the men were bad people, I loved them both and got along great with both, but on a societal level I feel they were socialized in a very fucked up way if that was the end result, as both claimed "male pride" in these instances [my dad took multiple thousands of dollars I'd saved from working during college from me during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and didn't tell me and that was the reason I was given for why I hadn't been informed/asked, because it would be too emotionally difficult for an adult man to ask a young woman. My graduation present was them repaying me 1/3 of the money they'd taken from me without asking because I'd like, trusted them when it had been in a joint account that was a holdover from when I was <18 and couldn't have my own bank account].

While in some ways my parents on the surface achieved the American dream of going from nothing to a bunch of money, the real factor in play was that my dad's father was the bank. My parents had no credit and couldn't get real loans. My dad worked construction and during the two major periods that flipping houses was very lucrative, he never had to get an actual loan or pay actual interest, he just had to ask his father to pay out cash and then repay him at a flat 2% interest rate that didn't even accrue over time, just...whenever you are ready, repay the value of the loan + 2%. Because my father was doing something productive, in these instances, my grandfather was happy to pay, because it wasn't giving away money, it was loaning it. I had a very weird situation of mostly being poor but like also getting taken to the "big donors" events at the Kennedy Center and my grandparents regularly buying me a dress as a child worth more than my mom's wedding dress and also needing to pretend I fit in with these people.

And look. When I say "these people"...honestly, by and large, most wealthy people, whether inherited or not, are not the assholes you want to imagine. Most of them are extremely nice. Most of them are generous when it comes to the less fortunate who are in their personal sphere of being. Most of them are just really out of touch. The 100% kindest of all of them that I know once relayed to me that she thought people would be happier if once a year they did what she did...go to the airport with a purse packed full of absolute necessities, buy a one way ticket to the most appealing destination on the flight board, buy your clothes and book your accommodations after you'd arrived, and come back after you felt you'd 'centered' yourself. She didn't understand why there were so many unhappy people who weren't taking this very obvious route to being happier. I didn't quite know how to explain that saying "most" people couldn't afford to do that either financially or from a job/career angle didn't even cover it, as "most" sounds like 70% instead of 99.7%.

I was both my parents eldest son and eldest daughter in the worst combination possible. I was the eldest son because I was the most stereotypically male of all my siblings, in everything from desire to physically fight the battles I was given to dislike of shopping/fashion to lack of emotional connection to my relationships, so I can now fix your average household plumbing/drywall/electrical issue better than most "city" guys I interact with and remain less clingy to them in the process. I was also very much the oldest daughter from a responsibility perspective, I managed our household and from age 10 - 24 managed the finances of our family business, my mom almost died giving birth to my youngest brother after a ruptured uterus that should never have happened in the first place if we had adequate insurance to get her a non-emergency C-section (I was just past 9 years old at the time) and I was informally withdrawn from school for two years to take care of the family when she couldn't because there is no paid parental leave in the US and we got double-fucked by the medical industry because she got a bad "mesh" put in and then had to have a further surgery to repair that which we also had to pay for and didn't have the money to win a lawsuit over.

I don't know quite how to put this, but in the deepest fuck you of the universe, my rich-immigrant-ggggg grandfather's money led to him owning banks, insurance companies, etc, and the family cashed out in a big way when their ownership was bought by and merged with what is now Cigna, one of the biggest US healthcare insurers, and my nuclear family specifically got screwed by the American health insurance industry, but anyway, we were the people selected for that karmic comeuppance so if you want to feel schadenfreude at my expense, I'll allow it without begrudging the sentiment, my family might have fucked up your family’s life too, not just their own.

I got up twice a night to feed my brother because my dad had to sleep unmolested in my room to get to work and my mom was too weak to carry my brother or even hold him against her while she nursed so I had to hold him up to her. Adjusting to living in a city and hearing lots of random noises all the time was not easy when I'd had mom sound instincts from age 9.

I learned to drive the fall my youngest bro was born because my mom couldn't and I had to get my middle brother to preschool and go the grocery store on my own. While I hold absolutely no ill will towards my father or grandfather for this and given that about 1/3 of my paternal family either has an autism diagnosis or should, I fully feel the struggles they both went through to be communicated with, my father wouldn't ask for help, and my grandmother that lived 20 minutes away couldn't give enough help because my grandfather refused to do a single dish on his own as that was outside their "marriage contract" type agreement and she couldn't ever stay with us overnight when there wasn't a clearly-communicated need, so they let the burden fall on a 9 - 11 year old child and that really shaped a lot of my life in both good and bad ways. My youngest brother is 22, and we have only just climbed out of the medical debt his birth left us with between my dad's life insurance and my oldest brother and I paying for the extra cost of out-of-state college tuition.

