#I am so sick of my government killing people abroad

[sequencer987]

I’m living in an empire when I wanna be living in a city state.

[luceroin505]

It's been a while since I posted about my country... however I wanted to say something.

This is a kind reminder that Venezuela isn't free yet. We're under a dictatorship that started 27 years ago that not only destroyed our economy, but also our safety and that threatens our human rights. Basically, those who make known the reality of the country are the Venezuelans who live abroad, cuz if you ever dare to tell people about this while living in Venezuela... mate, you're done. Either you get imprisoned or killed by the government, or both.

We fought. For decades we have been fighting for our freedom, at the cost of prison or death and still we ain't giving up. But don't you dare to call us cowards because we escaped the country. We were starving and we wanted to be alive.

We cannot end this just by "putting our best foot forward and continuing to fight". I repeat, WE ARE IN A DICTATORSHIP. The only people who have the power to overthrow Nicolás Maduro at this moment are the Venezuelan militia, which sold its soul to the government so... that ain't happening until they get on the side of the Venezuelan people.

We are 8 million Venezuelans living abroad, enduring insults, discrimination, xenophobia just for wanting to preserve our lives. There are thieves and murderers among us, that's for sure, but that doesn't define the Venezuelan person. We are hard-working people, who despite the circumstances are optimistic and try to see the positive side in everything. We laugh at our tragedies, we hope for a better future but above all: we don't give up.

So if you see a Venezuelan living abroad, hug them. We suffer a lot because of leaving our country and culture. And if you see news about Venezuela on social media, have empathy for them. There are still people who have remained, people who have lost family members, friends, mates, people who can't afford to escape this hell.

I write this with tears forming on my eyes. I'm a Venezuelan who lives in Colombia, a Venezuelan that with her family had to leave the country. My father had received death threats for not supporting this bloodthirsty regime and my mother was sick, unable to get better since meds can cost a fortune. My brothers and I, exposed to propaganda at school, at the strees, everywhere. We didn't come to this country to steal, kill or do any harm to the inhabitants here, but even in 2025 we are still treated like this, like many Venezuelans in other countries.

I miss Venezuela like hell, everyday. I miss my cousins and neighbours, my house, my life there. But I know I can't return yet, not at this moment.

I don't even know why am I writing this, but since you're reading I want you to think about this later... We didn't mean to hurt anyone. We just want to live. The Venezuelans still living in Venezuela... they haven't given up. But like us, they want to live. We want freedom, but not at the cost of streets stained with blood. We were hurt enough, it's enough.

[reynasheart]

i know the usual white feminist crowd wont even care to read this but i just have to share it somewhere bc i feel sick to my stomach.

today we went to uni wearing all black bc the government wouldn't declare a national mourning. i heard one of my friends asking another boy why wasn't he wearing black, he answered with "why, what happened?" ive lost all hope for this country and men in general.

one of my professors had a rent abt how homicides weren't special to our country and if we were to move abroad we'd become second-class citizens there. this is a man who lived in europe for multiple years and now is making his studies with the help of the government, making moneys we cant even dream of, telling us to basically get over it. why am i even surprised at this point, he's working with government, theyre giving him money for his researches, of course hes gonna help discard the news under the rug faster, the media block irl version.

another professor made even crazier comments, a misogyny speech, he said that he didnt even care abt the events bc the girls were the murd3r3r's ex gfs. he talked abt how it was women's fault that they were always choosing the abuser men, not even considering the abuser men in question as a problem. i couldnt believe my ears when he said he wouldnt even help a girl if he saw it happen. i feel worried abt the women in his life (he doesnt have a wife, ofc, thats why hes so salty at this age with a child) i tried so hard not to cry and scream during the lecture, having to listening to him in silence.

they're trying to feed us these propagandas even more than media, poisining our brains and gaslighting us to believe that world outside turkey is hell, even worse than here. the sad part is these are people who were supposed to be role models for students, but they're men after all.

i felt even more nauseous when one of my "friends" (apolitic, a new way to say you're pro-government and a freak) as a woman said that there were more homicides happening in belgium. i couldnt even look at her at this point, me and my other friends argued saying how the difference is that theres a law system there, as oppose to ours. she ignored us and kept trying to talk abt biochemistry. how can she not see that everything is political when you're a woman? how can she believe that she's privileged enough to not have a political opinion?

i've lost hope. im tired of walking home with my head low, looking at my shadow with a paranoia, knowing that someone could kill me for no reason at all and get away with it. please share the events anywhere you can, they're trying to silence us, to keep us in our houses with fear to go outside but we cant let them win. TURKISH WOMEN NEED HELP

[notsolong-pause]

I am Russian. Never in my life i wanted to feel ashamed or guilty of who i am. But now, after reading the news non-stop for three days, not being able to sleep properly or go on with my daily tasks, I can’t help but feel the overwhelming shame and guilt for my government. I know, feeling this way doesn’t help anybody, and it’s, probably, just me feeling more important than I actually am.

For the past three days, I couldn’t stop feeling scared for my friends and parts of my family in Ukraine, for the regular citizens that were robbed of life and safety by the president of my country, for all the Russians and for myself.

I hate him for killing people, not only in his country now, but in Ukraine as well. I hate him for not listening the entire world, his own people, the UN, and for god’s sake (!) even Tal*bs. How mad one has to be if even the terrorists are telling you to fucking stop.

Seeing people hiding in subway, being under fire, looking at their life shattering makes me so mad and devastated. Their life being in danger is a priority, it is the biggest and the most horrible thing about this war and has to stop.

There are consequences that I am scared to talk about, because they are shifting focus to what I feel, to what every Russian feels. But even though, this is not the most important thing right now, it is a thing. I see it in the eyes of a barista when taking my morning coffee, my teachers, my friends, my mom, every single person on the subway. I am angry that this old crazy man who has gone fucking mad and sick from being the “tsar” for so long claims that we, Russians, are on the same side with him, that all this is done from our names and with our support.

People around me get arrested for:

1) Picketing

2) Going for protests

3) Posting on social media

4) Putting up signs in their windows

The list goes on. Yesterday a woman who lived through the occupation of Saint-Petersburg (read up on Blockage of Leningrad) during WWII was arrested FOR WANTING TO STOP THE WAR.

As a Russian, I feel that there’s no escape and no support. Our economy is crushing. In my family there are times when there is very little money and we have to think about where to cut the budget so we could have food for the nest two weeks. It is about to get worse. We are getting locked up in our country: visas are getting harder to get, sanctions are cutting off the internet, the transportation. All the sanctions are not making it harder for the Old man and his gang - he stole from us, he steals from us and he will keep stealing until we are drained to death. Finally, even if I go abroad some day, despite the peaceful protests that we have been on, despite our disagreement and hatred for the war, we are Russians, we are the aggressor. Our government, all the other governments in the world and the world community sees as a problem. or someone to avoid. I feel like I am being locked with an abusive parent who makes my friends suffer and tells everyone that I wanted this to happen, while I can only beg him to stop.

