#Actuarial Study

[myvirtuesuncounted]

chat i think we've got a viable uni option

[iamhollywood]

i told my mum i want to be an actuary and she was like "oh i know an actuary, he's really smart but he's so difficult to work with and awful at communication" girly i think he might just be autistic

[eduspiral]

Education Pathway to Become a Professional Actuaries in Malaysia

How to Become an Actuary in Malaysia Actuaries measure and manage risk. Basically an Actuary calculates the amount of premiums to charge to a policy holder using mathematical models based on statistical data from the past. Since we are not able to predict the future, the actuary has to use mathematical models to make projections as accurate as possible on the chances that disease, accidents or…

[anky123]

This post is about Pursuing a UG Actuarial Science Program in Australia. This post has all the information you needed for pursuing a UG Actuarial Science course in Australia such as top universities to pursue, Course Highlights, and many more. To know more, read it and contact our study abroad consultants in Gurgaon for Australia.

[inkats]

what if i double major math and english.

[allurilove]

I can't believe we went from being scared of yandere husband baby trapped us to literally everyone is bullying this same man now, keep bullying him girl💀🙏

“So… what is it that you do again?” Henry asked his father. His feet were off the ground as he leaned deeper into the cushion of the loveseat. The kid opened his notebook and grabbed one of his father’s fountain pens off the desk. Henry looked around his father's study, taking in the sight of his collection of old books, the dimly lit lamps, and the reliance on the natural light from outside. His father loved brutalist architecture. The soulless, simple, and cold-looking interior suited his father perfectly.

The man ignored his son at first, his fingers still typing on the keyboard and occasionally adjusting the glasses on his face. He'd been busy ever since the company he worked at decided to absorb another branch. Now, he had about double the amount of work for the same pay. “…I'm an actuary."

“So, you do boring stuff…” Henry mumbled and shook his head. He didn't really understand what that meant, no matter how many times his father tried to explain it to him. All he heard was science or risk, blah blah blah, and he immediately clocked out. “How am I supposed to compete with Zach, who is doing his report on his astronaut father?”

Henry's father closed his eyes, sighed heavily, and pinched the bridge of his nose to find the strength to deal with Henry. “It’s not supposed to be a competition. All you have to do is make a presentation about your parents' careers.”

“Yeah, and I should have gone with Mom.” Henry crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at his father. “Is it too late for you to quit? Maybe buy the moon so I can rub it in Zach’s face.”

“No one can own the moon.”

"I beg to differ. Have you watched Despicable Me? Gru steals the moon. You should do the same."

"And why would you do your presentation on your mother? She doesn't—"

“She does work,” Henry cut in. If his father even tried to argue that being a housewife wasn’t work or wasn't "hard," Henry wouldn’t hesitate to put him in his place. Henry saw you running around doing chores, picking up after him and his father all the time. When his father wasn’t home, you were the main person who was taking care of him. Henry gave him a glare that suggested his father to "keep his mouth shut."

“I… yes, yes, she does,” Henry's father nodded and cleared his throat. “I suppose your mother is the better candidate.”

[noagskryf]

Actual events from today

Me: i have to tell you a joke

Friend: okay

Me: *already giggling*

Me: okay so i was at a uni open day and

Me: *more giggling*

Friend: it's okay, take your time

Me: and i told someone i want to study actuarial sciences and

Me: *wheezing from laughter*

Me: she said WHAT A RISKY CHOICE

Me: *now literally unable to stand upright from laughter*

Friend: (not laughing or understanding why i'm taking my glasses off to wipe my eyes) i'm sorry, i don't know what actuarial science is

Reader, it took me 6 minutes to type this post because i had to stop halfway and get the giggles out. It's such a bad joke but it's so funny. And i told my actuary friends, and they reacted the exact same way.

[avrmee]

Hiiii guys here is some more info about my blog and me. Mostly the blog

MEEEEEE

I am 20

I study actuarial Science

I grew up in South Africa

My mom is German/Austrian and my dad is South African/Russian (I'm whiter than white. That's what my friends say because I'm pale and I am mostly European)

My favourite colours are green, brown and Black (don't even start with the black is a shade... NO)

I am bisexual

I have 2 cats named Fiona and Shrek because Shrek is my favourite movie and why not

I have a total of 15 tattoos but like 10 of them are small and 5 of them are pretty big so yeah

I only have 3 piercings (ears and nose)

My dad used to be in the military but sadly passed away during a mission or whatever you call it 3 months ago.

I was a MASSIVE daddy's girl

My birthday is 19 February

I have a motorcycle and she's my baby

If you want to know more about me then you can ask I don't mind ♡

BLOGGGGG

What I'll write...

Pretty much anything except very graphic rape scenes, murder ect.

I do write smut but I'm not THE BEST but I am working on it

I will write any form of self harm, sexual assault, drug abuse ect but like I said not too graphic and there will be a trigger warning

FLUFFFF

angst. But I will need my trusted sad ass playlist so yeah

I will do daddy and mommy kink but you know I don't really float in that boat but yeah I called my dad daddy & dadda as a kid until now

You HAVE to give me scenarios to write from. It could be videos or photo or prompts but please don't give me just "can you write something for ______ x reader" please no I'm not that creative

Who I'll write for...

Keep in mind that I will add to this and if you want me to write for someone that isn't on this list then you can still request something about them💗

Youtubers/streamers;;;

Blarg

Smii7y

Grizzy

Pezzy

Puffer

Soup

Thedooo

Mcnasty

Swaggersouls

Actors;;;

Norman Reedus (MY MANNNNN 🧎‍♀️😫)

Christian Serratos

Arists;;;

BILLIE EILISH (my wife, the women that made me realize I like womannnn)

James Hetfield (my new hyperfixation!!!)

Game characters;;;

Simon "ghost" riley

Soap McTavish

John price

I WILL ADD TO THE LIST LATER ONN BUT FOR NOW THIS IS ITT

If the character or person you want is not on here still feel free to request something about them 💗

I won't do the request in one day so please be patient because what I study is genuinely a pain in my ass but I will try and post as soon as possible lovies 💗💗

[forasecondtherewedwon]

seven degrees east - chapter four

Fandom: Masters of the Air Pairings: multiple Rating: T (may change) Chapter: 4 / ? Word Count: 4645

read on tumblr: one | two | three

For most who were permitted entry, the Thorpe Abbotts grad pub was a useful spot to continue any promising discussions begun in class, bitch about grading undergraduate essays, and—thanks to the student discount offered by this campus establishment—get pre-trivia night tipsy on a higher quality of beer than they normally drank. The pub was called the Barracks because of the airfield that had stood on the spot decades before. Though the chairs were hard and the laminated page ambitiously headed “signature cocktails” likely hadn’t changed since the ’80s, the university’s graduate students considered it a nice place to hang out. The Barracks’ quirks made it all the homier. And nobody ordered the cocktails anyway.

It was larger than most of the pubs the boys would have packed themselves into on a Friday night, and continued to feel spacious even when a popular local band played the low stage situated at one end or the once-a-month karaoke event packed the place with unusual customers. (These were mostly fearless female students from departments that scared the boys shitless, like medical biophysics and actuarial science. Curt had once gleefully disappeared into the thick hedge ringing the pub’s patio with one such woman after discovering his shot-in-the-dark conversation topic of the possibility of animal cloning had legs.)

On an average, unspecial day, the Barracks had its particular draw for each of the boys. Gale liked it as a place to sit and nod, resting while others spoke. Rosie liked to do the speaking. For Bubbles, its pub fare was an oasis on Crosby’s nights to cook—for Crosby, it was the simple pleasure of an actual place where an actual bartender knew his name (after he summoned the nerve to inform the man that his name was Harry, not Henry). At the Barracks, Nash did what Nash did anywhere: trawled for a date to the movies. John—kinetic creature that he was—would throw darts with his eyes closed and dig out ancient board games whose missing pieces (“Yes, you can use that rook as a Battleship peg, Buck! Go! Your turn!”) were no impediment to his will to play anything and everything.