The irony of all of this is that because my father died before his father, when my grandmother dies, my siblings and I will all inherit enough money (as a non-blood relative my mom, despite keeping her vows to part at death and not having remarried in eight years, is cut out entirely) to make this a non-issue, but my grandfather couldn't conscience spotting his unluckiest child some money in the end of days to pay for my youngest two brothers' education and take that worry off my father as he was dying. The day before he died I had to hold him down in bed to keep him from trying to climb in his truck to go to work because he was so anxious about trying to provide for us in spite of his father having fuck you money, because his father didn't think it was fair to the other siblings (who, at the time, still owned a major hedge fund and were married to a C-level executive of a huge conglomerate). A day and a half later I went back to my job because at the time I was then the sole provider for the family and didn't want to risk asking for the standard week's bereavement leave when I knew I was capable of showing up at work the next day and was fresh out of college so hadn't built up a reputation yet.

My father worked the day each of us was born, so I suppose it is only fair and he smiled at the choice. In spite of what it may seem, I gave a baller and very heartfelt speech at his funeral to all his rich friends that over and above everything, he'd taught us how to be happy with our own lives no matter what, and multiple of them emailed my mom in the aftermath to say they'd reassessed their relationship with their children in light of it, although...tbh I kind of doubt that lasted and they probably changed nothing 😅. The last good talk I had with him, two weeks before he died [his liver was going and it sent toxins to his brain that de-personed him after that and he no longer recognized me as his daughter, but as his sister], I reassured him that though we would all be sad he'd gone, we'd live on just fine without him because that's how he'd raised us, and according to my mom that was what gave him the final bit of peace he needed. Although honestly, I don't think I will ever see the strength in another human again that it took my grandmother to sit next to him and stroke his hand and tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was happy on a beach and die, for God's sake, because he was unaware and in pain and just prolonging it for our sake by then.

That type of obsession my grandfather had with assessing his children and grandchildren on the basis of economic productivity and a very black and white idea of "fair" is one you don't easily forget, I promise you. My hedge fund uncle is currently positioning himself to screw us out of our inheritance because of janky writing in the will and I'm doing my fuck all best to gain the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with this cold motherfucker in court as the oldest and representative member of my happily much nicer and softer younger brothers who I want to remain that way not because I even care that much about the money, I know what bills affect your credit first and what you can put off paying and all of us have good enough career prospects to do our own thing, but just because I want to give the middle finger to a man that was a multi-millionaire and drew lines on his milk and orange juice bottles when I came over so he knew if I drank what my parents couldn't afford when I was approximately six. Anyway, ask me why I support major reforms in wealth taxation. I don't care who it goes to, just not that guy, you feel?

Having expendable income was very exciting for a bit after I started working but once I got to the hateable point of assessing my annual bonus and internally complaining that I'd spent the money I should have spent on a Sauternes cellar to drop five digits on bedset materials (to be fair they are drop dead gorgeous, very comfy and the factory pays a living wage for people to handmake the sheets/duvets/pillows to people in San Francisco, which is not cheap, so maybe I did more good than harm with that), I two seconds later nodded to myself and went "the government needs to confiscate more money from me". The narrative is always that the "undeserving" will use it for dumb things they don't need like iPhones or refrigerators...?...but like...I could also have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a very nice sheet/comforter set for at most a tenth of what I paid so am I really spending it responsibly either....?....who is going to get more joy out of this misspent money....?....not me, that is for sure, I probably would have had more fun going to BBB and laying on all the demo beds and buying something there.

My lifelong dream, which may become possible if/when I do have something of an inheritance, is to provide food security for one of the many towns in the US were most residents don't have it. It's the thing I remember the most distinctly over the years. I never could quite believe it when I got to the point that I could just...pay to eat at a restaurant. One of the most disappointed my mother has ever been in me is when I was twenty five and confessed I actually had no idea how much a gallon of milk cost in a city grocery store besides that it was probably between $1 and $5, because I didn't have to know. For now I make a weekly drop off of my excess produce to a mom group I met under somewhat weird circumstances but I was walking through the cut-through that went through the low-income housing back to my apartment at like 2 AM on a Saturday and these moms were out there partying and smoking weed with their kids all strapped in strollers around or the older ones watched by a rotating member of the group and I felt very safe and like these moms had a very good vibe of both living their own lives [seriously for mental health parents but in most cases specifically mothers need to be able to keep up relationships with people their age] but keeping their children safe and accounted for while doing so and trying their fuckin' best against all the odds to figure out how to make that happen when life had dealt them a shit hand.