This whole post is not to say that we are the victims. The people of Ukraine are. My heart, my mind, my soul is with them. This post has no point at all. These are just my thoughts and feelings that kept me awake this night. God, I hope we all still have a future. Amen.

[clexa--warrior]

Hey, Have You Heard About This Coronavirus Thing? Crazy Shit, Right? (Ferret/Shower Cap)

History texts depicting this period will read like deranged Choose Your Adventure books written by sadists; no matter how frantically you flip backwards, you just can’t seem to find the page when you still had the option to vote for the really smart lady with the email server. Anyway, join me for a quick news round-up, it won’t take long, and when we’re done, I give you permission to run away to join a roving Thai monkey street gang.

(As always, find this post WITH nifty news links here: http://showercapblog.com/hey-have-you-heard-about-this-coronavirus-thing-crazy-shit-right/)

For those of you just waking up from a Rip Van Winkle nap, the United States is facing a massive, coast-to-coast, health crisis, whose tragic consequences have exploded exponentially because our Idiot Manchild President really believed, in that churning campground septic tank he calls a mind, that protecting his personal approval ratings by understating the problem was more important than the health and safety of the American public. I don’t know what you can call that but murder. On the one hand, it’s weird to say “wow, the President murdered a bunch Americans through boneheaded, unforgivably selfish, neglect,” but we already saw him get away with precisely that crime in Puerto Rico, so here we are.

Now, I have come to expect malice from the federal government under Hairplug Himmler, but sometimes their capacity for raw, senseless, evil still shocks me. This is my way of saying that, until they got fucking caught, the Department of, and Someone Should Slap the Word Out of Their Filthy Mouths, Justice attempted to remove CDC fliers offering potentially life-saving information regarding the coronavirus from...immigration courtrooms. My God. What a small but potent horror. Feels like the work of an ambitious intern in Stephen Miller’s office, doesn’t it? Trying to impress the boss? Just a sinister little trick, to spread a little more pain, a little more misery, a little more death in an already vulnerable, and whatta-coincidence-nonwhite, community? Fuck these awful, awful, people.

It seems President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster has been calling up leading Taliban terrorists on a secret U.S. kill-or-capture list, presumably to trade tips n’ tricks on how to undermine the USA at home and abroad. Now, negotiating with these murderous dirtbags is a big diplomacy no-no (and of course Donnie Dotard got rolled anyway) but in all honestly, if I had access to a secret kill list contact sheet, I’d probably give in to the temptation to make some prank calls. “Is your refrigerator running? Yeah? Are you sure it’s not a FLEET OF DRONES ABOVE YOU RIGHT NOW?”

For Jeff Sessions, the wages of sin turned out to be a faceful of Trump-branded fecal matter, as the Candycorn Skidmark, whose campaign Ol’ Beauregard embraced way back before fascism was cool in conservative circles, endorsed his opponent in the coming Alabama Senate runoff. How must it feel to have been the very fellow who flipped the switch on the Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap Board Game device that destroyed America, and to watch the machine work its destructive magic for years, only to realize it’s also got one special crotch punt in store for just you personally. I’d feel bad for Bilbo Bigot, if it he weren’t, y’know, one of the very worst people alive.

Alex Jones got arrested for drunk driving, and, upon his release, got right back to work selling...sigh...selling some bullshit toothpaste that he’s telling the rubes magically cures the coronavirus. Authorities are cracking down on Jones and fellow charlatan Jim Bakker over their odious snake oil peddling enterprises, but I don’t know what’s more shocking and disappointing to me, that there are such vile fuckwads in the world, who seek to profit off the fear of the misinformed during times of crisis, or that said fuckwads have so many blind, willing, disciples?

Speaking of fuckwads, Ron Johnson seems to have backed down, for now at any rate, from his quest to stage a show trial for Hunter Biden in the U.S Senate. And that’s awesome and all, but never forget how ready, how eager, RoJo has been, to corruptly manipulate the vast powers of the government for his democracy-stomping Turdlord’s political benefit. Ron is the kind of fellow you’d have found stamping documents outside trains bound for Dachau.

But yeah, I suppose the big story is still that coronavirus thing. Great choice on evolution’s part, the way symptoms don’t necessarily manifest right away, so we can spread that shit around without knowing we’re even infected. Anyway, I made sure to thoroughly disinfect tonight’s blog before posting, and medical professionals inform me that though the virus can linger on plastic and metal surfaces for as long as days, it cannot survive on a poo joke, so please rest easy, knowing you can safely consume this content in comfort. Unless you're reading it next to somebody with the coronavirus, but that's on you, kid.

The Shart Administration has actually slowed progress in this crucial fight, by classifying high-level coronavirus meetings, because they’re more worried about congressional oversight of their crimes n’ fuckups than they are about OUR LIVES, and y’know what, I do believe I’ll be voting Democrat this November.

And of course, many conservatives are more concerned with blaming the virus on the Chinese than preventing its spread; by gum, there’s no need to abandon yer principles, even when your ineptitude is getting countless folks sick and/or killed! “We may be a cabal of dangerously incompetent assclowns, but let none forget that we are also RACIST assclowns!”

With the stock market finally catching up to the rest of the world in noticing a pudding-brained twit had inexplicably been placed in charge of the most powerful nation in history, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot oozed into the Oval Office for a prime time speech, and if his goal was “fuck up the entire world as much as humanly possible in ten short minutes,” then he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.

It was a speech that completely failed to reassure, instead reminding the world that this drooling manbaby, this bathtub drain hair clog in an ill-fitting suit, truly is President of the Entire United Fucking States, and not only is he light years out of his element but he’s probably spending most of his time practicing his “the world is ending, you have to go out with me now” phone call to Salma Hayek rather than pursuing desperately-needed solutions.

Despite being on teleprompter, with the text of the fucking speech right fucking in front of him, Dorito Mussolini somehow managed to catastrophically misrepresent his own administration’s policies, dropping one more cartoon anvil on the stock market’s already-throughly-bludgeoned ballsack. This is, of course, on top of nonsensical non-solutions like banning travel from Europe, when the virus had already had weeks to spread throughout the country thanks to presidential bungling and neglect.

For 73 years, this cretin has somehow never encountered a problem he couldn’t lie, buy, or bully his way out of, but COVID-19 doesn’t care how much money your daddy gave you, little man. And may I say, on behalf of the thousands who are about to become sick, fuck you. Fuck you eternally with a rusty shovel, for daring to take on such an important job without the skills, temperament, or character to execute its duties. Asshole.

In contrast, Smilin’ Joe Biden gave a speech of his own; calm, collected, solemn, and filled with concrete steps to address the problems facing the nation. And America collectively went, “Oh right, it’s actually highly abnormal to have a gibbering, rectum-mouthed, dolt for a President, and we can actually have a decent, competent, one again! Soon!” It was like leadership porn. I got aroused.

Meanwhile, our already-hopelessly-overmatched Golf Cheat in Chief is multitasking, lobbing missiles at Iran-backed militias in Iraq. I’m just hoping the buttons on his desk are clearly labeled, y’know? Or at least that there’s somebody hanging around who can tackle him before he bombs Seattle and launches 500 respirators at Tehran.