Curt loved the Barracks for another reason. Below the dusty TV usually tuned to show music videos, the news, or a match of whatever sport the academics got overly invested in that week as an excuse to put off writing an essay or studying for an exam, there was a PlayStation. Due to its locale, it had suffered some abuse, but it was reliable enough to get Curt through several levels of Air Combat. This left him feeling triumphant and allowed him to pat himself on the back for tearing his eyes away from the smaller screen of the Game Boy he had in his dorm.

“C’mon, Lieutenant,” he coached himself, leaning his whole body as he steered his fighter jet away from enemy fire. “Fly like an angel, don’t die like one.”

The pep talk didn’t work, and when his plane was destroyed, Curt sighed and set the controller on his knee in defeat. It slid off and clattered to the floor. He stared at it for several seconds before scooping it up and putting it back on the battered cabinet upon which the TV rested.

“Rough day to be a pilot,” he said, sagging into a different seat as he joined Jack Kidd at the bar.

“Yeah,” Kidd commiserated. Then, “Huh?”

“Aw, never mind. How’s the dissertation goin’?”

Predictably, Kidd groaned. Curt winced sympathetically.

“Next one’s on me, bud,” he promised, giving Kidd’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

“It’s actually going…” Kidd tried again as his face attempted a more hopeful expression. “…fine.”

“That good, huh?”

“I’m not behind. Well, I am, but not catastrophically. Well… You know what? You’ll see. Enjoy your innocence, Curt.”

Curt didn’t know exactly what to do with this troubling speech—or with being called innocent, which he wasn’t sure he’d ever been called. He decided he would give Kidd the gift of silent companionship. In between sips of his beer, he held the edge of the bar and twisted back and forth on his stool. This didn’t appear to bother Kidd, who seemed to be lost in his own mind for a while.

Eventually, he said, “I think I need a hobby.”

“A hobby,” Curt repeated. “Ok, that sounds like a good idea. Whaddya like?”

Very seriously, Kidd replied, “Reading.”

Curt kneaded his forehead and tried not to make the noise Kidd made when anyone brought up his dissertation.

“No. You gotta do something that’s nothing like the thing you’re working on,” he counselled with an emphatic slashing gesture. “Like, me? For instance? Last summer, I drove out to Rhode Island, right?”

“I don’t know, did you?”

Curt sighed.

“Guy, wait. I’m tellin’ you a story. I drove out to Rhode Island because I heard about this big skateboarding competition—the X Games. So, I’m watchin’ Tony Hawk, in person, doin’ all these flips and shit—”

“Yeah?”

“—and I’m like…” Curt spread his hands, a grin splitting his face. “…I could fuckin’ do that.”

Kidd’s expression went flat.

“Right. And now you’ve given up academia to pursue your dream of being a professional skateboarder,” he said sarcastically. “Mega inspirational. Thanks, Biddick.”

Curt leaned his elbows on the bar and shrugged.

“Well, no. But I bought a board, and I’m tryin’ to learn. Gets me outta my head, you know?”

“Hey, you know another way you can get what’s in your head out? Skateboarding accident. I hope you wear a helmet.”

“Hot tip. Thanks, Dad. I’m just tryin’ to help you overcome that fuckin’ fight-or-flight response you get whenever somebody says the D-word.”

“Dad?”

“Dissertation.”

Kidd’s nose scrunched in aversion. Curt was surprised he didn’t shrink back more dramatically, a vampire confronted with a cross, but maybe the fact that he’d already said the word once had desensitized Kidd a little.

“I guess I feel a bit better,” Kidd said. “Being annoyed at you is kinda cleansing.”

Curt raised his glass to toast that sentiment.

“You’re welcome.” He had a swallow. “You comin’ to trivia later? New hobby?”

“My being smarter than you isn’t a hobby, just a fact. But, yeah; I’ll come.”

“Awesome. We’ve been lookin’ for a new teammate who’s an expert on havin’ a stick up their ass.”

Kidd glared at Curt, but the remark provided him with the impetus he needed to hop off his stool and storm out of the Barracks, curtailing his afternoon of procrastination. Curt chuckled into his glass until he realized he’d been left to pay the bill.

—

Trivia night at the Barracks was a joyful confusion of noise that only clarified on the chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” the handful of patrons close enough to a speaker conducting the room with air-punches timed to each “BUP BUP BUH!” Though less busy than it was in fall and winter, the bar was still close to bursting. Windows and doors had been propped open to allow the sound to spill out into the warm summer evening. Free chairs were scarce, so all around the bar, friends crammed into booths and sat on each other’s laps.

The atmosphere was both competitive and full of low expectations; there were never enough questions in the category someone knew a lot about to enable them to perform well overall. This meant any feelings of despondency were, at least, short-lived. By nature of their discipline, the literature boys had a small chip on their collective scholastic shoulder. They were mainly let down by always going into trivia night expecting to do better than they inevitably did, trusting the novels they’d read to provide a sufficient foundation on topics like religion and politics and geology. Sometimes they lucked out, and sometimes they absorbed a stray grad student from another discipline into their team. Often, they cursed the very authors they had venerated only hours before. And they cursed Bubbles, who would give away literature answers to anyone who asked. (“That’s the one thing we know!” Crosby lamented, head in hands.)

Mostly, the night was about pooling information the way they would pool change for a cab, picking through the pocket lint and the gum wrappers to find the coins. Gale knew all the parts of a radio. Rosie could confidently name five Janet Jackson hits. Nash surprised the entire table with his knowledge of African rivers, inspiring John to take spontaneous hold of his head with both hands and plant a benedictory kiss on his forehead, not seeing the shockwave of hurt that momentarily dislodged Gale’s careful public mask. When Curt slung an arm around the back of Gale’s neck the next time they were all bent over their answer paper, Gale found it was easy to settle into the contact. He laughed when Curt told him he smelled good.

When they had lost, and they were trashed, and it was not yet 10pm, they considered how they might extend their evening. They had handed in their short essays for Professor Harding’s class that morning, which increased their sense that they should be celebrating; another paper down, only the final essay to go, and then the summer class was over and they would have some time to dick around before fall semester began. Everything seemed good and big and possible as they tumbled from the Barracks’ interior onto the patio.

It began as a whisper, and then they were all looking at and teasing Rosie as he blushed about the girl he’d met at the video store.

“You should call her,” Nash suggested, grinning. “You got her number, right?”

Rosie nodded.

“Well, go back to your room and get it!” Bubbles urged. “We’ll wait right here!”

There was a short bank of payphones against the brick wall, just beyond the bounds of the patio, and Rosie glanced at them before looking again to Bubbles.

“Call from here? You wanna hear me crash and burn?”

“Not at all, Rosie,” Gale assured him, eyes sparkling with playfulness and intoxication. “We wanna learn how it’s done.”

As they cheered him on, Crosby shoved Rosie gently in the direction of their dorms, but Rosie rolled out of the push. He held up his hands, smirking.

“I don’t need to go get her number.” He tapped his temple. “Right here, boys.”

“You memorized it?” Curt interpreted with a laugh.

“That is adorable,” John pronounced. He trailed Rosie to a payphone—they all did—and massaged his shoulders like a prize fighter’s while Rosie dug change from his pocket. When Rosie shook him off, smiling, John stepped back and crossed his arms as he joined the semi-circle the boys had made around the payphones.

Rosie dropped the coins through the slot, then took a deep breath and lifted the plastic receiver to his ear. He turned to the boys.

“It’s ringing,” he hissed.

And they all saw the moment she answered: Rosie’s hand clutched tighter around the receiver, his eyebrows shot up, and his gaze darted up towards the lately-appeared stars in relief, then down to the patio stones between his shoes as he focused in on her voice.