...anyway, looping way back to the original question of what finishing school is, when I was almost done with middle school my dad had built a legit construction business that then very quickly took off because we lived in a commutable zip code to the now-rich-in-their-own-right people he went to high school with who trusted him to redo their homes. We eventually moved to that zip code but I stayed and commuted back to my old high school. But, i was a pretty wild kid which my father appreciated for a long while because I would follow him around on jobs and enjoy doing physical labor, but once I was mid-puberty and also he had to maybe show me to his high school friends that did not fly.

I snapped - not broke, snapped - my left thumb and my parents had to trap me like a wild animal to get me to go the hospital. Then I got a deep cut that partially injured a tendon in my leg and at eleven I tried to beat the shit out of my dad to prevent him from picking me up to strap me in the car and go to the hopsital. Next I got a deep splinter due to my eternal-barefoot tendencies and it wouldn't come out so got infected and I refused to go to the doctor [another weird back story but I was minorly sexually assaulted [[to be clear, not raped or anything big traumatic]] when I was eight and had to stay in hospital for a week and my parents couldn't be with me all the time so I have a permanent heebie-jeebie about going to the hospital, not true anxiety, I will go if I know I need to and I don't breathe heavy or anything, and I'm actually not permanently weirded out by sex or anything, just doctors in hospitals specifically I kind of unconsciously try to justify not needing to the extent I can rationalize it] and my dad was tired of my antics so he was like "fine if you don't go I will slice your foot in half with a Swiss Army knife to get it out" and I called his bluff and laid down on the floor, stuck my foot on his lap, and he didn't really know what to do when a barely fourteen year old girl called his bluff so my brothers watched in fascinated but horrified awe as I got my foot sliced open spectacularly so that the infection/splinter could come out and I didn't even make a sound out of spite despite it being quite painful to my recollection almost twenty years later.

They saw me cry from pain exactly one time when while trying to break up a fight between all three of them (it was over ice cream) I got pushed and my ankle got dislocated and what actually made me cry was snapping it back in place and they realized it was not a joke. These dumb assholes that I love have ragged on me for "skipping" chores the day after I was in the hospital because the day before that I had to spend 18 hours running Thanksgiving as a good sub-hostess like I didn't have a serious infection that needed treating and couldn't rest because none of them were up to any task beyond peeling potatoes.

After the Swiss Army knife incident, my dad's discussion of sending me to finishing school became real, which I knew when my mom made me take a walk with her and talked about it. Finishing school is like...etiquette school....? In ye olden day when finishing high school was not the norm for anyone, wealthy men finished high school and wealthy women often went to "finishing" school to have a combined education on being a proper lady but also being able to hold a decent conversation with your presumably-educated husband, so it wasn't entirely etiquette non-academic. It was more just like "what a rich man wants in a wife" school, which was sort of household management and knowing enough about cleaning/cooking to correct the staff if they fucked up, how to be a polite hostess, and how to not entirely bore him when you were alone together and had done your five minutes of sex or whatever so actually had to have a conversation. In modern times it has obviously expanded to be less bleak.

I said miss me with that, I can be a girl on my own, so I went full throttle into the girliest sport they offer in high school and ever since have gained the inestimable advantage of knowing how to also use femininity to my advantage, which I am very grateful to my parents for making me learn. It would be great if we lived in a world where that didn't count, but it did/still does, and they really set me up to operate in all the worlds.

It is weird for me to tell the story to Internet strangers because it's one of those things that makes your parents sound terrible and abusive in the general tone of the Internet nowadays, and while I support gender nonconforming children I don't remember my childhood or parents that way. But, I feel like the bits and pieces of my life I've given don't always make a ton of sense together without the context, so here it is, and in the end, I think a number of parts of it are areas where you can probably understand where it makes me have the opinions I do when I write.

Anyhoo, this makes my life sound far worse than it is, I actually have a great life and I am not unhappy with it at all and feel I was on the whole blessed with many more turns of luck than unluck, so, please, do not take this as a depressed artist rant, it is more like a rant of a very energetic person who rants about a lot of things all the time and didn’t need to come out but just did because the question was asked and the time was right with my life being in a bit of flux to think about how I got where I am and where I want to go and why.

Always remember no matter what problems it seems like I have, if I didn’t solve them on my 2 year round the world traveling hiatus I took from working, it’s my own fault, I definitely had the time and money to solve them and just chose not to.

[poisonintopositivity]

(My Very Own) Top 20 Sterek Fics

Here is my very own Top 20 Sterek Fics (out of order)

For me, these fanfictions are a “MUST READ NOW!!!” kind of deal. These authors have so much talent, it’s incredible. These stories are just marvelous and deserve LOVE ! So, I decided to share them with you.

