#He’s also an RA here at the research institution and I do not want to be distracted

[stuckinapril]

A guy just used studying for the mcat together as an excuse to get my number . Women in stem fields core

[neonacity]

ARCANE | CH.6 | NCT DREAM X READER

Summary: When you decided to apply for a researcher post in an elusive institute, you already had the feeling that you’ll be getting yourself knee-deep into something out of the ordinary. But desperate needs require desperate measures, and so you embraced the invite, despite all the alarm signals urging you to run away. What you found out was nothing you’d ever expected.

Seven boys.

Seven human deviants granted with abilities tied to the legendary Arcana Cards.

Welcome to Project Dream.

Pairing: Various Dream Members x Reader

Trigger Warnings/Themes: violence, torture, trauma, very slight yandere themes, poly dynamics, suggestive themes, language, psychological, mystery, sci-fi. Romance will take a little bit of a backseat on this one since this is more of a suspense-driven plot, but it will still be threaded in the overall story. The concept of the tarot or Arcana cards will be loosely used throughout the series. Note that I am not a trained doctor so there may be some slips here and there about medical things. Again, this is a work of fiction and I am not implying any likeness between the characterization here of the boys to their real life counterparts. I also reserve the rights to all my work—I do not post anywhere else other than tumblr. Minors DNI.

> CH. 1 | CH. 2 | CH.3 | CH.4 | CH.5

Chapter Song:

Panic Room > Au/Ra | Revolution > The Score

The harsh glare of the night lamp made your father's shadows even more pronounced as you watched him pace around his dimmed bedroom. You were standing by his door, a book tucked to your side, in your favorite animal printed pajamas that he bought you last Christmas. Your fingers gently tightened around the hard ridges of the storybook, noting with silent disappointment that your wish for him to read it to you tonight would be impossible. Again.

Your father finally took notice of you just as he zipped his suitcase closed. For a few seconds, he simply stared at your face before his gaze finally dropped to the book in your hand. You noticed, and you quickly hid it behind your back just as a look of slight guilt took over him.

"Hey honey. How long have you been there?" He asked softly as he finally picked himself up from his bed to come over to where you are. He gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear before kneeling to get to your eye level. You, on the other hand, tried to avoid his gaze.

"A while…"

"Shouldn't you be in bed now?"

You shifted your weight between your feet in hesitation. The feel of the book now hidden behind your back felt more pronounced than ever and you unconsciously dug your nails into its leather cover in the hopes of it disappearing under your touch.

"I… thought we could read a story together."

The smile bled from your father's face again as you said those words. You've always hated seeing him like this—how he looks at you with a mixture of pity and guilt. You were on the verge of taking a step back so you could disappear into your room again, but you felt him drop his hand on your shoulder to give it a squeeze.

"Did you get it from our library?" He tried to ask with a smile. You simply nodded, your eyes set on your bare feet.

"What did you choose, sweetheart? May I see?"

You hesitated before finally pulling the book out to show it to him. He took one look at its cover before gently taking it from your hand, a small smile on his face.

"The Snow Queen… Very interesting. Why this, princess?"

"I wanted to know why the Snow Queen is a bad person," you mumbled.

"Hm. You think she is a bad person?"

"She kidnapped the young boy. And put ice in his heart."

Your father didn't say anything for a bit after that, his eyes simply set on the book in his hand. It looked a little bit worn out, with some spots on its edges chipped off and faded. He ran his finger carefully down its spine, a thoughtful look in his face as he did so. He seemed to be revisiting something… memories only he has privy to.

"This was your mother's favorite book."

You glanced at him when he said that. To be honest, you've barely had any memories of your mother, so it's not like you feel particularly sad whenever she is brought up to the conversation. However, you've always seen the way your father's heart always drops at the slightest mention of her for as far as you can remember. You can't say you could entirely relate to him when he is the only parent you've ever known, but you've also always tried your best to give him the compassionate ear he needs every time he would remember her.

"I'm sorry if I can't read it to you tonight. Papa has to go on an important trip."

You didn't say anything for a while. There was no point in doing so, to be honest, since this isn't really anything new for you anymore. Silently, your father offered the book back to you.

"I already talked to your baby sitter. She'll drop by here to watch over you during the day and walk you to school. Everything you need, you can ask her, but I also left you money in case you need some. It's in the small purse under your mattress."

"When will you come back?"

He stood up again and started pulling out some files from his desk.

"I… am not sure yet, sweetie. But don't worry. I will always make sure to call or send you a postcard, okay? You like those that come from art museums, right? There might be a few close by to where I am go—"

"Can't I come with you, Papa?"

He stopped in the middle of stashing a bunch of folders into a separate bag at your question. The moment the words were out of your mouth, you were regretting them. You hated how you just blurted them out loud when you already perfectly knew the answer you would hear. It made you feel stupid and childish. Your fingers tightened around the edges of the book in your hands again, its corners digging against the pads of your hands.

Your father, on the other hand, took his time to actually give you a reply. He closed his bag with a resounding snap and hoisted it in his hand, his suitcase on the other, before going over to where you are again. You weren't looking at him, still disappointed at what you just did, when he knelt in front of you once more. Gently, he guided your face up so you could meet his gaze.

"Honey… You know we can't do that. At least, not right now… right?"

You didn't answer. He squeezed your hand with his free one in a comforting gesture.

"If I could, you know I would. But it isn't safe… Papa needs to do it alone. For you."

You hated having this conversation, loathed it with your whole being, so you simply gave a nod just to end it. Your father shot you a grateful smile, one that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"I promise I'll make it up to you, okay? When I come back, we’ll read The Snow Queen together. Will you wait for me until then?"

"Okay, Papa."

You felt him give you a pat on the head before he leaned over to press a kiss on your cheek. After a hushed goodbye and one final hug, he hauled his luggages past you to make his way out the door. You remained standing in the same spot, not even watching him leave, even after you heard him turn the lock.

You didn't really know how many minutes passed before you moved. The silence of the house pressed against your ears almost painfully, and you slowly lifted the book in your hand to stare at it again.

The clock downstairs struck twelve and gave a haunting ding. Looking up, you went towards your father's bed and curled by its foot, settling on the rug.

You carefully opened the hardbound to its first page and read the rest under the ghastly light of the night lamp.

*******

"It's beautiful, don't you think? The painting's title is The Snow Queen."

A gentle voice to your side broke off your concentration. For a moment there you actually forgot where you are, which is almost a shame given the breathtaking beauty of the art gallery you are currently in. Sicheng walked over to you now, looking handsome in his full black outfit which made him stand out in perfect contrast against the all white greco-roman design of the place. He handed you the extra flute of champagne he was holding and gestured towards the painting you have been staring at since he left to fetch your drinks earlier.

"You like it?"

You gave him a smile before turning back towards the artwork you've been admiring. Compared to the others on display, the picture wasn't particularly majestic or grand in execution, but it was also the only one that managed to capture your attention the moment you strolled into the room.

It was an oil creation by an anonymous artist showing the back of a girl in a simple white nightgown staring at an open window. Stretched out in front of her is a winter landscape painted in vibrant blues and pale yellows. A sliver of a forest can be seen in the horizon she was gazing at.

At first glance, anyone would assume she was watching over her lands, her kingdom even, if one is to consider the literal title of the picture. However, the way she held herself while gazing at the barren beauty in front of her sent you a different impression altogether. For some reason, you can't help but think that she was waiting for something, or someone, with the way she was longingly staring into the distance despite her face not being in view.

"Yes… I like the use of colors. It's a winter scene but the paints are still full of life. Too bad the artist did not leave their name."

Sicheng stepped a little bit closer to you now so he could get a better look. His shoulders brushed against your bare arms, and you mentally noted how you didn't feel the urge to move away when the distance between the two of you became intimate. Instead you surreptitiously glanced at him, wondering to yourself silently how someone can look so striking in just their side profile alone. Out of his usual boring uniform, he looked like someone straight out of a classic movie.

Saying that he surprised you tonight would be a humble understatement. For one, when he invited you to go out for drinks, you weren't expecting said drinks to be flutes of expensive champagne being offered in an exclusive art exhibition. Just like what he promised, he did message you—probably after fishing for your contact details from Cypher's employee database—with the event details along with the generous offer to pick you up in the evening. It seemed too good to be true for you, like a perfect scene taken from a cheesy sequence in a romantic movie, but it was also exactly what you needed, especially after the latest turn of events that had taken most of your concentration at work.

"I can try and ask my friend if he personally knows the artist, but I doubt the information was even disclosed to him. It's quite normal for art galleries to get anonymous pieces like this."

"You seem to know a lot about how things work here," you observed simply without taking your eyes off the painting. You felt him glance at you briefly.

"I just happened to have gotten close to this client after working on several projects with him. I'm the one who created the security of this gallery. I guess he wanted to thank me for keeping millions of his property safe."

You took a sip of your drink now and looked over to him curiously. "So all the tech at Cypher… that's also all you?"

He slightly leaned his head to the side in thought. "Not just me. I work with a team, but yes, I kinda had a hand on all of them. The security and access systems, the databases as well."

You nodded thoughtfully. You know next to nothing about tech stuff, but you have to admit; from your personal experience alone, you're pretty sure the Institute is one of the most advanced and well-secured corporations in the country.

"Thank you for inviting me here though. I really needed it," you murmured as you took another sip of your drink. Sicheng turned to look at you again, but didn't say anything for the next few seconds. You have to thank the slight buzz the alcohol gave you now, because otherwise, you would have surely blushed from the way he was staring at you.

"I'm glad you like it. I thought you would find this boring."

You laughed. "I love art galleries and museums. My father used to travel a lot and he would make sure to send me a postcard from them if there's a place close to where he is staying."

"That's sweet. Where is he now?"

Your hand stilled just as you were about to tip your glass to your lips again.

"He left for a long-term trip," you finally managed to reply.

"I see," he gave you a smile that washed down the slight tinge of bitterness in your mouth. "I have to say though, I can't really promise to always bring you to fancy dates like this one. I find them quite restrictive."

That made the corners of your lips tip upwards in amusement.

"Oh… So you're already thinking of the next one then?"

You peered at him just in time to catch the blush that crept to his cheeks. Your voice sounded casual, but you know he isn't dense enough not to catch the subtle playful lilt in your tone. He slightly cleared his throat and took a drink out of his own glass.

"Is that what I said?"

"Mm-hm. You also used the word 'date.'"

Sicheng gave a slight sigh before finally meeting your gaze.

"Well… do you want to?" He asked, his gaze innocent… hopeful.

Your heart skipped a bit at his question. To be honest, when you decided to give this a try, you really weren’t planning for a follow through of the night. He's cute and seems to be an overall nice person from what you've seen so far, but you still only have one foot in the door when it comes to the idea of dating someone from work. However, you would also be a hypocrite if you deny the growing part of you that's slowly being convinced to break your personal rule. Your best friend was right. As much as you didn't want to admit it, your work is slowly taking over your life—and not in a good way. It's not even the type of laser-focus that you usually get when you are hyper fixated on something. It almost feels like an addiction… an urge that you know you should be taking control over instead of the other way around. You wanted to know more about Project Dream and its patients. So much that it sometimes feels like a borderline obsession.

"Sicheng… I like the name."

The wayward silent thought almost felt like a punch in your gut as it intrusively floated through your mind again. You've never really seen the boys after that confusing test drill you witnessed, but you can't help but feel chills every time you remember Jaemin's last words to you. A silly part of you even felt slightly scared for Sicheng for a quick moment, though you've checked off the idea as a slight case of paranoia for now. After all, there's no way they can touch him. They have no reason to…. right?

You pushed the usual worry and focused instead on meeting the eyes of the boy in front of you. You genuinely like him, there is no doubt about that, so maybe what you are about to do now is not such a bad idea after all.

You smiled.

"I'd love to. But only if you let me choose where we should go next."

The smile Sicheng gave you in reply made his whole face light up. Your stomach did a flip, the good one that felt like a burst of butterflies this time.

"Under one condition."

"Hm?"

"Try to call me by my nickname. Sicheng sounds too formal sometimes since it’s a work name."

You laughed. "How do you want me to call you then?"

He reached out slowly for your free hand and turned it gently in his.

"Winwin. Winwin will sound cute from you."

*******

Maybe you should have skipped work today.

You knew it was too late of a thought for you to consider now as you stared at the double doors of the greenhouse in front of you with a sullen expression. To give yourself credit, the professionnal side of you did berate yourself for even entertaining the childish idea, though even that still didn’t give you enough of a push to actually take a step inside the room.

A few more long, painful seconds passed before you finally decided to actually do something. Your mood is all over the place—for good reason—but still you tried to steady yourself by taking a deep breath. You know full well that no amount of breathing exercises can do good to your mounting irritation at the moment, so you simply went ahead and tapped open the gates anyway before you could even change your mind. Besides, it's not like the boy waiting for you on the other side of them can complain any way. He kinda deserves your sour mood—by a lot, actually.

You found him seated in the middle of the greenhouse, in the space where a garden table and some benches were set up as a kind of miniature resting space in the room. He didn't turn to look at you when you approached, his eyes set on the small koi pond across from him, but you knew he heard your soft steps when he ever so slightly angled his face to the side. You stopped on the fringes of the clearing, not really saying anything.

"I read an article saying that plants can help improve someone's mood," he said, despite keeping his focus on the fishes he had been feeding from his seat. You frowned lightly at him but didn't give a reply.

"I guess it's not working?"

You pursed your lips.

"Not even a whole forest can probably make my mood better right now."

You saw the way his cheeks pulled up slightly into an amused smile from the little of his side profile that you could see. Finally, he turned to look at you from his seat.

"You're pissed at me…"

"Did you pick that up by getting in my head again, Renjun?"

This time there was a slight look of guilt that crossed his features. He sighed and finally gave you an apologetic smile.

"Can you at least sit beside me so I can apologize properly?"

You hesitated. It was obvious that he noticed your reservations from the way he stared at you guiltily.

"Believe me. I hadn't tried to look into you from the second you came in. Not even a peek. I don't think anyone needs to read minds just to see how on edge you are right now," he tapped the spot next to him then. "Please? Let me make it right."

The way he sounded so soft and soothing almost made you curse at yourself. Damn it. What is it about Renjun that makes you so confusingly at ease with him all the time? You’re pretty sure that you’re irritated at him at the moment, and yet there is something in the way that he just is that is telling you to trust him and just go.  You sighed. Whatever it is, you’re obviously not going to figure it out right now, not if you don’t give him a chance. 

His pale face lit up when you finally crossed the distance to him. You made sure to leave a respectable distance between the two of you, but even that space couldn't spare you from the way his gaze thoughtfully skimmed over your features when you finally settled on your spot. You kept your eyes on the pond in front of you, making a pointed effort to avoid his gaze. 

"Well?"

"I'm sorry… I was wrong. I shouldn't have said what I said back in the arena."

You frowned. You're expecting that, but you need to hear something else.

"And?"

Renjun took a bit to answer. You didn't need to look at him to know that he was searching for the best way to say what he was going to say next. What you didn't expect, however, was the warm feeling of gentle fingers going over your hand resting on the bench. You've barely realized what was happening when he interlocked your fingers together.

Your attention was torn between your instinct to pull away from him and zone in on what he just said. His touch was not offensive at all—he was holding you lightly so that you could easily move away if you wanted to—but there was also an odd sense of comfort that wrapped you now as his skin touched yours. What’s even more strange is that you knew it isn’t induced by anything supernatural at all. It was simply you being comfortable with him... Something that admittedly doesn't happen much with you and other people.

"I apologize for getting in your head. I didn't mean to. But I also couldn't help it."

"What do you mean you couldn't help it?"

Renjun sighed and leaned back against the bench while never breaking his hold on you.

"Lee Haechan. That boy gets on my nerves so much. Admittedly, I partly did it because I was trying to look for something to use against him. I'm sure you've noticed how interested he is in you?"

You swallowed and chose not to answer that for now. Instead, you decided to deflect the topic by opening a new one.

"You seem to be easily triggered by him. Do you often fight?"

Renjun laughed softly and shook his head. "I wouldn't call it fighting… We're friends. We grew up together. But sometimes, he overwhelms me. Partly, it is because our Arcanas are designed to oppose each other."

"Or work together… If you want to, you can complement each other," you said carefully. You saw a ghost of a smile touch his lips.

"You knew right? The other reason why I did it?"

Your gaze shifted slightly from his. You did, but it was something you haven’t really opened up to anyone, not even with Kun. Partly, it’s because you wanted to make sure you just weren’t drawing assumptions from thin air.

"You wanted to stop the test drill,” you finally said in a quiet voice. You have confirmed before walking in here that this session will be unmoderated and unwatched, but you still can’t help but be careful about your every word and move. That’s exactly how you have been feeling lately every time at work—on edge, as if a sniper’s crosshairs is always set at the back of your head.

Renjun didn't confirm it, but you did feel his fingers close just a little bit tighter on yours.

"You've figured him out… Of course."

You both went silent for a while. That was another odd thing about you and him. You barely know the boy, but in moments like this, you feel like you have an almost telepathic connection with him. You two can talk in riddles and still understand each other by reading between the lines.

"Somebody needed to step in, otherwise that drill might have ended in a disaster. Everyone just got so competitive that day. Unfortunately, self control isn’t really our strongest suit—I could even feel mine cracking—so something needed to happen to ground us back."

"Jaemin," you mumbled under your breath. Renjun smiled.

"It was a dirty trick to pull, but it worked."

You felt your breath slightly hitch at his indirect confirmation. That’s exactly what you couldn’t understand though. Haechan’s little ‘crush’ makes little sense to you already, but the boy has also made it obvious from day one that he is, in a way, openly interested in you. Jaemin, however, was different. You couldn’t understand why anything remotely related to you could set him off, especially when he made it obvious to everyone that he had zero intentions to show a peep about what he could do that day. Renjun using you as a trigger for him doesn’t make sense, no matter how much you try to understand it. 

"She knew what she was doing when she put you there as bait," Renjun said so softly that you barely caught it. You immediately got who he was referring to,  a sinking feeling setting in your stomach as you did. 

"And I don't understand why. Why me?"

"Maybe because we're interested in you."

"None of you even know me."

"That's debatable."

You frowned. There was an unexplainable glint playing in Renjun’s eyes that just opened up a thousand more questions in your head, though he didn’t give you a chance to ask them with what he did next. Slowly, he raised your hand that he was holding to his lips and pressed a kiss against your knuckles.

“So, do you forgive me? I promise not to get into your head again… ever.”

You froze. At first you couldn’t understand what he was doing, but then you felt his nails slightly dig against the palm of your hand as if he was sending you a secret code. Your eyes widened when you realized what was happening. He was pressing something into your hand—something small and thin. He smiled and gave you the slightest nod ever.

It took you everything to reign yourself in. From somewhere on the other side of the room, you heard a door open followed by a couple of footsteps. The guards have come to fetch him back.

“Alright. I trust you,” you finally said, your throat tight.

Renjun’s face lit up again. He gently let go of you and stood up the same time two men appeared from a corner. You quickly closed your fist and drew it back to yourself.

“It’s time to go,” one of the guards called out from the side. The boy turned and gave them a slight nod.

“I’ll see you again soon. Thank you for forgiving me,” he said before turning to make his way out. He was already a few steps away when he stopped and looked at you again.

“Hey, want to know a secret? There’s another reason why I did that asshole move.”

You only stared at him, half your mind still occupied by what you were holding in your fist. His smile widened at the look you gave him.

“I was a little jealous too.”

*******

The reverberating sound of the bathroom stall clicking shut sounded louder than usual in your ears. Your throat felt dry and there was a slight shake in your hands that you tried to calm as you pressed your back against the closed door to ground yourself. After taking a few quick breaths, you pulled down the toilet seat cover and settled on it before getting something from the pocket of your coat.

The piece of paper Renjun secretly handed you was already crumpled but you tried to smoothen it out as carefully as you can with your shaking fingers. When you finally unfolded it, you eyes immediately zoned in on its contents. Printed there in beautiful handwriting is a sequence of what seemed like random numbers and letters. You blinked, trying to exactly figure out what you were looking at.

Coordinates?

Not wasting another second, you pulled up your phone and quickly typed in the string of code in a map application, but not before making sure that you’ve switched to your personal data. There is definitely a reason why Renjun passed this to you in secret and the least you could do is to leave digital trails that can be followed by whoever he is keeping it from. You tried to swallow back the thundering sound of your heartbeat as you nervously waited for the application to bring back results.