So, um, in the midst of this once-in-generation shitstorm, I guess Sarah Palin dressed up in a bear suit to perform “Baby Got Back” on a reality television program. I’m not a religious person, honestly, but I’m increasingly open to the idea that there is a God, and that s/he’s been on a meth bender since mid-2016.

Social distancing is the zany new anti-dance craze sweeping the nation as we all do our damndest to not get sick and die! As a result, public gatherings are getting called off left and right. March Madness, MLB, NBA, PGA, SXSW, Broadway...personally, I don’t think I fully appreciated the scope of this crisis until I saw the XFL shut down their season. Like, are we even America anymore without one billionaire’s sad attempt to reboot his once-failed vanity project?

As sensible organizations all over the world made painful but obviously necessary sacrifices to, y’know, slow the spread of a deadly disease and save lives, naturally the Velveeta Vulgarian was among the last holdouts, canceling his precious hate rallies only grudgingly, because the safety of even his own fervent base is secondary to the sugar rush of their rageful cheers, filling, if only for a moment, that empty space within him where most people have a soul.

Now more than ever, I am brimming over with gratitude that we took the House back in 2018. Thank god there’s a little leadership, a little accountability, a little common frickin’ sense in Washington now. And thank god for Katie Porter, one of the standouts in a freshman class packed with absolute ass-kickers, cornering the CDC chief into exercising his legal authority to make coronavirus testing free for every American. Imagine if Kevin McCarthy were running the House right now. He’d be fleeing from reporters, in mismatched loafers, trying to sell the public on a bill bailing out nothing but Trump University and Marm-a-Lago.

Well, the Emperor of Hemorrhoids finally buckled and declared (acknowledged) a state of emergency over the coronavirus, which is admittedly a pleasant change from his previous “do everything I possibly can to help the fucker spread” position. We’re still woefully behind, and god only knows how deeply the virus has penetrated while the doddering old bastard diddled and dawdled, but the good news is, the President of the United States finally moved his bloated ass out of the road so we can get to work cleaning up his mess, which is, I suppose, as close to an act of kindness as he’s come in his entire misspent, treacherous, life.

In the middle of today’s press conference, Vice President Mike Pants paused to give Boss Turdworm a rhetorical handjob seemingly designed to last through an entire 14-day quarantine. Jeeeeesus. Mikey Hairshirt was a man once. Not much of one, to be certain, but at least he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of bored schoolchildren pouring salt on him, which would of course prove swiftly fatal in his current state.

A reporter asked Government Cheese Goebbels, “Hey, if you’re not too busy fellating yourself over fucking up slightly less than you’ve been fucking up for weeks, why the fuck did you close down the pandemic office, you nation-wrecking clod?” and he whinged that the question was “nasty,” before reiterating his refusal to take responsibility for the things that are, objectively, his fault. I truly do not understand how this trembling coward’s approval rating isn’t 0%

So Nancy Pelosi spent the week trying to hammer out an emergency bill with Steve Mnuchin, but Republicans naturally balked at many necessary measures. It’s a tricky spot for the GOP; they can’t risk the mass-extermination of the underpaid labor/consumer force that keeps their donor class filthy rich, but doing anything to improve working folks’ lives is just instinctually anathematic to them. But at the time of posting, it does appear as though a deal has been reached, let’s hope no spray-tanned morons fuck it up, right?

In conclusion, I am sick of typing the word “coronavirus,” and you are sick of reading it, so let’s let’s all retreat to our quarantines for the weekend, okay? Enjoy the solitude! Read that novel you bought back in college! Watch that 425-minute Russian film set in a fish cannery! Hey, you can even peruse the archives at showercapblog.com if you feel like reliving just how the fuck it all came to this! Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a bit, fear not, I’m turning production of this blog over to Jared Kushner, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

[imaginemycroftholmes]

Imagine you're in a relationship with Mycroft. You met at work ad you were a double agent

Imagine Mycrofts face when he arrives at home and finds you badly injured on the floor, because one of his enemies bullied his way into the house and wanted to gather information from you.

 Imagine the magic moment when Mycroft (your husband) gets furious when he meets your brother Jim Moriarty for the first time and you can't understand why, since you were abroad the past 8 months

Imagine taking Mycroft to Comic Con to show him "something". Someone who wears the EXACT same clothes as his brother stops in front of him and says: "Wow, dude! You really know how to cosplay!" He turns to you and is like: "What the bloody hell is 'cosplay'?"

Imagine Mycroft proposing on you in the Moriarty Style ("(Y/N), will you marry me? -M" appears on every screen in great britain) You don't see it, cause you work in an old library and turned off your phone Your best friend storms into the library and tells you: "It's everywhere, (Y/N)!" and you're like: "What is everywhere? What's going on? You're the third person, that-" But she gives you no time and takes you outside, where you see *it REALLY everywhere As soon as you say "YES!" it disappears

Imagine telling Mycroft his diet is useless, because he's perfect, just the way he is and him hugging you.

Imagine calling Mycroft Mymy instead of Myc. Especially when others are around. He always complains about it and tells you that he has friends in high places that... blablabla. But you know, that he secretly likes it.

Imagine Mycroft being sick and not admitting it, although he's got 40° C. So you take care of him, whether he wants or not.

Imagine Mycroft taking care for his/yours daughter- Alone- The first time- And he's totally overstrained because she starts to cry over the counter 

Part II of that whole big brother Jim stuff) Imagine Jim gelling you what things he did when you were away. "Well... it could be that I was a little bit naughty..." And Mycroft attacking him because he's still not over the whole Sherlock-faking-his-death thing

Imagine making out with Mycroft in bed and Sherlock suddenly stands in the door frame and you stare at one another for like 4 secs and then you're like "Oh my god." And Sherlock thinks you are a prostitute and Mycroft stand for you and is like: "She's my girlfriend and now get out or so help me!!!" Although you didn't want them to fight because of you, you admire that Mycroft vouched for you.

Imagine someone kidnaps you and the ransom is information they want from Mycroft. You laugh at them and say he won't give the information, although you are married, because the government is more important and he'd know that. 2 minutes later they tell you the ransom is paid. They get captured, though and Mycroft gives you a tongue-lashing. The terrorists (or whatever) had cameras and he wants you to know that nothing is more important than you. Plus he tells you he has to "DEAL" with them now.

Imagine being Mycrofts daughter and it's bring-your-child-to-work day. Just when Jim is "interrogated" by the MI6. As stubborn as you are you storm into the room and scream stop, since your attempts of convincing your father to do so failed. Mycroft is embarrassed.

Imagine telling Mycroft you’re pregnant

Imagine dancing alone in Sherlock's living room and you don't realise that Mycroft is stood in the doorway watching you. As soon as the song finishes he claps and you get all embarrassed, Mycroft just chuckles and starts dancing with you to the next song. You end up being very close to each other and in the end he presses a soft kiss to your lips

imagine being introduced to his parents

Imagine calling Mycroft because you got on the wrong train and you're in Cambridge now. Although Mycroft is pissed, he actually picks you up PERSONALLY and BY TRAIN. Mycroft the-noise-the-people Holmes gets on a train to pick you up. When he arrives you hug him and tell him, this was the most adorable thing he has ever done.

