#Covid contrarian

[trendynewsnow]

Trump's Controversial Health Appointments and Their Impact on Infectious Disease Policy

Trump’s Controversial Health Picks and Their Implications President-elect Donald J. Trump has already stirred significant unrest within the nation’s public health and biomedical communities by the time he revealed his selection of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As concerns mount regarding a potential deadly bird flu pandemic, the anxiety among experts in…

[yessoupy]

they take a little while to get to the interview, but the interview is SO. GOOD. I could listen to this doctor talk about this topic for HOURS.

[wat3rm370n]

The tycoons are now demonizing remote work in government and planning a purge.

Government Executive -  Trump’s ‘DOGE’ commission promises mass federal layoffs, ending telework The incoming administration will handle large-scale RIFs with compassion, Vivek Ramaswamy says. November 18, 2024 01:40 PM ET “So this is a historic opportunity. We're not actually going to squander this.” He added that reductions to telework and relocating agencies would help motivate employees to leave government voluntarily. He called it a “dirty little secret” that most federal workers “don’t even show up to work.”  About 80% of the federal work hours are currently spent in-person, according to a recent Office of Management and Budget review, and more than half of federal employees do not telework at all because their jobs are not conducive to it. Of those who do telework, employees on average spent about three-fifths of their time on site.  “If you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won't want to do that,” Ramaswamy said. “If you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great. That's a good side effect of those policies as well.”

The dirty little secret is that this anti-telework agenda is about tycoons who don’t want to pay their fair share after getting rich exploiting the rest of society. This agenda against work from home is about tycoons who are jealous that talented people choose to work for the government, doing work that is a benefit to society, and want to force them into bullshit jobs in private industries, just to avoid in-person office work for various reasons, including disability (declared or undeclared). This hostility to remote work is about commercial real estate wanting butts in seats downtown for the economic finances of real estate moguls and the investors that treated real estate investments like a casino. The pandemic accelerated a trend toward telework already happening, and ramped up real estate investor exposure to loss, and they want to socialize that loss. And this anti-telework agenda is about fossil fuel interests wanting everyone to continue arduous fuel-intensive pollution laden dangerous harrowing commutes to jobs that don’t need to take place in an office, and which are often done more efficiently remotely.

Return to office and dying on the job

Denise Prudhomme's bosses at Wells Fargo insisted that the in-person camaraderie of their offices warranted a mandatory return-to-office policy, but when she died at her desk in her Tempe, AZ office, no one noticed for four days.

That was in August. Now, Wells Fargo United has published a statement on her death, one that vibrates with anger at the callously selective surveillance that Wells Fargo inflicts on its workforce:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WellsFargoUnited/comments/1fnp9fa/please_print_and_take_to_your_managersite_leader/

The union points out that Wells Fargo workers are subjected to continuous, fine-grained on-the-job surveillance from a variety of bossware tools that count their keystrokes and create tables of the distancess their mice cross each day:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Wells Fargo's message to its workforce is, "You can't be trusted," a policy that Wells Fargo doubled down on with its Return to Office mandate. Return to Office is often pitched as a chance to improve teamwork, communication, and human connection with your co-workers, and there's no arguing with the idea that spending some time in person with people can help improve working relationships (I attended a week-long, all-hands, staff retreat for EFF earlier this month and it was fantastic, primarily due to its in-person nature).

But our bosses don't want us back in the office because they enjoy our company, nor because they're so excited about having hired such a swell bunch of folks and can't wait to see how we all get along together. As John Quiggin writes, the biggest reason to force us back to the office is to get a bunch of us to quit:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/26/in-their-plaintive-call-for-a-return-to-the-office-ceos-reveal-how-little-they-are-needed

As one of Musk's toadies put it in a private message before the Twitter takeover, "Sharpen your blades boys. 2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures":

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

The other reason to spy on us is because they don't trust us. Remember all the panic about "quiet quitting" and "no one wants to work"? Bosses' hypothesis was that eking out a bare minimum living on from a couple of small-dollar covid stimulus checks was preferable to working for them for a full paycheck.