“Hi, Liss. It’s Robert Rosenthal calling.” He swatted his hand at Curt, who was pretending to look impressed as he mouthed “Robert” at Gale. They couldn’t remember him ever going by his first name; he was always Rosie to them. “From— You do? Ok, good.”

They took the side of the conversation they were hearing to mean that this was the girl from the store, that she hadn’t given Rosie a fake number, and that she’d known who he was right away. A very good sign. The boys monkey-barred between Rosie’s “uh huh” and “mhmm”s, his noises of agreement as he listened to Liss, and they watched him smile and smile into the receiver’s mouthpiece. Eventually, Rosie and Liss had talked so long that he had to feed more change into the payphone. They peeled off to sit at a nearby table. Gale watched Rosie, and he watched John—shoulder-to-shoulder with Nash. When Curt rose to go back inside and find a bathroom, Gale went too.

“Well, yeah,” Rosie was saying to Liss, running a fingernail down the metal ridges of the payphone cord. “I was hoping you’d call too. I mean, that I’d call you. You gave me your number.”

On the other end of the line, Liss laughed.

“I did,” she said. “Are you a little bit drunk right now, Robert?”

Rosie felt the flush in his cheeks deepen.

“A little. You don’t have to call me ‘Robert.’”

“That’s what you told me your name was,” Liss reminded him, amused. “What do you go by? Rob? Robbie? Please don’t say Bert. I probably could learn to separate that name from Sesame Street, but I don’t want to.”

“Most people call me ‘Rosie.’ I introduced myself as Robert because I… you…” he stammered, then laughed at himself. Because the second we locked eyes, I didn’t know if I was coming or going, he was trying to say.

“I get it.”

“Yeah?” he breathed, relieved.

“Yeah.”

Her straightforwardness terrified and reassured him—and not much could do either. It didn’t make his heart beat any slower though. That Poesque organ was pounding in his chest, making itself known. He felt like he’d been seen when he hadn’t even realized he’d made himself visible. In this way, it seemed to Rosie that love was a terrifying game of laser tag. He hadn’t used the word “love” out loud—not to the boys, certainly not over the phone to Liss—but Rosie was possessed of a quiet certainty that love was happening to him, completely unexpected.

“It was trivia night here,” he told Liss, when someone used the rear exit of the Barracks and a swell of sound escaped as the door was pushed wider. “You should come sometime.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said.

He wished she were there already. Had he not been drunk, he knew he would’ve been driving to meet up with her. He recalled Curt’s early attempts on his skateboard, how Curt had said that what you had to do before anything else was find your center of gravity so you could keep your balance. Rosie believed that was what he was experiencing: he’d found his center of gravity. It felt to him as though he was suddenly aligned with a force of considerable magnitude. A powerful feeling—and yet he grinned into the phone like a kid.

Meanwhile, the boys had decided it was worth getting another round, since Rosie was taking an unexpectedly long time on the phone. Bubbles offered to go back into the bar. John accompanied him. They wove between tables and joined the end of the line. Bubbles didn’t seem to mind waiting, but after John had stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tapped his foot for about thirty seconds, scanning the busy bar, he felt too antsy to keep standing there.

“I’m gonna go look for Curt and Buck,” he informed Bubbles, raising his voice to be heard though they were beside each other. “That alright?”

“Ok! You know where I’ll be!”

John nodded and twitched his mouth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He slipped away through the Barracks’ front doors. This didn’t put him outside. The Barracks, though a pub, was a university establishment, connected to campus via more than its patrons; it was located in the back of the Philosophy building. The front door exit dumped John into a distinctly institutional corridor, from the sickly pastel paint on the walls to the rectangular lights littered with the shadows of trapped flies overhead. He strolled down the hall, letting the sound of the bar lessen and blur. The bathrooms were way at the end, past the water fountains.

He didn’t see Curt and Gale standing by the bathrooms, and he hadn’t really expected to. There was nothing to do in this hallway. John’s plan was to walk to the end then turn and continue on to the entrance hall. He figured the boys were probably outside, smoking on the front steps. Maybe getting a little high. That would have explained why they’d taken so long to come back to the group. They’d probably lost track of time.

John was smiling as he pictured this, coming upon the two of them with their brows furrowed, spliffs pinched between the fingers they pointed emphatically at one another as they said the dumbest shit they’d ever said in their lives. Yeah, he’d take a hit too, then wrangle them, shoo ’em back to the patio. Casting his eyes into classrooms each time he passed a door with a window, John idly decided he would walk the boys around the outside of the building instead of backtracking. This hallway, he thought, killed the lively atmosphere of the Barracks. It was just too—

He stopped like someone had stopped him. Physically. He forgot how to walk or blink or breathe. It wasn’t until his jaw clenched that John remembered he had a body at all—it had all gone numb.

The ache of his teeth startled him back into himself. Reanimating, he hurried down the hall. He didn’t know if the bathroom was empty, only that the closest stall was. He slammed the door wide. It hit the wall with a bang, and, like a pair of dice, John threw himself to his knees on the cold tile floor. He hadn’t had that much to drink, but he braced his forearms on the toilet seat and retched into the bowl until he shook, until snot ran from his nose and tears from his eyes. When it was over—taking the immeasurable as-long-as-it-takes that time was unfairly doled out in when one was in the throes of being painfully ill in the liminal space of a (probably) empty men’s room at the end of a quiet hallway in a darkened Philosophy building on an interminable June night—John felt as hollow and contorted as a bendy straw. He wiped roughly at his mouth with the back of his hand before collapsing against the wall.

Finally, he reached up to shut the stall door, fumbling limply with the lock. It was too late and not the kind of protection he needed, but he wanted the illusion.

—

As in many places, the thing to do for fun in Casper, Wyoming as Gale had grown up had been to ride bikes all day long. The summers had been wide, Casper Mountain crumpled like a bedsheet on the southern horizon. Gale’s routine had involved picking up his bike from where he’d dumped it at the side door on his way in to dinner the previous evening and roaming in lazy loops—not the kind of reliable routes the mailman did, but Gale would’ve inevitably run into a friend who’d been doing the same thing. When there had been a few of them, they’d ridden towards the train station. His friends had always liked crisscrossing the tracks on the way, ducking under the lowering gate and laughing at the flashing red warning lights. Gale had done this too, his face marked with a cold determination the other kids didn’t really understand, the rest of them whooping and bumping their wheels across the tracks.

In the parking lot, they had chattered and loitered, leaning their bikes against the train station. Gale had stayed astride his, paying little attention to the others. With his shoes planted on the asphalt and his chin atop the arms he’d folded over his handlebars, he’d watched people arrive from Laramie and Denver and Salt Lake City. But before that, before the cars had disgorged their passengers, there had been the sound of the train pulling into the station. The screech. The low huffs, so alluring to Gale that that had been the sound to call him towards the tracks, rather than the jangling alarm at a crossing. He hadn’t given in—he’d known better—but he’d closed his eyes to better hear it breathe.

The huffs of Curt’s breathing took Gale back, but this time, the warm push of air was right there on his cheek. Their mouths moved together. Except for the breathing, Gale didn’t think Curt had ever been so quiet for so long.

It had been a lot of little things that week. Or not so little, only seeming small because it was as if Gale had viewed them through a telescope. Breaking up with Marge was one. Because she was so far away, that hadn’t made a big change to his life, but it felt like a long-attached tether was suddenly gone and he’d discovered a fuller range of motion. He hoped she would too. On top of that had been the in-class discussion of the woodchopper, and Curt’s mystery hickey last weekend, and Curt’s unembarrassed insistence that Gale read Giovanni’s Room, and Curt still by Gale’s side when John’s lips met Nash’s forehead. Gale didn’t want to date Curt, but he wanted to take a page from his metaphorical book and make out with somebody outside a bar without thinking too hard about it. In some half-examined corner of his self, he’d needed it, and Curt had been amenable, and then there they’d been.