Imagine Mycroft forgetting your anniversary and trying to make it up to you.

 OMG Imagine Mycroft not eating or sleeping because you got killed and he's not able to forgive himself! (Am I even allowed to send you requests. It's the first time here and I'm not sure, okay, whatever..)

imagine adopting a dog and trying to hide it from Mycroft

Imagine Mycroft finding out how you feel about him and him telling you that he, too, has always loved you.

[davidwindsor97]

For a while, I've been an asset to the U.S. Government. Since then they have continually asked what it is I want for my service. Since I am apart of a group of Missionaries that doesn't believe in payment due to service it has become complex to perceive what it is I do want. It comes the time to put into detail what it is I desire:

I want to reclaim my real full name, David Windsor. Of course, I want my blood to accept me. But at the moment it is irrelevant. I have an obligation to a people I can seriously relate to. People who if I was in the same position would gladly do the same. Maybe some of them wouldn't but why should that make the difference?

My circumstances have really been unnecessarily shameful. All I've wanted is to explore my identity and yet people offer secrecy. What I've noticed is in every branch of this United States Government there are those of advocacy and heresy. No sector of the organization feels solely the same for me. To consider such a thing would put everyone in the same bubble of thought. Such a form of segregation is something the Enemy holds in high regard. Which is why I shall remain intentionally ignorant of such practices.

I had the money and the means to get to Israel. But some fools froze my accounts impulsively and just plain extemporaneously as if I am some sort of terror threat. When I risk my life for there sakes they decide to paint me as an enemy. The kind of enemy destined for execution by there spiteful hands. What is logic? Simply put I am a Christian who is not swayed by their sinful indulgences.

I don't want a new identity or a new life. I want to accept the identity I've always had and enjoyed the life of which so many fools attempted to control. If my enemies face me like men instead of hiding like children and grow courage in the midst of numbers then I'll be ready. Why fear the wrath of man when I know the wrath of God is exact? Nothing could be swifter. So when I see these Barbie spies hiding every time I call them out I laugh. Because it reminds me of Adam and Eve. Didn't they try and hide from there mistakes? I too have tried to hide from my sins. The sin of deception, of arrogance, of selfishness, of lust, and there's probably more that I'm just not ready to accept. But that is the point, isn't it? We are all sinful people trying to make amends for our mistakes. But the only true way to do such a thing is to accept Christ as your savior. No government could give you a better chance than the Holy Trinity.

Another aspect that just bothers me is there constant attempt to find a code in everything I do. I was looking out this pleasant window expressing part of the Houston downtown area and people act as if I'm scouting out a sniper. My survival is based on a number of factors. But when God tells you you are safe their's no reason to doubt it. Relaxation is something I'm fond of. You just add anxiety when you anticipate something that isn't there.

They've made silent offers to go to school in the states. But frankly, this school system sucks. Elementary, Middle, High, and a bit of college. What did I learn? Absolutely nothing. Every useful skill I learned when I left the states or experienced extremities in the states. A school setting makes me want to regurgitate. Ergo, I would rather throw up than set foot in a ridiculous system. The education I required no money but all commitment. Sure some skills I acquired through favors and some coin. But the most important lessons were learned through earned respect. There's no way a school teacher respects every student. But when you first earn that mentor's respect thereby gaining the important lessons that are when you gain more than any college could give you.

That's not to say you can't gain a wealth of knowledge from any known education system. I've just learned more from the unknown ones.

I'll most likely come back to the U.S. to eventually pursue the arts. But that is not my main objective. I don't have scores to settle but relationships to build. No matter the high or the low that is all that matters. Perhaps the U.S will offer some resources for my journey other than the mud some of them (not all of them) have thrown on my face. But I really am fine either way. Here I can anticipate being treated like I have leprosy. So if I get nothing it would be by no means surprising. Plus they have the audacity to act as if they saved me. When really they're like a dad who decided to stop by after 22 years of abandonment while the mother (the Missionaries and other great heroes) has been protecting and guiding me from day one. And this mama bear hasn't taken any breaks. Even when a lot of them have. I have no doubt some of them relished the thought of my enemies killing me. But I am untouchable by God's grace not by any pitiful physical "mercy".

I am just so sick of feeling like I'm in a prison of misunderstanding. Despite my continual transparency. I'm transparent, not translucent.

There have been times where if they would have told me we're protecting you I would have to ask: how can you protect me from yourself?

Because if I didn't have my license and social a lot of them would have killed me by now. Does that mean they represent the entirety of the U.S. Government? Hell no! People like that are just examples of a load of cowards who can't accept how wrong they are because they're too busy bolstering up their egos. Honestly, I'm surprised they still have a job. How can you rely on someone who's more interested in saving their own asses then the guy next to them?

Oh, and do these pricks get pissed when I call them out on their bullocks. Then they try to act as they care about me. If I was a corpse on the street you would take a selfie, you sick demented morons! But have I, throughout this entire process, had a reason to anticipate death? By Gods Grace: no.

Their mistake is a heavy reliance on fear. I am referring to the cowards of course. Such people are a form of the slaver. They wish to keep their informants in fear so they can do anything they can to take advantage of them. To make the person bend over as they relish in their sadistic pleasures. Such people are the inevitable viruses of any system. Just because a car is dirty doesn't mean it can't be cleaned. Yes, I've given a wealth of information and exposed a wealth of criminals. But that doesn't mean I'm for free. Money has never been an object of concern for me. I've thrived with or without it. Its freedom I will continually seek. No amount of money, no occupation could be worth more than that to me.

Why should anyone fear my expression? Has it ever been a crime to express oneself honestly? Since I don't fear who I am I've officially accepted that cameras will follow me in some way. It seems my reputation has finally landed in the states. But at this point I quite like it. Just as long as personal space is constant. After all, I don't want to be treated like a slave again. A lot of people have called me a weirdo or just been confused by my actions as if I have to fit a certain mold. But I realized when I read the biographies of celebrities they were treated the same way. So I guess I could look at it as a good sign. I do think the photos and videos of me would be fun to watch in certain cases and just a plain invasion of privacy in others.

Despite these neanderthal's, I know a lot of them to care about me. But sympathy or apathy doesn't change that I need to go to Israel. Do I give a damn if my enemies know my destination or not? Of course not and I shouldn't have to mention why. There fear their of overt caution is just evidence of the fact that they have very little understanding of what they're dealing with. But the Missionaries do. And whether they help us or not makes no difference. We will still pursue the mission objective. As we always have and always will.