Every accusation is a a confession. When your boss tells you that he thinks that you can't be trusted to do a good job without total, constant surveillance, he's really saying, "I only bother to do my CEO job when I'm afraid of getting fired':

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

As Wells Fargo United notes, Wells Fargo employees like Denise Prudhomme are spied on from the moment they set foot in the building until the moment they clock out (and sometimes the spying continues when you're off the clock):

Wells Fargo monitors our every move and keystroke using remote, electronic technologies—purportedly to evaluate our productivity—and will fire us if we are caught not making enough keystrokes on our computers.

The Arizona Republic coverage notes further that Prudhomme had to log her comings and goings from the Wells Fargo offices with a badge, so Wells Fargo could see that Prudhomme had entered the premises four days before, but hadn't left:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe-breaking/2024/09/23/wells-fargo-employees-union-responds-death-tempe-woman/75352015007/

Wells Fargo has mandated in-person working, even when that means crossing a state line to be closer to the office. They've created "hub cities" where workers are supposed to turn up. This may sound convivial, but Prudhomme was the only member of her team working out of the Tempe hub, so she was being asked to leave her home, travel long distances, and spend her days in a distant corner of the building where no one ventured for periods of (at least) four days at a time.

Bosses are so convinced that they themselves would goof off if they could that they fixate on forcing employees to spend their days in the office, no matter what the cost. Back in March 2020, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge – then the highest-paid CEO in America – instituted a policy that every back office staffer had to work in person at his call centers. This was the most deadly phase of the pandemic, there was no PPE to speak of, we didn't understand transmission very well, and vaccines didn't exist yet. Charter is a telecommunications company and it was booming as workers across America upgraded their broadband so they could work from home, and the CEO's response was to ban remote work. His customer service centers were superspreading charnel houses:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#sociopathy

That Wells Fargo would leave a dead employee at her desk for four days is par for the course for the third-largest commercial bank in America. This is Wells Fargo, remember, the company that forced its low-level bank staff to open two million fake accounts in order to steal from their customers and defraud their shareholders, then fired and blackballed staff who complained:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/26/495454165/ex-wells-fargo-employees-sue-allege-they-were-punished-for-not-breaking-law

The executive who ran that swindle got a $125 million bonus:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/wells-fargo-ceos-teflon-don-act-backfires-at-senate-hearing-i-take-full-responsibility-means-anything-but.html

And the CEO got $200 million:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html

It's not like Wells Fargo treats its workers badly but does well by everyone else. Remember, those fake accounts existed as part of a fraud on the company's investors. The company went on to steal $76m from its customers on currency conversions. They also foreclosed on customers who were up to date on their mortgages, seizing and selling off all their possessions. They argued that when bosses pressured tellers into forging customers on fraudulent account-opening paperwork, that those customers had lost their right to sue, since the fraudulent paperwork had a binding arbitration clause. When they finally agreed to pay restitution to their victims, they made the payments opt-in, ensuring that most of the millions of people they stole from would never get their money back.

They stole millions with fraudulent "home warranties." They stole millions from small businesses with fake credit-card fees. They defrauded 800,000 customers through an insurance scam, and stole 25,000 customers' cars with illegal repos. They led the pre-2008 pack on mis-selling deceptive mortgages that blew up and triggered the foreclosure epidemic. They loaned vast sums to Trump, who slashed their taxes, and then they fired 26.000 workers and did a $40.6B stock buyback. They stole 525 homes from mortgage borrowers and blamed it on a "computer glitch":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#too-big-to-jail

Given all this, two things are obvious: first, if anyone is going to be monitored for crimes, fraud and scams, it should be Wells Fargo, not its workers. Second, Wells Fargo's surveillance system exists solely to terrorize workers, not to help them. As Wells Fargo United writes:

We demand improved safety precautions that are not punitive or cause further stress for employees. The solution is not more monitoring, but ensuring that we are all connected to a supportive work environment instead of warehoused away in a back office.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/27/sharpen-your-blades-boys/#disciplinary-technology

[wat3rm370n]

Doctors who spread medical misinformation have been free to do so.