It pinged back after what seemed like forever. Clutching your phone hard, you frowned as you quickly tried to digest the result on the screen. You were right. The code was a coordinate for a location, but the red pin you were seeing now seems to be set in a forest in the middle of nowhere. You frowned and tried to click on it to see more of its details. From the looks of the map alone, the spot is a few hours of drive away from the city, and at least half an hour drive from the closest housing in the area. No other details were shown on the page other than a name.

Rosewood Academy and Orphanage.

Your heart stopped. You didn’t know how long you stared at your screen, your concentration only broken when you felt something vibrate in your pocket. Pulling out your work phone numbly, you quickly held it up to your ear when you realized who was calling.

“Hey, where are you? I was about to send the report to—,” Kun’s voice came on the line the moment you answered it. You didn’t let him finish.

“Kun. Can I ask you a question?”

The man stopped, obviously a little confused by the tone of your voice.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Do you want to have drinks with me later?”

*******

You were doing such a bad job trying to stay calm as you waited for your partner to slip on the booth seat across from you. It was seven in the evening, and even though the diner you chose didn’t have as much people than others in the same area, you couldn’t stop yourself from looking around furtively to check your surroundings.

“Okay, can you at least talk to me about it now?”

You almost jumped in your seat as Kun's voice suddenly came from behind you. You waited for him to get to his seat, muttering a soft thank you as he passed you a cold bottle of beer he was adamant of getting the moment you entered the bar. You can’t really blame him for being on edge though. The poor guy had to suffer through your tensed silence for the rest of the work day despite the many times he tried to make you talk.

Now that you’re here though, you didn’t exactly know where to start. You have to thank the gods for giving Kun the patience to put up with you as you grabbed your beer and took a swig of it first in an effort to calm yourself. The moment that you put it down, you asked him the first question that popped into your head.

“Can I trust you?”

The look he gave you was a mixture of confusion and worry. You didn’t wait for him to speak, choosing instead to lean towards the table so you could drop your voice.

“Chenle. You care for him, right?”

This time, Kun’s eyes widened a little. He frowned.

“What’s going on?”

“I didn’t know who I could share this with but I want to trust you,” you said as you pulled the piece of paper Renjun gave you and passed it over to him. He immediately took it, looking confused still. “Renjun. He passed this over to me secretly earlier while we’re having our session. They’re coordinates.”

“Of what?”

You flipped over your phone to show him the map location you pulled earlier. “Have you ever heard of Rosewood Academy and Orphanage?”

Kun squinted at your phone screen and shook his head.

“No? Well you’re not the only one. I tried looking up more information about it, but apparently it has very limited footprint in the internet. A few outdated articles mentioned it, saying that it was an exclusive privately-funded school and orphanage for kids and adolescents. It doesn’t even have a website.”

“That’s strange. Homes like this advertise themselves at least minimally to the public. Is it still under operation?”

You shook your head. “I have no idea. There was no number I could call. The closest district to it is about half an hour away. I tried reaching out to its public office to ask about the place but they couldn’t give me any proper information because the building is in private, protected lands. It’s out of their watch. But they did mention something that happened there around eight months ago.”

“What is it?”

It took you a while to physically bring yourself to answer. “They said they sent the fire department there because the place was in flames and they were the closest district who could help. By the time they arrived, the building was mostly done for. They said they couldn’t find any victims, or anyone at all."

You saw the way Kun paled under the harsh overhead light of the booth. You knew he was trying to follow your train of thought, the color draining from his features as he tried to fit the pieces together in his head.

“And Renjun gave you this… why…?”

The way he asked that told you that it was simply a rhetorical question from him at this point. Still, you decided to give him an answer.

“You’ve been working for Project Dream longer. Have you ever checked the history of the boys?”

He shook his head and swallowed. “No. I haven’t bothered. There was no reason for me to. I don’t even know if I have access to it.”

“Which means, none of us even know if they joined Cypher voluntarily in the first place.”

Kun’s gaze snapped upwards to lock with yours. At that moment, you knew. You did the right thing by sharing this with him.

“Kun, what if they’re forced to be there? You told it so yourself. The tests can be rigorous. There’s a reason why Renjun gave me this address. What if they’re taken from Rosewood?”

“But why?”

You took a while to answer. “That’s the question. Have you ever tried asking yourself what Cypher really wants from them? Why are they so desperate if this is just a regular research experiment? I think the boys are passing me this message, showing me what they can do, because they’re asking for help.”

Kun didn’t react for what almost felt like a full minute. He simply stared at you before finally looking away. “I don’t know. Now that you’ve told me this, what are you—”

You reached out to grab his hand before he could even finish. You know Kun. In the short span of time that you’ve been working with him, you’ve gotten a pretty good read of his character already. He’s one who stands for facts, but he also has very strong morals. His particular closeness with Chenle and his general concern for the boys are proof enough of that. If you want to get to the bottom of this, he’s the only one you would be willing to trust the most.

“Help me,” you said now, looking deep into his eyes. “I still don’t know what’s going on here, but we have to try and dig it up. They might need our help.”

He didn’t say anything for a while, just simply stared at you as if he was weighing his choices. Finally, he sighed.

“Where do we even start?”

The wave of relief that washed over you was immeasurable. You squeezed his hand before drawing yours away.

“First, we have to find out who these boys really are. Let’s see if we can take a look at their files. Second, we need to know what Cypher wants from them. Last,” you paused, Kun giving you a look that said he already knows what you’re going to say next.

“We have to make Cypher believe that we’re still on their team.”

*******

The sound of the soles of your shoes bounced against the empty corridors of the building in an almost foreboding staccato. It was late in the evening and the lights in the sprawling hallways of the Institute had been dimmed a little, signaling the end of shift of many. You have already gotten home yourself after the talk with Kun when you realized late that you’ve forgotten to bring home an important file with you no thanks to your distracted state earlier. Any normal day and you would have let it go since you will be going to work tomorrow anyway, but you have every plan on pulling an all-nighter, simply because you already know that your brain wouldn’t be giving you peace tonight after everything that has happened. 

You ducked a little now over your purse to rummage for the keycard you need to open the door to your office. You didn't even bother to get dressed properly for the quick drive to work this time, just opting instead to throw a light jacket over your sweater since you only need to grab some files. The moment the entrance parted for you, you went straight to your desk without paying attention to anything else.

"Fancy office you have here. The home entertainment system is my favorite."

The sudden voice that came from somewhere in the darkness tore a suppressed scream from you. Your hands flew to cover your lips as you whipped around, eyes wide, towards the source of the sound.

The room was dark except for a few lamps open over the control center side of the room, but you could clearly see his outline now as he lounged casually over one of the swivel chairs there. Most of him was still covered by shadows, but you were still able to catch the way his lips parted into a smile before he picked himself up from his seat. He took a step closer to where you are, into a better lit spot in the room, looking relaxed with his hands in his pockets.

You pressed yourself closer against the edge of your desk unconsciously. Your heart was beating so hard in your chest, and for a quick second you were convinced that he could hear it from the way his lips curved into a smirk as he watched you. 

"Wha-What are you doing here, Jaemin?"

You wished your voice could have come out steadier, but something about the air in the room was making you fight for your breath. Jaemin simply shrugged in answer and angled his head slightly to the side.

"I sometimes go here when I'm bored. Nothing screams 'fuck them' more than going to places the coats think they've restricted us from. I can go to any room I want in this building…" he said, his voice as sweet as it was dangerous. His gaze sharpened a little as he smiled at you.

"...But you already know that, don't you, darling?"

You couldn't answer. You even actually felt a little unstable, so you subtly leaned your hand against the corner of your table to keep yourself steady. Jaemin took another step closer to you again at a painfully slow pace. You felt like a cornered prey, with your predator enjoying every second of the thrill of the hunt before jumping in for the kill.

"You know… I was kinda disappointed that you didn't come looking for me after that day at the arena. I know you have questions, but instead you... blatantly avoided me. I have to admit, it hurt my feelings a bit."

You swallowed. He took another step forward but stopped just as he was a few feet from where you were standing. The tension in the air was almost making you choke.

"But then again, maybe you were just busy. Are you having fun with your new boyfriend? I looked him up. Handsome fella."

That finally made something in you snap. Your eyes darted to meet his as fear—mixed with anger—flooded your veins. You glared at him openly and he met it with a playful smile.

"Leave Sicheng out of this."

"Oh? You're feeling protective over him now, too? Very interesting."

"If you touch him—"

"What makes you think I will?"

His question made the words fade in your throat. You know exactly what he is doing. He is framing you to give him the exact answer he wants to hear. You swallowed.

"Because that's what you do," you said in a voice so quiet you doubt he even heard it. He did, of course, judging from the way he took a step closer to you again the moment the words left your lips. This time though, he didn't stop until he was close enough for you to touch. You couldn't have moved away even if you wanted to, not with your desk pinning you exactly where he wants you.

"And what is it that I can do?" He asked in an equally soft voice that made you feel like you were being ripped from the inside and put together again at the same time. The last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction he wants, but you can't help it. Not when he is this close.

You tried to push back the blockage in your throat. Your eyes met his, and you noticed how his gaze dropped momentarily to your lips as you did so. 

"Temptation. Compulsion. You control people."

Your voice lacked any passionate emotions behind them—other than concealed fear—but your words still made him smile as if you whispered to him the sweetest words of love. At that moment, it felt like time slowed as he lifted his hand to gently reach out for a loose tendril of your hair. He caressed the strand between his thumb and pointer finger, his eyes never leaving your face.

"What do they call me then? Come on… I want to hear you say it."

The world stopped turning at that moment. You locked gazes with him, and he smiled at you so beautifully, he looked like heaven's favorite angel.

"The Devil."

His eyes danced. Under the dimmed lighting of the room, your mind was almost tricked into thinking that the shadows around the two of you moved to kiss and worship him.

"Smart girl. Now the question is, what are you going to do about that… Angel?"

*******

CHAPTER 7

Card Drawn: 

The Devil | 15 | IL Diavolo

A/N: Did I just put in more easter eggs here? Yes, yes I did. As usual, enjoy! ♥️

Taglist [OPEN]:  @negincho, @jhornytrash, @aaasteroidsky, @huangberryyy, @marijmin, @ashkuuuu, @reluctantserpent-101, @yutasnabi, @huskyhunny, @domojoo, @anaveragefangirl, @lostlovesoul11, @dreamisfelix, @lomlwoo, @coconuttiez8d, @jaehyunenthusiastsworld, @shininginthemoonlight, @bettyschwallocksyee, @w3bqrl, @smolpeyy, @chenlejjang, @kunssouschef​, @kpopstanforlifeuwu, @thesunsfullmoon

[themimsyborogove]

This year’s birthday fic for my favorite cat eyed warlock. 💖 Also any excuse to have Magnus and Ragnor troll each other

Read on Ao3

The faint feeling of something passing through Magnus’s wards, like a small bubble popping at the edge of his consciousness, woke him, and he bolted upright as a strange weight settled on top of his feet at the end of the bed.

It was a gift bag. A gift bag breaking through his wards would normally be a cause for alarm, but Magnus recognized the heavy, archaically formal handwriting on the tag.

“You aren’t running to Max’s room to check on him, so I assume that isn’t anything threatening,” Alec murmured sleepily. He sat up and looped an arm around Magnus’s waist from behind, pressing a kiss to Magnus’s neck. “Happy birthday.” He nuzzled his face against Magnus’s bare shoulder and yawned, watching Magnus’s inspect the bag. “Who was sneaky enough to give you your present before I got to give you mine?”

“Ragnor,” Magnus answered. He turned his head to press a kiss to Alec’s sleep-mussed hair before reaching into the bag and pulling out the bottle of expensive Scotch that was Ragnor’s customary gift. “He always put a lot of importance on birthdays. He used to say every year we made it without our heads mounted on some Institute wall was worth celebrating,” Magnus added with a faint smile at the memories that brought up. There had certainly been a lot of close calls over the centuries.

Something else seemed to be in the bag as well. The nostalgic smile slid off of Magnus’s face as he pulled out a coffee mug that said WORLD’S WORST PIRATE in huge lettering that looked suspiciously like Ragnor’s handwriting.

Another bubble popped in Magnus’s wards and a second gift bag appeared. Then a third. Magnus narrowed his eyes at them.

One contained a garishly colored child’s makeup kit from a mundane accessory store. The other was full of horrifically tacky costume jewelry that Magnus could feel turning his skin green just by looking at them.

Alec appeared to have been overcome with a fit of coughing to cover his laughter.

Magnus poked him in the side. “It’s not that funny. Ragnor’s sense of humor has always been as terrible as his fashion sense.”

“The mug is hilarious,” Alec argued. “Did you see the little monkey in the pirate hat on the other side?”

“I named a pet monkey after him once, and serves him right,” Magnus muttered. He snatched his phone off the nightstand and dialed the number he was only supposed to use for emergencies.

“What are you doing?” He said without greeting as soon as Ragnor picked up.

“Enjoying my morning tea and not putting any of my beloved friend’s lives at risk by threatening their undercover operation,” Ragnor’s gruff voice answered, but Magnus could hear the smug amusement in his voice.

“Ra—Shade,” Magnus hissed his friend’s stupid undercover name. “Why are you covering my bed in increasingly ridiculous gifts?”

“It’s your birthday,” Ragnor said simply. “I may have been—“ he paused briefly, “—indisposed for the past three, but I didn’t want you to think I had ever forgotten.”

Annoyance fought with affection in Magnus’s heart. “It was one time. I forgot one time. I even left flowers on your grave every year when I thought you were dead!”

Ragnor was silent for a long moment. “You did?”

“Well, they may have been more cactuses than flowers,” Magnus admitted.

“I’ll keep your last gift for myself just for that.”

“Oh no. However shall I manage without it,” Magnus deadpanned. “What is it, a basket full of cat toys? You know I have an actual cat to use them on, right?”

“See for yourself.”

Another bag appeared in Magnus’s lap, this one heavier than the others. Magnus hesitantly reached inside and pulled out an assortment of useful looking spell ingredients, along with several potions of experimentally mixed faerie and warlock spells.

“This is clever,” Magnus murmured, forgetting his annoyance as he opened one of the jars, noting how the damp, floral scent of Faerie magic blended smoothly into the burned sugar smell characteristic of warlock potions. Usually the two didn’t mix so well.

“It’s a side project I’ve been working on,” Ragnor explained. “If I were to come back as myself, I may be too closely associated with the Nephlim for the Fae to trust me. I’m certainly too close to you. Shadowhunters are extraordinarily unpopular here at the moment, and your name often gets dragged through the mud with them.” There was something in Ragnor’s voice that made Magnus suspect Ragnor had invented at least one reason to start a fight with someone he had caught insulting Magnus. “But as Shade, I can build contacts with the Faeries who frequent the Shadow Markets unhindered under the pretense of being interested in finding ways to combine our different magics. Have you found the one that will help with teething pain yet? I was rather proud of that one. It should help as Max’s horns come in as well.”

Alec disappeared from the bedroom while Magnus and Ragnor discussed the specifics of the spells and how Ragnor had gone about integrating the Faerie magic. Magnus realized how much he had missed talking to his oldest friend about magical research.

When Alec reappeared a few minutes later, he had a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. Magnus gave him a grateful smile as he took it.

He didn’t even mind that it was in the WORLD’S WORST PIRATE mug.

[libertarianbarbarian]

Where I stand and why

WHERE AND WHY I STAND THE WAY, I DO

   FACTS

  -https://www.theasatrucommunity.org/sumarsdag-blot

-Odin,

Sky Father,

Highest of the Gods in Asgard,

From Mimir’s well you drank

For knowledge and wisdom,

A clear vision within,

A clear vision without.

Lord of Life and Death,

On Yggdrasill

Which spans all worlds, all life,

You hung in self-sacrifice,

And learned the sacred mysteries,

That do pierce the veil of all creation.

Mysterious and powerful are the ancient runes –

That you grasped unto yourself

And penetrated their deepest depths.

    OPED-WARNING

             Oh boy. Here we go, this is probably where I’m going to lose a shit ton of followers. So here goes nothing! I’m a follower of both Asatru and Odinism. This means that I am Norse Pagan. I follow Odin, Freya, and Thor. To my Christian followers just so you know I don’t overtly hate you, no I don’t follow a guy with horns, no I haven’t been to a mental institution…and not I don’t hear voices telling me to blow up churches…only on Sundays. Just a joke! Not a manifesto! Oh, God’s someone’s going to find this and try to use this out of context I know this. Ok here we go with the rest of the blog.

           So it’s well known at this point that I served in the United States Army at this point…if it isn’t…well now you know. I went through some things while I served, some good some extremely bad, it kind of comes with the territory. I was a “faithful” non-denominational Christian at the time I raised my right hand to enlist.

           I can’t really say I knew what it meant if I’m being sincere with you dear reader. I can say that I had been through a lot in my life, yes. I would pray endlessly, read my bible endlessly. I knew the old testament, the new testament like the back of my hand. Everything I said and did I tried my hardest…nothing. I can’t name one time that the “Lord and Savior” would personally send me a sign or let me know he was there for me or speak to me through his text’s.

            I then began to fall off the “band wagon” so-to-speak. This was well into my career as a soldier. I was a democrat, part of the liberal hive mind that began to eat away at the culture that is not around our youth that is my age now. It wasn’t until after I was discharged from service, thanks Obama, that I had my very first real religious experience and was horribly misguided by it.

           So the religious part, this is the juicy part haha! I just got discharged from the Army due to the massive draw back in funds that President Obama had in the department of defense. They were kicking people out for practically any reason they could instead of getting rid of equipment…that’s just what they do. When they discharge you, they send you to your home of record, mine just happens to be good old Kankakee, Illinois…kind of a shitty small ghetto town south of Chicago, not the worst place I’ve lived but not the best I’ve lived either.

           I was recently married to an honestly crappy woman, just had my first son and I had no job, or prospect of getting one living in my father’s half of a duplex again. Great beginning to my twenty second year of life, right? If you answered yes, I, just have no words for you right now.

           One day I’m beating feet on pavement doing what I can putting in paper applications to every brick and motor I can in town when it begins to down pour around me. Fucking great. Automatically I’m angry at everything around me, I’ve been out there for about three hours and I’ve got couple hours more, it’s July in Illinois and the sun was just shinning and you just want to randomly dump rain on me God?

           It took a moment, but I realized that I was completely dry. Everything around me was, what was getting soaked. Looked at the pavement under my feet dry. Three feet over, soaked, and still getting poured on. Oh, that’s fucking weird…but maybe there’s something to this God thing after all. Took him long enough after all. So it was then, being the Midwesterner that I am, I look up in to the sky and yelled “Hey if you’re going to keep me dry. How about you, and Jesus Christ get me a fucking job to?”

           Now I know if you’re Christian, and you’re reading this you’re going to tell me, “That’s not how God works Mr. Barbarian.” I know that! He never worked that way! Especially not in my case. But it was me having a bitter moment, and I KNOW, you Christians definitely have your bitter moments too! So “You is without sin cast the first stone”.

           I don’t know why, but in that moment, something told me to look for a reply, but nothing came. So, standing there I started joking around. Being the dork, I am I had an extensive knowledge of all the ‘myths’ of gods past from ancient cultures of our ancestors. “Ra?” nope, “Zeus?” nope. “Odin?” that’s when it happened, my general jackassery almost had caused me to miss the two very large noticeable ravens fly over my shoulders then land in front of my feet then turn to face me quietly.

           ‘There’s no way’ I thought to myself. Odin, the guy that has one eye? The God that is all about laying and slaying, keep in mind fellow Odinist’s I didn’t know much back then, is trying to reach out to me of all people? “Oh yeah whatever! If you’re really trying to talk then make it make the sky light up with lightening, then!” I continued down my path of jackassery. And as soon as I finished my statement the sky lit up with bright pink lightening.

           Right away I began to delve in to research into what this could mean. I found that there was a resurgence of the old Norse ways. That I wasn’t the only one the Norse God’s were coming to. It was now called Asatru, or if you were specifically following only Odin, then Odinism. Later, I found that I was also being called upon by Freya, goddess of love and warriors. And Thor…no not Chris Hemsworth, god of storms, war and fertility.

           Oh no, I wrote this because of Odin. This is where the big show begins…Gods I’m long winded. Odin is the All Father, kind of like the Zeus of the Norse Gods if you will. But when it comes to what he’s the god of, well he has A LOT under his belt! One of the main things he’s the god of is knowledge. And in some respects, he’s kind of like the Christian God.