Yes, the Missionaries could get me there in a matter of days. But the relationship between the U.S and the Creed of Christians (Missionaries) needs to have a solid structure. Its clear to me now the whole purpose of coming back to the US to spill the beans was so I could be free to go where I please. Which thanks to my training is exactly where I'm supposed to go. I definitely can't dispute if it wasn't for the scrutiny of law enforcement and the constant surveillance (for a time) I wouldn't have had the chance to tear away from the fake family. So yeah that tearing away from that toxic mold couldn't have happened without them. It has been freaking cool working with them. Especially when I drove to LA. It was so composed. Every maneuver was a different thrill. And watching my enemies flee in fear wouldn't have been so satisfactory if it wasn't for my exposure induced by there surveillance. Recently the cowards tried to drug me which I can't help but laugh at. If my calculations are correct this is the second time they've attempted this. Even the Russians stopped drugging me because I learned how to fight through it. When it comes to any drugs as long as you physically exert yourself it is plausible to shatter that barrier between you and your capability.

One of the big mistakes some of them have made is thinking I am in some way going to be some sort of Edward Snowden ergo a boy who thinks he could run the country better by pointing out the flaws but totally ignoring his own hypocrisy by sleeping with a Judas of a Government. Look everyone can agree mistakes were made on both sides. As long as we remain transparent and not look for ways to annoy each other we really shouldn't have any problems. Yeah, I've been pissed off at the stupidity that has come my way, but that doesn't change the warm hearts I've come across as well.

Wither they be military, investigative, or a mixture of the two it's not hard to see that the people advocating for me within the U.S. Government and abroad are by no means few in number. This is why it is of the utmost importance for us to work together to put a stop to these extremists by any means necessary.

[keiccu]

it's been a while since i posted here.

i handle finances now, and dad doesn't fight with me as much as he used to before. i'm also in quarantine, so i have full control over my daily schedule. you'd think i'd be doing better now, but everything's actually going downhill and i don't know how to fix things on my own.

every time i see my nursing books, i feel bitter. every time a messenger notif pops up, i feel scared. my mom tells me she'll kick out dad someday, that my siblings need therapy, and that she dreams of making me study med abroad. it makes me feel sick.

i'm very lost and i need help. i ghosted academia at the start of the lockdown, which was coincidentally the height of my arguments with dad, weeks after i started performing really badly in school. i was really stressed out then, and i was dealing with so much body pain. mom's monthly allowance got delayed, too.

i remember crying during one of my demos. i remember finally telling my friends and my prof about my dad, days before the lockdown. my prof said stroke patients are all words and that i should be fine. mara said she noticed my bruises back in senior high but was too afraid to ask about them. my carpal tunnel was getting worse and i couldn't write.

now dad's in his chill phase and my hands aren't as painful as before. everything's theoretically better. i think it's too late for that.

i'm so behind in academics and i don't know where to start. i could answer the book activities and submit that, but that would mean unghosting everyone again and having to memorize at least 6 demos for the videos due on may 7. one prof already marked me INC. another already gave me a grade, though i don't know what. i also missed the english exam. not sure what else.

my saving grace is me lying about faulty internet connection. that's what i told my friends when i came back recently, and also mentioned my dad.

i don't know how long i could keep this up, though, because i'm not sure if the government would still extend the lockdown. the president literally shut down the top news channel and got called out again by united nations for violating human rights. i don't trust his administration.

i've lost motivation. the only thing that i want to do is write and talk to my friends, but i can't even write as much as i want to.

am i depressed for real? i remember the online quiz saying that the feelings should last for at least 3 weeks, and i'm pretty sure i've been like this for at least a couple of months now. not suicidal, but still.

my mom supports my education. i don't know if she'll support me if i said i wanted to take a break. i'm really really tired. i'm not even sure if i'll pass this year. the government is unforgiving and so is my college. the world is so cruel.

summer's coming up and it's only going to get even hotter, and i'm already starting to suffer.

my mom said i shouldn't let things affect me but they always have, and i'm only crumbling now. i don't know what happens after this. there's nothing optimistic about this.

i wish i had a nicer life. i love the friends i've made, and i'm forever grateful for my girlfriend. i just wish i was richer, or that my dad wasn't around, or that my mom let me move out right from the start. i think that would've made a difference. maybe i wouldn't turn out like this.

i don't even want to kill myself. i want to be around people i love. i'm just so numb to all my problems and i want to rest for a moment. i don't think anyone in real life would understand.

i'm in so much pain all the time. i'm not comfortable with my own skin. sometimes when it gets bad it drives me insane, like i want to peel myself and scratch until i bleed. i'm better at holding back now, but sometimes i can't stop myself from dragging one nail and it instantly leaves a red line on my skin.

i wish i could at least write. maybe then i could channel all my angst there and have something to distract myself with. i don't want to tire people with my misery. i'm miserable all the time and nothing will change unless i do something about academics but merely thinking about it scares me so much.

i'm sad and nobody truly cares, but at least i got a five-hour nap today. i want to sleep all my days away.

[proudliberal11]

LGBTQ Bigotry Wrapped in Religion

In yet another discussion with intolerant and hateful Trump supporters on social media I was once again reminded of what was at stake in this last presidential election. The hope was that if Hillary Clinton won then we would continue to be the compassionate and tolerant nation we were under Obama but when she didn’t the bigotry once again came to the forefront. Yes, we know that it is always there but now with a person who has a history of such bigotry in the highest office, they feel they are free reign to behave this way and one of the ways they behave is to show their intolerance towards the LGBT community in this country.

I had a discussion about LGBT people and once again these people showed who they really are while pretending that they are trying to “help” and pray for the “sinner”, nobody including me is buying that. Those who oppose Muslims, immigrants, LGBT people, and so many more have one thing in common and that is that they have hate in their hearts while claiming they do not. They always start off by saying, “I don’t hate gay people” and then go on to as you can guess, hate gay people and the remarks they make are harmful yet they cannot see it. They like to hide behind the Bible and claim that God said it not them but this is untrue.

Jesus never said one thing about the issue of homosexuality and was someone who loved and accepted everyone yet they use the six outdated verses in Bible about the issue to show that God is against homosexuality and thus as justification for them to discriminate and hate the LGBT community and also the GOP lawmakers whether they admit it or not also do this. They are always doing what they can to remove LGBT rights and hurt the community and this is obvious by them doing what they can to oppose things like the Equality Act, LGBT work and housing rights, and even go after marriage equality. They do everything to keep the people in this community unequal and fight against the progress we have made over the years and the non-politicians are worse.

They claim that it is the left who hates but it is the opposite, they are the ones that hate and it isn’t just the LGBT community they are against, they are very hateful towards Muslims, immigrants, the poor, and so many more. They like to use straw arguments and try to put it back on the left claiming that we are the intolerant ones but it is obvious they are. These people try to excuse their hateful behavior by pointing out that Muslims “throw gays off buildings” and call us hypocrites for supporting Islam when this also is a false argument and is just an excuse for their own hate.

Yes, we know that there countries that treat LGBT people poorly and kill us but that doesn’t mean we have to hate the tens of millions of decent and good Muslims like they do. It is possible to be gay and support Muslims while also opposing hate where it comes up whether that be Muslim nations who kill LGBT people or conservatives who try to hurt this community or the hate crimes done against them by the right. These folks like to excuse their behavior and what they do by demonizing others including Muslims. It will not work, we know that the Christian right isn’t very Christian at all as calling LGBT people things like “abnormal”, “mentally ill”, and “sick” are not only false but also very disrespectful and hateful.