Gale had been private with Marge too, so it hadn’t felt so different—after Gale had found himself looking at Curt with half-lidded eyes, Curt with his heated stare on Gale’s mouth—to step into a vacant classroom and close the door. That much was the same. And it was a surprise to Gale that kissing a man didn’t feel like Kissing a Man; it just felt like he was kissing Curt, as he had once kissed Marge. There was a zing of giddy lust without any deeper sense of romantic devotion, but Gale didn’t think that had anything to do with Curt not being a woman. They were friends—a little drunk, a little horny—who happened to be comfortable with each other. Which made it so easy for Gale to fist Curt’s t-shirt at the base of his neck as his pulse thundered through him like a departing train, and for Curt to go along with it.

Curt smiled at the parts of Gale now being revealed. This knowledge wouldn’t go anywhere, wouldn’t mean anything, and so it was fine to enjoy Gale’s uncompromising aggression. He had taken control so quickly and so thoroughly that it could almost have been his idea. Except Curt knew better. He knew every small opening he’d given Gale, a million ways to come close if he wanted that, never really believing that he did until their eyes had met in the bathroom mirror and Curt had watched Gale’s cheeks bloom a dark, velvety pink.

I thought there was Bucky, Curt thought, but Gale wasn’t hesitating, kissing him roughly over and over, so Curt didn’t ask.

In a while, they went outside and found the boys where they had left them. Only John was absent. Curt slid into one of the benches and Gale sat on the edge of the table. It didn’t seem like anybody’d missed them; there were drinks on the table and some idiot had brought up the essays they’d submitted to Professor Harding, so everyone was talking about what they’d written, liberally badmouthing Thoreau as the font of all their grief. Gale didn’t want to think about schoolwork, but he didn’t want to attract everyone’s notice by demanding a new topic, so he sat quietly.

When John appeared, Gale straightened as though called to attention. John didn’t look well, somehow.

“What the hell, man?” Bubbles said to him, more confused than angry. “You never came back! I had to wave my arms until Croz saw me through the window and came to help me carry drinks!”

John just muttered, “Sorry,” and stood apart from their table.

“Everything ok?” Rosie asked.

John could tell he didn’t want to, that he was still enjoying the high of his phone call to Liss, and that John was bringing down the mood. But he couldn’t help it. He let his mouth stretch into an insincere, close-lipped smile and let out a quick, “Yep.”

Rosie watched him uneasily. The entire tableau had frozen: the perfect picture of a group of friends on a night at the bar. John stared at Rosie until he nodded slightly, understanding that something was definitely not ok, but that they weren’t going to talk about it. Talking about it was not a strong suit for either of them.

“We’re invited to a party,” Rosie said, now that everyone was there.

The news thawed the boys just enough; Rosie answered their questions. Next weekend. Yes, Nash, Helen would be there. Yes, she and Liss were roommates. Yes, all the boys were invited, but nobody had better make Rosie look bad or he would give them shit like they had never been given shit before. He was already looking forward to it, seeing the inside of a place that wasn’t just one of their regular haunts, though he intended no offence to the familiar. Rosie liked having something to come back to, but he liked having someplace to go.

They left the Barracks that night still talking about it, the dark sky twinkling far above Nash and Rosie’s excitement, and Crosby’s guilty yearning, and Curt’s contented libido. In the dorms, he tapped Gale’s elbow with his own before bounding down the hall towards his room. It wasn’t an invitation, just a farewell; he didn’t expect Gale to go from never having kissed a guy (he hadn’t said, but Curt assumed) to the whole enchilada in one night. There was no pressure. Curt didn’t think either of them wanted to turn a few minutes of messing around into anything more than that.

And Gale was aware that he should’ve felt relieved by how Curt left it, but he didn’t. He trailed John into their suite, full of unspoken dread.

“John,” he finally said, when the door was shut.

“What?”

But John was moving towards his bedroom, not even looking in Gale’s direction. Gale knew, he knew already, but it wasn’t enough. For some reason, he had to feel this too: what he knew he would feel when he looked John in the eye.

But John was a baby, and he wouldn’t allow it.

Gale sat tensely on the couch, waiting in case John emerged from his bedroom. He turned on the TV, tried to read. He chewed his lip until he couldn’t stand it and whipped The Portrait of a Lady across the room, angry at himself, angry at the soft crush of pages hitting the opposite wall. God fucking dammit, John! he wanted to yell. Gale was furious because it wasn’t right that he had done this thing—this rare, uninhibited thing, the huff, huff of Curt’s panted breath—that he told himself wasn’t about John at all and now John was punishing him by refusing eye contact. He wanted to make John look at him.

Gale had never intended for him, for anyone, to see. Part of what frustrated him was his own discomfort. He was trying not to let that sour what he and Curt had done. John wouldn’t care, Gale was certain, that he’d spied Gale kissing a man; he’d never known John to exhibit that kind of prejudice. But something was eating John, and if John had seen—and Gale harboured no doubts—then Gale wanted to read it in his eyes.

They read books, mostly. They found meaning. Gale wasn’t sure he could decide what this had meant for him until he learned from John’s eyes what it meant for them.

He waited another fifteen minutes, then he went to bed.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

University of São Paulo Study: Public Policy Gaps Hinder Bus Fleet Electrification in Brazil

According to the latest data from the E-BUS radar , the Brazilian electric bus fleet is behind other Latin American countries such as Chile, Colombia and Mexico. As one of the main alternatives for decarbonizing the automobile sector, the electrification of public transportation in Brazil guarantees the country more than 500 electric buses, but it is not enough to surpass the countries mentioned. In an interview with Jornal da USP no Ar 1ª Edição , Professor Adriana Marotti de Mello from the School of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Actuarial Science (FEA) at the University of São Paulo says that the replacement that many countries are making of internal combustion vehicles has to do with the dependence on oil imports, their energy sources and also the commitments that these countries have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as improving energy efficiency.

“Here in Brazil, we have had a renewable fuel alternative since the 1970s, which is ethanol. That is why we do not have a more urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by replacing petroleum in vehicle use, nor are we heavily dependent on imports, since Brazil is an oil producer,” she says. According to her, this explains the lack of action by federal, state and municipal governments to seek a transition to vehicles — especially passenger vehicles — that use a lot of ethanol.

However, the professor comments that replacing public transportation with cleaner alternatives, especially buses, is something that is more encouraged in Brazil, since many are powered by diesel engines. More polluting than gasoline itself, she warns that diesel emits not only carbon dioxide, but also particulate matter from other toxic gases, and its replacement could indicate advantages for Brazilian society in terms of public health and improved air quality. Furthermore, actions aimed at improving public transportation are already more advantageous in themselves, since its use provides a greater benefit to the population as a whole, reducing congestion and democratizing access to transportation.

Continue reading.

[zerogate]

An even broader investigation by James J. Lynch of actuarial and statistical data on victims of cardiovascular disease indicated that an astonishing percentage of the million or so Americans killed by heart problems each year have an underlying difficulty that seems to trigger their sickness: “lack of warmth and meaningful relationships with others.” On the other hand, research in Europe suggested that kissing on a regular basis provides additional oxygen and stimulates the output of antibodies. Closeness to others can heal. Separation can kill.

The cutting of the ties that bind can be fatal even in the wild. Jane Goodall, who has studied chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream preserve of Africa since 1960, saw the principle at work in a young animal named Flint. When Flint was born, his mother adored him. And he, in turn, doted on her. She hugged him, played with him, and tickled him until his tiny, wrinkled face broke out in the broad equivalent of a chimpanzee smile. The two were inseparable.

When Flint reached the age of three, the time came for his mother to wean him. However, since Flo, the mother, was old and weak and Flint was young and strong, this proved difficult. Flo turned her back and tried to keep her son away from the nipple, but Flint flew into wild tantrums, lashed about violently on the ground, and ran off screaming. Finally, a worried Flo was forced to calm her son by offering him her breast. Later, Flint developed even more aggressive techniques for ensuring his supply of mother’s milk. If Flo tried to shrug him off, Flint struck her with his fists and punctuated the pummeling with sharp bites.