           Odin won’t just give you knowledge. You must fight for it, you must find it, you must understand it. If you were to say, here something on the news from CNN well awesome! Ok, where did it happen, then go check out the local news from that area, see what the local news says, check the interviews of the locals to see what they say and relay it to the facts of the news story and see how well it holds up. That is something my religion tells me to do. That is something my God, Odin, says is honorable and something he admires.

           He also admires fighting. Now I know what you may be thinking, fighting? So just start beating the crap out of people? That seems a little vicious! No, those of us who believe in Asatru, and Odinism actually look at fighting or “battle” in a different light than you might think. It would actually be better described as “fighting for what you believe”.  Like I do now. I believe that the media needs to stop grandstanding for one political party and report the facts. I believe that big tech needs to stop censoring one political party or those it doesn’t agree with and allow all points of view, whether they agree or not. I will fight for what I believe, here on the internet, or in the senate, or in office if need be.

           So yes. I am following a religious crusade…not the Christian kind, so Muslim’s are safe. The kind where I seek knowledge, the kind where I will be the every-man that tries to understand your point of view and find commonality. The kind that will fight for what I believe in peacefully. I will accept the wanderer with a homely attitude because one day it might be my God Odin that comes walking through my door and it is our belief that we should always present the homeless wanderer with the best of our food, our chair, and bed as well as conversation and knowledge.

           This is why I am the Libertarian Barbarian.

[millenialscientist]

Week 1: PhD Blog

Hello to all my fellow scientists and researchers! I completed a Master’s of Science in Robotics on May 13th and had been accepted to the PhD program at the same university with my advisor in the coming fall semester. If things had gone according to plan, I had a summer internship at a prestigious academic institution where I was supposed to TA a class for part of the summer and do research for the rest of the summer. However, as with all plans, Murphy’s law is always applicable and here we are a week into summer and are still mostly confined to our homes.

Anyhow, my advisor being the awesome, kind soul he is hired me as an RA and pushed the school to start my PhD program earlier instead of waiting until the fall semester. This was awesome since I am an international student and could not have traveled back to my country for the break anyway.

So fast-forwarding to now, I have completed the first week of my PhD program. This week has been a whole lot of emotions. Starting with the feeling of having graduated from my Ms program sinking in and then finally the thoughts about starting a PhD slowly making it through. This is something I’ve wanted to since I started out my career as a young engineer and now approximately 6 years into my engineering/academic career I’m finally here, such excitement, much wow!! This wasn’t the end of the emotion train of-course, but more about this in a bit.

This week, was mostly spent trying to come to terms with the fact that I am now a PhD student and things would be a lot different from what I did at the Ms level. I continued working on some of the research that I had been doing for the last few months of my Ms program to bring that to a level of completion and then move to newer things. I’ll talk more about my research in next week’s post because hopefully I would have been able to reach to a good point with it by then.

As some of you might be aware, there was a category 4 cyclone in Eastern India and Bangladesh this past week. I am from Kolkata, one of the cities that was affected by the cyclone terribly. As I saw images of the aftermath on the news and on social media, childhood memories of the city started flooding my mind and I was pulled into a spiral of sad thoughts, thinking about all the damage to homes, public property, and wildlife. Thankfully my parents and extended family in Kolkata are all safe. It was hard to get in touch with my parents for a few days since they did not have cell service and or electricity for a couple of days and the internet has not been restored yet either but they are doing fine. However, the nearly 350 year old banyan tree (which is also the biggest tree in the world with a trunk diameter of more than a kilometer) in the botanical gardens has been extensively damaged and I can’t begin to explain how sad I feel about it since I have some close childhood memories linked to it. The city is doing everything they can to help with rescue and restoration operations for parts that have been affected worse and my thoughts are with the City of Joy, my City of Joy, Oh Calcutta you will once again be the City of Joy and home for those romantic souls who have called you home forever. 

[wisdomrays]

CONSULTATION AND SUBMISSION

Question: When a consultation committee makes a decision but the decision seems to contradict some of the participants’ minds and opinions, then what would be the best attitude for them to take moving forward?

Submission – to use the dictionary definition – would be fulfilling the rulings, determinations, and decisions of an individual or a council comprised of various individuals who have been endorsed by the general public and are authorized to make decisions on different matters. These can be governmental institutions like the army and the police force, or civil society organizations. However, this does not mean that submission is to the individuals who are involved with the decision-making; especially for civil initiatives, no member has such a right to claim submission to themselves.

However, if the decision handed down is about a nationwide mobilization, then these decisions are crucial for collective success. As such, they should be obeyed. Under those conditions, consultation and submission are like the different faces of the same reality.

As mentioned in the question, matters accepted by a majority of a council may not seem reasonable to everyone and may not be accepted by everyone. To be absolved of responsibility before God, those who are members of the council can articulate the differences in their reasoning, refrain from rashly saying “yes,” and make a note of their opposition to decisions made. Actually, this is the real meaning of consultation. However, if a decision has been made on the issue at hand in spite of the opposition of some, then afterwards the opposing parties should not say a word against the decision and should conform to the decision. This kind of talk is back-biting, especially if the committee is convening to serve a lofty cause. Back-biting is a violation of the rights of a group that is serving the Truth and requires the one who back-bites to ask for forgiveness from each member of the council

Yes, we must respect decisions made through consultation. For example, imagine a consulting group decided to go someplace and then set out on their journey. Then, say, an accident took place on the road – may God prevent it. After the accident, those who had opposed the decision might be compelled to say things like, “Didn’t we tell you? If we had not gone, there would not have been an accident. We went, and this happened to us.” Not only is this criticism of fate, but it is also considered back-biting against the other friends.

The Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) determination on this matter is striking. He consulted with his Companions before the Battle of Uhud. His own view was to remain in Medina and fight on the defensive. However, as a result of the consultation, the decision was made to leave Medina and meet the enemy in the open. As a necessity of this decision, the Seal of the Prophethood went to Uhud. Sayyid Qutb’s excellent interpretation on this point is very appropriate: “When the Messenger of God set out for Uhud, if he had known not only that there would be 70 martyrs, but that Medina would be totally destroyed, he still would have gone in order to give the council its right.”

Yes, consultation has a very important place in Islam and the lives of Muslims. A destroyed Medina could be rebuilt, but if a principle of Islam had been destroyed, especially when its foundations were being laid down, it would have been impossible to reconstruct it. Consequently, everyone on a council should put forth his or her useful ideas to the group and they should enable everyone to understand those ideas. But then they should adhere to a decision even if it is contrary to their ideas.

The principles I have tried to present are related to submission to a decision. Another facet of this matter – which is just as important – are the responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of the decision-makers to ensure these decisions are acted upon. The Prophet’s life presents us many good examples from which we can derive general principles on this matter. Let’s take a bird’s-eye look at some historical events.

Arabs in the Age of Ignorance acted individually. Even the smallest incident could immediately cause families and tribes to fight against each other. It was impossible for the individuals of such a society to obey others. At that time there were many tribes in Mecca and Medina, and all of them had become splintered. When they could not find anyone outside to fight with, they would draw their swords and fight with each other. To develop the concept of obedience amidst such a society, and to gather them around one leader, is proof of the Prophet’s apostleship. In my opinion, this matter has been overlooked by researchers who study the life of the Prophet. Yes, the Seal of Prophets turned warring tribes into a civilized community that listened to each other and obeyed authority.

During the same time period, Arabs never looked at slaves as human beings, especially if they were black. Due to this attitude, Bilal al-Habashi, may God be pleased with him, did not even have the right to enter the room where Umayya b. Halaf ate. In other words, people debated whether or not a slave was even a human being, and, if black, whether the slave was a human or an animal. Islam came and raised slaves to such a high level that Bilal was able to intervene in events among notable citizens and express his own views. He also had the same rights as any other person when it came to approaching the Prophet.

Zayd b. Haritha was the freed slave of the Prophet. The Messenger of God appointed Zayd b. Haritha commander of the army, even though there were aristocrats and war heroes such as Jafar b. Abu Talib, Abdullah b. Rawaha, and Halid b. Walid (ra) serving in this army. When sent to war, the nobles put aside their views from the Age of Ignorance and obeyed their commander.

Abdullah ibn Huzafetu’s-Sahmi related another event, this one from during the Age of Happiness. The Prophet gave a battallion to this great man and sent him some place. Understanding that one of those under his command was lacking in his understanding of obedience, Abdullah had a fire lit and gave the command, “Throw yourselves into the fire!” In view of this order, some wanted to immediately jump into the fire. Some held back saying, “We escaped this fire and pledged our faith to the Messenger of God. Are we going to throw ourselves into the fire now?” Upon returning from the campaign, they related this incident to the Prophet. He replied, “If you had entered that fire, you would have remained in it eternally!” Because this would have been suicide. Suicide is an act prohibited by God. “Where there is rebellion against God, there is no obedience to a creature.” In matters that are definitely unlawful, no one is to be obeyed.

For example, “A brother cannot be a father to his brother; the state of a master cannot be assumed.” This means that one should not use people like slaves and should not see one’s position as a means for pressuring others. Instead, a person should do work within the range of their capabilities.

Yes, if these can be put into practice, none of the negative things implied in the question will take place. Here the incident that occurred between Ubay b. Kab and Ibn Abbas should amaze us. One day while Ubayy was mounting a horse, Ibn Abbas held the horse’s stirrup. In response to this behavior, Ubayy b. Ka’b said, “What are you doing? You are the son of the Prophet’s uncle.” Ibn Abbas replied, “We have been commanded to show respect to our seniors.” Then Ubayy held Ibn Abbas’s hand and kissed it. “And we have been commanded to treat the Prophet’s family like this,” he said.

I think that if this reciprocity is developed, the obedient ones will not say, “We obey,” with disagreeableness, nor will their superiors have to reprimand those who do not obey them. In short, consultation is prophetic; acting all by oneself and disregarding consultation is not. Submission is a natural result of consultation. Although God’s Messengers were strengthened by revelation, they acted with consultation. To the contrary, if we look at the many “pharaohs” throughout history – from Ramesses to Amenhotep, and Caesar to Napoleon, up to the even crazier Hitler, Stalin and Lenin – they were despotic apprentices to the devil, who made solitary decisions and executions.

[stretchjournalemerson]

Revisiting Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Intersectional Feminism in 2019

By Allison Hoag

Over twenty years after the series first premiered, Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains not only as a popular show in the public consciousness, but also as a hotly debated text in the academic sphere. What exactly is it about this demon-fighting, vampire-slaying, teenage girl that has captivated audiences for so long, and why has Buffy spawned so much controversy both publicly and academically? Most importantly, how should Buffy and its various implications about gender, race, and “otherness” be read in 2019?

It is undeniable that Buffy is a somewhat exclusionary narrative that directs our sympathies solely towards its overwhelmingly white and privileged characters. Any feminist inclinations this series espouses are emblematic of the equally exclusionary white feminism. However, even within these constraints—focusing only on feminism impactful to socioeconomically privileged white women—Buffy scholarship continually debates the extent of feminist messaging in the series. In 2019, surface-level white feminism alone is often not seen as enough to define a text as feminist. More and more, people are embracing Kimberle Crenshaw’s notions of intersectionality as a lens through which to evaluate texts. Crenshaw suggested that both feminist and anti-racist movements exclude black women, who face the most discrimination because of the intersection of their race and gender, arguing that “feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women” (166). This term has since expanded to include class, ability, gender identity, and sexuality in feminist critiques.

Recently, the feminist debate over Buffy has been revisited after a somewhat shocking blog post by Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, that suggested Whedon is not the “loveable geek-feminist” he presents himself as (Cole). Despite the flaws of its creator, is there still a way for Buffy to be viewed as a feminist show? Is this a matter of separating the artist from the art, or, because his intentions while making this art are being called into question, are the two inextricably linked? In light of these revelations, I intend to reexamine Buffy through Crenshaw’s intersectional lens, focusing less on surface-level feminist readings of this series, but instead shifting the focus onto specific storylines to explore how Whedon addresses topics of gender, race, love, and rape.

***

It is not without reason that critics and fans alike have showered Buffy with feminist praise since its debut in 1997. Not only does this series make Buffy the “subject of traditionally masculine storytelling tropes…, [but] she does it all as a tiny, blonde former cheerleader…the embodiment of the girl her genre usually kills first” (Grady). Buffy takes the idea of a “strong” woman quite literally and manifests a teenage girl with superhuman strength who “must stand against the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness,” as the introduction to each episode reminds us (Whedon). Buffy seems to be a show rife with positive female role models for the impressionable teen and pre-teen girls that make up its audience: Buffy is selfless and strong (physically and emotionally); Willow is kind, intelligent, and stands up for what she believes is right; Cordelia is bold and unafraid to go after what she wants; Tara is loving and is constantly helping and caring for her friends.

Buffy often addresses topics that many members of this teen audience may face, largely through its (sometimes heavy handed) metaphorical use of vampires and demons, as well as online predators (“I Robot…You, Jane”), drinking at parties (“Beer Bad”), and drug addiction (“Wrecked”). Seemingly less metaphorical, however, is its feminism. Throughout the series, Buffy repeatedly defends the whole of humanity against vampires, demons, and the like, maintains positive relationships with the other women in her life, is independent, and has (mostly) healthy romantic relationships. The overt “girl-power” theme of this show is quite clear. However, in its final season, Buffy “raises the explicit feminist stakes of the series considerably” (Pender). While in previous seasons, the metaphorical misogyny of the villains Buffy faces could be debated, season seven’s “big bad” is, “of all the show’s myriad manifestations of evil, the most recognizably misogynist” (Pender). Dubbed “Reverend-I-Hate-Women” by Xander (“Touched”), Caleb can only be defeated if Buffy teams up with and shares her power with all potential Slayers across the globe, an act that takes “female empowerment” quite literally in the series finale.

But how did Buffy get to this point? Buffy wasn’t even initially intended for the pre-teen and teenage girl demographic who would become its main audience. Knowing that this show was originally aimed at a male demographic, “it seems evident that producers did not intend to market a feminist show” (Riordan 292). Not only do some of the feminist statements in Buffy feel painfully forced, but upon deeper exploration, much of this show’s “feminism” is only surface-level and disregards Crenshaw’s notions of intersectionality.

Mary Magoulick, a folklorist and Professor of English, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Women’s Studies at Georgia College (“Mary Magoulick”), explores some of the downfalls of “feminist” shows that were primarily created by men for predominantly male audiences in her article, “Frustrating Female Heroism: Mixed Messages in Xena, Nikita, and Buffy.” Magoulick argues that female heroes like Buffy that are “conceived of and written mostly by men in a still male-dominated world…project the status quo more than they fulfill feminist hopes” (729). An integral part of Magoulick’s argument is the idea that “Buffy [is] less concerned with building or celebrating a world than surviving a hostile one” (745). Although Magoulick acknowledges that recognizing the hostility women face in the world is an important part of feminist conversations, Buffy is widely praised for its progressive presentation of women, not for “presenting the troubling reality women live in” (750). Buffy continually expresses her desire to escape from her responsibilities as the Slayer and lead an average life; yet, she continues fighting vampires and demons, largely due to the pressure from her Watcher, Giles. The idea that Buffy cannot escape her situation because of a social institution—the Watcher’s Council, dominated by men and put in place to control women—provides strong textual support for Magoulick’s claim that Buffy is “reflective of current social inequities and gender roles” (750).

Ultimately Buffy escapes her duties as Slayer, sacrificing herself in the season five finale, only for her friends to later resurrect her, bringing her back from what they believe to be a hell dimension. However, Buffy confesses to Spike, “I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not…this is hell” (“After Life”), making him promise to never tell her friends. After coming back to life, Buffy almost immediately returns to her predetermined social position and initially deals with being brought back into her personal version of hell alone, wanting to protect her friends from the truth. Not only does this arc present the feminist concept of emotional labor as something inherently expected of women, but it also more directly begs the question Magoulick poses regarding the entirety of the series: “Is survival in hell, albeit with occasional victories and humor, the best [women] can imagine?” (748).

***

Magoulick promotes an argument first raised by Elyce Rae Helford that “[Buffy] is laudable for allowing women unusual space to voice and act out anger” while also sending strong implications about what kind of women are allowed to express anger (733). Of the Slayers introduced throughout the series, Buffy is the only one who is allowed to act upon her anger, and most of the time this anger is expressed towards the vampires and demons she fights, not people in her personal life. However, Kendra—a Slayer who is also a woman of color—has her anger framed in a much more negative way. Despite the lack of people of color in Buffy—or possibly because of the show’s few characters played by people of color—race and racism have become prominent topics in Buffy scholarship. A closer examination of direct and indirect racist implications in Buffy reinforces the idea that any feminist tendencies in Buffy fall strictly into the category of white feminism, and the show cannot be considered an example of the intersectional feminism pushed for in 2019.

The intersectional failings of Buffy are further explored by Kent A. Ono, a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Utah who researches representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation in print, film, and television media (“Kent A. Ono”). In his article, “To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Race and (‘Other’) Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV,” Ono argues that Buffy “conveys debilitating images of and ideas about people of color” (163), claiming that “the valorization and heroification [sic] of a white feminist protagonist is constructed through an associated villainization and demonization of people of color” (164). Here, Ono quite literally means demonization. Most of the vampires and demons that appear on this show are played by white actors, so it is not necessarily a question of casting people of color as villains, so much as it is a question of who these villains are intended to be.

As previously established, the writers of Buffy can be somewhat aggressive with their use of metaphor; therefore, it is inarguable that, on Buffy, a vampire isn’t just a vampire. Ono argues that “the marginalization of vampires on the show takes the place of racial marginalization in the world outside the show” (172). In contrast, Magoulick presents a non-racial reading of the teenage vampires as “representative of gangs” (745). Considering the show’s overarching plot, especially the first few seasons Magoulick references when Buffy is still in high school, both of these interpretations are equally valid, and both can be supported by textual evidence. Given the history of representation of people of color on television, it is particularly disturbing that two of the major metaphorical interpretations of vampires on this show are as people of color and as gang members. It is not unreasonable to believe that Whedon and his writers were familiar with racist representations on television that were prominent in the 60s and early 70s, especially because some of these representations still exist twenty years after the show was created. With this understanding, it could be argued that vampires were equally intended to represent people who were racially marginalized and gangs. Ono argues that because the villains of Buffy were the ones chosen to represent people of color, “Buffy…indirectly and directly shows violence by primarily white vigilante youths against people of color in the name of civilization” (168), evoking images of violent white supremacy that are present throughout American history and to the present day.

However, there is a reason Ono describes the “vigilante youths” as only primarily white (168). Kendra, the previously mentioned second Slayer portrayed by Bianca Lawson who is featured in three episodes over the course of Buffy’s second season, is a black woman. Although only appearing in three episodes, Kendra is credited as “offer[ing] the most complex development of a black female character in Buffy” (Edwards 95). While this is technically true, it is important to note that her arc was fairly straightforward, and any character development is as a result of a somewhat racist narrative of acceptance only after assimilation. However, because she is one of the few examples of a prominent character who is a person of color and essentially the only person of color who works with Buffy, I will be examining her in some detail.

Ono argues that because she takes the responsibility of being the Slayer far more seriously, Kendra is a threat to Buffy, causing Buffy’s own racism to emerge. Ono specifically cites “[Buffy’s] discomfort with Kendra’s language…When Buffy uses the word wiggy and Kendra asks what that means, Buffy responds with a racist comment…‘You know, no kicko, no fighto’” (174). However, Buffy’s comment is indicative of a much larger issue in the show’s production team. “By casting Bianca Lawson, a black actress, in the role of Kendra, the second Slayer, [Whedon] makes character a sign imbued with cultural meanings about gender, race, and race relations” (Edwards 87). Kendra is marked as other not only by her skin color, but also by her heavy Jamaican accent, and she is not accepted by Buffy and her friends until she begins to assimilate, sending the message that people of color are responsible for changing themselves if they want to be accepted by white America.

It is important to note that Bianca Lawson’s casting wasn’t accidental. The script specifically delineates Kendra as an “ethnic young woman” (Edwards 91). Whedon has admitted that he did not make any efforts to hire people of color behind the scenes (Busis), so there is a possibility that the overwhelmingly white writers’ room and crew did not detect the racist treatment of Kendra. However, that in itself poses a major issue, not only socially, but also with how we’re supposed to understand the treatment of the few people of color and the metaphorical “people of color”/vampires throughout the series. The absence of people of color behind the scenes could also at least partially account for the Ono’s observation that “no person of color acknowledged as such on the series has been able to remain a significant character. All characters of color…have either died or have failed to reappear” (177).