Covid contrarians repeating false information have not typically faced much in the ways of consequences. Anyone who makes claims of “cancel culture” or any kind of “silencing” of “opinions” by fringe covid contrarian doctors or anti-vaxxers is NOT telling the truth. Legal research has shown that doctors who have peddled in false covid claims have almost never been disciplined. 

In Pennsylvania, and in Florida, zero physicians were ever penalized for misinforming patients or the public about covid. 

CIDRAP - Medical boards almost never discipline doctors who peddle false COVID claims, legal researcher says - Mary Van Beusekom, MS, Nov 13, 2024 No New York physicians were disciplined for any misinformation offenses, and no Florida or Pennsylvania physicians were penalized for misinforming the public. "Even within the small number of actions involving misinformation, the data shows that boards are far more comfortable disciplining physicians for misconduct involving direct patient care than addressing erroneous public statements," Saver said in a UNC news release. "Yet false public communications may cause wider harm."  "These findings suggest a serious disconnect between regulatory guidance and enforcement and call into question the suitability of licensure regulation for combatting physician-spread misinformation," he noted in the study. "In today's digital age, when a single physician spreading misinformation can influence thousands of people, our regulatory framework may need to evolve," he added in the release.

One should never assume that something really out there must be true just because a doctor feels free to say it. And it’s not wrong to seek a second opinion. 

And doctors really need to shut up about their little myth of cancel culture - especially ones with lots of money, huge platforms, and government influence.

Who What Why - The Loudest Voice: Who Is GOP COVID-19 Expert Jay Bhattacharya? Walker Bragman 03/29/23 For his unconventional views, Bhattacharya has been showered with media attention,  particularly from right-wing media — but not exclusively. He has been given column space in a number of publications to make his case. This brand building has allowed the professor to amass hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and establish himself as a prominent dissenting voice in the national discourse around public health measures. Bhattacharya has made at least 37 appearances on Fox News since the pandemic began, which other right-wing outfits like Breitbart and the New York Post have amplified. But he has appeared on CNN. He has also been quoted in many outlets from The Wall Street Journal to The New Yorker, The Washington Post to The Daily Caller. Beyond giving quotes to reporters, Bhattacharya has gotten to make his case himself, writing for a number of publications including the WSJ, The Hill, The Daily Mail, and Newsweek.

[mylittleredgirl]

just convinced my dad to get a covid booster and a flu shot even though he has reportedly “never had a flu shot in his life.” i pointed out that he’s going to florida where “almost no one” (exaggerated) will be vaccinated, meaning that he should protect himself, but his eyes lit up and he blew right past my argument into “oh! so i’ll be a contrarian!!” YES dad that’s exactly right. don’t be a square. fight the mainstream. make a bold counter-culture statement by not dying of the flu this winter.

[covid-safer-hotties]

How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism - Published Aug 7, 2024

Widespread distrust of our public health system is reviving long-debunked ideas on HIV and AIDS—and energizing a broad movement that questions the foundations of disease prevention.

Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the former evolutionary biology professor turned contrarian podcaster Bret Weinstein, agreed with him: The “evidence” that AIDS is not caused by HIV is, he said, “surprisingly compelling.”

During the show, Rogan also asserted that AZT, the earliest drug used in the treatment of AIDS, killed people “quicker” than the disease itself—another claim that’s been widely repeated even though it is just as untrue.

Speaking to the biggest podcast audience in the world, the two men were promoting dangerous and false ideas—ideas that were in fact debunked and thoroughly disproved decades ago.

But it wasn’t just them. A few months later, the New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, four-time winner of the NFL’s MVP award, alleged that Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, had orchestrated the government's response to the AIDS crisis for personal gain and to promote AZT, which Rodgers also depicted as “killing people.” Though he was speaking to a much smaller audience, on a podcast hosted by a jujitsu fighter turned conspiracy theorist, a clip of the interview was re-shared on X, where it’s been viewed more than 13 million times.