At an age when other chimps have freed themselves from parental apron strings, Flint was still acting like a baby. Though he was a strapping young lad and his mother was increasingly feeble, Flint insisted that she carry him everywhere. If Flo stopped to rest and Flint was anxious to taste the fruit of the trees at their next destination, the hulking child would push, prod, and whimper to get her moving again. Then he’d climb on her back and enjoy the ride.

When shoves and whines didn’t motivate his mother to pick him up and cart him where he wanted to go, Flint would occasionally give the exhausted lady a strong kick. Although Flint was old enough to build a sleeping nest of his own, at night he insisted on climbing into bed with his mother. In the course of normal development, Flint should have turned his attention from Flo to the other chimps his age, forging ties to the superorganism—the chimpanzee tribe—of which he was a part. But he did not, and the consequence would be devastating.

Flint’s mother died. Theoretically, Flint’s instincts should have urged him to survive. But three weeks later, he went back to the spot where his mother had breathed her last and curled up in a fetal ball. Within a few days, he, too, was dead.

An autopsy revealed that there was nothing physically wrong with Flint: no infection, no disease, no handicap. In all probability, the youngster’s death had been caused by the simian equivalent of the voice that tells humans experiencing a similar loss that there’s nothing left to live for. Flint had been cut loose from his single bond to the superorganism, and that separation had killed him.

Social attachment is just as vital to human beings as it is to simians. Research psychiatrist Dr. George Engel collected 275 newspaper accounts of sudden death. He discovered that 156 had been caused by severe damage to social ties. One hundred and thirty-five deaths had been triggered by “a traumatic event in a close human relationship.” Another twenty-one had been brought on by “loss of status, humiliation, failure or defeat.” In one instance, the president of a college had been forced to retire by the board of trustees at the age of fifty-nine. As he delivered his final speech, he collapsed from a heart attack. One of his closest friends, a doctor, rushed to the stage to save him. But the strain of losing his companion was too much for the physician, and he, too, fell to the floor of the platform, dying of heart failure.

-- Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History

[marsneedstherapy]

silas in accounting, actuarial studies, or law school. my little nerd <3

REAL

[shalomniscient]

ARCHIVIST’S TRIVIA: FAFNIR [HSR]

◆ Fafnir is an extremely meticulous individual, especially when it comes to managing her business and her money. Although she has a secretary, their duties are simply limited to ensuring the casino runs smoothly—by making sure equipment has proper maintenance and keeping inventory. All financial information and decisions are personally handled by Fafnir.

◆ Due to her long lifespan, Fafnir has had the oppurtunity to attend university several times over, for several different courses. Currently, she holds these degrees: a Masters in Business Management, a Masters in Business Administration, a Masters in Accounting and Finance, a Masters in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, a Doctorate in Actuarial Science, a Doctorate in Data Science and Analytics, and a Doctorate of Juridicial Science (specifically in Corporate and Interastral Law). This gives her a grand total of 4 Masters Degrees and 3 Doctorates.

◆ In addition to her degree in Accounting and Finance, Fafnir is also a chartered accountant.

◆ Fafnir is excellent at mental math.

◆ Fafnir is a well-respected member of the Intelligentsia Guild, having published her Doctorate theses and a few other publications through the Candelagraphos. Hence, it is not uncommon to see Intelligentsia Guild members studying statistics to be ‘testing’ the machines at Gnitaheath.

◆ Fafnir knew and was friends with Ruan Mei’s grandmother, who was also a member of the Intelligentsia Guild.

◆ Fafnir guards her documents on all her finances with the same ferocity as she guards her money.

◆ Fafnir is about 400 years old.

◆ On the level above Fafnir’s vault in Gnitaheath is an extensive library. Some of the books in this library are up to a few hundred, even a thousand years old. They are relics of her past lives, and although Fafnir does not know what they meant to her previous selves, she painstakingly preserves each and every one. The library is a strictly restricted zone, only accesible to Fafnir and perhaps any extremely lucky guest.

◆ Fafnir enjoys paperwork. She finds it relaxing and reassuring to know the goings-on of her casino in quantitative terms.

◆ Unfortunately, Fafnir is near-sighted—so whenever she does sit down to do paperwork, she needs to wear glasses.

◆ Fafnir’s familiartiy with interastral and corporate law coupled with her expertise on various other mathematical and business subjects makes her somewhat infamous in the IPC, since it is incredibly more difficult to entice Fafnir into prematurely signing any deals or contracts. To IPC agents, getting stationed on assignment to Gnitaheath and dealing with Fafnir is colloquially known as a punishment.

◆ After Topaz’s ‘failure’ at Jarilo-VI, she was stationed at Gnitaheath. Surprisingly, Fafnir and Numby get along well—likely due to the fact that both of them are very good at ‘sniffing out’ profit. Topaz, on the other hand, did not have a good time.

◆ Fafnir’s weapon of choice in combat is a sword called Gram. It was once used to try to kill her—but Fafnir defeated her would-be killer and took the sword for herself.

◆ In both human and dragon form, Fafnir’s tail is prehensile. In human form, Fafnir can use her tail to immobilise someone or defend herself from attacks.

◆ If Fafnir is fond of you, her tail will curl around your feet as a sign of favor and protection.

◆ Fafnir wears cologne. She typically goes for dry woods/leather scents that have a smoky accent to them.

[battleangel]

Hallucinatory & Dreamlike: Problematizing the Balletic Violence in the NFL & NCAA

I have never been as emotionally affected by any piece of media whether it be a film, novel, album, television show, documentary or otherwise as I have by a recent video I just viewed by former NFL lineman Jared Odrick entitled “Am I Crazy? – Damar Hamlin Prelude”.

Please, give it a watch as it is only 3 and a half minutes long.

Jared’s description of the prelude is as follows:

“Why are we so willing to ‘live & die by the games we play’….but then so quickly abandon the game’s importance when someone’s life is threatened? What is the value of making heroes out of players if we know they’re just playing a game that doesn’t really matter? Well - I’d argue that it does matter. Whenever a tragedy like this happens in #football, I take it as an opportunity to reflect on my current #CTE investigation. A tragic event like this helps us all reassess value, tone & messaging when trying to connect with football families looking for answers. I’ve asked myself a lot of questions since leaving football behind. Flying private with foes, in emergency rooms with friends - but most recently, sitting silent in my house watching a heart attack on National TV…”Am I giving consideration to all the various elements at play? Risk. Disease. Resilience. And the acceptance of Death.” Sometimes during a tragedy like this, when very little information is being released - but even less medical information…pop-media struggles to assess the underlying meaning of football….”What are we doing & why?”

Certainly, with Tua suffering yet another concussion which caused yet another fencing response resulting in him having to be stretchered off the field after a tackle by Damar Hamlin, who we just saw die live on our TV sets on Monday Night Football two seasons ago, and this is Tua's fifth concussion in as many seasons — two of which Tua played through just last season — and Tua's obstinate refusal to even consider retirement and, far from it, him standing at attention on the sidelines during the entire Dolphins game this past Sunday — I'm sure what Tua's concussed brain needed was NOT a stadium full of 70k screaming fans, bright lights, constant noise but who cares, right?

Tua is there to captain his troops.

And now with Brett Favre announcing his Parkinson's diagnosis at 54 which he testified in front of Congress today he believes was caused by the hundreds, and very likely, thousands of concussions he suffered during his NFL career.

And the NFL's own actuaries confirming in a study that they predict that 1/3 of NFL players will be diagnosed with a neurological condition or disorder — that is NINETEEN TIMES the average of non-NFL players.

And finally, a study was released yesterday that found that 1/3 of former NFL players believe that they have CTE.

I wanted to ask — what does the violence we see every Saturday & Sunday mean?

What happens if we problematize the balletic violence we are presented by the NFL & NCAA every single weekend?

What is it about the violence in football that is so alluring, so balletic, so much like a dark ballet or opera?