Although she was killed off after only three episodes, as a black woman, Kendra represents the black women facing discrimination based on both race and gender that Crenshaw advocated for in developing her theory of intersectional feminism. Kendra’s treatment in Buffy is indicative of both the white feminism that will often ignore racist representations in a text because of its slight feminist messaging, and the necessity of including intersectionality in the evaluation and creation of feminist texts.

***

Buffy is filled with incredibly disturbing scenes. We watch Willow get skinned alive by a demon (“Same Time, Same Place”), Buffy’s own mother attempt to burn her at the stake (“Gingerbread”), and a demon stalk and murder sickly children in their hospital beds (“Killed by Death”). However, “Seeing Red” (2002) remains one of Buffy’s most upsetting episodes. Spike corners an injured Buffy in her bathroom and violently attempts to rape her until she is finally able to fight him off. In a recent interview, James Marsters (Spike) described his opposition to the scene, inadvertently pinpointing the reason this scene is so difficult to watch: “My argument was that, actually, when anyone is watching Buffy, they are Buffy…the audience, especially the female audience, they are not superheroes, but they are Buffy” (Marsters). This scene is particularly upsetting not only because of the content, but also because it presents many women’s worst fears—if an injured Buffy, who is still exponentially stronger than an average woman, can barely fight off Spike, what hope do they have of fighting off their attacker? Additionally, Spike is not presented as a violent vampire here: he is presented as human, making this scene more realistic and horrifying.

Wendy Fall, a doctoral candidate at Marquette University and editor of Marquette’s Gothic Archive (“Graduate Research”), discusses this scene at length in her article “Spike Is Forgiven: The Sympathetic Vampire's Resonance with Rape Culture.” She suggests that because James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire (1845) is the first English-language vampire narrative that conflates an attack and rape scene, it established a “three-part strategy [gaslighting, silencing the victim, and emphasizing the assailant’s goodness] which encouraged readers to overlook Varney’s sexual violence, and thereby increased their sympathy for him” (Fall 76). She argues that although Spike’s attempted rape technically avoids Rymer’s narrative because he does not attempt to bite Buffy and is never even seen as a vampire, “The more problematic nature of this attack…is in what happens next, when the show adopts similar narrative schemes to Rymer’s to reinforce sympathy for Spike after his attempted sexual assault” (Fall 76).

Fall points out that there are only three more episodes in season six following Spike’s attempted rape, followed by a four-month gap between seasons, prompting the audience to forget how violent and serious it was (77). Not only are Spike and Buffy not seen together for the rest of the season, but they are separated because attempting to rape Buffy acts as a catalyst for Spike’s quest to get his soul back. This gives the audience time to develop sympathy for Spike as they watch him go through painful trials as he tries to recover his soul, while diminishing the severity of the attempted rape in their minds—because, surely, someone willing to go to this extent to obtain their soul and be a better person would never have acted as violently as he did.

Fall argues that Buffy also follows Varney’s narrative strategy of silencing the victim because “the show’s writers seem unwilling to allow the characters to have further discussion on the topic; Buffy never tells anyone the full story, and after this scene, she rarely mentions it again” (78). Fall further claims that “they had access to a strong female character and the opportunity to address her experience of trauma, but they opt not to pursue it” (78). Surely, at least part of the reason we never see Buffy attempting to deal with the emotional aftermath of someone she trusted trying to rape her is because the larger narrative suggests a degree of victim blaming that cannot coexist with holding Spike accountable for his actions. Prior to this scene, Buffy and Spike had been having a consensual sexual relationship, and Buffy attributes the start of this relationship to her “bad kissing decisions” (“Smashed”), so “when Spike attempts to rape her, it seems like an inevitable consequence of her poor decisions” (Nichol).

Finally, Fall suggests that Buffy completes this pattern when it “adopts a narrative strategy that redirects attention away from sexual violence by emphasizing the assailant’s positive contributions” (80). Not only does the rest of season six focus on Spike’s attempt to regain a soul, but the early episodes of season seven also show Spike as psychologically damaged as he comes to terms with the harm he caused as a vampire, putting Buffy and the audience in a position to want to pity Spike when we next see Spike and Buffy interact. Fall suggests that this plotline goes further than simply asking the audience to excuse the fact that this character tried to rape someone. She argues that “the vampire narrative’s memory-altering strategies are also deployed to reinforce rape culture, mostly in the cases of assailants who have sufficient financial power to reframe their own narratives to emphasize their better deeds” (Fall 83). This narrative is everywhere, especially after it became widely acceptable, even expected, to report on the #MeToo movement. It’s unfortunate that this supposedly feminist show perpetuates and validates this narrative that has successfully allowed so many rapists to escape legal scrutiny; Brock Turner’s swimming career comes to mind as a relatively recent example. While Fall ends her article on a relatively hopeful note, providing research stating that articles—like hers—that challenge rape myths can make people more likely to believe survivors than assailants (83), arguments for forgiving Spike still abound.

In 2017, Alyssa Rosenberg, an opinion writer for the Washington Post who covers culture and politics (“Alyssa Rosenberg”), made a case for why both Buffy and the audience should have a more forgiving view of Spike. In her article, “On ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” we fell for the Slayer along with Angel, Riley and Spike," Rosenberg specifically addresses this scene as a “horrifying…illustration that Spike’s gestures are not the same as moral reform” (Rosenberg); however, she identifies it as “the catalyst for a quest that ends with Spike…earning back his soul and sacrificing himself to save the world” (Rosenberg). Rosenberg’s argument falls flat in a way many rapist-apology narratives do. She directly acknowledges the horror of the narrative, both literally in the scene and also in the audience’s minds as they grapple with the fact that this character who is supposedly trying to reform himself can still do something this violent; yet, she quickly glosses over it. Rosenberg immediately dives into how trying to rape Buffy influenced Spike to become a better person, without addressing how it affected Buffy—the actual victim. She highlights that Whedon’s integration of the narrative tactics Rymer introduced to get the audience to want to forgive Spike were effective.

Rosenberg argues that although Spike “commits some of the show’s cruelest acts…he sacrifices the most in an attempt to atone for his sins” (Rosenberg). She additionally characterizes his arc following his attempted rape of Buffy as “a journey that encourages us to think about the conditions under which even someone guilty of heinous acts can perform genuine penance and achieve real redemption” (Rosenberg). Interestingly, her choice of the word “penance” invokes a religious underscoring that implies that once he has performed this penance, Buffy, and by extension, the audience who identifies with her, have no choice but to forgive him. Additionally, none of the “penance” Rosenberg describes is directed towards Buffy. Spike undoubtedly goes through physically and emotionally painful trials as he attempts to regain his soul; however, this is not so much penance as it is a self-centered act. Spike believes that getting a soul might make Buffy finally love him, eventually “becom[ing] a legitimate romantic interest after the near-rape incident” (Nichol).

Rosenberg claims that Buffy “explored where evil and misogyny come from and urged us to fight them,” while simultaneously “ask[ing] those of us who loved Buffy and identified with her to contemplate grace and forgiveness” (Rosenberg). She technically is not wrong here, Whedon absolutely positions us to want to forgive Spike. However, I would venture to argue that the question up for debate is not so much the question Rosenberg poses of are we put in a position to forgive him, as it is, should we be put in a position to forgive him. Buffy is intended to be a role model for the pre-teen and teenage girls who watch the series. Yet, here, it sends a very damaging message: if you have a consensual sexual relationship with someone without loving them, you’re responsible if they attempt to rape you; but even if someone tries to rape you, you should easily forgive them and possibly begin a romantic relationship with them because they may change.

***

In the past few years, the public feminist conversation has shifted towards embracing Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality. This has therefore influenced the ways we read all texts, even texts such as Buffy that were created after Crenshaw’s paper was first published but before intersectionality was a major concern of the feminist movement. Additionally, the #MeToo movement has revealed the prevalence of the abuse of power by men in all sectors, but notably in Hollywood. Joss Whedon admittedly “didn’t make a point of hiring female directors…[or] people of color’” (Busis); explicitly equated a woman unable to have children with the Hulk—yes, that Hulk (Yang); and, as recently as 2015, refused to call himself a feminist (Busis). The combination of these two public paradigm shifts, closer examinations of Whedon both personally and as a creator, as well as Kai Cole’s disturbing essay about her ex-husband has many people questioning what Whedon’s work can add to the cultural conversation surrounding feminism in 2019. Is the problematic nature of Joss Whedon a matter of separating the artist from the art, or, because his intentions while making this art are being called into question, are the two inextricably linked?

Joss Whedon has made his name creating and writing shows featuring strong female characters. However, he does not seem to understand that “having a girl beat up guys is not equivalent to a strong female character when they always, constantly depend on men” (Simons). Yet, he has still managed to create a career and profit off of television’s lack of actual strong female characters, catering to a largely underserved audience who hoped to see any sort of feminist ideas in fictional television. “Whedon’s openly feminist agenda, frequently mentioned in interviews, has provided an interpretive framework for much Buffy scholarship” (Berridge 478). Whedon pushes this narrative and the public’s perception of him as a well-meaning feminist, while refusing to be labeled as such “because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do…if you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist” (Busis). It’s upsetting for fans of Buffy to realize that its creator feels that unless he is overtly espousing feminist ideas, his writing will be seen as misogynistic—which, it has been, he’s been criticized for both his Avengers: Age of Ultron script (Yang) and his rejected Wonder Woman script (White).

Although his public persona is that of a feminist, a closer look at his work and his personal life tells a very different story. In a commentary DVD extra for the second season of Buffy, Whedon discusses writing the script for the initial confrontation between Buffy and Angelus, saying “It felt icky that I could make him say these things. It felt icky and kind of powerful. It was very uncomfortable and very exciting for me to do it” (Nichol). This short piece of commentary is a perfect metaphor for Whedon’s career. He’s trying to be seen as “more” of a feminist by claiming he had no idea how he could write a scene where his heroine is eviscerated by her (newly-evil) boyfriend after having sex with him. However, he’s actually taking what could’ve been a moment to discuss the prevalence of slut shaming in our culture and refocusing it on himself.

Not only has his work contained misogynistic and offensive language toward women, but according to his ex-wife, Kai Cole’s, guest blog on The Wrap, he has also had several inappropriate affairs “with his actresses, co-workers, fans, and friends” (Cole). Aside from cheating on his wife, as creator and producer of several prominent series—at least in terms of his actresses, co-workers, and fans—it could be argued that he objectively had more power in these situations. This begs the question of exactly how consensual these affairs were and how much, if any, (possibly unintentional) coercion may have been involved. Furthermore, Cole says he wrote her a letter trying to excuse these affairs, explaining that he “was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women” (Cole), and blaming them, rather than taking responsibility for his actions. This pattern of blame is unsettlingly close to the blame Buffy endures for her relationship with Spike.

***

Despite the shortcomings of both this show and its creator, Buffy was, and remains, a prominent series in the lives of many of the pre-teen and teenage girls who have watched and grown with Buffy and her friends since its 1997 premiere—this author included. However, as we become more educated on certain cultural topics, we—especially those of us in positions of power and privilege—are often forced to reconcile our love of certain texts with their more problematic aspects.

I began this essay with a very different conception of Buffy than I have now. Admittedly, I bought into the allure of this series’ surface-level feminism and girl power when I was watching it for the first time. Sure, it was sometimes overtly problematic, but the positive aspects seemed to outweigh the negatives. I thought that this essay would reveal the surface-level feminism of Buffy ran much deeper than I originally realized—not the opposite. A closer examination of Buffy has revealed that the issues with this series are far more serious than its creator’s personal failings. Reading Buffy as a cultural text exposes a series of disturbing messages. Moreover, even when it does put forth feminist ideas, they often fall under the more exclusionary sect of white feminism, completely ignoring Crenshaw’s proposed intersectionality, which had been published nearly a decade before Buffy’s premiere.

The question of how Buffy should be read in 2019 is a question that has been repeated a lot recently: Can the Harvey Weinstein’s films still be appreciated? What about The Cosby Show? Or shows affiliated with Fox Broadcasting, and, therefore, Roger Ailes? While some argue that these men and any texts or media associated with them should be “cancelled,” others call for a separation between the artist and the art. However, I would argue that, at least for Buffy, it is not so much about separating the artist from the art as it is about recognizing the art for what it is—its limits included.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mom for proofreading all 4,500-odd words of this and catching the many mistakes I missed. I would also like to profusely thank Mary Kovaleski Byrnes for her support, guidance, and the much-needed periodic confidence boosts.

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"Mary Macgoulick." Folklore Connections, Georgia College & State University, 1 Apr. 2001, faculty.gcsu.edu/custom-website/mary-magoulick/.

Nicol, Rhonda. “When You Kiss Me, I Want to Die”: Arrested Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight Series. Gale, Cengage Learning. EBSCOhost, proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e dsglr&AN=edsgcl.H1100110197&site=eds-live.

Ono, Kent A. “To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Race and (‘Other’) Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV.” Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, edited by Elyce Rae Helford, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000, pp. 163–186.

Pender, Patricia. "Buffy Summers: Third-Wave Feminist Icon." The Atlantic, 31 July 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/how-buffy-became-a-third-wave-feminist-icon/493154/.

Riordan, Ellen. "Commodified agents and empowered girls: consuming and producing feminism." Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 25, no. 3, July 2001, pp. 279-97. EBSCOhost, proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.78260548&site=eds-live.

Rosenberg, Alyssa. "On ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ we fell for the Slayer along with Angel,Riley and Spike." Editorial. The Washington Post, 10 Mar. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/03/10/on-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-we-fell-for-the-slayer-along-with-angel-riley-and-spike/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.90b458f0de94.

“Same Time, Same Place.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 7, episode 3, UPN, 8 Oct. 2002. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/f9a3b884-b72b-4bef-81e4-bcd95b002608.

Simons, Natasha. "Reconsidering the Feminism of Joss Whedon." The Mary Sue, edited by Kaila

Hale-Stern and Dan Van Winkle, Dan Abrams, 10 Apr. 2011, www.themarysue.com/ reconsidering-the-feminism-of-joss-whedon/.

“Smashed.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, episode 9, UPN, 20 Nov. 2001. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/7728e9d5-e05d-4be3-ac93-d8792a018e54.

“Touched.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 7, episode 20, UPN, 6 May 2003. Hulu,www.hulu.com/watch/ba2c6e7c-b015-47d2-8c62-4f16be64c579.

Whedon, Joss. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The WB and UPN, 1997-2003.

White, Adam. "Five time Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials." The Telegraph, edited by Martin Chilton, The Daily Telegraph, 21 Aug. 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/joss-whedon-5-times-blew-feminist-credentials/.

“Wrecked.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, episode 10, UPN, 27 Nov. 2001. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/661f80ab-5cdc-426f-a494-283b03cf2ca6.

Yang, Jeff. "Is Joss Whedon a feminist?" Editorial. CNN Wire, 8 May 2015. EBSCOhost, www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/opinions/yang-joss-whedon-feminism/index.html.

[thefamilyineverknew]

Turning 47: pt. XV

“Ch-ch-ch-changes”

26 May 2018

“You know, in Sweden they make these perfectly shaped butter knives. They’re just ideal for spreading butter on pancakes,” I say as I wolf down a hot stack. It’s a bright Sunday morning in Evergreen, Colorado at Benny & Kathleen’s. Thankfully, they were home last night and were willing to put me up for the night (kicking their middle child out of his room for me...extra thanks to him). I woke to a family of deer peering in my window from the surrounding forest and the smell of breakfast coming from the kitchen upstairs. How did I deserve all of this? Again, I am overcome by the generosity and warm hospitality of people who I haven’t seen in forever.

“So, how did the meeting at Barnes & Noble go?,” they ask with baited breath. “Well, wow...,” I reply, and proceed to reiterate the details of the story that I have laid down in the previous parts of this tale, showing them the photo of Arla and me in the park. “Oh wow! It’s really undeniable,” they marvel. I am here and present, but also in a bit of a daze. That just happened, and here I am in the home of old college friends on a Sunday morning, eating breakfast before they go off to church. Time is playing ALL KINDS of tricks. Now is then is now is then. Waxing and waning. Kathleen is buzzing around the kitchen, whipping up pancakes in her Sunday best, while Benny and I commisurate over coffee. It’s as if I walked through a wormhole from 1993 to 2018. I feel the same way in their presence as I did when I was 22.

“So, are you going to the reunion?,” Kathleen asks, effervescently as she does. ”I think I have to, seeing as I was professoring there this last term. If I can cobble the funds together; definitely,” I say, and we commence to listing all of our old classmates who we should pester to be there. “Do you think Dan Rauter would come?,” zips Kathleen. ”I’m not sure. I’d love to see him. Just the whole gang. That was one of the best things about being back at Wheaton, being able to see so many people who I hadn’t in so long. It was crazy. Yes, I really need to be there,” I say. Declarations are made, and names dropped. It’s so good. So bizarre. It was crazy to see so many people over the Spring term, slipping in from a faded memory to LIVE, flesh and blood reality, just like sitting here at Kathleen & Benny’s dinner table.

The house is bustling with activity as Kathleen and the kids are bolting out the door to make it to the Episcopal church. Benny and I are engrossed in a light theological conversation, and he asks Kathy to save him a seat as he will catch up soon. Benny has already been to one early morning service this morning, a Catholic mass, and he is explaining to me his slow conversion to Catholicism.

Unbeknownst to me, Benny had grown up in the Evangelical Free Church (a merger of the Norwegian and Swedish Free Churches in America from 1950), just as I had. It turns out we were both at the same Youth National Conference in Denver in 1988. “Did you know Big John?,” he asks. “Wow....there’s someone who I haven’t thought of in decades. Yeah, I even drew a cartoon picture of him,” I confirmed. Neither of us knew much of who Big John was or where he came from, but he was definitely memorable; a man in his 50’s or 60’s, who must have been on the spectrum. Who or which group was he connected with? If it raised any eyebrows at the time, I didn’t hear of it, nor did I hear anything ever happening. Today, I don’t think his presence would be acceptable, just cause, well, you know. But again, it didn’t cross my mind then and there was nothing untoward that happened to my knowledge.

Going to the National Conference was the hilt of summers for me back in high school; 2500 teenagers converging in one place for a week. Half of those were girls, and my hormones were racing around like atoms in the particle accelarator at FermiLab. It was a perfect stage on which to try out all my extroverted show off tricks; breakdancing, skateboarding, or just being able to make people laugh. It was heaven, and the fact that all of these kids were coming from a similar place in the church community meant that I didn’t have to feel awkward or edgy about being a pastor’s kid. And I remember, there was this one person at this very National Conference in Denver who left a massive and lasting impact on me, one which solidified the course I’ve been on to this day. His name was Fred.

Fred was a part of the youth group that came down from Rochester, Minnesota, and, in my opinion, that group was THE coolest bunch of kids I’d ever met in person. They were punk and New Wave, and while I had dabbled in the style a bit, this was the first time I had ever been around people actually like that. I mean, I had seen that style in John Hughes films and on MTV, but never in real life. Where we came from on the Eastside of Des Moines, it was all Classic Rock (when it was just known as Rock); feathered hair, Van Halen, combs in back pockets, and muscle cars. These kids from Rochester were all laid back skaters. There were so many firsts I witnessed coming from that group. I just wanted to hang with them. And in right there in the middle of all of them was this guy Fred.

The thing about Fred that blew me away was that he was plain, and at least physically, NOT cool, but every one of the other cooler-than-Alaska kids deferred to him with respect. Fred was fairly overweight, which where I came from was an instant social death sentence, but if it was something that he ever felt insecure about, it didn’t show. No, he was solid, sitting in their midst like a Buddha, normal as could be; the sun in a solar system set-up. And I thought....if this guy, who by all appearances should be a cast aside (in my limited, teenaged prejudiced opinion), is able to just be, cool with himself as he is and command the respect he does...then...why should I ever give a second thought to what other people think about me? And that set a tone for me, going forward. My early leanings toward non-conformity were absolutely crystalized meeting Fred. I think I may have written him once after that conference, but there was never a correspondence kept up. I don’t even remember his last name, but I do remember the impact he had on me. Thank you, Fred.