I’ve read most of these fics several times and some of them are even my bedside table books (with Harry Potter and the Prisonner of Azcaban and Jane Eyre)

So here we go!

1:  Enemy Lines by @qhuinn -  150k - Explicit - Dystopia - Enemies to friends to lovers - Action/adventure

This is the story of werewolf Derek Hale and human Stiles Stilinski: two people who grew up in the same town but completely different worlds, their realities split by the war between men and wolves.

Years later when Derek returns to Beacon Hills, he does it as Alpha of a military pack on a mission to capture those responsible for the region’s resistance. With his main objective, Sheriff Stilinski, out of sight, he settles for the next best thing: his son, Stiles.

Neither of them suspects they’ll need to trust each other if they want to make it out this alive.

2:  Actions Speak Louder than Words by @isthatbloodonhisshirt - 435k - Explicit - The BEST and slowest burn there is - Spark Stiles/Mute Derek - Friends to Lovers

“I apologize.” The cop finally looked back up at his face, seeming thrilled. “It’s just—it’s been so long. And we finally have you.”

That was a bad word. Not found.

Have.

Stiles wrenched his hand free and took a step back, but before he could even think up a gameplan, he felt a prick in his neck and jerked away, reaching up to slap one hand against it and twisting in the same moment.

One of the others had come up behind him while he hadn’t been paying attention, and his vision began to swim even as his eyes caught sight of the half-empty syringe the guy was holding.

3: Radio Tower by @hyperlittlenori - 130k - Explicit - Dystopia - Hope - Slow Burn/Build 

Everything was different. The world he knew was gone. It’d been a long time since he’d started thinking he was probably one of the last humans on earth, that out there the only sentient beings were those that would devour him whole. He wasn’t sure why he continued with the radio broadcasts, continued to talk into nothingness. The only explanation was that there was a spark of hope in him yet that he wasn’t alone. The lonely safety Stiles has built around an old radio tower in the middle of nowhere is about to be broken. Stiles isn’t sure if Derek is a harbinger of chaos or hope at the end of the world. 

4:  The Hollow Moon by @thepsychicclam - 180k - Explicit - Fix-It - Memory Loss - Slow Burn/Build

It's the summer after Stiles' first year of college, and he's working a crappy job and dealing with nightmares and anxiety - but he's okay, he swears. He makes it through most days without too much trouble. Then, a certain werewolf comes back into town. Which Stiles doesn't care about, nope, not at all.

After two and a half years, Derek returns to Beacon Hills with his small Pack. Though he tried to move on, something just kept drawing him back to Beacon Hills, he's just not sure what. Now, he figures he can start building something like a life - but he keeps getting distracted by Stiles Stilinski of all people.

5 :  Amor Fati by @alocalband  - 43k - Explicit - Consent is sexy - First Time - Fluff & Angst

When Stiles gets thrown into the bank vault about twenty minutes after him, Derek isn’t even surprised.As it turns out, neither is Stiles.

6 :  (not so) Pure Imagination by theroguesgambit - 33k - Explicit - Shared fantasies - Angst with a happy ending - hotdamn! 

"There is a world where whenever someone fantasizes about you, you can physically feel it, but you have no idea who is thinking it about you."

Stiles knows it's wrong, but he's been Fantasizing about Derek and he can't bring himself to stop. Derek doesn't know who's taken an interest in him, but he's enjoying it way more than he probably should.

7: What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm - 119k - Explicit - Wolf!Derek - Slow Burn/Build - Friends to Lovers

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

8:  Stand Fast in Your Enchantments by @devildoll - 77k - Explicit - Captivity - Feral!Derek - Angst with a happy ending

"Stiles knew damn well what a pissed-off wolf sounded like, and every hair on the back of his neck was telling him that somewhere in this room was a very pissed-off werewolf." An AU in which Derek is feral, Stiles is magical, and they eat a lot of fast food.

9 :  What Fresh Twilight Bullshit Is This? by @isthatbloodonhisshirt - 196k - Explicit - Soulmate - Slow Burn - Misunderstandings 

“I am not Bella!” he insisted, shaking his fist angrily at Jackson, as if he’d been the one to suggest he was. “I am not Bella! I am, like, a Jacob, at least!”

Lydia made a noise of debate from his right and he whipped around to look at her.

“What?! What was that sound?!”

“You’re more of a Mike,” she insisted, shrugging neatly and flipping some curls over her shoulder.

“Wha—” Stiles had never been so offended in his life! “I am not! No way! I am a solid Jacob!”