Rodgers was repeating claims that appear in The Real Anthony Fauci, a 2021 book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a work that has renewed relevance as the anti-vaccine activist makes a long-shot but far-from-inconsequential run for the White House. The book, which depicts the elderly immunologist as a Machiavellian figure who used both the AIDS and covid pandemics for his own ends, has reportedly sold 1.3 million copies across all formats.

“When I hear [misinformation] like that, I just hope it doesn’t get traction,” says Seth Kalichman, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and the author of Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy.

But it already has. These comments and others like them add up to a small but unmistakable resurgence in AIDS denialism—a false collection of theories arguing either that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS or that there’s no such thing as HIV at all.

The ideas here were initially promoted by a cadre of scientists from unrelated fields, as well as many science-adjacent figures and self-proclaimed investigative journalists, back in the 1980s and ’90s. But as more and more evidence stacked up against them, and as more people with HIV and AIDS started living longer lives thanks to effective new treatments, their claims largely fell out of favor.

At least until the coronavirus arrived.

Read the full article at either link! (the covidsafehotties archive is always free of annoying in-line ads, jsky!)

[barryogg]

So The Grauniad published an article about how the voters incorrectly believe that the US is in a recession, and people here are discussing the plebs gaslighting themselves, so I'd like to propose some possible explanations:

A median person when asked this will not care about the formal definition of "recession" and will instead interpret the question as vibes: "Is the economy doing ok or not?" and answer accordingly.

"But the economy is doing ok!" Sure, but I'm only getting started. Consider these:

In a period of significant inflation, even if the wage increases match the inflation (and that quite an assumption), people will feel that someone pulled a fast one on them because they earn "more" only to end up in the same place.

The above is only about earnings. What about savings how many people have their saving primarily in cash? 40%? 50? Inflation is a tax on the poorer part of the society in that way, decaying whatever they managed to save.

While many of the markers are looking good, the costs of higher education, medical care, and homeownership in the US are decades-long problems. The stuff was fucked long before covid and will be fucked long after it. People feel dread about it, and are projecting that dread about the state of the rest of the economy.

People were repeatedly lied to about mostly everything during covid, trust in basically any media is at decades-low so people default to contrarianism when anyone tells them the economy's doing good.

Specifically, some stocks were hitting ridiculous highs when the economy was still in the 2020-2021 shitter, so people are primed to distrust those.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Dude conspiracy theorists are insufferable. Obviously yes you should question what you're taught but assuming the exact opposite position of whatever you deem as mainstream isn't free thinking. Sometimes the mainstream view is the correct one. Sometimes people saying crazy shit is just people saying crazy shit like the holocaust happening is a pretty mainstream view. According to conspiracy logic, the holocaust didn't happen because the holocaust happening is a mainstream widely held view. Question what you're told but also don't automatically assume your view is strengthened because you're being needlessly contrarian.

Yep. And it's gotten worse since Trump was elected and so many things that the mainstream has dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" have been proven true. The most 9/11 truthers I've seen since 2012 or so was right after the CDC pivoted to "actually the vaccines don't stop you from getting covid" and the media admitted the lab leak was actually probably what happened. Nah dude, just because the government and the media literally couldn't lie anymore in the face of all the evidence of a few things doesn't mean George Bush paid the aliens to drop Bigfoot off in New York to destroy the Twin Towers.

It's just a different form of post-modernism. "Everything you think is true is actually wrong! It's only the fringe stuff that's always right!"

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Rupen Savoulian

Numerous left wing writers and activists – the term left wing being a broad brushstroke – have moved into the rabbit hole of COVID denial MAGA ultrarightism. Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, among many others, have descended into a contrarian position from the libertarian ultraright. It is no exaggeration to call it a fascist contrarianism.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. a long term environmental lawyer and activist, has metamorphosed into a MAGA supporting far right political figure. Starting with the respectable-sounding position of vaccine hesitancy, RFK has moved decisively to the far right.

His journey is indicative of a widespread phenomenon – leftists who move right wards on an anti scientific trajectory. They remain contrarians – fascist contrarians, ultra libertarian opponents of publicly funded services, such as health care and education.