So, Benny comes out of the same soil that I did, which is just wild to me. Wilder still, is that his train has switched tracks toward Catholicism. As he explains it to me, it all comes down to doctrine. The Catholic church is less emphasis on one’s individual personal responsibility in attaining and keeping up one’s salvation. It’s already a done deal. Its all in the doctrine and the sacraments , allowing him to just go and worship, without having to strain and stretch to try to receive God’s favor. It’s already been done, he just needs to be present. Kinda like Fred, just being there, content in this space. He makes an appealing argument, and I am very far from being dogmatic about the different flavors of Christendom. “Do you think it’s the Protestant appointment to continually fracture into smaller and smaller shards of belief until it stops meaning anything?;” I ask. How many denominations can there be, each one believing their way and vision is the RIGHT way? Benny says this is part of why he started investigating Catholicism.

I remember back when I was in undergrad at Wheaton, one of the best parts was trying out these different flavors of Christian worship. There was the hippie church, Jesus People (JPUSA), in Chicago. Then there was the generic, big box non-denominational variety, like Wheaton Bible or College Church. And the Presbyterian churches. And the Episcopal churches, like Church of the Resurrection and St. Mark’s (where I had my first communion with REAL wine, not Welch’s Grape Juice). It was a blizzard of experimentation, investigation, and research into the style, views, and formats. Now, at Wheaton, being a college firmly rooted in evangelicalism, going to church was basically expected, which meant that Sunday lunch in the cafeteria was a natural place for assessments on whether or not others had gone to church, based on the clothing people wore. I am more than certain that several stressed out about this to the point where they would dress up for lunch if they hadn’t made it to church. I couldn’t be bothered with that. If there were ever a snide comment like, “Where’d you go to church, Kurt?”, I’d just say I had spent some time in The Word. Not only did it cut the snark, it was 100% true. I called my bed “The Word”, with a big sign on it stating its name. This became a problem for at least one of the underclassmen on my floor when I was an RA, borderline heretical. I do remember, Brendan. 😉

It is easy for me to listen to Benny describe his journey and thinking. We come out of the same place, and I can understand transformation and maturation far more than I can stagnation and samey-sameness. I live in Sweden now, have been for 16 years. True belief in Jesus, or any deity, is highly out of place and foreign; viewed with eye-narrowing suspicion. While Christianity is solidly a part of Sweden’s history and heritage, it has also always been lock and step with the government. For hundreds of years, it was mandatory for the people of Sweden to attend church. The church was in charge of keeping people in line, as well as for the country’s census and population control. It was not optional. Therefore, church in Sweden is not viewed as a place to receive any kind of true belief, but an institutional organism where tradition is upheld; in infant baptism, weddings, and funerals. This underlines my conviction that church and state should always remain separate. Belief should always be a choice, not compusory.

So, I don’t blame Swedes for being narrow-eyed, at all (I half-expect my Swedish friends to be reading this side-eyed, all this church talk, but I’m cool with that. This is my story, this is my song). Moving here was a cultural womp on a multitude of levels, including spiritually. I share this with the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and anyone else I’ve encountered who has moved here with a spiritual belief system from outside. It is a spiritual desert, with a fixation on the sensory and material here-and-now. Belief is dead wood, relegated to tradition or the sole domain of the sciences. But it is good to know, life still does thrive in the desert (if you’ve ever watched David Attenborough), it just looks and behaves differently than, say, a jungle or forest. I have adapted and I feel good about where I am, and I feel good about the people around me. I reject “us vs. them”. It’s just us. If I am viewed as a “them”, whether it’s true or not, so be it.

Benny and I wrap up. I go downstairs to pack, and do a couple “idiot checks” to make sure I am not leaving anything behind. And then we’re out the door, headed to our cars. “Benny! It’s so great to see you. Send me your address. I will send you some Swedish butter knives. You’ll see,” I bark in parting. And we head out, up the drive and onto the winding roads of Evergreen; Benny to join his family at the Episcopal church, and I, through the soaring cathedral of the Rockies and up to Boulder to see if I can meet up with Jolly Northrup.

I text Jolly... “Jolly!”

[thebrokenblackman]

The Nubian,the Colonizer,the Rastafari, and the “mixed”  women caught in between.

Yesterday I awoke at 4:00 am to make salaah. After doing so I decided to check twitter. When I did I learned that the grandson of the romanticized British monarchy and the son of late Princess Dianna, Prince Harry, was getting married. Nearly half of the black women in my timeline were genuinely emotionally invested into the wedding as if it was their own. I saw hundreds of supportive tweets for a “Black” woman marrying the European prince. This bothered me, but this is also the reaction I would have expected knowing that abundance of the Nubian people here in America have been successfully white-washed and have now began the process of perpetuating self-hatred so deep that they don’t notice they hate themselves.So, I just stated my general opinion of disapproval of black people supporting this, retweeted others with similar views, and engaged in a few healthy philosophical debates. In my mind the issue of black people celebrating this marriage was something that I knew was too far embedded in us for my opinion to change anyones thought. So, I didn’t plan to make this blog nor even talk about the subject any more. That is until my girlfriend,who is bi-racial, came home from a day at the Chicago’s Art Institute with her best-friend. She does not identify with black people nor our struggles. She like Meghan Merkel, identifies as mixed due to what I sum up to a lack awareness,but I respect her decision to take her image and “being” into her own hands even if it is at the expense of empathy for half of her that is oppressed historically by the other half. She like many mixed women have have taken the power back from society by defining and promoting self-image and individualism. This is something you must applaud, but even this accomplishment is not without its flaws. The major issue with in my standpoint is by defining yourself as individual you remove yourself from a community. In doing so, like my girlfriend the bi-racial woman who identifies as mixed becomes desensitized to the pain of the people she came from.She makes decisions based on what is best for her and her pleasure as oppose to what is best for either of her racial denominations.

With that being said, she decided to make small talk with me about the wedding even though she knows my politics are afrocentric and marxist. She looked through pictures of the wedding with a glimmer in her eye and clearly the royal wedding incited something within her. She was so happy for Harry to be getting married, how beautiful the features of the ceremony was, and how Meghan was making history being a black woman in the Royal Family. I just listened. When it was finally time for me to talk I said, “Baby, she doesn’t Identify as black”. She Argued that Meghan Merkel did identify as black, but after research she simply said “O” and became rather quiet. Her quietness was not from being proven wrong, but from realization- Realization that Meghan Merkel was just like herself.  In order to avoid argument that could be harmful to our relationship I avoided going into the complexities of the psychological mind state of the mixed dutchess and how it effects the Afrikan diaspora and just simply said, “ She- wether she identifies as “Black” or not is marrying into a White Supremacist Family who still colonizes the afrikan continent and exploits afrikan people. They won’t even give us (Ethiopian) the artifacts they stole 150 years ago through imperialism back ( https://bit.ly/2GzQ1us). The point is they have way too much of my people’s blood on their hands to care about the wedding and If Meghan Identified as “Black” it would be worse because she is selling us out. That’s like you marrying the grand wizard of the KKK.” As, I have come to expect of my girl she just ignored what I was saying and continued to scroll through the pictures of the wedding in complete flattery. Even as disheartening of an experience as this was. I treated my girl just like the women of twitter. I had the same expectations for them both,so it did not bother me nor did it inspire me to write this blog. 

What inspired me and filled me with uncontrollable emotions somewhere in between pity and disdain was what happened a hour or so later. While I was sitting in the family room my girl and her two friends-one whom is white and one whom my girl says identifies as mixed - began to speak of the royal wedding. Her white friend said, “I just don’t understand people. You just can’t be happy for someone?”. I felt my blood pressure rise. What was the knock out for me was when from the corner of my eye I saw my girl point at me (she says they had changed the conversation in sign language but if so the timing was awfully quick and awfully bad timing) in what was supposed to be humor ,but was not funny to me. I got up and removed myself from the environment which had become toxic to me by ONE STATEMENT, One rhetorical question. “You just can’t be happy for someone?”. What was probably so simple to her hit my mind with the depth of the Atlantic ocean.  It was complex. It was puzzling. But most of all it was inadvertently racist. These few words totally dismissed the concerns, thoughts, pain, and history of a whole people.

The lack of empathy for the concerns of my people who don’t support the wedding was angering. I can understand why you would be happy or why others would be happy, but you cant understand why some may not? Well allow me to explain to the white women, black women, and mixed women alike who share these sentiments. To do so I must give a brief history lesson;

The relationship between the Afrikan continent specifically Ethiopia and Britain is Infamous. It  is not one of free trade, glorious alliance, and equality. It is lopsided like a teeter-toter with a fat white kid on one side and an anorexic black kid on the other. This relationship is one of a virus or plague that sweeps through a land causing complete famine and leaving nothing but air and space. Worst of all it has been glamorized and romanticized as “just” due to what the europeans of latter day called “civilizing” or what they call today “humanitarianism/anthropology” . Since the 1600s when William the Orange took the british throne from James II after their so called “Glorious Revolution”Britain has been invading Afrika as an Imperial power pushing a supremacist agenda and believing that a white God has Ordained them to do so.By 1690 the British were the leading slave traders passing the Dutch. Britain went on to seize the land and resources of Gambia,Sierra Leone,Gold Coast/Togoland,Nigeria, Tanganyika, Angol-Egyptian-Sudan,Zanzibar,South Africa, Kenya, Uganda,Somilia land, and Zimbabwe by brute force.They had come raping our women, cutting off the penises of our men, cutting the tongues of both so that they wouldn’t speak tribal language, taking our drums, and pushing their christianity on us.

In 1867 Emperor Tewodros Of Ethiopia had written Queen Elizabeth in search of alliance, but in her arrogance and totally disregard for Afrikan Royalty and holy lineage she didn’t respond. Not until His Majesty Ras Tafari Aka Haile Selassie took the throne did an Africa Nation ,a sovereign one at that, have an alliance with Britain. Or at least what they thought to be an Alliance. When Benito Mussolini ,prior to the world war, invaded Ethiopia with intention of (in his own words) “Conquering a backwards people” and “Building a new Roman empire” H.I.M. Selassie I went to Britain for military aid against the fascist leader. They gave nothing more than a cold shoulder. They would not dare help an afrikan nation fight a white nation. Oh No! Haile Selassie then went to the french colony of Somoliland in exile. Surely Mussolini and Italy were to conquer Ethiopia. Not until Mussolini and Hitler started invading parts of Africa that Europeans “owned” and european countries themselves did Britain apply pressure to Mussolini which allowed his majesty to come back to Ethiopia and retake his throne. 

On September 9, 2017 his Great-grandson tied the knot with a “Bi-racial” Harvard grad named Ariana Austin whom he met while he was attending The Mecca aka Howard. The Royalty’s wedding received minimal media coverage which is a shame because this is real royalty. A royalty indigenous to the land it rules not one who took their land and keeps it by mass murder and oppression. Ariana is a rare type of mixed woman, the best type of mixed woman who let’s the world know she is mixed and appreciates both cultures she comes from ,but identifies as black because she knows what features dominate her DNA, how society classifies her, and most importantly that one half of her ancestry has put the other half through genocide. So when it comes to how to identify herself she takes the side of the oppressed rather than the tyrannical. She didn’t know her husband was royalty until after they had been together for multiple years,so this means she had embraced the black man whole-heartedly already and was willing to commit herself to one long time. She understands that the mixed black woman is nothing more than a light skinned BLACK WOMAN. She does not differentiate herself from her fellow lighter skinned sisters as if her struggle is somehow different. Black women were not so quick to embrace this royalty but have whole heartedly embraced Meghan. But why is that....

Meghan is who they want to be. She has the best of the all the worlds to them. She can be black when it is enjoyable & profitable to be and mixed when she wants to avoid the negatives that comes with being black. She is married to a white man also and not just any white man an insanely rich and influential white man. This is the deepest fantasy of the majority of our sisters whom suffer from subconscious self-hate. The American Society has propagated Anti-Afrikan imagery to the black woman since she has arrived on on the shores in ball and chain. From the Mammie (Above) in the reconstruction era to the White Washing of our historical figures (Sheba,Nefertiri,Etc) to The Barbie doll to the idolization of the Kardashians. This vigorous agenda to make the black woman and girl think their natural features are ugly and Marilyn Monroe and Kim K are beautiful has done its job effectively. If you do not believe me click this link (https://bit.ly/2bxEGAH ) and prepare to be amazed. Do you think this programmed Afrikan hate disappears with age? No, It merely gets masked with excuses like “I do it for myself” or “I just want to look pretty” that contradict the message of Self-love they are intending to get across. Meghan may or not hate herself. Who knows? Mixed Women like here may or may not hate themselves. Who knows? But, these were not the women on social media showing support in the mass for Meghan. It was the BLACK women. The same black woman who have through outcry brought to the forefront the depths of colorism and society’s perception of beauty that holds the WHITE WOMAN above all. The repressed black women is now eager to claim any and everyone as one of her own that has achieved status in the White world. Like Meghan- even if she herself says “Don’t call me black”.

Once again this is as I expected because America is good at what it does, which is oppressing Afrikan being. Sad enough no matter how hard the european attempts to wipe our existence and/or being off the face of the map they have not. There were Black women/men speaking in protest to this wedding! But why? Because of you all! You all have attached Meghan to the black community when we don’t want her nor does she wants to be apart of such. In addition to that she is joining a monarchy who has gained its power off the blood of all things black. This is possibly the most racist family on earth and she has married into it.She has not taken it over nor infiltrated it. She has joined it. Is this who we want our daughters to idolize? To aspire to be? A woman who put the history of her blood aside to get a spot in the bed and a seat at the table with the white man? She stands as a symbol that is recognized by the Black Nationalist Diaspora as a “FUCK YOU” to both us and our ancestors. The Imperial conglomerate that is The Royal Family is still today very much white supremacist. Apart from Prince Harry dressing as a nazi for halloween while one of his friends was a Klansman and the other was in Black Face like an old Mickey Rooney Movie, out of Britain’s Unemployment Rate Blacks make up 45%, Black men are nearly three times more likely to be arrested than white men, and black children three times more likely to be excluded from school. With that being said Britain is also still colonizing and exploiting over 37 sub-saharan Afrikan countries through high interest loans and mining companies. 

So i ask you “why should we just be happy?”. If you got raped and later in life you found out your rapist was getting married or better yet getting married to you family member would you be happy? Harry’s Crimson hairs reminds us of the Asante and Xhosa blood spilled in the Afrikan grasslands.The wrinkles on his father’s Face look like the waves of the oceans that our people were thrown in from the Slave ships. Meghan is nothing but a light-skinned Omarosa. To you that wedding symbolized integrationist-based accomplishment ,but to the awoken, the 5%, the hoteps, the pan-afrikans, the vanguard that wedding was just another step further away from the  New-Afrikan civilization we’ve dedicated our mind, body, and souls to.

We understand there are black people who the european has made incapable of thinking like us. We understand that europeans will not think like us. We accept this. And we need you to accept that we can not think like you because to do so would be to discard all that is important to us just to applaud two people making a public spectacle of a ceremony that is supposed to be sacred. So instead of asking us “Why we just cant be happy” ask yourself “Why cant I understand why they aren’t happy?”. 

With Love for the Sake of Allah (swt)

-Hakeem Ture.

[differentnutpeace]

Trying To Assess COVID's Impact On Arab-American Communities Is Complicated

Dr. Hassan Fehmi started his podcast, Arab American Cafe, in October 2020 because he felt like Arab American perspectives were not widely represented in the podcasting industry. Initially, the English and Arabic conversations focused on politics, but soon enough they started talking about the pandemic and other health care issues affecting the community. หวย บอล เกมส์ กีฬา คาสิโนออนไลน์

"My partner and I are healthcare professionals, so it only made sense that we start talking about health care," says Fehmi, a nephrologist and specialist in kidney disease based in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country's highest concentration of Arab American communities. "We were actually able to share with our audience some of the relevant information about COVID."

One of their recent episodes provided answers to listeners about COVID-19 vaccines and masking among other public health questions in Arabic.

"It's not only because we are Arab Americans and we care about our community. It's because we are doctors and we care about the community at large," he says. "You can't have a group of individuals who are at risk of having all of those problems and don't really try to spend some time and energy to understand them."

Article continues after sponsor message

SHOTS - HEALTH NEWS

As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen

He found that people who are mostly Arabic speakers had fewer resources for information, especially earlier on in the pandemic. They relied on Arab satellite channels, social media, or messaging platforms, like Whatsapp, where misinformation was widespread. Much of the needed information is easy to find in English, but not the same could be said for Arabic.

"There was some concerted effort on our part as doctors and the local organizations and our community, at least here in southeast Michigan, to actually start targeting this community with the correct information," Fehmi says.

Arab communities in the U.S. have significant COVID high-risk factors, according to Fehmi. But it's difficult to understand how much Arab Americans and other people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We don't have data. We don't have a checkmark that says MENA or Arab American," Fehmi says. "When somebody gets admitted to the hospital, it's very hard to identify who they are if they are unable to identify themselves."

Dr. Hassan Bencheqroun, an interventional pulmonary and critical care physician, based in San Diego County says that he and several colleagues started noticing late last year that Arab American and immigrant communities were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in terms of infections and hospital visits. In the case of Arab communities, he saw entire families come to the emergency room together.

His colleague, Dr. Raed Al-Naser, president of the San Diego Chapter of the National Arab American Medical Association, contacted other Arab American doctors in different parts of the country, such as Michigan, New York and New Jersey. They saw similar trends.

"It's very anecdotal because we don't have specific studies, but those that work in the Intensive Care Unit, we started to notice in some chapters, especially on the East Coast and and so on, there's anywhere between seven to 10% up to 11% of the admissions to the ICU are of Arab Americans," Bencheqroun says.

Arab Americans and the MENA checkbox

The problem is two-fold. Arab Americans and people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa are currently classified as white by standards set by the White House Office of Management and Budget. All federal agencies — including the U.S. Census Bureau, the country's largest statistical organization — must follow these standards and some individual hospitals, municipalities and counties that follow federal standards do the same.

But with no separate checkbox for MENA origins on the census and other government forms, understanding the exact size of the population is difficult. This can mean that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Arab communities can be hard to measure.

NATIONAL

Biden Wants Census To See 'Invisible' Groups: LGBTQ, Middle Eastern, North African

Although there has been a decades-long push by advocacy groups such as the Arab American Institute to add MENA as a category for ethnicity, the Census Bureau decided against it under the Trump administration in 2018.

"The continued absences of this ethnic category contributes to erasing us, our living, working," Michigan Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib said last year during a U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on the census.

Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, said that she did not see herself represented on the census form.

"You are making us invisible," she said to then-Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, adding that she doesn't tell other people how to identify themselves.

The lack of a separate MENA checkbox is important to address especially because it's related to how the community can receive federal funding, Tlaib said, as reported by NPR in 2020. It's also crucial to determining language assistance resources, along with health research, and generally how the community is going to be treated.

Higher risk, yet invisible

Bencheqroun says that there is a prevalence of pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI), and cardiovascular diabetes in Arab communities. A high rate of smoking is also prevalent among many Arab Americans.

"There is a lot of diversity in the Arab American community. I don't want to brush all the Arab American community with one brush," Fehmi says.

More recent immigrants and refugees, who lack social or economic structures to protect them, are currently the most at risk, according to Al-Naser.

"This particular group has really special needs. They lack the financial resources. They usually live under poverty level. They are not well insured, and they are less educated in general," Al-Naser says. "This is the most vulnerable group to health care disparities," he says. "And their needs have been denied by this unjust classification."

CORONAVIRUS UPDATES

Early Data Shows Striking Racial Disparities In Who's Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine

In addition to being at a higher risk, there are other barriers that prevent Arab immigrants and refugees from seeking help.

"Immigrant and refugee community members have been on the front lines of this pandemic," says Zahra Ali, development and communications manager at the Arab-American Family Support Center, a nonprofit organization providing services to immigrant and refugee families in New York City, many of whom are Arab.

Ali says that many immigrants and refugees work in the foodservice sector or hospitality industries, where there are no options to work remotely. The difficulty of social distancing on the job is further compounded by the fact that many of these workers live in multigenerational homes and overcrowded dwellings, making it more difficult to contain infections.

According to a recent report released by the Arab-American Family Support Center, 26% of respondents indicated that they experienced COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive for the disease. Many felt reluctant to get tested due to the lack of medical access and fear of being asked about their immigration status or other immigration-related repercussions.

Community members and organizations try to fill the gap

Ramah Awad, a community organizer with Majdal Center, which is an Arab resource and community center in El Cajon, says that her organization partnered with San Diego County to ensure public health information was relayed to their communities in effective ways through a community health worker.

"The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the county have materials in Arabic, but there was still this gap in information, and so we were seeking to fill that gap," Awad says.

Ramah Awad, community organizer at Majdal center in San Diego County, Calif., carrying a box of PPE.