“Mike,” she argued.

“Who’s Mike?” Scott asked.

“Shut up, Scott!” Stiles insisted, pointing a finger at him but still glaring at Lydia.

10 :  taste your beating heart by @cinematicnomad​ - 112k - Mature - Pack Dynamics - Slow Burn/Build - Stilinski Family Feels

Something was wrong in Beacon Hills. Derek was halfway across the country when he felt a call to return to his hometown, and somehow Stiles had been talked into letting the werewolf stay in his guest bedroom. This could lead to nothing good.

11 :  between the click of the light and the start of the dream by @thepsychicclam 105k - Explicit - Pack Dynamics - Getting Togheter - Fluff & Angst

A twig snaps, and then Stiles hears breathing and the rustle of leaves. He strains to get a better glimpse into the darkness, but it’s pointless. There’s nothing but a black void.

It's Stiles' senior year, and he's trying to concentrate on normal things - like the lacrosse championship, spring break, prom, graduation (and definitely not Derek) - when he starts having nightmares and waking up in the middle of nowhere. Oh yeah, and he's being haunted by a hag. Great.

12:  And You Say You're Alone by taelynhawker - 30k - Explicit - Pack Dynamincs - Bad Friend Scott - Romance

Between the kanima, the Argents, and Peter's untimely return from the dead, everything has fallen apart. Stiles and Derek try to put their lives back together once the crisis has passed. Stiles deals with the aftermath of being tortured, and the distance growing between he and Scott. Derek attempts to become a stronger alpha and keep his pack safe, and that includes Stiles.

13:  Trust Fall by Stoney - 144k - Explicit - Body Swap - Hurt/Confort - Slow Burn/Build

Stiles is fairly certain that a case could be made for every bad thing in his life coming back to Peter Hale. This time it's pissing off a powerful witch, who retaliated by swapping Stiles and Derek a la Freaky Friday, because sure. That makes sense. Um, there are GPAs on the line, not to mention the whole thing where his dad wants to shoot Derek on sight. Except who he sees as Derek is actually Stiles, and Stiles did not sign up for filicide.

Great. Wait...does this mean he's the Alpha until they figure this out? Holy. Shit.

****

Derek had stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a few minutes trying to control the panic as he saw himself as Stiles. As the loud mouthed human friend of the pack. He was going to kill Peter. He was going to kill the witch, then he was going to kill Peter. Maybe even resurrect him again just to kill him all over.

They were going to have to play this cool. They would have to stay calm and focused. Which is of course why the universe threw him into this situation with someone who physically couldn't be calm and focused.

Of course.

14:  Gravity's Got Nothing on You by @zosofi - 84k - Explicit - Fake/Pretend Boyfriends - Humor - Romance

“Three weeks,” Derek says.

“Still don’t want to,” Stiles says.

“I’ll pay you,” Derek says, and that… that has Stiles interested. Alf’s Antique’s may be a great job, but it’s not a high-paying job, and half of Stiles’s tuition is coming from financial aid, so…

“How much,” Stiles asks, “are we talking here? Because I know your family, dude. And it’ll be kind of awkward after.“

“My family thinks you’re some sort of fucking gift to the world,” Derek seethes, like he’s jealous, “they’ll probably be pissed at me when we break it off, so don’t worry about that. Five hundred bucks.”

“A thousand,” Stiles says, because screw ethics. Also, the Hale family is loaded. Derek can deal.

15:  Every Step You Take by @nokomiss - 49k - Mature - Magic - UST - Secret Feelings

Stiles accidentally ends up magically bound to Derek. It’s super.

16:  Baking My Way Into Your Heart by theSilence - 179k - Mature - College AU/Coffee Shop AU - Slow Burn/Build - Friends to Lovers

Derek is an uptight college student, all work and no play. His carefully scheduled life is thrown kilter when his regular barista is replaced with someone new.

17:  Windows by @drgrlfriend - 83k - Explicit - Blind!Stiles - Friends to Lovers - Found Families 

Derek has a new neighbor who won't stop looking.

Excerpt:

“You’re blind,” Derek said flatly, the anger draining from him so suddenly he felt almost woozy. His vision cleared, his claws sliding back into blunt fingernails.

“Thanks for the memo, genius,” the kid said acidly. “I can still fucking defend myself, so don’t take another damn step.”

“Fuck, I...I’m sorry,” Derek stuttered.