[glacierbash]

Y'know, any time I start to talk about this game, I feel obligated to lead with the funniest fact I have: I absolutely hated Final Fantasy, for myriad reasons both personal and amusing. I hated, for example, the way Elezen were shaped. I hated that Lalafell looked so young. I hated that everybody acted like it was so great, and by sheer contrarian nature I decided I would simply never play this game. And for quite some time, that worked! I'd bombard my partner with whatever media algorithms recommended me involving FFXIV, just to make fun of it. I detested this MMO, without having ever tried it. And yet, deep down, I knew I wanted a community. I wanted to be around people, even if through an online medium. When I worked at the library, my coworker set up a WoW private server that I spent some time fucking around in, but deep down I wanted people. Try as I might, I couldn't deny some part of me wanted to see what the game was all about.

So, I tried it. I spent 30 minutes exactly between opening the character creator to first posting a name that, genuinely, would define more than 2 years of my life: Iverelle Vauvenelle.

I spend about 2 days playing the game, one being chased around by strangers who my partner swore were good people, and one just questing on my own--and it was fine. I got to MSQ level 24, quite literally one quest away from being able to travel to other city states, and I stopped. I played my fair share, I played 5 hours, and I decided the game wasn't for me. I put it down for several months, when I was approached by somebody who I am no longer friends with. He said I should play the game again, keep going just long enough to travel to Gridania, so that I could see one of his alts--and maybe, we could play together! I didn't want to upset him, so I said "fine," and gave it another try.

By the end of the week, I was finishing up ARR, and moving into post patch, and something just... Changed for me. I'm not sure what it was, honestly. It's not like the game magically changed for me then, or if Iverelle had become perhaps my most meaningful character ever, but something shifted, and I found myself enjoying the game. It didn't even make sense to me then when I bought a subscription to the game, but I knew that something here was special. I just... Had to.

Post patch took me about a month, with multiple days spent stressing out over queuing into Good King Mogglemog out of fear and anxiety, because the trial was labeled as hard and my disorder was, frankly, at its worst. But, I managed to do so anyways. The victory was meaningless for most people, but for me? It was beyond words, just how important it was that I did content with other people, especially considering I went through all of ARR solo.

I made it to the end of ARR, to the infamous cutscene, when I realized I was sick with covid. In VC with two of my friends, I said the infamous line: "I think I have a fever." What a way to enter Heavensward, huh? I think it is in no small part due to Covid that Heavensward ended up being my favorite expansion of all time, and why Ysayle Dangoulain ended up being my favorite character of all time. Sickness and quarantine gave me all the time in the world, and being far too sick to be anxious, I sped through the story. One week later, I was done with Heavensward.

And of course, by now, I am finished with Endwalker and awaiting Dawntrail. For 2 years of my life now, I have been playing this game nigh daily. I stay up late playing it, I finish my daily responsibilities as soon as possible to play it, and I find myself enjoying it. I never thought that would happen, truth be told. More importantly than enjoying the game itself, though, is the friends I met.

I have lived a very isolated life. Partially due to my anxiety making me extremely averse to interacting with people, and partially due to how I've been raised, I struggle a lot with people. Autism, anxiety, and having not been properly socialized made me terrible. I longed for new friends, but I hated the effort that went into it. Imagine my surprise when one day, I found myself driving out to meet people who I play this game with, to spend time with them? When I found myself wanting to meet them?

And yet, here I was. I was driving out to meet these people who I play this game with--and more importantly, they wanted to meet me. Even as I think back on that day, I start to tear up. It was one of the most important days of my life. Were it not for this game, for playing it daily, for being dragged into a Free Company and for sitting in calls with people because of this game, I would not have known these people. They are some of the most important people in my life.

I think of the late nights playing Mahjong, or doing PVP, or treasure maps, or just sitting around talking. I think of those nights and then having to wake up early for work, waking up exhausted but so happy. I think of staying up until damn near 5 in the morning talking about whatever it is that comes to mind. I think about stupid inside jokes, and shared experiences, and the stories that I'll tell for years to come.