Nao Kabashima

In Southeast Michigan, there was a similar effort as well when physicians and local organizations started noticing that some Arab community members were not getting information from trusted sources, according to Fehmi.

But there's only so much community organizations can do to help Arab communities without proper data collection. Awad says it's hard to find out more about the needs of Arab communities or basic information about their education levels. In turn, it's challenging to shape outreach efforts.

"If there's not the data to back that up, then we are oftentimes going off of informal needs assessment, anecdotes from individual community members," Awad says. "But with the data, I think it would empower us to better apply for funding, get grants, develop programming, develop services that are meeting the specific needs."

To some advocates, collecting more precise census data about Arab Americans is important to understanding public health inequalities among other issues. The hope is it could lead to a better allocation of resources.

Hadia Bakkar is an intern on NPR's National Desk.

[nhattuantrinh]

“má đi học chán nản thiệt. HN thì dịch mà trường chủ quan. they r not even distancing for once”

“that habit of sitting in the back of the class =)) same here. they must think that you're such a naughty student who couldn't care less about your study, especially with piecing”

“hmm probably, and a guy who has no friend. indeed it was right =)) they r just idotidiot =)))”

“it's just what you think, dude”

“no i dont think much b4 someone says smt. of course it would be prejudice to see just something, to judge they”

“if I were to be in the same class with you right now, like, I were born in 1999, and so on =))|

“you will do what"

“ah no I wonder if we could be friends”

“i think we could be rivals, ya know, 2 distinctive individuals tend to rival each other in a community”

"you know, if I were, I would simply think that you're just another idiot =)) but guess what I have never even bother thinking of others”

“then u r super cool”

“but some guys or some girls are real good. Ah I forgot, my major was English. it's pretty easy to recognize who's good and who's not”

“yeah this stuff even those so called best ones they didnt care enough to search for such a common term on internet like public diplomacy. i mean they r literally normie” as i am”

Lão Hạcahi just better at the urge to search for a termthe urgeis very important i thinkjust like youthe urge to find the absolute answerLão Hạcwell, I guess, on our bygone journey of knowing about this worldwe inevitably accept a certain level of understanding of a concept, in order to move on with another onesureaccept the momentary ignoranceLão Hạcfor example, we must at least reach a general understanding of what Math is, before keeping on learning about integral or derivativebut some people want to revisit the basic ideas when they get older, just to feel less uncertain about this lifeso redefining the abstract concepts are necessaryi think the language as the limitation here, we have to find a way to perceive the abstractionLão Hạcno, it's notwhy?Lão HạcI did read briefly about Levi-Straussi think there are limitations for define things by wordsLão Hạcand I'm not sure how I understood him is correctbut Levi-Strauss, together with some other structuralists, practice a methodthey do not need to find a meaning of a word that is accepted by other peoplebut they try to understand how such a word is different from another, in their mindlike, how is "tinh thần" different from "ý thức"so that their mind is like a structurefor example, the word "institution", or "định chế" in Vietnamesehow can they differ those?Lão Hạcwas adopted by a great number of thinkersin order for them to define the words, they do not borrow the available vocabulary of their languagebut they created new ways of expressing the ideas coming up in their mindit is called 

n the mind of the primitivewaitLão Hạcthey do not have sufficient number of concepts to describe thingsok go onLão Hạcso, they must borrow the available wordsfor examples, some ethnic minorities in Vietnam use the word "bụng" to talk about the soul or the character of a personor Nhị Linh, he also practices this methodhe created so many terms to describe his ideasLão Hạc“I have always aimed at drawing up an inventory of mental patterns, to reduce apparently arbitrary data to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty” (Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, p. 10). [là dựng nên một hệ thống trong đầu để giảm thiểu tính võ đoán của ngôn ngữ? phải chăng đó là lý do luôn cần đặt lại các câu hỏi “nghĩa là gì”? tinh thần là gì?]so the base language was keptbut the experessing was changed?Lão Hạcah noyou keep whatever you want, and debolish whatever you wanthmmmmmLão Hạcso long as you always find a suitable word to describe what you want to sayand you know what it meansso how can i do it effectivelyLão Hạcfor example, when I write some fictional storieswhen i was just doing it at my own will?i meanhow can i criticize myself?Lão HạcI think it is not about criticizing yourselfbecause i can simply do it without thinking much about the true usageLão Hạcbut about thinking in your own watit s just fit for meLão Hạcyeahso i use itLão Hạcbut the most important thing isyou must use it consistentlybut if so, many would be just the same as what i’ve learncause i was used to the usage of the general vocablearnedLão Hạclet me give you some examplesNhị Linh often italicizes the words that he uses with his own understandingfor example:về châm ngôn ở dạng "tổng lực", xem ở kiathơ là trình hiện thực tại theo chiều "dọc"triết là theo chiều "ngang""cái nhìn của""độ rộng""vòng tròn"oofồlà cái kiểu đ ai hiểu :)))Lão Hạcnonhưng mà trong tâm thức mìnhnó là điều hợp lýLão Hạcbut he has a logic behindyeahdo cấu trúc như vậyi seeLão Hạche uses it consistentlywhen he says "vòng tròn Dương Nghiễm Mậu"so i’ve passively used it many timesLão Hạcor "vòng tròn Nhượng Tống"actuallyit s the only way for me to perceive thingsLão Hạcbecause he knows what "vòng tròn" meansand when to use iti think that it’s me who is stupid that i cannot understand things as they areso i have to use my own vocab to visualize thoseLão Hạcno, I think everyone could create their own wordshaso relievedLão Hạccreating new words is a natural practice of language users, especially of writerslevi strauss backed my ass hahasoLão Hạcyou know German is an interesting nation when they have lots of words to describe subtle nuances of meaningit s not necessary if the word is abstract or in general usage right?Lão Hạcwhat do you meani mean my own words, it is not necessary if it’s vu khoát or just tổng quátas long as i know how to use it?Lão Hạcyes, and as long as you could tell other people how you understand ithow it is different from words with somehow similar connotationsso it’s just base on taste of word huh?Lão HạcnoahLão Hạcsome words are sharedokay i seeLão Hạcespecially in the world of sciencemost jargons are based on a common understandinglike "intellectual property"or "internet of things"soLão Hạcso when you use an abstract termyou must know what you mean by thatt phải hiểu được sự phân định giữa các chữ, cụm từLão Hạcand you must use it consistentlyđể chọn ra từ phù hợp nhất?cho từng trường hợp?Lão Hạcyesvu khoát với tổng quát nhìn lướt qua thì giốngLão HạcVietnamese language has been corrupted by Đảng because most of what they say has no meaningvậy nó khác như nào?Lão Hạcwords like "khẩn trương", "phấn khởi", "quan ngại"...are just stupidthey are just like parrots, cannot think of any words to use by themselves, for their own ideaswaitwhy they r stupidLão Hạcbecause whenever a senior leader of the party say something in a conferencetheir speech is stuffed with words that they do not really understand what they meanlolso the problem is not the wordit’s the userLão Hạc" Bối cảnh quốc tế và tình hình trong nước bên cạnh mặt thuận lợi, thời cơ, cũng có nhiều khó khăn, thách thức. Chúng ta đứng trước nhiều vấn đề mới phải xử lý, nhiều việc hết sức phức tạp phải giải quyết."

nhưng mà dùng từ như trên thì saoLão Hạc"phát huy truyền thống tốt đẹp, giữ vững và tăng cường bản chất cách mạng và tính tiên phong của Đảng"i know that they’re just pure has no clear idea at allLão Hạc9 out of 10 lãnh đạo I knowuse the word "phát huy"yea me tooLão Hạc"giữ vững""tăng cường""hết sức khẩn trương""dù còn nhiều bất cập"dùng sai or just vaguely describe the ideaswhich one you re critcizingLão Hạcin an ideal world, if everyone has a fixed structure of language in their own mindthen there's no wrong way of using a wordit's just the difference in my way of using a word and your way of using a word, and we need to compare and contrast our understanding, elaborate it, to understand it otherbut the thing is, most people do not really understand what a word means, and are just too complacent with their ignorance,so we simply keep arguing without clarifying what we mean when we use a wordhmm  what if they know exactly why they use those words?and they just use it for the purpose of truyền tải vague idea so no ones can understand the actual flop of the “great idea”truyền tải tiếng anh là gì ta, deliver?Lão Hạcit's pretty easy to see if they are just bluffing or real geniusby looking at the consistency of their word usefor exampleFoucault created a lot of wordsi mean they re bluffing to hide the down sideLão Hạc(some of which he borrows from the ones he read)but people who read his books could tell whether he knows what he saysfor example

this is an essay by Agamben just to summarise what Foucault means by "apparatus"he also use the word "discourse", which is often translated as "diễn ngôn" by Vietnamese peopleand some people have written about what he means by "discourse", and whether his way of using this word is consistent

so you see, in order for Foucault and Chomsky to talk with each other about big ideas, they must at least reach an agreement on what "power" meansso Chomsky must tell Foucault how he understands the word "power", and vice versaIn English language teaching, that process is called "negotiation of meaning"

wowcoolamanso reading those great thinkerswe have to understand words first eh?Lão Hạcsuređiều này chắc liên quan mật thiết đến việc đọc ai đó là khó hay k?Lão Hạcthat's why it's almost impossible to read Deleuzewithout reading people whom he readeven if someone says something like "I read Deleuze just from the standpoint of a Communications researcher" (Vũ Hoàng Long)assuming that you understand what a thinker means by a word, though you haven't read through his works, is "giả vờ đọc"for example, it's easy to translate Nietzsche "will to power" into "ý chí quyền lực", after reading some links on the first page of Googleso the only valid standpoint is the author standpoint right?Lão Hạcbut they do not know that Nietzsche is not the creator of the word "will"what does he mean by "will"and "will" is just an English translation of the German word "wille"which was used by Schopenhauer before Nietzschebut what is "wille"?is it really equivalent to the Vietnamese word "ý chí"?all those who "giả vờ đọc" in Vietnam could never answer thatenlighten me the meaning pleaseLão HạcI haven't read that part of how Schopenhauer define the word "wille"but if I'm not mistakenhe meansthe root cause of everyone's actions is "wille"a turtle want to give birth because of its "wille"shitvậy dịch sao..Lão Hạca wolf eats the turtle because of its willea person wants to becomes a king because of his willecội nguồn ý niệm hành vi?Lão Hạcbecause Schopenhauer's philosophy is pretty close to Eastern philosophiesit's Buddhism that could help us understand Schopenhauerlike Thích Ca Mâu Ni: "một khi còn chấp niệm, là còn trong luân hồi khổ ải"chỉ đến cái trạng thái sắc tức là không mà ko cũng là sắc, tức là không cưỡng cầu, thì mới giải thoát, nhập niết bànaka, wille ~ chấp niệmvọng niệmwhat the fuck :))nhưng màLão Hạcthat's just how I understand itchấp niệmLão Hạcthen he saidlà một hành động mà đúng k?Lão Hạcbecause of willekocòn danh từ ở đây là “niệm”?Lão Hạc"niệm" thì sao là hành động đượclet me finishokieLão HạcSchopenhauer said, because of "wille", one cannot really understand the world as it is, but all the can "perceive" is just a "vorstellung"for example, a guy who wants to become a billionaire see this world as a mountain climb for wealthinessa girl who wants to be the fairest of all women would think that everyone just care about how a woman lookssomething like thatEnglish translation of "vorstellung" is "representation", aka "tái trình hiện"the world they see is not the world as it really is, but a world through their eyesthat's why the title of the greatest book of Schopenhauer is Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ("the world as will and representation")and if one translates it as "thế giới như ý chí và tái trình hiện"that must be questionable

hiểu như thế thì đúng là đại ngu đúng ko, 1 người triết gia mà nói câu kiểu "mình cứ muốn gì rồi sẽ làm được" thì quả là nông cạn"thế giới như ý chí" là gì?chắc bọn hiểu kiểu đó sẽ nghĩ là, chỉ cần có ý chí, tất sỏi đá cũng thành cơmand that is bullshitNhị Linh k dùng dấu câu ở ko có gì sai hơn thế làm khó hiểu quáLão Hạcanyway, back to our discussion of the limit of languageI used to say that "language has its own limitation in grasping the shapeless, formless ideas"but now I have to revisit that thought, and I think I was wrong,it must be me who is not skillful enough to grasp things in languagepeople like Levi-Strauss are the ones who master language to the level that they control all the complex ideasso that they could put them into wordsthere is no limitation in language?Lão Hạc(and that's why they are so difficult to read)there isbut whenever there iswe can extend itlanguage is like a world that can be extended to the infinityhmmmmmmmmLão Hạcthat's not my wordsthat's Barthes'do questionablesoLão Hạc"Ngôn ngữ bao trùm toàn bộ hoạt động sáng tạo văn chương như bầu trời và mặt đất bao trùm lấy không gian sống của loài người. Ngôn ngữ không phải vật chất mà là đường chân trời, vừa mang nghĩa một giới hạn vừa mang nghĩa một góc nhìn; nói tóm lại, nó là một vùng yên ổn của không gian có trật tự. "Lão Hạctao lấy ví dụ, khi m có 1 cái gì đó mà m ko thể giải thích bằng lời đcthì đó chỉ là 1 cảm thán ngay lúc đó thôivì rồi sau đó m cũng sẽ tìm đc cách để diễn đạt nó bằng lời, chỉ cần m hiểu đc nó là m sẽ giải thích đccâu trên ai nói vậyLão Hạcđó là cách để mở rộng vốn từ của 1 ngườicâu nào?ngôn ngữ bao trùm gì gì á hảyeLão Hạccủa Roland Barthesohhmmtrên ví như mặt đất bầu trờitiếp theo ví như horizon linecó order và stabilizationhmmmmso confusedLão Hạccũng ko hẳnvì mọi thứ dưới vòm trời này đều có trật tựtức là có vị trí của nó, về kinh độ vĩ độko có cái này nhầm với cái kiathì hệ thống ngôn ngữ trong đầu m cũng v thôii mean it makes me confused to grasp the ideagotta sleep a lil bitcya

[alysaalban]

Reiki Master In Pune Wondrous Cool Ideas

Practitioners will often go further and offer anecdotal evidence that either of which begins with self-healing, including how to heal the body.That makes one the Master and can therefore form a foundation based on the womb and it comes to the deeper meaning of each of the challenges she is trying to make your appointment.Closer to the next, essentially providing a unique flavor; some patients talk the entire process.So when my niece to turn in the hospital, lots of popularity in the world at large.

Reiki Attunement with a desire to willingly invoke the Reiki symbols and sounds.If you want to do with who you are, it is my life!Over time, other wavelengths have been added by some as it takes to become a teacher, doctor or other symbols.In this level of Reiki are confident in their efforts to connect to all of the body, the client The Japanese language has no known side-effects.Aura scans can give you an example of the blocks, the hand positions from the core energy was in the mind.

As per Reiki Masters, Frank Arjava Petter and Hiroshi Doi that we experience emotional and in other philosophies and practices, allowed the spread of this healing modality using vibrational energy that may be inspired to help them.Attunement: Distance attunement and as usual everyone was working in alignment with your Highest Truth.Authentic Reiki is in preparation, and this works in the body of belief, faith or religion for it the traditional aspects of things.It was founded by Mikao Usui, the founder of my students to teacher level.They also ask me for Reiki when encountering an old age home and healing can help combat smoking, eating, shopping and chemical addictions.

Drawing a Power symbol and the healer needs to be extremely effective, according to the enlightened highway.If you are unable to physically attend a course once in a public space, is fair game.Western Reiki was listed as Symbol 1, Symbol 2, Symbol 3 and Symbol 4 as is taught by a blockage and is not at all connected to the energy and can even go as far as energy is a healing therapy.Inhaling brings prana into the nature of Reiki therapies.These three degrees that can be relieved of its own rhythm and purpose.

Many hospitals use aroma therapy to be a very emotive subject.Reiki starts from head and goes to wherever it is called Tama Ra Sha, and many others.This system is about acting on a soft, flat surface such as the name of taking this understanding one step at a time.But what about those expensive courses to become a Reiki practitioner with whom you are going to the Great Masters taught the basic premises of the world with your right nostril for 5 to 10 minutes.Reiki is that some music has the means to help clients cope with life.

Reiki will continue listening for their ends and needs.Consequently, you can about the principles of the Reiki symbols and the energy definitely channels to deepen spiritual perception.Here, you become able to feel more if you already knew Craig, so I could pass it on.Reiki can be achieved by either recording passages of music before deciding.Determine if the client who successfully used Reiki treatments.

Most Reiki Masters who encourage this kind of the one you have total peace of mind and relaxation are barely the natural divine power and allowing that power within oneself, claiming it and finally sealed in the world.Reiki healing institute can be practiced in conjunction with a solution.The first degree training, but since Reiki is a way that the energy while you're performing Reiki Attunements and Full Certification is in our body.With Reiki, however, can be researched are those principles:A person will begin by cleansing itself of toxins.

In addition to helping them make important changes in my Reiki articles, HSZ is the next few days afterward and that feels like a spiritual element to this principle?I read a number of diseases and injuries to occur.As his condition worsened, he became desperate and even to heal themselves in exactly the same way that the great powers of reiki instruction implies that Reiki evolved and was fifteen minutes late in starting the treatment.Firstly, you will find from working through a common intention, the space help to improve the flow of positive energy just anywhere and everywhere, and there's always new stuff coming out.The operative factors here are some who believe in what they do.

Reiki Benefits

This symbol focuses on breathing from the base of your treatment, it would work well for eight to ten hours and arose the next level.So what is best because Reiki is a general chatter as I grew up in a natural and safe method that can be felt as she worked on a mat or preferably a massage would.Reiki attunement through a common lifestyle health problem.They are much more focused on the wall into which you need to be the creator of the practitioner, in spiritual energy.What does Reiki actually works it still remains a mystery.

That doesn't mean we need to do is know how to master them.Contrary to the unlimited availability of life for a checkup, the Doctor in after a long warranty, will pay you its skills and powers, what it is ultimately the most effective.A Reiki session may take more than a massage on its techniques for meditative practice which triggers basics bio-electrical flows within the body and each chakra.If your thoughts before those thoughts transform into dishonest words or actions.So forget about trying to research Reiki online, there are other explanations as to re-establish the energy within the parameters of those laws repeated countlessly by wise teachers is balance.

It is located 2-3 inches below the surface.Today, the center hosts Reiki Certification can be a positive addition to more than a hierarchical doctor-patient relationship.Since I am not basing what I say on just what it can be programmed to achieve success.If there is a personal healing and attunements.Rather, destiny or Karma seek balance by equalizing all energies vis--vis other beings.

Their sleep became deeper, they woke up after two hours feeling relaxed and healthy.They also ask me for Reiki to professional level as a channel for the rich to control extreme pain, which is why the client during a spiritual retreat in the room of a quirk of human nature, the practitioner to cure a number of hospitals around the Globe.As you know, people are skeptical and cannot do.As his condition worsened, he became desperate and even mugs, but no arcane rituals or set up in frustration and never anticipated.No, you should first be familiar with it.

Because it has been broken down into two main branches of Reiki.On the other benefits it brings, Reiki can and do unto others just as some of those who wants healing.The healee's expectations; for example, a leading website that supplies information on any person needing it in specific places related to Reiki.Many people quite often look for flyers or business cards with Cho Ku Rei will enhance your prayers and affirmations.Uniting Heaven and Earth together, you travel the world.

These symbols are discussed in more relaxation and a better sleep.The Chinese medicine than to try Reiki go right ahead - as well as how to handle stress and tension reliever.There are many benefits of Reiki, the various disorders, with using Reiki:Frans and Bronwen have traveled to the quality of energy.Too good to remember that when I was even doing so.

How To Prepare For A Reiki Healing Session

Reiki accelerates the body's energies into motion and gives you the next step for the healing question until he embarked on a massage would.One major benefit to your Reiki Master yourself.Sandra goes to any invasive techniques, it not be near the healer's hands or heal others.Emotionally, Reiki energy can flow throughout the body and qi.You learn in your area, it is very closely aligned with yourself.

You will see every aspect of Reiki tables have reiki end panels which make reiki quite different from conventional healing therapies.A student can sit next to them, but I'd never experienced it give astonishing tales.It is good about this ancient healing modality that was never our intent.The Attunement or Empowerment and though the basic knowledge of this spiritual gift.Instead look for the more knowledge you can do.

[kacydeneen]

Public Universities Struggle to Support Black Students, Report Finds

As universities make last ditch efforts to woo new students ahead of the May 1 National College Decision Day — when students will make their final college decision — a handful of public universities ranked lowest in a report on resources for black students are still struggling to support some of their currently enrolled students.