“What?!” The kid’s brow crinkled. “I mean — what?! You’re fucking sorry!?” His lips thinned into a harsh line. “What, is this some kinda Hallmark movie where you’re discovering the error of your ways because you don’t want to rob a blind person?! That’s fucking condescending, man. I’ll have you know that —”

“Just, wait.” Derek interrupted what was apparently the start of a convincing argument as to why he should rob the kid after all, feeling his head start to spin. “This is — it’s a misunderstanding. I’m — I’m not robbing you. You’re — you’re safe, okay? I’m taking three steps back. Just — just let me explain.”

“Explain why you came busting into my apartment? Yeah, go right ahead, man, I can’t wait to hear this epic tale.”

18 :  Just to See You Again by MellytheHun (@loserchildhotpants​) - 15k - Explicit - Love Letters - Getting Together - College AU 

A sterek college!AU where writing student Stiles specializes in love letters, runs a blog about it and can be commissioned to write love letters on behalf of lovers who are at a loss for words.

He makes some cash, he’s good at what he does (especially when he gets to be a little more explicit in his letters), it pays for his textbooks and that’s all he’s really looking for and life is fine. That is, until someone anonymously commissions him to write a love letter to mathematics student, Derek Hale.

19:  Chasing Slumber by @hyperlittlenori - 21k - Explicit - Post-Nogitsune - Porn With Feelings - Fix it

Stiles finds solitude and a glimpse at recovering from his ordeal with the Nogitsune in a dingy motel far from Beacon Hills. Inhuman blue eyes follow his silent struggles in the darkness of the room and he can no longer pretend to sleep, pretend he hasn’t been profoundly changed by all that has happened. He can only let his fingers stretch out across threadbare but clean sheets and clench around them, in a failed attempt at not reaching for Derek.

20 :  the thread is ripping by @thepsychicclam - 36k - Explicit - Pinning - Angst with a happy ending - Flashbacks

Stiles is 27 now, with a master’s degree and a career and a house and a serious boyfriend and a life in San Francisco that doesn't include Derek. But then Stiles unexpectedly shows back up in Beacon Hills, and Derek would recognize that scent anywhere.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my Sterek Fic Recs Collections on A03.

On this lovely note, happy reading guys!

[pompadourpink]

hi mom, after several very bad experiences i think im really not made to work in an office and i want to my own boss like u. there is something i'm very good at so i think i could make a living out of it. do you have any advice?

Hello dear,

I can't fully answer because you haven't said if you would be selling things or services, which create very different needs (office, employees, bank loan, boxes, business cards, packing peanuts, suppliers, ink, paper, paint, fabric, accountant, etc.). Also, each country has its own rules, and I doubt you're French!

I think the biggest question is this one: why do you really want to do this? There are hundreds of thousands of companies, it's unlikely that you will be coming up with a new concept and therefore will have the monopoly of that thing on the market. So how is your take on an old concept better? What do you bring to the table that other brands don't have? If you don't have an answer to this, you're going to sink.

A few scary things first: you'll have to pay VAT (20-25% of your income), deadlines and taxes are stressful, getting noticed is hard, you can't take time off for holidays or bad health without renouncing to income, you never know when customers will decide they don't need you anymore, you'll occasionally meet time wasters and scammers, you might lose a friend or two, if you run out of anything your reputation is threatened, you'll get ghosted, if you don't earn a certain amount annually you'll have to close down, retirement is a big question mark (!!!), etc.

I'm up at 7/8 every single day, and on my computer until 11pm - I usually answer messages within an hour, emails within a half-day and questions within a half-week (because they require a lot of research and I don't want to botch it). And then there are lessons (giving them and prepping), blogposts, personal research, Latin learning, Youtube, Discord, the website, doing my billing once a month, and once in a while getting in touch with my editor and my web developer. And then there's cleaning, working out, cooking, socialising, taking care of myself, etc. I haven't had a day off since the beginning of the pandemic or left the country since 2018.

I realise I sound pessimistic but I think I would have preferred to hear those things before I started. Let's remember I started this blog in the summer of 2016 and finally made money off it in March of 2020 because of the pandemic! I had tried to offer lessons before and no one ever contacted me about it, so all that time I had been doing all that work for likes and comments.

That being said, I'm making it work, I have a lot of projects for the future, and I've hands down never been happier. I work from my couch, with my cat (which students will confirm because he's part Ferrari), lessons are a lot of fun, I get to binge-watch Sabrina the teenage witch as I write posts and answer questions, my commute is five seconds long, I've never felt so creative at work, and being able to see the impact my hard work is having is very rewarding.

If I have to be transparent, earlier this year I was feeling guilty about being happy and having so much fun at work, to the point that I got in touch with my therapist and ended up realising I was just sad because I realised how absolutely miserable I used to be at work, being the type of moron who was doing the job of three people while being paid a ridiculous amount of money and treated like crap, and that now that I didn't have people walking over me, my life long depression had disappeared, never to be seen again. It took me a while to be able to rationalize this new position I was in and all the good things that came with it.