It's just a game. Final Fantasy XIV is, at the end of the day, just a game--and yet, that game has served as a way for me to grow as a person in ways I've never thought possible. My anxiety has not magically been cured, mind; but, when I'm able to talk to strangers and my heartrate doesn't skyrocket, when I'm able to do things in this game that once terrified me, when I'm able to exist comfortably not just in this game but in the outside world, I realize that it's done more for me than I'll ever be able to say. Yes, it is just a game, but people play a game due to a shared interest, no? And through that shared interest, friendships can blossom. To say that I love my friends, the people I met ultimately because of this game, would be an understatement, and I fear I do not make that clear enough.

Stupid as it is to say, Final Fantasy XIV has changed my life, for the better. Dawntrail is coming in just a few short hours, and though I am a whirlwind of emotions, the predominant one is excitement. I was there for the end of an era, and now I am here for the start of a new one.

So thank you. If you read all the way through this, thank you. If you skimmed just to the end, thank you. Thank you to my friends, especially. I would not be here as I am now were it not for you all.

Here's to a new adventure, friends :^] (Second screenshot featuring: @gailiag, the best viera on hydaelyn)

[rozecrest]

i played slay the princess for the first time yesterday! it was really cool!! i have covid so i was like i need to make this day memorable for a different reason and distract myself so i'll finally play this game (similar reason i started reading dunmeshi -- but that was just a scare)... gonna talk about my full run under da cut this post got long. spoilers, of course

okay so i knew a little about this game in that i saw a few screenshots of the princess looking Different so i knew she changed but i didn't know anything about then narrator or the voices or the vessel (that's what i took to calling our handsful growing god we brought gifts to. i think it's a fitting name thematically if technically incorrect) or the looping game mechanics which i'm glad of!

run-through of the main actions i took

first loop: questioned the narrator intensely, did not take the knife, chose to keep course of saving the princess after she lightly threatened me for dithering about it, the narrator took control of my body and i warned and resisted until she killed me. i meet the damsel and the voice of the smitten, argued with the narrator, slipped the princess' hand from her chain and asked her what she wanted over and over until her drawing simplified enough that it seemed painful so i let it go, we left together and she was taken... and i met the vessel for the first time

second loop: i shirk the call and refuse to go to the cabin just to see what will happen. there are infinite fractal cabin. the world ends. the stranger begins! i meet the voice of the contrarian and take the harsh stairs and have the worst icy trip of my life. i talk to the stranger until she shatters and shatters and shatters and i have no choice but to slay her/save her/every option until she combines into a three-bodies-joined princess, and the vessel takes her

vessel interlude of note: speaking to Her this time i felt confident that i ccould kind of do whatever and not ruin things, and find my way back to Her. i decided to choose to slay the princess. i wanted to see what would happen

third loop: the princess is quite rude this time, which makes the choice easier. i play at deciding whether i should rescue her for a bit, and the strike. we fight. we both die. do you really think this is the end? i wake up and meet the adversary. don't take the blade and i refuse to fight. it causes her agony. she kills me. she becomes the fury. i believe i gshe kills me awfully and says it will be forever. the vessel takes her anyway

having the time of my life on priv btw

fourth loop: i speak to her for a while, and am unsure what path to take, so i leave, and push the table up against the door, and go to sleep. the princess comes to me anyway. i die of fright. she says she will not forget. i wake up to the nightmare. i believe this is where i meet my favorite voice, the voice of the paranoid (the voice of the hero is narrowly second to him in my ranking). absolutely love him chanting your organs into function, it creates such a good rhythm and tension to the moments. the nightmare and i get all the way to the cabin door and i kill her. on impulse, and because it felt like at the time that violence had been my least utilized path. she takes me with her. i am falling, falling, falling. i choose to throw away the knife. i die terribly.

i reach a third chapter for the first time! the wraith :)

i love how fucked up the road looks. and this is maybe my favorire cabin entrance..

she breaks my ankle, i let her possess me, she walks me out to her freedom, she is taken.