The facts are that LGBT people are not any of those things and the American Psychiatric Association even stated so when they did the right thing and removed homosexuality from the DSM, which is the manual used for all psych disorders. There are many professionals and academic researchers who also say that homosexuality is completely normal and not a mental disorder but yet they continue to spread the lies that it is abnormal, it is a lie. Being LGBT is normal and should be accepted and the future for the movement depends on us standing up to these hurtful falsehoods and myths, we must do what we can to move forward and fight for the future of the community and LGBT rights despite what Trump, Pence, and the Christian right are trying to do to the progress we have made in recent years.

So, what is in store for the future for LGBT rights?

I believe that in order to know where we are going we first have to know where we have been to know where we are going and I hope people can see where we have been on this issue based on the previous posts on the issue I have written as well as in my book Defending Equality and by seeing this I hope that it helps to know where we are going and how we get there as that is the goal here. We have come so far my friends but we cannot stop here as the fight for equality never ends and is always raging on, especially when there are so many who want to see us fail, we cannot! We also cannot be silent about injustice around the world including how our LGBT brothers and sisters are treated in places like Chechnya even if Donald Trump will not call it out and stand up for oppressed LGBT people both here and abroad.

The reason we cannot give up is because those who have gone before us did not fight so hard for equality just so we would stop fighting, the time is now to keep going and to keep up the fight as there are those who will come after us who need to know there is hope will count on us like we counted on those who fought years ago for LGBT rights. The future for the movement is always happening in the present and it is up to each one of us to keep that fight going so people will know that change is possible but more than that, hope is possible, they need to know that and we must keep fighting so they do.

The future as we stand now is unknown as the LGBT rights victories of the past are at risk as there are many who want to get rid of LGBT rights and they may have the power to do just that, we cannot let them and that is why for the future of our movement to carry on each one of us has to commit to the fight. How do we do that? We do that by speaking out and by refusing to back down and we do that by believing in each other and believing in what we are fighting for. What happens in the coming weeks, months, and years for this movement depends upon what we do now and how we move forward and how we advance the rights of LGBT Americans as well as LGBT people across the globe.

Speaking of the Equality Act, it must be part of this future as LGBT rights deserve to be protected and the right has done nothing but try to take away these rights here in America for decades and continues to do so, this piece of legislation is essential to protecting the rights of every LGBT citizen in this country and is a must for us to have full equality. However, this will be difficult with the Republicans in control of the major parts of our government and seek to take away the rights that we have talked about in this book and the rights that would be protected by the Equality Act.

The Equality Act was more possible when Obama was president and when we had thought Hillary would be our next president but with Trump in office and a GOP controlled government it becomes much more difficult. Just to review, the piece of legislation known as the Equality Act that has been pushed to be passed for some time now but has been stalled and obstructed by the Republicans as they claim to value “freedom of religion” over LGBT rights but religious freedom doesn’t mean you can discriminate, guess they didn’t get the memo. The GOP fights against the Equality Act as they fight against all things that will help and protect LGBT people and have done so for some time now.

Even though we know that with Trump and the GOP in power they may not let us win over the next several years in regards to equality or the Equality Act we still must do what we can to fight and keep this movement moving forward like those before us have done and trusted us to do after their time passed. For us to continue the progress of the last decade or so in the future we have to do the things we have done in the past to win and sometimes this isn’t easy because when we have people oppose us it can be difficult to keep going but it is for sure something that we must do.

Keep fighting, that is what we must all do no matter where we live and no matter who we are. Many people think that you have to be a political figure or even a well-known TV personality in order to have an impact but the truth is that you for sure do not and anybody who has a passion and a drive to change things can do this. I am just your average American and I became an activist after I saw the issues that I care about not being changed like I believed they should be. I decided I needed to take a stand and fight for the issues dear to my heart and this particular issue is very important to me so I joined the ranks of millions of Americans who also care about it and began my journey advocating for LGBT rights.

The future is now and it is a future worth fighting for and I hope you and others like you will join this fight and do what you can to make a difference not only in America but across the earth fighting for the rights of LGBT people. You do not even have to be part of the LGBT community to fight for the rights of the people in this community, you just have to be a person who cares about people and wants to have an impact and if this is you then you for sure can make a difference and join the movement that has already come so far and cannot go back to how things were, we cannot allow those who are anti-LGBT to win and accomplish their goal of removing the rights of the LGBT community and hurting these people, we just cannot allow it.

I firmly believe the hate of the so-called Christian right as well as this current administration do not care about LGBT Americans and it shows in their words and actions and I know that what we are doing with fighting against the hate of homophobic agenda of those who oppose equality is the right thing to do, it for sure is and we will continue to do so. I also know that even though we have an administration that doesn’t value our rights we will continue to fight for these rights. The resistance will carry on and fight four our values with LGBT rights and so many more issues because we are the freedom fighters and humanitarians.

I will say as a bisexual man that the rights of the LGBT community matter and these rights must be protected against both the many anti-LGBT politicians who try to restrict and remove those rights as well as the anti-LGBT “Christian” citizens and organizations who fight against the LGBT community. The cost of giving up is far too great and the reward of continuing to fight for our rights and the rights of those who come after us is worth what we have to put into the battle. The many successes we have had over the years will motivate us to keep going and stand up to hate and oppression, we know it will not be easy with this administration and the current hate being thrown our way like what we experience in these debates , but it is possible as long as we believe and as long as we RESIST!

[ebenpink]

Disease Detectives: The role of a field logistician in international disease outbreaks http://bit.ly/2Z8BBMH

Being deployed into an international disease outbreak situation is a reasonably stressful experience.

The stress starts the minute you get the call to leave; how big is the outbreak? What’s the pathogen? How dangerous is the living and working environment? Should I pack my Aeropress? Questions that all pale into insignificance when you’re explaining to your kids why you’re flying to a distant country with ‘a really nasty disease that’s killing lots of people’.

But stress and excitement are a hairs width apart, and deploying to an outbreak can also be an incredibly rewarding, challenging and humbling experience and for me it’s an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the world.

Being ready to deploy anywhere in the world

Having to be ready to deploy anywhere in the world within 48 hours means that occupational health have you jabbed up against every possibly nasty they can think of. Most of the pathogens we deal with don’t have vaccines but these jabs help rule out the obvious ones if we were to get sick whilst abroad.

The logistics team have issued all deployable staff with suitcases and grab bags full of items that make life easier when operating in a fragile or difficult environment. These include things like multi region Wi-Fi dongles, indestructible smartphones, state of the art mosquito nets and a little orange whistle. My kids like to imagine these gadgets get handed out to me by some Q-like figure in a Bond film.

When the call comes to deploy, the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) Operations team spring into action and send out pre-deployment briefings that include any and all details about the country we are deploying to, the pathogen, the outbreak status, the response and any security, political and logistical information that we might need.

Flights are booked, accommodation is secured in Foreign Office approved, security vetted hotels and transport arrangements in-country are planned.