What is it about the violence, bodies in motion, athleticism, feats of courage, physicality, athletic grace that is so magnetic, exhilarating, cathartic, devastating, addictive, atavistic & mythological?

How might we filter that violence through a different lens than what the NCAA & NFL presents it as and see it for what it truly is?

I have always felt that the moment of a football tackle — a hit — was devouring.

In Josh Begley's "Field of Vision: Concussion Protocol" montage of every concussion that occurred during the 2017 to 2018 NFL season slowed down and in reverse, Josh said in an interview with The Intercept that he felt that the moment that a concussion occurs is "devouring", however, I've always felt that the so-called "normal" and routine everyday violence in football — the typical tackles inherent in football itself — were devouring, violent, brutalistic, unrelenting, merciless and inhumane.

As you may imagine in our football obsessed society, my protestations of the brutalistic violence inherent in football itself were dismissed as hypersensitivity.

Despite this, I always felt that the "normal" tackles often occurring in the open field at 20 to 25+ mph with human beings literally smashing and crashing into one another at full speed was inhumane no matter how much the violence was normalized during every broadcast of every game, sanitized by the network's presentation, sanctioned by the overly legalistic rules of the game and embraced, rationalized, handwaved, justified & eye rolled away by the ever rabid and bloodlusting fans.

I have done extensive research on tackle football, concussions, brain damage, CTE, neurological conditions & disorders (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia & ALS), chronic pain, opioid addiction, early deaths, suicides, mental & physical trauma, PTSD and more resulting from playing the sport of tackle football for nearly ten years. I have read hundreds of scientific and academic research articles regarding the same as well as former NFL player autobiographies, blogs, interviews and more.

As my research deepened, so did my concerns and cognitive dissonance towards the NFL as an organization and the sport of tackle football itself. I eventually ended up researching, reviewing and reading former players and players families lawsuits against the NFL, NCAA & Pop Warner as well as contacting non-profit organizations, player advocates and attorneys regarding these lawsuits.

In addition to the above, I also started writing articles regarding my observations, thoughts & musings on the above mentioned issues as well as the NFL's very well-earned and deserved reputation of League of Denial. I'm constantly doing ongoing research into these issues and have about 100+ browser tabs open at any given time in my mobile browser.

While researching the NFL being a bloodsport, I came across the documentary I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, "Am I Crazy?" by former NFL lineman Jared Odrick.

Specifically, the Damar Hamlin prelude video.

I instantly started sobbing towards the end of the video when the football tackles were slowed down, reversed, pixelated, distorted then the players were shown disintegrating with haunting background music playing over the almost hallucinatory dream-like sequence and disturbing imagery.

This is what football violence is actually like slowed down and reversed without any of the pageantry or sanitized presentation with men in suits with microphones presiding over the carnage.

To see the slow damage that befalls many football players who later succumb to neurological disorders like CTE, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lewy Body Disease, ALS and dementia from the thousands of subconcussive head impacts they endured throughout their football careers artistically represented by the violence the players were dishing out in terms of hard hits and tackles while other footage showed players on the receiving end of devastating hits and ferocious tackles reflected in the prelude by the players themselves becoming distorted and pixelated, their images slowly disintegrating similar to what progressive neurological conditions actually do to former NFL players which is slowly deteriorate and disintegrate them and break them down over time to the point where they are broken shells of their former selves and it was hits just like the ones shown in the prelude to the documentary – the thousands of hits endured by players from Pop Warners to the Pros that leads some players to a debilitating and disabling cognitive decline which they never recover from.

I was so used to people telling me both in real life and online that I was being overly sensitive or that I was just plain wrong about how disturbed I've always felt by the violence in football.

I had never before seen someone express what I have always felt since I was 14 years old in 1996 watching Chad Pennington get knocked around like a human pinata — that the violence in football was inhuman and inhumane.

Hard tackles would bother me for days on end and I would play them back in my mind without meaning to – I would randomly just get the images and they would play in my mind during the course of my day.

The artistic and haunting presentation of the violence in Jared Odricks “Am I Crazy? Damar Hamlin prelude video” distorts and defamiliarizes what is all too familiar – a hard violent football tackle – and thus problematizes what is presented as totally ordinary – a good old fashioned football tackle or a nice, hard hit as any football fanatic would say.

It made me cry so hard my eyes hurt. The every game, every snap, every down violence that at all times is simultaneously and paradoxically denied, legitimized, excused, endlessly consumed, defended, handwaved, sanitized, commodified, commoditized, packaged in plastic, Photoshopped, presented in cinematic 4K glory, sanctified, glorified, Americanized, militarized, consecrated and presented to the viewing audience for mass consumption while almost never being actually questioned had finally been not just questioned in an intellectual, academic and scientific way but in a humanized, empathetic, emotionalized, artistic, haunting, disorienting, hallucinatory way.

Maybe what adrenaline, pain, the rush of 70k roaring fans, smoke-filled tunnels and hysteria feels like.

I was honestly so affected by the “Am I Crazy? – Damar Hamlin prelude video” that after sobbing, I immediately woke my husband up at 1 am when he had work later that morning and forced him to watch it.

My husband is a South Jersey born Philadelphia Eagles fanatic who is a simple dude that just wants his football, adrenaline rush, spectacle and pageantry. It's his weekly escape and he's not really trying to "get that deep with it" outside of my numerous articles, text messages, IMs, emails and countless conversations with him regarding the disturbing violence that is inherent to the sport of football itself which he does read in their entirety and he does give me his honest thoughts about but rest assured it did not keep him from watching Eagles Saints this past Sunday.

As anyone who is honest I think can admit, once you start to actually look closer at the actual violence in football, it gets harder to just turn your mind off and "get ready for some football" once you actually think about how the sausage is made so to speak.

I have yet to watch the entire hour long plus “Am I Crazy?” documentary by Jared Odrick but I plan to do so later this month when I have the time to really sit down, watch, digest and contemplate the documentary in its thought-provoking, artistic and emotionally evocative entirety.

Just from viewing the prelude videos, it is clear that “Am I Crazy?” delves into the sport of tackle football and the interplay of capitalism, politics, militarism, patriotism, masculinity, exploitation, violence and other intersectional societal factors.

Although I have very rarely ever watched college football – only when someone else had it on and I was visiting their house – Jared Odrick’s Youtube short for “Am I Crazy? Episode 3” literally haunted and disturbed me so much.

In fact, the picture at the top of this blog post are screencaps from, "Am I Crazy? Episode 3".

I attended Rutgers from 2002 to 2007 and the football team was doing very well during my last few years of attendance and definitely by the time I graduated.

I absolutely refused to ever attend a Rutgers football game despite my husband, at the time my boyfriend, being a fanatic and attending all their games.

As you can read above, I have always had cognitive dissonance towards the sport of football as well as a natural aversion towards the violence inherent in football itself.

But college football literally disturbed me on a different level from the NFL and the Jets games that were always on at my parent’s house – uninsured athletes making their schools billions who are left to pay for their own injuries out of pocket was a different level of exploitation that made me feel literally physically ill.

When 86% of NCAA Division 1 football players are below the federal poverty line yet their coaches are paid millions and are some of the highest paid employees in their state, we do have a fucking problem.

During the time I attended Rutgers (2002 to 2007), this was before NIL so not only were those athletes not paid but they couldn’t even make any money off of their status as college athletes as their schools were disgustingly able to do with jerseys, videogames, licensing deals, network TV deals, streaming apps and more.

Only .06% of NCAA Division 1 college football players ever actually play a down in the NFL. Not practice squads. Actually suiting up and playing in a game. You know. The dream?

.06%!

Put another way, there are 100k NCAA college football players every season.

There are only 1,600 NFL players.

That is some very unforgiving math.

But beyond the violence, exploitation and straight up racism – keep in mind, that over 50% of NCAA Division 1 football players are Black yet Black men only make up 6% of the US population – the mass hysteria I witnessed on game days at Rutgers fucking terrified and unnerved the living hell out of me.