fifth loop: i don't remember how, but i reach chapter two: the witch. (on second thought: i think i had an almost identical run to the very first meeting. i am taken over again, but i cannot resist. i am killed) my utena senses immediately start tingling even harder, and this was correct to happen. and for the life of me, i cannot remember what i did here! and don't feel like checking history.. i think i gave her the knife? because in the next chapter, the thorn, she already has it. and i did not kill her.

i made her trust me, and i did not break it. as a lesbian, this chapter was emotionally manipulative. of course i was going to save her. of course i wanted her to trust me, and keep it. her being taken made me terribly terribly sad, she was ready for a future, gone now.

i went to the mirror. the narrator took me instead. i've grown to resent him by now, how he spins the princess and the player against each other over and over, encouraging my worst violences. i had told the vessel once that when i found him i would kill him. my desperate want for answers got in the way. and he was dying anyway. i asked them until he was ready to shatter on his own. i told him the truth: that i was still deciding what to do, and i wanted a hand in that choice to be hers.

endgame! fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i rejected godhood. i spoke to all the gifts i had given, which was really cool and affecting, loved that. i found the hero, and we went to her heart.

i was VERY indecisive. i wasn't sure what could get me what i wanted, which was of course a breaking of the cycle, a forging of something new, walking to the outside world lesbianly etc etc. on my first go of the cabin at the heart of the princess, i took the knife. i chose to because i felt more often than not i had chosen not to take it. i felt validated when the hero said it was wise, that it tended to give us more options than it didn't. considering who he was, i shouldn't have listened LOL

first: i chose to kill her. i hated the choice, but i wanted to see what would happen. i became a god and saved the nameless world and broke from the constructs. my voices came back, pissed, and decided to beat me with hammers forever, lol

i reloaded a save for a very first time. second: i chose her option. i was on a path to the cabin in the woods. i had a job to do. credits roll. MISERABLE ! deeply fun that it's an option, but miserable.

i mulled on what i could do to change things for a bit. i had been saving often throughout, at places of interest or nexuses of change, so i had plenty of options. it came to me like a bolt. of course! don't take the knife!

third: we left together. utena ass ending. we can always build new roads ! i am sentimental and was deeply invested in the princess' freedom and happiness and possibility fo life outside this violent cycle we were bound in, so i was happy to tell her i loved her, open the door together, and leave, close the game, and let that world be final. for now :)

last thoughts: i really enjoyed that. i'm always saying i need to play more visual novels and i really really do they rule they rule! the art in this was so cool! the voices were so creative! i liked the writing style a bunch! i loved how settings shifted. i loved how branching it felt, like there was always something new to try. always enjoy when a game just closes on you and greets you again when you open in like the vessel did that one time. good game !

things i want to go back in my saves and try at some point

becoming Gods and letting the world fall away with her

breaking the narrator before He can die on his own

breaking my body in a meeting with the vessel

killing the vessel before She has collected enough selves

and also trying to find more of the princesses i missed!

scrolling through achievements i didn't get also (i got 24/97) and i saw you can kiss her. i bet its fucked up. i would like to see it

[thoughtlessarse]

Today, Stanford University is holding an all-day gathering on the Covid pandemic, with its new president making opening remarks. It’s the second such meeting at a prestigious university in recent months, after Johns Hopkins hosted a “symposium on health policy” in September. They may seem fine on the surface, but both events should be a source of embarrassment for the institutions involved. (I have a personal stake in the former gathering: I’m spending my time this fall at Stanford with a group of wonderful, truly talented researchers, who I hope do not get sprayed with the stink of this misbegotten affair.) While the organization and funding for these two meetings isn’t explicitly linked, the cast of characters at both are eerily similar. They each feature a collection of well-known Covid contrarians: those who, in the early days of the pandemic thought we should “let ’er rip” and get as many people infected as possible, with a performative nod to protecting the vulnerable; suggested that vaccine and mask mandates were somehow akin to Nazi totalitarianism; told us not to worry about variants (“variants, schmariants,” as one of them remarked months before Delta and Omicron blasted their way through the US); and said we’d have herd immunity by April 2021. If you want just one piece of evidence about the kind of cranks we’re talking about, consider this: A late addition to the Stanford meeting is a senior editor of the Epoch Times, a far-right publication that not only dabbles in Covid conspiracies but is a frequent purveyor of climate change denialism. While the organizers have tried to add a few reasonable voices to the meeting, it doesn’t change the overall thrust of these gatherings. As former Texas governor Ann Richards said, “You can put lipstick and earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it’s still a pig.”