One of the more unsettling aspects of a deployment for family members is that we never know how long we will be gone, it could be two weeks but it could be six depending on the situation we find, the span of the outbreak and our ability to make a difference to the response whilst there.

The role of Field Logistician

My job as Field Logistician for the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team is broadly twofold; to provide the logistical support to the wider team, hopefully allowing them to do their jobs more effectively and to provide technical logistics advice and training to host governments on outbreak logistics.

Supporting a team of epidemiologists, clinicians, data scientists and microbiologists to ensure they have adequate transport, security, accommodation, communications and field support whilst in an outbreak in a developing country can be likened to herding squirrels whilst riding a unicycle blindfolded.

It is not an easy job and can frequently be one that doesn’t go to plan, but this is all part of the work.

My background and training were originally in existential psychotherapy, the treatment of complex drug and alcohol addictions and the commissioning of city wide addiction services, so I have much experience of dealing with what could be chaotic situations and heavy workloads.

When the opportunity arose to volunteer and head to Sierra Leone in 2014/15, during the Ebola outbreak, I jumped at the chance and started working in the Kerrytown Ebola treatment centre under the guidance of PHE’s Neil Bentley (who’s fascinating career you can read more about here).

Neil recognised that the lab supply chain, was causing significant issues for the PHE teams working in all of Sierra Leone’s labs, as they were running out of essential items to run diagnostic tests and were having to use often inadequate personal, protective equipment. Neil tasked me with coming up with a logistics plan to remedy the situation.

The problem was that there were too many links in the supply chain, too many people getting involved in the ordering and shipping process and high staff turnover in the labs. This meant that often orders got lost along the way and nobody could remember who ordered what.

I designed a simple, single point of contact system for the labs to complete all orders and track shipments. Four years later I am still working on supply chain issues in outbreak situations.

Supporting the Nigerian Government through a Lassa Fever outbreak

Images: Nigeria Centre for Disease Control

In February 2018, the UK-PHRST sent a small team to support the response to a larger than normal Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria.

The team consisted of two epidemiologists, a clinician and myself as the Field Logistician. As this was a ‘bi-lateral’, government to government deployment, which means one government working alongside another, logistical arrangements were the responsibility of the Rapid Support Team.

In bilateral deployments like this one, the UK-PHRST adheres wherever possible to Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) guidelines for UK civil servants travelling and working abroad.

For the Nigeria deployment we arranged logistical support in the form of transport and local procurement through the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), who continued to support us throughout the duration of our stay.

Challenges during the deployment

Having the dual remit of providing team support and technical advice in Nigeria presented a number of challenges. One day I was conducting field visits, investigating supply chain issues in the Irrua and Owo Lassa treatment centres where we were witnessing the highest concentration of patients, and the next day I was spending several hours procuring local SIM cards in Abuja for the team to use in their deployment phones.

Something as simple as buying a SIM card, which in the UK would take 5 minutes to procure, requires official registration in Nigeria and you have to take your passport and wait in an extremely long queue before filling out multiple forms and finding out that you can only procure 3 SIMs per day so will need to do it all again tomorrow.

Without local SIMs the team cannot operate and communicate, both with each other and with the local NCDC experts on the ground. The local SIMs also allow us to use our global dongles and have roaming internet and access to emails which is vital in fast moving outbreak scenarios.

The coordination of transport in these situations is always a minefield and we need to make plans for several people, often wanting to go in different directions, at different times and to meetings that are invariably vitally important.

In Nigeria this also meant coordinating internal flights, making sure we had cars and drivers to meet us in remote locations and ensuring that local hotels were safe and appropriate to our needs. The key to success in field logistics is to ensure that your team communicate their needs effectively and in a timely manner. Failure to plan in an outbreak, in a challenging environment, can have unforeseen and potentially catastrophic consequences.

The uninterrupted supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medicines was a particularly challenging issue during the outbreak and there were ‘stock outs’ in a number of locations, requiring emergency action by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This essentially means none left to hand out to people.

A stock out of vital PPE could force front line staff into unsafe practices such as reusing gloves or gowns that have the potential to spread disease, which is something we have to stop from happening.

Training others

Since the deployment we have worked closely with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to develop a package of training to upskill local logisticians in the importance of maintaining effective supply chain management in an outbreak situation.

In March 2019 three members of UK-PHRST staff delivered a two day ‘train the trainer’ event that was well attended by six different states and a number of NCDC logistics staff. All attendees committed to take the materials presented by NCDC, UK-PHRST and WHO representatives, and use it to train front line staff on the importance of stock management and supply chain in outbreaks.

The event also allowed the opportunity for laboratory staff from the National Reference Lab to address their own logistical concerns and seek ongoing support to ensure effective supply chains for diagnostic services.

The opportunity to work on capacity building training and follow up with local staff to implement the changes they identify has been a hugely rewarding facet of the job. It has helped identify new areas that the UK-PHRST can support NCDC in driving forward meaningful change on the front line of logistical support and supply chain management.

If you liked this blog, you can read more from our Disease Detectives series by clicking the links below:

Using supermarket loyalty cards to trace an E Coli outbreak

keeping track of new and emerging infectious diseases

  from Public health matters http://bit.ly/2GfjtsW via IFTTT http://bit.ly/2VDy4nk

[linoliu]

 Talking about the people in the Ming Dynasty, it was known that Tang Xianzu died of syphilis.

The reason for the death of Tang Xianzu has always been that Xu Yufang wrote the article "Tang Xianzu and syphilis", published in the first issue of "Literature Heritage" in 2000, and later changed its name to "Tang Xianzu suspected of dying of syphilis", but this article was published after the publication. There are not many readers. At the same time, when the collection of his anthology was published, it was edited and deleted, so there are fewer known people.

In the article of Xu, it is not appropriate to argue that Tang Xianzu died of syphilis. That is to say, at best, it can only be regarded as "suspect", but it cannot be confirmed. He is lifting:

Before the death of Tang Xianzu, he said in the small preface of "The Seven Sayings of the World": "The servant is old." Fortunately, two people are big things. It’s impossible to get rid of the disease in the block. Be cautious, still use the linen crown to attack. On the side of the second person, you will see you in the morning. The people are returning to the virtual, and the customs are prosperous. Blame, hate it. For fear, I am forgiven. "With the death of the syphilis, Tu Long, who told his son Yu Heng when he died before his death, was very similar: "I will blame." Its thin and concise, killing the custom, don't yell at me. 』

2 ‧ "Zhang Shizhen" "Yuelutang Collection" Volume 8 "The Sacrifice of the Emperor Lang Linchuan Tang Ruoshi" quoted the teacher's disciple Zhu Eryu as saying: "The disease is caused by ulcers." A general term for tumors or ulcers in ancient times. The latter is a common symptom in the late stage of syphilis patients. 』

3‧Take another "Tang Xianzu has a poem "Seven Years of Sickness and Answers", saying: "If you don't have a disease, you will get a few tons of medicines. You will not be able to get a handful of medicines for a while. The ancient disease is not the same as the new disease." According to "Wild won", Volume 22, "Supervisor and Xu Zhongyu", Zhai Zhongkai is a mountain person in Suzhou, that is, a literati who is a leisurely guest in the government. "The ancient disease is not the same as the new disease," indicating that this is a new disease that has never been found in China. It cannot be effectively treated with traditional ancient methods. This new disease can only be accurately explained by the new syphilis introduced from abroad. 』

4‧ Another year in the year of Tang Xianzu’s examination of the scholar, Wu’s wife died in her hometown. His continued wife, Fu, is a prostitute.