I would literally be filled with existential dread that would induce physical nausea.

The mass hysteria. The unthinking elation and ecstasy. The screams and school chants in unison by over 80k people.

The face painting. The unthinking crowds. The mobs. The fervor. The pageantry. The spectacle. The tradition. The unrelenting violence.

The feeling it evoked in me was reminiscent of the worst examples of mob violence that I could envision ever reading about in history from the French Revolution to lynchings.

It was insidious, pervasive, pernicious, suffocating, dark and sickly.

The unthinking hysteria that unnerved me to my literal core just walking past the Rutgers students with their faces painted red and black decked out in game day gear waiting for the buses on College Ave to take them to the stadium.

I have never seen anyone else capture the unease, dread and unnerving feelings that the mass hysteria endemic to college football has always induced in me as Jared Odrick does in “Am I Crazy? Episode 3”.

Please watch it – it is less than a minute.

The all white. Like a fever dream.

The men screaming and yelling their faces distorted in what appears to be rage but is pure unbridled unhinged fanaticism.

The students — thousands of them — all dressed in white running down the steps in an extremely unnerving blurred mass of total and complete hysteria.

White white white students – you did catch that, didn’t you?

To watch players — where Black men are way overrepresented as they are 52% of NCAA Division 1 college football players but only 6% of the US population — beat, tackle, hit, collide with and hurt each other.

All for the fans' delirious school spirit. For their delirium. For their unhinged unbridled ecstasy. For their fervor and elation. For their religious orgiastic pleasure.

Who cares about brains being damaged permanently and concussed?

Who cares that college football players — the vast vast majority of whom never make it to the NFL, less than 1% — have a much higher chance of developing neurological conditions and disorders like CTE, Parkinson's disease, ALS, Alzheimers and dementia from tens of thousands of subconcussive hits to the head accumulated over a lifetime of playing tackle football from Pop Warner to the Pros?

Many college players start as children as young as 8, some as young as even 5 – so by the time they are done with collegiate football at around 21, they have already endured potentially 10 to 15+ years of repetitive head impacts.

On average, Pop Warner players (aged 5 to 14) endure 336 head impacts a season.

High school football players endure 600 to 1000 head impacts a season.

College football players endure 1000 head impacts a season.

That is a lot of fucking head impacts even for those players who stop at the college level and never make it to the NFL – over 99% of them.

And the fans deliriously cheer on the helmets clashing & smacking together, the head hits, the collisions, the players running into each other at 20+ miles per hour, the unmitigated violence.

All for school spirit and school pride. All for tradition and spectacle and pageantry. All for emotional release. All for being in a mass crowd. All for hysteria. All for elation and ecstasy. All for religious fervor. All for orgiastic ecstasy. All for mindless indulgence.

All for screaming, yelling, school chants, school songs, school pride, school spirit.

All for catharsis.

All for being one with 70k to 100k other screaming fans.

All for the mob mentality.

All for drinking and getting drunk. All for rushing and storming the field. All for getting caught up and swept up in emotion. All for a cathartic release. All for a vicarious experience.

All for the glamorized violence, the gloss, the marching bands, the cheerleaders, the patriotism, the brightly colored uniforms, the jets flying over the stadiums.

All for students scrambling their brains and minds and breaking their bodies for you.

All for injured students being stretchered off the field.

All for players – most of them still teenagers under 21 – risking life, limb, brain and mind just to entertain you.

Just to give you your school spirit.

Just to give you your mindless escape.

What must that be like – as a player – feeling all that bloodlust, that elation, that hunger, that mania, that mass hysteria, the screams in unison, the school chants and songs, the eruptions, the mob, the screams, the yells, 100k people all dressed in white, the violence, the stadium so much like a bullfighting arena, you the warrior out to give the tens of thousands in the stands and the millions watching at home – they, safe and secure in the stands and on their couches – you, vicariously fulfilling their gladiatorial fantasies.

You being urged on by your coaches not to let the fans down, to make them proud – these people you dont even fucking know and have never even met before yet you are risking your literal health, mind, brain, body and fucking life for – to make your school proud, to go out there and give it every single thing you’ve got, to never give up, to fight, to play through your pain, to play through every injury, to go out there and be their warrior, be their Roman shield…

What is that like for the men who aren't in the stands, drinking, eating, imbibing, vibing, laughing, talking, cheering, screaming, dancing, singing, taking selfies – what's it like for the men on that field risking serious debilitating and incapacitating injury on every single down on every single play – what’s it like for the men on that field risking catastrophic injury and paralysis – what’s it like for the men on that field constantly incurring & accruing permanent brain damage, suffering concussions, risking future memory loss, amnesia, personality & behavioral changes, suicidality, aggression, volatility, mood swings, violent behavior, difficulty swallowing, breathing & moving their muscles in their 30s, in their 40s, in their 50s and will they even live to see their 60s?

What’s that like for the men who can never show even a single solitary ounce of fear or any hesitation whatsoever – as they have been trained and brainwashed not to since they were kids – who have to walk out into the gladiatorial arena – to the mass hysteria – to the screaming mob of 70k to 100k fanatics all decked out in their school’s colors – one hysterical massive blob of flesh all decked out in the same identical school colors – terrifying in its insanity and intensity – yet you as a player have to be a cool customer, a cool hand Luke, never betraying fear nerves or anxiety – cool, calm, collected, confident, cocky – tough, high energy, braggadocious, ready to sacrifice yourself on every down, to give your body up on every single play, to leap to tackle to hit to collide to sneak to lower your shoulder to deliver the boom the hit stick stiff arm to lower your head to gain the extra yardage to run through the wall to hit opposing players and run through them like theyre not even there to play hurt to play injured to be shot up drugged up pills popped wrap it up tape it up shoot it up numb it ice it ice tub hot tub absolutely anything to stay on the field where the gladiators belong…

I think it feels exactly like what Jared Odrick showed in this short for his CTE documentary and what I would always feel when I would see groups of Rutgers students all decked out in game day gear waiting for the buses that would take them to the game.

I felt cold. I felt shivers. I felt nausea. I felt existentialist dread. I felt fear. I felt loneliness. I felt physically sick.

I felt an insidious, pervasive, thick, suffocating, mindless, mob-like, violent, delirious, manic, zealous, bloodthirst, bloodlust, fanatical emotion that was hungry, sick, pulsating and alive.

It felt exactly like Rome with their gladiators.

It felt exactly like a Spanish bullfighting arena with their toreadors.

It felt like bloodlust and death mixed with a sickening excitement and feverish delirium.

It felt like the fever dream Odrick presented in his short.

It felt hallucinatory and dreamlike.

It felt like a dark ballet, a violent opera, a dark pageant.

It felt like death and like resurrection, a public execution, a guillotine in the middle of the blood-soaked streets.

It felt like teen spirit and esprit de corps.

It felt like heaven and hell.

It felt like a nightmarish dream and a dream that was a nightmare.

Between Jared Odrick’s “Damar Hamlin Prelude video” and his “Am I Crazy? Episode 3” short which were both previews of his full-length “Am I Crazy?” CTE documentary, I felt this surreal existentialist moment because I had never before encountered someone – much less a former NFL player – who had artistically and emotionally depicted in a haunting and distorted manner the problematic balletic violence and dark spectacle and pageantry that is so inherent to both the NFL & NCAA.

It unnerved me, made me cry so hard I sobbed & my eyes hurt, as waves of nausea washed over me and I instantly recalled how I felt when I would see the students at Rutgers on College Ave waiting for the bus to take them to the arena so they could see their gladiators hurt and maim themselves and each other for their entertainment to roars of approval.