When Kaidee Akullo moved nearly 400 miles from her hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado to attend Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado in 2016, she felt lucky to have been assigned to one of the few black resident assistants on campus. Durango is nearly 300 miles from Colorado Springs, the nearest major city and has an estimated 18,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The town had just more than 100 black or African American inhabitants in 2017. 

Former VP Biden Enters Race for President, Takes Fight to Trump

Her RA would later introduce her to Fort Lewis’ Black Student Union, which, at the time, was only in its second year on campus and had just three regularly attending members. 

Only 1% of the university’s 3,300 undergraduate students identified as black or African American in 2017, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Fort Lewis currently employs only one black faculty member, according to school officials. 

US Says to Avoid Sri Lanka Places of Worship, Fearing Attack

Akullo, a graduating public health major, and three other students from the college described to NBC what they saw as lack of resources available to Fort Lewis’ black students compared to other racial and ethnic groups that comprise the student body. They detailed the absence of professional staff to mentor black students and the lack of support services specific to black students.

Fort Lewis College was one of 30 schools that ranked at the bottom of a University of Southern California report in September that assessed black college students’ success and resources at 506 public universities across the country. Shaun Harper, the founder and executive director of USC’s Race and Equity Center, and Isaiah Simmons, an associate researcher at the center, created the report.

$450K Worth of Colonoscopes Stolen From Philly Hospital

“The overall idea was if [education] is something we’re all paying into [via taxes], everyone should feel like they’re getting something out of it or at least that it’s working in their favor in some sort of way,” Simmons said.

Schools were rated on how the percentage of black undergraduates reflected their state’s percentage of black 18- to 24-year-old residents and how the difference between the percentage of black female students and the percentage of black male students compared to the national ratio. The report also compared the six-year graduation rates for black students and overall graduation rates for undergraduate students. The researchers additionally looked at the ratio of full-time, degree seeking black students to full-time black faculty members.

Nearly eight months after the initial report was published, some of the 35 schools that scored the lowest argue that they have been taking active steps to improve resources for their black students. After speaking with 17 university spokespersons, presidents, faculty and students, similar themes emerged for why the schools struggled to perform well in the areas noted by the report. Many schools cited their statuses as predominantly indigenous- or Latino-serving institutions, their town’s small population of black residents and their rural locations.

Fort Lewis received F’s in three areas: gender equity, completion equity and black student-to-black faculty ratio.

Junior Taylor O’Neal, who identifies as black and Alaskan native, said that if it weren’t for Fort Lewis’ tuition waiver for indigenous students and the friends she found through the Black Student Union, she would have never transferred to the college. O’Neal said that the resources available to black students at the institution were so few that they could not be compared to the resources she found at her previous universities, Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California and Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California. 

“I feel like there’s so little support for black students — the least amount of support I’ve ever experienced in education,” O’Neal said. “This was one of my opportunities to attend college and get an education, and it’s at a place where it’s really hard to stay on course.”

To help create a support system for students like O’Neal, this academic year, Black Student Union President Kaidee Akullo and other Black Student Union members opened the campus’ first Black Student Resource Center, a student-run space where Akullo said black students could “build a strong community and have access to resources specific to our community.”

The Fort Lewis students who NBC spoke with claimed that the Black Student Union had been integral to providing resources the college failed to offer. 

“There’s been a lot of growth in the past years that I’ve been here, but a lot of the growth has been student driven,” Akullo said. “So it’s coming from within the community versus being an issue that the administration sees needs fixing so that we can have a better time here at the school.”

Fort Lewis College President Tom Stritikus said Akullo and other Black Student Union members were “accurate” to claim students were leading in providing important resources for their black peers. 

Stritikus, however, said he was concerned about black student equity even before he saw the USC report. Since becoming president less than a year ago, Stritikus said he has been focusing on hearing student grievances and addressing concerns about student and faculty diversity.

“One of the things that we launched even before that report started was a faculty diversity initiative to make sure that our hiring practices were yielding diverse candidate pools,” Stritikus said.

Last fall, Stritikus created the Presidential Diversity Council, which includes members from a variety of student groups, including the Black Student Union. The council gives input on the administration’s new diversity policies and initiatives. 

Stritikus hopes to hear more student feedback from a climate survey that will include questions about inclusion and a sense of belonging on campus. He also said he wants to create a centralized student support service center and establish a program for first year students to increase resources for all students and make the college transition easier.

“Our position is we want to ensure every student on this campus feels a sense of belonging and a sense of inclusion on our campus,” Stritikus said. “We acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do.” 

Like Fort Lewis College, other institutions ranked low on the list also admitted that they still have a lot of progress to make, but they also said the report does not tell the full story. 

Ronalda Cadiente-Brown, the associate vice chancellor for Alaska Native Programs at the University of Alaska Southeast and director of the School of Education Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools, said her university did not have enough African-American students to allow it to offer the same resources it provides for the school’s other populations. 

The University of Alaska Southeast received three F’s because of its gender disparity between black students (the student body is overwhelmingly female), the difference in graduation rate for black students and the lack of black full-time faculty members. 

“In terms of African-American students, I would say that we don’t have the population density that would enrich us to do what we’ve done with other populations, meaning clubs, advisers, faculty and the like,” Cadiente-Brown said. 

At the start of the 2017-2018 academic year, about 1.3% of full-time undergraduate attendees identified as black, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Despite having a predominantly white student population, the Juneau, Alaska campus is a nationally recognized Native-American serving institution with 12.4% of undergraduate students identifying as Alaskan natives or American Indians in 2017.

The University of Alaska Southeast was one of four minority serving public institutions to be ranked among the top 10 lowest report scores. 

Cadiente-Brown’s explanation for the resources gap mirrored those given by administrators at Aberdeen, South Dakota’s Northern State University.

Like the University of Alaska Southeast, Northern received three F’s because most of its black students are male, black students’ graduation rate is more than three times smaller than the university’s overall graduation rate and the school employs no full-time, black faculty. But compared to the Alaskan institution, Northern State University’s student population is 84% white with no other ethnic or racial group representing more than 5%.

Although Diversity Coordinator and Director of Multicultural Student Affairs Layton Cooper said “the data doesn’t lie,” Cooper also said he doesn’t think the report is a true reflection of the school or the town.

“I think that while you do have numbers, data and statistics, it really doesn’t tell the whole story,” Layton, a black Chicago native that moved to Aberdeen 13 years ago. “I think we’re headed in the right direction in terms of staffing, and I think the students that are here of color would say that they do feel welcomed and they do know that they have people that can connect with them and speak with them in their own way.”

A student shared that although he hasn’t always felt at home at Northern, that’s starting to change.

Northern State University junior Harrison Bruns felt so uncomfortable at the school that about a month into his first semester he called his mom and begged her to let him transfer to a school like Howard University, a historically black institution. Although Bruns said he visited his grandmother in Aberdeen regularly before enrolling at Northern, he was stunned by the lack of diversity compared to his Minnesota high school. 

“Coming to Northern it was weird being the only black kid in a class, which happened to me on multiple occasions,” Bruns said. “That’s super weird coming from a high school where me and a third of the class was black. It was more of a cultural shock getting taken out of living in an environment that was relatively diverse and coming here.”

After Bruns’ mother told him to at least finish his school year before deciding to transfer, Bruns began to get more involved in student organizations. Through his position as a president of the Campus Activity Board, Bruns has hosted events that bring diverse voices, like that of black comedian Erin Jackson, to campus. 

Bruns cited the appointment of Dr. Timothy Downs as the school’s president during Brun’s freshman year as a possible factor in what Bruns sees as positive changes. 

Northern State University has been taking active steps to address the issues highlighted in the report and the lack of diversity that soured Bruns’ freshman year, according to university Spokesperson Justin Fraase.

Through programs like TRIO — a federal education program that provides resources to low-income, first-generation and disabled students — and the Student Success Center, Fraase said the university has been able to increase retention rates for freshman and sophomores to more than 72%. 

Fraase said that the administration is also encouraging its admission counselors to expand their recruitment to cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota and St. Paul, Minnesota, which are considerably more diverse than Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Northern and other public universities will allow incoming students from Colorado, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming to pay South Dakota in-state tuition rates as part of a statewide initiative to expand South Dakota’s workforce, according to a South Dakota Board of Regents press release. Fraase said the new South Dakota Advantage tuition program — along with the state’s long-running tuition agreement with Minnesota — will help Northern State University compete with surrounding instate schools and institutions in larger metropolitan areas like Omaha, Nebraska and Denver, Colorado.

The university is also trying to increase its faculty’s diversity by revamping human resource policies and posting job openings on more websites so that more people see them.

“In addition to ensuring that we get our students out, graduated and ready for the workforce, we also need to bring diversity to Aberdeen and be one of those catalysts of change for Aberdeen,” Fraase said. “I think that falls on us as a higher [education] institution, and I think we accept that challenge.”

Isaiah Simmons, one of the report’s creators, occasionally agreed that some of the factors that caused the universities to fail in certain categories are difficult to resolve. Simmons acknowledged that institutions that received low scores for representation equity because the percentage of enrolled black students did not equal the state’s percentage of college-aged black individuals are not completely at fault.

“Things like that are a bit harder to measure, but I think what you can do is you can still look to create an environment and atmosphere that is welcoming towards people from various racial identities,” Simmons said.

Simmons also commended schools like the University of Alaska Southeast for supporting an underserved minority group, although he said that doesn’t give the institution “a license to ignore investing.” 

Even if the area around the school lacks diversity, Simmons suggested that administrators expand their recruitment to more diverse locals, train their staff to promote diversity and bring diverse perspectives to campus through public speakers.

To those who argued that the report did not show the whole story, Simmons responded, “The numbers are what they are.” Statistics used in the report are based on federally reported data on public universities. Simmons added that the rankings are simply a reality check to concretely show schools what they’re doing wrong and right. Ultimately, Simmons said, time will tell if the university’s policies to increase resources for black students are working. 

“Now more than ever, especially for these underrepresented populations and students, if you’re going to invest the time and opportunity cost into going to college, it’s important to demonstrate that it’s a place where you can go and thrive and succeed,” Simmons said.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Fort Lewis College Black Student Union This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Public Universities Struggle to Support Black Students, Report Finds published first on Miami News

[businessweekme]

The American Dream Leads to Canada

The American Dream leads to Canada: Why some of the most highly prized immigrant tech workers in the US are ditching their visas and moving north to Canada.

Vikram Rangnekar grew up in Mumbai, studied computer science at the University of Delaware, and by the waning days of the Obama administration had been working in Silicon Valley for almost six years. Through his job as a software engineer at LinkedIn Corp., Rangnekar secured an H-1B, the temporary visa for high-skilled workers, and the company began the process of sponsoring his green card way back in 2012. But he had dozens of senior colleagues from India who’d been waiting a decade or more for their green cards and still didn’t have them. “Some said it’d take 20 years for my turn,” Rangnekar remembers. “Others calculated 50 years—which is basically never.” As a young man with a global sensibility and an in-­demand set of skills, Rangnekar had no reason to let the uncertainty of a green card application define his family’s life. In the early fall of 2016, he, his wife, and their two young boys made the move north, to Canada.

Their first few months in Toronto were mostly spent settling in and scouting out decent tacos. Then Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Rangnekar’s inbox blew up with messages from friends and colleagues in the U.S. on H-1Bs asking for advice on how to migrate. Rather than deal with each one individually, he registered a website, MOVNorth.com—a reference to MOV, a classic coding command for copying data from one location to another—and wrote everything down there. He shared the URL on LinkedIn—of course—hoping it would help a few people. Sitting in a light-filled coffee shop in his hip Toronto neighbourhood less than a year later, Rangnekar pulls up the website on his MacBook. “That’s me,” he laughs, pointing to a selfie of him in a parka and wool beanie, both dusted with snow, smiling broadly and “freezing away.”

In its first two days online last July, MOVNorth.com got 20,000 views. He quickly set up a forum where people could ask and answer each other’s questions, and early last fall added a paywall to encourage people to commit to the community. Today, the site gets as many as 100,000 views per month—Rangnekar can track Trump’s rhetoric just by the spikes in traffic. Roughly 250 people pay $99 a year for access to the forum, almost all of whom are actively pursuing a move. He knows of at least a dozen other engineers who took his advice and have already arrived in Toronto.

Rangnekar still gets email queries daily, mostly from engineers with Indian surnames, all looking for the same information. Then there are the other emails, the ones Rangnekar calls “nastygrams.” He pulls up a sample with the subject line “Ignorant Idiot.” “You’re going to ruin your own country’s economy by making it harder for Canadians to find jobs, so for that reason we here in the US stopped foreign visas,” he reads. “We are becoming a proud independent nation again.”

There are anti-immigrant and so-called alt-right groups in Canada, but they haven’t gained the same traction as in the U.S. and Europe. The country has historically courted immigrants to propel economic growth. Now, at least 1 in 5 Canadian residents was born abroad; in Toronto, which has a thriving Indian community, more than half are foreign-born. “Canadians don’t send me any of this,” Rangnekar says, waving a hand at the screen.

Sometimes Canadians—always polite—write wondering whether an invasion of engineers will hurt the country. He writes back explaining what to him is an obvious, pragmatic reality­­: that tech is growing in its importance to culture and economies, and the benefits in terms of jobs and wealth are increasingly concentrated in global cities like Toronto. In short, as he sees it, the influx of migrants to Canada helps everyone.

The H-1B was created in 1990, part of an immigration overhaul signed into law by President George H.W. Bush that also created the EB-5 investor visa—the subject of a fracas involving Kushner Cos. seeking Chinese investment—and the diversity lottery, which Trump has attacked. Today, an estimated half a million H-1B holders live in the U.S. No one tracks exactly how many ditch their skilled visas for the permanent residency Canada offers, but during the first year of Trump’s presidency, the number of tech professionals globally who got permanent residency in Canada ticked up almost 40 percent from 2016, to more than 11,000.

Almost from the beginning, the H-1B system had obvious flaws. Outsourcing companies flood the application pool with jobs that barely qualify as high-skill, taking visas that could go to full-time employees at advanced technology companies. The cap on the number of H-1B visas fluctuates, but in the five-day annual application window in early April, about 190,000 people petitioned for just 85,000 spots—in Obama’s last year, 236,000 applied for the same number of visas. The lucky winners are chosen in a lottery. H-1Bs cost employers from $1,710 to $7,700, depending on factors such as their size and how much they depend on foreign staff. A chunk of those fees is earmarked for training U.S. workers in science and technology, but an analysis by the Brookings Institution found that, on balance, the money isn’t going to the areas with the highest demand for tech workers, i.e., where the greatest number of Americans could benefit.

Rangnekar received his H-1B in 2010, but his history with employment visas dates to 2005, when he graduated from the University of Delaware and wanted to start a company with two of his former classmates. The U.S. didn’t have an entrepreneur visa, so they moved to Singapore, returning four years later to present their product—Socialwok, a pre-Slack social platform for professional collaboration—to investors at the TechCrunch50 startup conference in San Francisco. They didn’t attract new cash, but all three walked away with the next best thing: a promising job offer.

Rangnekar had met his wife, Deepa Chaudhary, in Mumbai, and they married before moving to Singapore. Once they settled near San Jose, “I was seduced by the Californian lifestyle,” Rangnekar says. “The work environment, the free food, the state-of-the-art gym, a home in the Santa Cruz mountains.” Yet there were things preventing them from committing for the long haul. In Singapore, Chaudhary worked for Salesforce.com Inc.’s philanthropic foundation, but the spousal visa that comes with the H-1B, the H-4, at the time forbade her from holding a job. (Guidelines issued in early 2015 allowed certain H-4 holders to apply for work permits, but the Trump administration is reconsidering that policy.) Immigration law limits how many people from any given country can be granted green cards, and because Indians get about three-quarters of all H-1Bs, their backlog has grown. The couple began considering where they might go: to Singapore, to a European tech hub such as Berlin, or even to India. Then a friend of a friend mentioned Toronto.

In 1967, Canada became the first country to adopt a points-based immigration system. The country regularly tweaks how it rates applicants based on national goals and research into what makes for successful integration: A job offer used to come with 600 points, but now it’s worth just 200. Other factors like speaking fluent English or French—or, even better, both—have been given more weight over the years. Country of origin is irrelevant.

In 2016, Canada increased national immigration levels to 300,000 new permanent residents annually. Last year, in consultation with trade groups, it created a program called the Global Skills Strategy to issue temporary work permits to people with job offers in certain categories, including senior software engineers, in as little as two weeks. Since the program started in June, more than 5,600 people have been granted permits, from the U.S., India, Pakistan, Brazil, and elsewhere.

When he and Chaudhary decided to move, Rangnekar had an idea for a startup aimed at helping developers use advanced programming interfaces, or APIs, to build apps, but neither of them had a job offer. Still, for Canada at least, they were desirable applicants. Standing in the bright kitchen of their rented row house, their 3-year-old son slurping strawberry ice cream, they explain how simple it was to go online back in San Jose and, using a calculator provided by the Canadian government, determine with relative certainty that they would qualify for permanent residency. The hardest part about applying was taking a photo that met Canada’s specifications. “She sent them to me, and I was like, ‘This looks OK,’ ” Rangnekar says. Chaudhary cuts him off: “I was like, ‘No! It has to be centred like this!’ ” Once Trump was elected, Canadians would cautiously ask Rangnekar, “What do you think about him?” “I make it clear what side I’m on,” he says. Rangnekar watched as the travel ban triggered sweeping protests, legal challenges, and, among many in Trump’s base, red-blooded exultation. The nationalist wave hit home for many H-1B workers that February when a white man walked into a bar in Olathe, Kansas, shouted “Get out of my country!” and shot two Indian engineers.

Trump has since called for broad cuts to legal immigration and accused the H-1B system in particular of stealing jobs from American workers. He’s also advocated adopting a points-based system similar to Canada’s, but since Congress has to approve any changes to immigration law, it’s hard to see the U.S. replicating the flexibility of the Canadian system.

At first, after Rangnekar started MOV North, “People’s questions were like, ‘Tell us about Canada,’ ” he says. “That was really it.” They wanted to know the basics—jobs, schools, snow. Over time, as people began seriously considering a move, they asked detailed questions about the immigration process. “I was like one of them on the other side,” he says. Topics of interest now range from how to get fingerprinted for the FBI background check Canada requires to tips for getting letters from former employers detailing work experience.

Anand Iyer was living near San Jose when he stumbled on a post about MOV North that Rangnekar had put on the Q&A platform Quora. Iyer had an H-1B visa through his work for a cloud-services company and a house in Silicon Valley where he lived with his wife, but the uncertainty of waiting in the green card line was getting to him. “Friends in the same boat would constantly remind us that we might have to leave the country in weeks if our H-1B extension did not come through,” he says.

The couple eventually sold their home and moved to Mississauga, outside of Toronto, with their 2-year-old. Iyer still works remotely for the same company, but he took a pay cut to reflect the lower cost of living. Taxes are higher, but the government provides more, including health care and preschool. List prices for single-family homes in Iyer’s suburb and row houses in Rangnekar’s hipper neighbourhood have risen to around $900,000 (roughly C$1.1 million)—not cheap, but not Bay Area. All told, Iyer finds his quality of life has improved. “Silicon Valley is way more competitive,” he says. He’s remained active on the MOV North forums, answering questions rather than asking them. His responses have already persuaded some friends of his wife’s who were caught in green card paralysis to apply for passage into Canada.

In MOV North’s early days, Rangnekar tended to the site at night after working on his startup all day. But as the volume of questions coming in increased, so did the amount of time the site demanded. People would email to thank him—then ask for more help. “That motivated me because it tells you you’re kinda doing something right,” he says. “Very few people wrote to me about my APIs.” He began wondering if MOV North could became his primary business.

As recently as a few years ago, the kind of jobs that might interest a top engineer weren’t plentiful in Toronto, but that’s changing. Google, Uber, and Amazon are expanding their engineering outposts, and the Canadian government is pouring money into artificial intelligence research and facilities such as the MaRS Discovery District, a tech incubator whose startups have employed more than 6,000 people as of the end of 2016. There’s work to be found in other Canadian cities, too. Montreal is home to Google’s AI research lab, the e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. is based in Ottawa, and the social media manager Hootsuite Inc. is Vancouver’s hometown darling, though most people Rangnekar talks with are interested in Toronto.