What I would recommend since you haven't started: keep a regular job on the side (the type where you don't bring work home), part-time if you can afford it, and declutter your monthly expenses. You can be a diva when you're rich (I don't even have Netflix anymore!) but now you need frugality. Then, write down a plan: what is it exactly that you want to do? What would your ideal day look like? Does it require an office, going places, creating things with your hands, etc.?

Make prototype after prototype until you are so satisfied with what you've made that you would proudly send one/offer your services to your favourite celebrity without feeling an ounce of embarrassment. Once you like your product, network to oblivion, hand freebies, go to local events and see if you can get a few sales, etc. The service is as important as the product: let's say you paint and send me a gorgeous piece of art, if you don't communicate with me on whatever website we used and I receive the art wrapped in old cardboard, I'm not ordering again.

Do a lot of thinking before you launch. You don't get a second impression.

Hope this helps! x

[bookofjin]

Rise of Sixteen States: 306

Li Xiong declares himself Emperor of Cheng.

Meanwhile Sima Yue wins the Jin civil war, and the Jin emperor dies.

31 January 306 – 18 February 307

(Jin's 1st Year of Guanxi)

(Han's 3rd Year of Yuanxi)

(Cheng's 1st Year of Yanping)

[2nd Month], jiazi [8 March], [the King of Donghai,] Yue dispatched his generals Qi Hong, Song Zhou, Sima Zuan and others to welcome the Emperor.

Summer, 4th Month, the King of Hejian, Yong dispatched the Grand Warden of Hongnong, Peng Sui, and the Grand Warden of Beidi, Diao Mo, to resist Qi Hong and others at Hu.

5th Month, renchen [4 June], Qi Hong and others fought with Diao Mo. Mo was greatly defeated. Yong and Ying ran for the Southern Mountains, and fled to Wan. The Xianbei in Hong and others' section greatly plundered Chang'an, killing more than 20 000 people.

6th Month, bingchen [28 June], New Moon, [the Emperor] arrived from Chang'an and ascended the old hall, with mournful emotion and flowing tears

Winter, 10th Month [22 November – 21 December], the Minister of Works, the King of Fanyang, Xiao, passed a away. Xiao's Senior Clerk, Liu Yu, murdered the King of Chengdu, Ying.

11th Month, gengwu [8 January], the Emperor collapsed in the Xianyang Hall. At the time he was 48 years old.

(Liu Yuan)

3rd Year of Yuanxi [306 AD], Winter, 12th Month [1 January 306 – 30 January], used his General of the Van, Liu Jing as Envoy Holding Tally, Great Chief Controller of Conquering and Chastising. He intercepted and struck the Inspector of Bing province, Liu Kun, at Banqiao [“Ban Bridge”], and was defeated by Kun. Kun thereupon occupied Jinyang. His Palace Attendant Liu Yin and Brilliantly Blessed Grandee of the Right Wang Yu advanced to admonished Yuan, saying:

Your Highness, since [you] raised troops and onwards, bit by bit there has already been a single cycle, yet [we have] solely defended merely a region, the kingly power is not yet shaking. If indeed [you] were able to instruct the generals to set out in four directions and determine the moment with a single throw, to put on display Liu Kun's head, settle East of the He, establish the title of Emperor, strike the drums to march and go south, overcome Chang'an then make the capital there, and use the multitudes of Guanzhong to roll up Luoyang, is like pointing to your palm, that is all. These were means by which August Emperor Gao created and began the vast foundation, overcoming and exterminating strong Chu.

Yuan was pleased and said:

This is in an Orphan's heart.

Yuan advanced to occupy Hedong. He attacked and robbed Puban and Pingyang, both were lost to him. Yuan thereupon entered to have his capital at Puzi. The counties, ramparts and fortifactions belonging to Hedong and Pingyang fully surrendered.

(WS001 & WS095: 11th Year [305 AD], Liu Yuan attacked Sima Teng. Teng again begged for troops. Emperor Huan [Tuoba Yitou] personally led 10 000 light cavalry to save Teng, he beheaded Yuan's general Qiwu Tun. Yuan fled south to Puzi.)

(JS062: Liu Yuan at the time was at Lishi, the distance between them was more or less 300 li Kun secretly dispatched to go among the assorted miscreants of his section. The surrendered were more than 10 000 groups. Yuan was very much afraid. He thereupon walled Puzi and settled there.)