I felt sick as I thought back to how many times I had watched “regular” hits, tackles and collisions in NFL games and I was wholly disturbed by the violence, the sanitized viscera, the glamorized destruction, the devouring violence on display slowly destroying these men in slow motion decades after they stop playing – while it doesn’t happen to all players, we also don’t know the percentage of how many NFL players develop neurological conditions and disorders like CTE, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, Alzheimer’s and dementia from the thousands of head impacts they endure throughout their playing careers – so the truth is, out of the NFL players that the audience is cheering on today – how many and which ones will end up like Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Andre Waters, Justin Strelczyk, Mike Webster, John Mackey, Ken Stabler, Earl Morall and literally hundreds of others?

Unable to recognize their own children when their wives show them pictures like John Mackey?

Committing suicide like Seau?

Dying in agonizing pain with severe memory loss, confusion, dysfunction, amnesia, emotional volatility, aggression, suicidality, personality & behavioral changes, violent behavior, hallucinations, mood swings, disabled, unable to work, living in a nursing home, unable to walk, unable to feed or clothe or bathe themself?

How many? 10%? 20%? 50%? 90%?

What number of players dying agonizing and excruciating deaths in slow motion oftentimes without dignity and alone is too high of a number for the fans?

What is an acceptable number?

Even if the number is 10% – do those 10% not matter at all just because they are outnumbered by the 90%?

Should anyone willingly sign up – often as a child – for debilitating neurological conditions and disorders that the thousands of repetitive subconcussive head impacts in football have been proven to cause such as Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS and dementia?

LBD, what John Mackey was diagnosed with which led to him eventually not even recognizing his own children, is particularly debilitating, physically painful and agonizing and often leaves sufferers with a severely affected gait, unable to walk, having difficulty swallowing, breathing, moving their muscles, feeding clothing and bathing themselves, and often the individual dies within 5 years of being diagnosed.

It is estimated that NFL players on average live up to 22 years shorter than non-NFL players.

Is any game worth that?

College football is even worse – players are bigger, stronger, faster & hit harder than high school and you are taking 1000 hits to the head every season where high school football is estimated on average to be 600 to 1000 hits to the head every season – but there are no multimillion dollar contracts just a scholarship that can be taken away from you at any moment NIL or not the vast majority of these athletes are not being paid directly by their schools only select Big 10 schools offer direct payment so the reality is often times dictatorial coaches can remove your scholarship due to injury, underperformance, etc. The players fate lies in their coaches hands. Remember, 86% of all NCAA Division I athletes live below the federal poverty line. While the NCAA does have a pooled insurance for certain catastrophic injuries, absolutely everything else is the financial responsibility of the player who as I just stated is usually coming from an impoverished background where their parents do not have benefits so they are without health insurance paying out of pocket for the violence exacted upon them on the field that will not be covered under later insurance plans as it will be considered pre-existing conditions so any broken bones torn ligaments tendons post concussive syndrome migraines dizziness nausea arthritis joint replacement surgery torn tendons injured groin herniated discs broken back neck spine fractures degenerated joints bone muscles neurological conditions disorders CTE Parkinsons Alzheimers dementia LBD ALS is all paid for completely out of pocket by the player and their families.

It is totally exploitative and unfair to the athletes and nobody gives a damn.

Here comes Saturday night!

All that risk, all those hits to the head, incurred by the players alone, never by the fans who cheer so deliriously for the violence they endlessly consume.

College students unlike NFL players also do not have a union to advocate on their behalf so unlike the NFLPA that got hitting in practice greatly reduced to “only” 14 practices a season – college students are at the literal mercy of their coaches who once again can take away their scholarships at any time and there is no enforceable NCAA limit to how much college football players can hit each other in practice so it is left to the discretion of their coaches as the NCAA only issues guidelines that are not enforceable.

Only the Ivy league has had the courage to remove hitting from practices — five years ago and not one college has had the balls to follow suit.

A study conducted in 2017 determined that three quarters of concussions suffered by the college football players studied over the course of one season occurred in practice – those concussions are avoidable if these coaches would show leadership and reduce full contact in practice.

But no one protects college football players.

They aren’t in high school anymore so they are treated as adults yet they have no union to protect them as NFL players do and most of them are under 21!

NFL football. NCAA football. Big 10. SEC.

The dark ballet. The dark seductive pageant. The dark alluring spectacle.

The Roman colliseum.The spanish bullfighting arena.

Your gladiators await…

[sixstringphonic]

Opinion: What a doctor sees when Joe Biden hesitates

Daniel J. Stone, March 7th 2024, The Los Angeles Times

As a geriatrician, I discuss the effects of aging with patients every day. I wish I had a chance to give my usual talk to everyone who chortles or tears their hair out about President Biden’s fitness for his job.

First, memory. I explain to patients that there are three components to consider. One is formation. Then storage. And, finally, recall. The most common issue among seniors is slow recall. This is the familiar “tip of the tongue” phenomenon, when a word seems to hide or a name won’t come to mind. You know the name, it’s in your bank of memories, it just can’t be accessed quickly. Given time, it usually arrives.

This problem, called age-associated memory impairment, often starts for people in their 30s and gradually progresses. It’s a nuisance but not disabling. If, like me, you find yourself using the term “whatchamacallit,” you probably have it. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, is a different story. Those affected lose the ability to store new memories. They can still access old memories in their memory bank and may recount events that occurred decades ago. But they can’t tell you what they had for breakfast because that never entered the memory bank. (I reassure my patients with age-associated memory impairment by asking whether they remember their breakfast. They do.)

Alzheimer’s is cognitively crippling. Losing the ability to form new memories freezes one in time. Those affected can’t make new friends or address new situations without fresh memories. Additionally, the disease progressively impairs other domains, including behavior and ultimately physical skills.

Fortunately, President Biden shows no signs of Alzheimer’s disease. At news conferences, he references new events and obviously creates new memories efficiently. He speaks slowly and pauses to find words like others with benign age-associated memory impairment. These issues are exacerbated by a chronic speech impediment. Biden has struggled with stuttering since childhood, and remnants of the condition have long been apparent in his speech.

Unfortunately, word hesitations coupled with the mild stutter can’t help but affect his public speaking. Biden’s political opponents and the uninformed exploit it, along with stereotypes about older people, to create a false narrative about intellectual impairment.

I take care of many high-functioning seniors like President Biden in my practice. One that I know, who is not a patient of mine, has been my family’s lawyer for five decades. Melvin Spears, at 96, recently responded to an emailed legal question with succinct and well-targeted advice, as he always has. When I spoke to him, he acknowledged some concessions to his age. He speaks more slowly, and transportation is a challenge because he’s stopped driving. (He considers Uber and Lyft “a hassle.”) Like Biden, Spears focuses on his work and lets others worry about his age if they choose.

Studies show that high-functioning seniors like Mel Spears and the president compensate for slower reaction time by applying superior knowledge and judgment. The presidency is not a job that requires lightning-quick reflexes. First-hand experience with the successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy over decades, for example, combined with time-tested judgment offers far more than speed in speech or decision-making.

Actuarial tables show that the 81-year-old president’s life expectancy extends nearly eight years, well beyond a second term. He gets excellent healthcare, has no major chronic illnesses, and at his recent physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, he was declared “healthy, active” and “fit for duty.” All that means that Biden is likely to beat the actuarial estimate. Given his overall health and the absence of current cognitive impairment, he would likely complete a second term with stable cognition.

All candidates for political office in the United States deserve to be evaluated on their accomplishments and capabilities rather than by their age. Seniors may be the last minority whose natural traits are singled out for ridicule and stereotyping. If the American people disagree with President Biden’s policies and prefer change, they should support his opponent. But in the absence of valid evidence of true cognitive impairment, their judgment should not be influenced by ageist social stereotypes. Biden and the American political process deserve better.

Daniel J. Stone is an internist and geriatrician in Beverly Hills.

[mellifiedman]

Don't want to go back to work after vacation is over so I'm scrolling through alphabetical degree programs on the cuny website and pitching each one to Dan. Speech-language pathology? Sure, maybe that could be my new calling. Computational mathematics? Puerto Rican & Latino studies? Actuarial science? Why not all 3 at once??