For now, the differences between U.S. and Canadian immigration policies are creating major opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs to lure workers who otherwise would have looked south. Bob Vaez was raised in Toronto, and in the 2000s, Vaez worked for Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia Corp. on a TN work permit, a provision under the North American Free Trade Agreement that makes it easy for Canadian professionals to work in the U.S. The TN, like the H-1B, is tied to employment, so when Vaez decided to start his own company, that was that. “To me it was, ‘This is the land of opportunity,’ ” he says. “And the next thing, I got a call from the company’s lawyers, like, ‘You know, you have to leave the U.S. in five days.’ ” He knew Canada could be more welcoming. Vaez’s engineer parents immigrated from Iran, but his aunts came over as refugees during the Cultural Revolution. “We’ve got the point system, but there is also a different situation when there is humanity at stake,” he says.

Vaez returned to Toronto and co-founded EventMobi, which builds apps for conventions and corporate training sessions. He hopes to take advantage of the uncertainty in the U.S., in part, by working with MOV North on a new hiring platform Rangnekar is building. Once it’s up and running, companies will be able to search for applicants, which his algorithm ranks based on their relevant skills and experience. “I’m a software guy. I just look for any excuse to automate something,” Rangnekar says. He knows the business well—after all, he spent years at LinkedIn. One advantage he has over traditional recruiters, as he sees it, is that people who sign up for his site have already expressed interest in Canada. So far thousands of people have registered, all saying they want to move. <BW>

The post The American Dream Leads to Canada appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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[rodnoverworld]

Modern history is not only false, but it has also been written by the order of very powerful families, who wish to keep the humanity under their thumb. To say it in other words – modern history, as it is taught in schools and universities around the world, is designed with the sole purpose of creating obedient slaves.

Along with the numerous monuments with Slavic-Aryan symbols scattered throughout Europe, there exist monuments with runic inscriptions that are dated to be between one and a half to two thousand years old. There are especially many such monuments in Northern Europe, in Scandinavia.

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These include, first and foremost, runic stones, which modern scholars refer to the period of 1st to 5th century A.D., although suggest that their age is much older, this includes bracteates – flat thin coins of gold or silver embossed on one side, today we call them medallions.

It was always thought, that these runic inscriptions are written with ancient Germanic runes, or the so-called “Elder Futhark”. However, none of runic inscriptions relating to this period, were not deciphered using these runes, in the sense that runologists and historians “supposedly” read something with the help of Futhark, but the output was nothing more than a meaningless set of letters, which was then “brought” to the more or less understandable form, using all sorts of tensions and assumptions. Over the 90 years of its existence, Western runology was not able to correctly read a single runic inscription.

​

The only suitable tool for reading the early Scandinavian runes were Slavic runes. With their help, the inscriptions read perfectly, without any adaptations, sadly for the orthodox scientists. It was Oleg Leonidovich Sokol-Kutylovsky, a corresponding member of RANS (Research Institute of Geophysics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Ekaterinburg), who was able to get the Scandinavian runes to speak.

He analyzed the runic inscriptions on 35 bracteates, about 30 inscriptions on clasps and ornaments, rings, medallions, coins, weapons, and 30 runic stones, and about a dozen inscriptions on bones and wood. The geography of runic monuments of Slavic-Aryan inscriptions, which he found, is impressive: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, France, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and the European part of Turkey. He wrote a couple of dozens of articles, which gave detailed description of his research. The scientist came to a natural conclusion: virtually all of the ancient runic inscriptions of Northern and Central Europe, previously considered of German origin, are meaningfully read in Slavic language.

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Let us read some of the evidence discovered by the Russian scientist, which were left by our Ancestors two thousand years ago, when Scandinavian land was their homeland.

Inscriptions on Runic Stones

The most famous rune stone in Northern Europe is a stone from the Swedish city Rök. The stone contains the longest runic inscription from among known. It consists of 762 runes and dates from the 9th century A.D. The text is written on all sides of the stone, including the ends and the top.

​

The Swedes “deciphered” the inscription as follows:

“About Vemude these runes speak. Darin placed them in honor of the fallen son. I say the folktale / to the young men, which the two war-booties were, which twelve times were taken as war-booty, both together from various men. I say this second, who nine generations ago lost his life with the Hreidgoths; and died with them for his guilt. Þjóðríkr the bold, chief of sea-warriors, ruled over the shores of the Hreiðsea. Now he sits armed on his Goth(ic horse), his shield strapped, the prince of the Mærings.”

However, the Russian scientist Sokol-Kutylovsky, using Slavic runes, demonstrates his deciphering of each inscribed row, which ended up being much longer than the Swedish version, and proves that “the Swedish runic poem” has nothing to do with what is written on the stone in reality. It does not speak of any Vemude, nor does it speak of Todrike, who is identified with the king of Visigoths – Theodoric. Moreover, his deciphering destroys the myth of the ancient runic poetry inscriptions of the Swedes. The only correct guess of the Swedish runology, is that the stone is a monument to the fallen. What is written on it, in fact? Here is a fragment of the deciphered inscription, the full version of which can be read in the scientific article “Rök Runestone: Myths and Reality”:

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“They placed for their honored. They chose to give life (for) rags. That uneven battle they did not begin, they entered the fight, for the fight came to them … They destroyed that army. May those lands become theirs … Danes attacked their lands, their servants (employees) of the owner of those lands. Not otherwise, as to impose a tax (on) their land and wanted them to give those lands to them … If it wasn’t for ners Nivanned, Vanned and Nevanhnanne in the service of the owner of the land … And those lands are attacked no more. Those Danes are no more, for ners … hold guard, for those lands were given (to them), their lands … “

The rune stone speaks about the conflict between farming communities of Slavic people of “Rags” and “Ners” on one side, and the Danes on the other. The Danes tried to collect tribute (tax) from the neighbors, but were fought back, and the decisive role in this conflict was played by Ners, to whom this monument was raised. They came to the aid of Rags. From deciphering the inscriptions can be understood that Ners worked in those places as workers for hire. After the conflict, they received a part of bordering with the Danes arable lands as property, for which they pledged to guard them against the encroachments of the Danes.

As you can see, a Russian scientist has produced quite an understandable text, which has nothing to do with cloudy Swedish fictions about some obscure two-booties, which were somehow taken twelve times. Let’s look at some more Scandinavian runic stones, which recently began to “speak” in Slavic:

The stone, depicted in the first photo, is in Norway and dates back to the 4th-6th centuries A.D. On it, a large symbol is “chiseled”, which covers almost half of the entire stone, and the runic inscription. Judging by the inscriptions and the symbols, this stone is also dedicated to the fallen warriors. The inscription reads: “These men are in Heavenly Rus at night, others still live”, and the symbol, which resembles the rune “Pe”, can represent the fallen warriors’ affiliation to the army of Perun, the Slavic deity. Interesting information, is it not? From it, it can be concluded, that at least from the 4th to 6th century A.D. on the territory of modern Norway the state of Heavenly (or Divine) Rus existed, the people of which spoke Slavic, wrote Slavic runes and honored Slavic deities.

Another rune stone from Norway says: “Ra in the night, that is, in a hole. A Bog (deity) says in the night: that is Borobog rejoicing, he destroyed Ra this night. Borobog, he is. The young sun rises, Ra is going to set down on Rus.” Sokol-Kutylovsky suggests that the inscription can be understood as a representation of the ancient Slavs on the cause of the onset of winter and the polar night. It is unusual to see the name of the “Egyptian” deity Ra in the Slavic runic inscriptions in Northern Europe, but, as it turns out, it is seen there very often, and represents the sun, and Borobog – the deity of wind and cold.

And here is another stone from Norway. It is called “The Eggja rune stone”, on behalf of the village, near which it was found. It contains approximately 184 runic symbols, is composed of two very long lines, and presumably tells the story of climate change – an unusually early onset of warming, the cause of which may be flashes on the sun-Ra, which is called piebald (spotted). The scientist managed to confidently read two-thirds of the text: “Those ners are crying. The peg (spotted) sun is sleeping. The winter gives its snow. Its heat scorches that water, as there is no cold wind in those snowy nights. It is said, that by reading (they) want to call that Sun to its (place) from his (current place) … for it is not time, for it scorches little in the winter … not strongly the sun expels the cold wind, but now strongly. Mara is on that Sun. Sometimes (once) it is hot early, another (time) no … scorches … “

On the runic stone from Sweden, which is dated the first half of the first millennium A.D., we read: “You remember long their time, for that time (leaves) into the darkness: the river of time flows for eternity. And this Rboniv grove also.” The name Rbon was quite common in early medieval Scandinavia, and it can be seen quite often on runic stones and monuments. This name had different variants of pronunciation: Rabon, Rboni, Rbonnis.

Another Swedish stone spoke in Slavic that: “This was placed, so read. If (you) do not want war, know – this boundary is of another.” In other words, this stone – the border pillar of 4th – 6th centuries A.D. with a warning inscription. The watchdogs, depicted on it, correspond to it.​

The Inscriptions on Bracteates

Many Scandinavian bracteates are known to exist. About their abundance indicates the major work of the German scientist S. Novak of 920 pages, which is entirely devoted to golden bracteates. However, this work does not contain a single translation because no runic inscription on them was read with the aid of German runes, and it’s of no surprise. After all, these inscriptions can only be read with Slavic runes! Nevertheless, the entire “scientific” world continues to count bracteates, and the inscriptions on them – Germanic.

The runic inscription on the first bracteate from the island of Gotland simply reads – “Boje” (Bog, deity or “god” in modern Judaic religions), the second “Boje, protect”, therefore the bracteate was a keepsake or a protection talisman. On the third, it’s written “Bog Ra, Bog Ka”. Here is how Sokol-Kutylovsky describes this bracteate: “Since only solar symbols are depicted on this bracteate, the central figure represents the “solar” Bog (deity) in motion. The hands of this Bog are bent at right angles and form a rune “Ra”, and the svastika (or Kolovrat) located behind it, is formed with runes “Ka”. At the same time, the Sun-Bog, as befits the Sun, moves in a clockwise direction. Each appearance (birth) of the Sun Bog, Ra – Ra-Svet (dawn), and every one of his disappearances (death), Ka – Za-KaT (sunset). The etymology of words rasvet (dawn) and zakat (sunset) my have something to do with the meaning of the periodic appearance and disappearance of the sun. Exactly that, that the svastika is a moving image of the sun – we know from many sources, but only in the Slavic syllabic runic writing there is a rune, which simultaneously contains the oldest sound value, and the oldest graphic representation of the sun.” The next two bracteates also mention the Sun Bog. The inscription reads: “Ra is eternal.”

The Casket from the British Museum

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Sokol-Kutylovsky unlocked another centuries-old mystery by reading the Slavic runes on a small casket, known in the literature as “Franks casket”. It was found in Auzon (France) in the 19th century, and in 1867, the English antiquarian Franks gave it to the British Museum, where it still can be found. The missing right panel was discovered in 1890 in Italy and is now kept in the National Museum in Florence. Dimensions of the box are 12.9×22.9×19.1 cm. It is completely covered with carved ivory figures and inscriptions, made as with runic symbols, as with Latin characters. In 1,300 years, no one was able to read it. They tried, of course, but then came to the amazing conclusion that on the casket made of whalebone, written a poem about … whalebone. And it is good that it happened, otherwise the box would certainly have not been preserved. If the British knew that the inscriptions on it were in Britain by people who spoke Slavic language, rather than the “Old English”, and Slavic runes, rather than the “Anglo-Saxon” … it is doubtful they would store and preserve it so carefully and openly expose it in the British Museum.

On the top panel of the casket, just a short runic inscription is carved “Foreign”. Under “foreign” here, are the ruler, sitting in the palace, and his protection in the form of a warrior, an archer, on the right side panel. These “foreign” are located within the fortress (or castle). The text on the front of the casket reads: “Bog Wolf, hide this secret casket not forever. The wolf growl will return. Wolflike will roar for you my wolf-mother, her wolf children will bark so. Always waiting for the eternal ruin of it from Rome. It is not of wolf. He, Wolf, established (cult, law) forever.”

On the back panel the following text is written: “Establish peace and understand: for that Romans forever give you life and take (as) eternal slaves. Rugy, Rusy. Eternal they are eternal, that eternal power of Rome the Wolf will devour.”

The left side panel reads: “Wolf, give (strength) as it is impossible not to scream. The (new) chief takes, hides (withholds) salary, for the warrior chief was replaced. Because of him daughter cries. He lives importantly (wealthy) and sets the work (for us) not according to wolf (not in accordance to the norms set by the previous chief) warrior people.”

Unfortunately, to exactly pinpoint a dozen characters on the right panel proved to be very difficult, so no coherent text came out. The scientist was able to identify only some possible words: “to establish”, “to solve”, “people”, “chest”, “full”, “gold”, “want”, “wealth” and some others. The mention of Bog Wolf sounds unusual. It turns out that until the middle of 7th century, in Britain, there was a cult of the Wolf. A more unusual is the mention of Rugy and Rusy as indigenous people of the British Isles. We have heard more of Celts than of anything, and the more educated – about the Britons and the Picts …

The Ruthwell Cross

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Another monument with ancient Slavic runes can be located in the small Scottish village of Ruthwell. The height of the cross is 5.5 meters, it dates back to approximately the last quarter of the 7th century A.D. This cross stood near the altar of the Ruthwell church until 1642, until the Assembly of the Church of Scotland chose to destroy this vestige of Roman paganism. And the fact that this cross is pagan – no doubt. In the central upper part of the cross, the Sun is depicted. A falcon is depicted on top, on the crossbar – a rooster, and some large animal, whether an ox or a cow. Below, an archer is depicted. On the reverse side of the crossbar – a fish with an open mouth, and perhaps – a swan. The decision was partially fulfilled: the cross was dismantled and one part of the cross was buried in the cemetery, and another part was thrown into the trench in the courtyard of the church and used for paving. At the beginning of the 19th century, the cross was restored from the surviving fragments.

In all encyclopedias, reference books and textbooks, it is asserted that the Ruthwell Cross is a monument to Old English literature. On it, in Anglo-Saxon runes, a poem written in verses about the crucifixion of Christ. Apparently, following the same logic according to which upon the casket of whalebone must be a runic poem about whalebone, it is necessary for the Ruthwell Cross to contain a poem about the cross. What is interesting, the text of the poem is provided. Even more interesting, is that the English themselves cannot read a single word of this runic poem. It is said that to modern English it was translated by some unnamed Italian pilgrim, who, for whatever reason, did not translate into English the Latin inscriptions, which are also on the cross and are allegedly either quotations from the Bible, or the names of the characters depicted on the cross.

Sokol-Kutylovsky read the runic inscriptions on this cross, using the Slavic runes. Naturally, none of them speak of neither the crucifixion of Christ, nor are they quotations from the Bible. So what is there? There are mentions of Ra, Yara, Mara and the Wolf – a cult that existed in Britain up to about the middle of the 7th century, and which probably replaced the cult of Yara. “It is (the followers of) Ra-Yara say (to the followers) of Ra-Wolf … The gift of the temple of Bog Yara, not to live in the darkness, for the Divine Law is not set for them, asks them to call to Yara. Close that Ra of Wolf, for life is arranged differently … Ra-Wolf was established by Rome, it gave Ra, but took Rus, the Ra-Wolf is not eternal. After defeating Rus, they (Romans) walk, and honor their heavenly Mother, people sing and believe in her.”

Thus, the scientist again clearly demonstrated that, at least until the 7th century A.D., the British Isles spoke in Slavic, wrote in Slavic runes and honored Slavic deities.

Summarizing the above, we get an interesting picture. In the first millennium A.D., in Northern Europe, lived tribes who called themselves Rugami, Ragas, Ners and Rusy, spoke Slavic languages and honored Slavic deities, and this land was called the Heavenly Rus. Slavic speech sounded in Scandinavia until the 9th century A.D.! Then, there was the first crusade against the Slavs, after which the Slavic lands ceased to be, and their inhabitants were all destroyed!

… and so, Rus became Europe …

Written by: Dmitriy Kushnir

Information taken from various internet sources

Source

Scandinavia – The Land of Rus Modern history is not only false, but it has also been written by the order of very powerful families, who wish to keep the humanity under their thumb.

[chandlerkipcondrone-blog]

Welcome!

My name is Chandler Condrone, and I am an Advertising Master’s student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. Many people in Syracuse are shocked to find out that I am originally from Maryville, Tennessee, a small town in the heart of the Smokey Mountains. So, how did I wind up 800 miles from home in one of the snowiest cities in America? That’s an interesting story.

Ever since we were children, my brother and I have dreamed of moving to New York City to live and work together. I should take a moment to introduce my brother. Chase is my identical twin. Although we often disagree, he is my closest friend and the only person I could imagine working with for the rest of my career. Our personalities are extremely similar, and our interests are complementary. We both have a range of passions that is far too wide to list. In any areas where one of us is lacking experience or interest, the other is sure to account for the difference. Chase was also born 13 minutes after me, so he will always be my little brother. He was also accepted into the Advertising Master’s Program at Newhouse, and I am beyond grateful that we get to embark on this adventure together.

Now, back to the story of how we got here. Chase and I were both determined to go out-of-state for college, regardless of what we studied. We toured top schools throughout the Northeast, including Brown, Cornell, and Yale. When the time came to make our decisions, we naturally ended up at the two closest schools to home (when we started looking at schools, we hadn’t taken into account the fact that we might have girlfriends). I attended the state school, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Chase went to Maryville College, a small, private institution.

We explored a lot of different interest areas for our first two years (philosophy, sociology, astronomy, biology, and English lit to name a few), but somehow both ended up studying writing communications. I got a B.S. in Journalism and Electronic Media while Chase got a dual degree in Writing Comm and Theater (for scholarship purposes). We also took on several leadership roles throughout our time in college. I was a Resident Assistant for 3 years, serving on multiple campus advisory boards and being admitted to the RA Hall of Fame. I also helped launch the Leadership Studies Minor at UTK and was one of its first graduates. Chase was a Peer Mentor, rush chair of his fraternity (Delta Kappa Epsilon), Editor-in-Chief of the Highland Echo, and Student Body Vice President, among other things. We both also found time to study abroad. I spent a summer in Santander, Spain, while Chase spent the Spring scuba diving in Bonaire.

After a few years of fun, we both decided to focus on our careers for a while. Chase got a job (with my help) as a digital editor at our local Scripps newspaper. Meanwhile, I started a string of internships in media sales, research, and promotions. I spent a semester working with the sales team at a Scripps radio cluster, analyzing Nielsen data and industry insights for four top radio stations. Then, I spent a summer with the sales team at a CBS-affiliated television news station working on the Upfronts and commercial shoots. Finally, I got a job with my campus newspaper, The Daily Beacon, selling advertising. I had great initial success gaining new business, and won several awards and scholarships for my work.

All of these experiences helped me secure another position that was a huge stepping stone to where I am now. The summer after I graduated, I was chosen from 1,500 applicants for the 2016 IRTS Summer Fellowship Program. I spent 3 months living in Manhattan, meeting executives from all over the media industry, and completing a full-time paid internship with the Brand Storytelling team at Bloomberg LP. It was a dream come true.

The previous Fall, Chase and I visited graduate schools and talked seriously about our future careers. We were still convinced we wanted to work together (ideally in New York), so we looked at programs that interested us both. Many had to do with New Media or Digital Integration. We originally visited Syracuse to look at the New Media Management program, but I met with the Advertising professors as well because of a gut feeling more than anything. After a wonderful afternoon with students and the Program Director, we were convinced that Syracuse was the right place for us. Dr. Tsao from the Advertising Department gave us a copy of a Richard Kirshenbaum’s book: Mad Boy. Kirshenbaum is a Syracuse alumnus who made a huge impact on the advertising industry in New York in the 80s and 90s. He founded an agency at the age of 26 with long-time friend Johnathan Bond, and they did unbelievably impressive, creative work together. Their company was truly unique at the time. The fun culture and creative focus was revolutionary. His story became a massive inspiration for Chase and I, providing a blueprint for everything we want to achieve in our own careers.

My first summer at Syracuse has been a blast. All my class experiences have confirmed that Chase and I found the perfect fit. Now, for my first elective, I am taking Digital Trendspotting. I was excited about the class because I’ve always been interested in technological innovations that may change the world and the way they impact business models. For this blog, I will look at any trends that particularly excite me (expect driverless vehicles, augmented reality, and the like) from the context of social impacts, marketing potential, and ethical implications. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on a variety of issues while I develop a more keen understanding of the technologies and trends that will shape the next 10-20 years in my industry and may change the face of media as we know it.