(Li Xiong)

1st Year of Yanping [“Cloudless Peace”], 3rd Month [31 March – 29 April], Fan Changsheng drove in a plain cart to go to Chengdu from Xishan [lit. “Western Mountain”]. Xiong welcomed him at the great gate, held an official's tablet and led him in to sit. Changsheng requested Xiong sit face to face. Then he was designated Imperial Chancellor and was venerated as Fan the Worthy. Changsheng urged Xiong to declare the venerated title.

His junior cousin Zhi was Liu's son. Since he did not accompany the ranked order, he executed him.

Summer, 6th Month [28 June – 26 July], Xiong hence presumptuously acceded to the Emperor's throne. A great amnesty, and changed the year [to Yanping]. The state was titled Great Cheng. He retroactively venerated his father Te as the Luminous [jing] Emperor, with the temple title First Founder [shizu]. His mother, Ms. Luo, became August Empress Dowager.

(JS004: 2ndYear [of Yongxing], … 6th Month [8 July – 6 August 305], … Li Xiong presumptuously acceded to the Emperor's throne, the state was titled Shu. … 8th Month [5 September – 4 October 305], Li Xiong dispatched his general Li Xiang# to rob Han'an.)

(Since other sources agree that Li Xiong declared himself emperor in 306, JS004 appear to be mistaken in placing it in the year before, in 305. Li Xiang#'s attack on Han'an is not recorded in other sources, so it is unclear if this event should then also be moved to 306, 8thMonth [26 August – 23 September 306].)

10thMonth[22 November – 21 December], added to Fan Changsheng to be Grand Teacher of Heaven and Earth (HYGZ: Grand Teacher of the Four Seasons, the Eight Nodes, Heaven and Earth), ennobled Marquis of Xishan (WS: King of Xishan). Also his private retinue was not to prepare for army campaigns, and their taxes and levies were all to enter his household.

(HYGZ: [Fan] the Worthy's name was Changsheng [“Long Life”], one name him Yanjia [“Lengthy-lasting”], and also name him Jiuzhong [“Nine-Doubled”]. One calls him Zhi, courtesy name Yuan. He was a native of Danxing in Fuling.)

(The “Eight Nodes” of the year were the equinoxes, the solstices, and the beginning of each season.)

Xiong at the time had roughly began to establish a state, and habitually had no laws or systems. The various generals put their confidence in his graciousness, and each contended for the distributed ranks. His Prefect of the Masters of Writing, Yan Shi, sent up a missive, saying:

In all cases when making a state's regulations and laws, it is always best to continue the old. In the former affairs of Han and Jin, only the Grand Commandant and the Great Marshal managed troops. The Grand Tutor and Grand Guardian were offices for a father or older brother, posts for discussing the Way. The Minister over the Masses and the Minister of Works were in charge of the five teachings and the proportions of the nine soils. Qin set up the Imperial Chancellor with overall leadership of the ten thousand moments. At the end of Wu of Han, he went beyond to use the Great General to control government affairs.

Now state and patrimony are just now founded, and all the hundred are not yet ready. When the various excellencies and great generals are distributed rank proportionally, they yield and then warily request to arrange and set up. This and the standards of the past odes do not correspond, [we] should establish rules and norms to use as models and systems.

Xiong followed him.

(Record of Past and Present Blades and Swords: Li Xiong of Later Shu in the 1st Year of Yanping made 500 blades, the text said “Mount the Horse” in the clerical script.)

(Zhang Gui)

1st Year of Guanxi [306 AD], Emperor Hui collapsed. He dispatched Senior Clerk Beigong Chun, Marshal Zhang Zuan, Separate Carriage Yin Jian to offer a petition at the Imperial Capital.

That Year, he greatly walled Guzang. Its walls had originally been built by the Xiongnu, south to north they were 7 li and east to west 3 li long. The ground had a dragon-like shape, and for that reason it was named Wolong [“Sleeping Dragon”] City.

Earlier, at the end of Han, the Broad Scholar Hou Jin of Dunhuang spoke to the people of his group, saying:

Later, the spring water west of the city will dry up, and there will be a pair of watch towers erected on its bank, they and the eastern gate will gaze on each other. From their middle there will be a hegemon setting out.

Arriving at the middle of Wei's Jiaping era [249 – 253], the commandery officials indeed erected a school building, and built a pair of watch towers beside the spring. They and the eastern gates actually gazed on each other.

Also there was a guest who appraised [his?] seal and said:

Fortune will transmit to the sons and grandsons, and the oldest will have the Western Xia. When the Passes and Luo are overturned and lost, the lands of Liang alone will be kept whole.

Reaching this point, the Zhang clan thereupon were hegemons in Hexi [“West of the He”].