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[progressivepower]

He Rose to Fame as a Covid Contrarian, and Trump Wants Him to Be NIH Head https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/bhattacharya-covid-trump-pick-nih-health-director/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[aphverse-confessions]

cishet zane part 2: zanechan

important to note that the cishet zane era coinsided with the rise of twt purity culture in general fandom circa covid times. you can't just not like something, it has to be 'problematic' and you have to cite your sources. like a callout but entirely ineffective because fictional character.

so people who didn't like zanechan/zane would make these posts trying to point out how 'problematic' it was, usually focusing on zane because kc was experiencing a new wave of popularity post nana reveal.

not saying zanchan is good or bad (arguably it is the healthiest canon ship tho), these are just the three takes i saw most often, in ascending length of reach.

The Crimes of Zane Ro'Meave

1. Ableism

Zane has called KC 'weird', 'loud', annoying', etc, several times on numerous occasions.

Yes, the shipping thing is objectively weird, but that's irrelevant

No, it does not matter when in the timeline this happened or if they were even friends yet, it shouldn't have happened at all.

KC can be read as ND coded, which makes this ableism instead of just being a dick.

A contrarian might point out that Zane is also ND coded, and a lot of his specific traits tend to clash with KC's, which might make interactions with her kinda taxing until he gets to know her better (ex. zane's touch averse while kc is bad at boundries). In this case, Zane should get over his internalized ableism.

2. Violence.

In episode 5 of s3, there's this scene where Zane whacks KC's hand with a yardstick a few times.

Despite the fact that this is clearly just a meme (Don't Toucha The Child) that is only relevant in one episode and Zane literally is never violent towards KC in any context outside of this one bit, it is dv he is a bad person.

3. Transphobia

With the Nana reveal, a good chunk of the fandom began to interpret KC as trans-coded (which isn't bad I am also a trans KC believer)

However, bc KC is trans-coded, 'Nana' is her deadname.

So Zane calling KC 'Nana' is deadnaming her, which makes him transphobic.

It doesn't matter that KC literally asked Zane to call her 'Nana' in private, and he respected those terms until he literally had magic brain damage and could not help it.

And then there were all these fix-it fics where Zane would turn down calling Nana by her preferred name because "KC is who she really is" like that's better??? Like???

.

[wat3rm370n]

Eric Weinstein & Jeffrey Tucker sore over not being A-List in MAGA.

They see themselves as “dissident experts” and they’re disappointed that the anti-expert movement doesn’t necessarily want wrong experts either, maybe just lackeys.

Eric Weinstein quote tweeting Jeffrey Tucker on Twitter: “MAGA doesn’t understand how administration Jobs work. If dissident experts were so hungry for jobs for personal gain they wouldn’t have been living on scraps and berries fighting this war against Washington before Trump ever came on the scene. They sacrificed their comfort for the country often scraping by. That is not the class of people asking to be made Treasury secretary on Twitter. The MAGA picture of expertise is wrong. Expertise didn’t fail. What failed is which experts we went with for 32 years. We just have the wrong experts everywhere. Don’t be afraid of non MAGA dissident experts. But they aren’t going to fall over themselves to beg for a position. The interpretation of MAGA and the campaign not reaching out is this: The transition team doesn’t understand the dissident expert landscape and doesn’t seem to care to either. It’s about loyalty.”

Sam Explains Eric Weinstein's New Batcrap Conspiracy - The Majority Report - Nov 16, 2024 Sam Seder: “the dude is literally on Twitter talking about how he should be brought in for at least one of these roles”