Later, Xia wrote "Tang Xianzu's death test", against Tang Xianzu's death from syphilis, and pointed out that Xu Yufang quoted Tang Xianzu's poem "Seven Years of Diseases and Answers Zhong Zhong", the poem title "Seven Years of Disease" is an allusion from Mencius, not There are seven years of medical history, but "not real". It is also pointed out that Xu Weifang believes that Tang Xianzu’s succession is a prostitute, but it is a misunderstanding of the meaning of the text, because Xu Weifang pointed out in his "Tang Xianzu Chronicle": "The young woman sighs"... Poetry and clouds: 'Dream laughs and wakes up On, the wrong call to send the shadows. In the Ming Dynasty, in the square where Tang Chang’an officials lived, Bai Xing’s “Li Wa Chuan” was equivalent to the Qinglou North, and Fu’s family was also a Chinese. When Xia wrote, he pointed out that the young woman’s surname was wrong. And pointed out: "Determining the young woman's surname, according to what? Determined that this young woman is Tang Xianzu continued to be Mrs. Fu, according to what? The more serious negligence is that the poem of this poem, the apocalypse engraved "The Complete Works of Yuxi Hall" is "Young Women Sigh, Three", and Wan Liben's "Linchuan Tanghai Ruoyu Temple Collection" is "Young Women Sighing Mountains" People, three." Wanli was booked by Tang himself. Please pay attention to the key suggestion of "Showing the Mountain People": Can Tang Xianzu tell some mountain people about his wife's indecent experience and record it? According to this, it can be concluded that the young woman in "Young Women Sigh" has nothing to do with Tang Xianzu's family. Tang Xianzu succeeded with Mrs. Fu’s “Father Fu, Sheng Deshi, and the mother of Beijing”, and was born in innocence; according to Wang Siren, “Shou Tangfu Futai’s wife, 60, 22 rhymes, Mr. Hai Ruo’s succession”, Mrs. Fu’s virtue It can also be circled. 』

He also pointed out that "checking the history of Chinese medicine, ulcer is not only a general term for all kinds of surgical diseases, but also can refer to a kind of head ulcer. It has a long history!" "Said the text": "The ulcer, the head is also created"; "Release the name": "The head has a wound of ulcers." According to "Zuo Chuan? The 19th year of the Gonggong", he was once "born in the head", Shi Jiayu "瘅疽". Hey, the disease is also; hemorrhoids, fever and swollen poison. Referring to the experience of modern doctors in diagnosis and treatment, Tang Xianzu suffers from nothing more than head malignant abscess or tumor. The disease is fierce and the course of illness is short. Not only at that time, even today, it seems to be refractory. 』

When I wrote about Xu Weifang and Xia, the two kings said that Xu Xianfang’s argument about whether Tang Xianzu died of syphilis or not was supported by Xu Weifang. Because I have cited the discussion of the cause of death of Tang Xianzu from the above, in fact, the historical materials cited are not comprehensive, there is a more important historical data, the two kings are ignored, so Xu Weifang’s arguments have to use "doubt" It was sent out, and its essays were very weak, and the sorrow became a deep-spoken ancestor of the ancestor of the ancestors, and Mr. Xia Shi was stunned by the adoration of the idol Tang Xianzu.

In the late Ming Dynasty, Xu Shuzhen’s "Living Buried Xiaoxue ‧ Volume IV" has a record: "If the article of the scholars is not too much in my dynasty, it is a legend, and it is amazing. "Peony Pavilion" is especially Hey. In the text of the old age, Han Qimei: If Russell hates Taicang, the death of this legendary Du Li Niang is even more so, with the condition of Yangzizi, and the Pingzhang is also shadowy. According to the Xiangyang Immortal, Wang Yuanmei made a biography for him, and he also showed his glory. Later, the Taicang people were even more dissidents: after the reincarnation of Fuyang, they were married to the Hui women, and they said that they were ignorant, and if they were true. However, when I heard that if the sergeant died, he would do everything in his hand. If he was not slandered by a proverb, then he should also be ridiculed. However, it is even more sensible if the scholar has this romanticism, and the room has no sputum, and the wife is old and old, it seems that it is not appropriate to get this bad news, set to ridicule the real ear. 』I have mentioned: "When you hear the death of a man, you will do your best." 』

According to the feudal literati from the last century under the worship of Tang Xianzu, there is also a mention of this predecessor's record, all of which are the words of the singer who deliberately slandered Tang Xianzu. However, most of the literati who lived in the late Ming Dynasty were Tang Xianzu fans. Xu Shuzheng was full of praise for Tang Xianzu, not a slander. On the contrary, in this record, he mentioned that he was listening to the literati’s personal confession (“early smell”), which was recorded in the end of the Ming Dynasty. It was rumored that Tang Xianzu died of Hualiu’s disease instead of him. Defamation. According to this record, I also know that it is not Xu Yifang's deliberate nonsense for the later generations, but that people in the Tang Xianzu era knew this. When they died, they were "hands and feet" (the joints of long syphilis are like broken hands and feet). To say that strict defamation is to go to the Qing Dynasty to learn the glory of the road, and some meteorological, such as the Qianlong era Gu Gongyu's "Summer Record": "There were people who traveled to the Hades, see the A-Prison, and the two People, very bitter. Who is it for? Ghosts and paws: This is the yang masterpiece of "The Return of the Soul" and "The West Chamber", never surpassing. Yi Yi. 』

Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, Xu Shuzhen’s text, when he wrote Tang Xianzu’s death, was “hands and feet”. This is the same as Xu Weifang’s poem when he cites Tang Xianzu’s discussion about Tu Long’s death from syphilis. The ulcers, the bones and bones are bad, the pain can not be tolerated, and the teaching order is a little bit fixed. In the "Ten Tens of the Game", when Tu Long, who was suffering from syphilis, died, "the bones are broken" is synonymous. The so-called "when the singer dies, the hand and the foot do their best" is also the same as "when Ruoshi died, the bones and muscles are bad." This is the rumor that Tang Xianzu’s contemporaries in the late Ming Dynasty later appeared in the late Ming Dynasty. It was written on the same day’s notes, not the “doubt” of the later generations of Xu Weifang. However, if Mr. Xu has a more extensive historical data and a record of the people at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it is more convincing for Xu Weifang’s argument that Tang Xianzu’s syphilis has died, and that Tang’s ancestors will not be treated as religious. Mr. Xia wrote the text for the poor. (Liu Youheng: "A Study of the Truth of Ancient Drama History", Taipei: City State Press, 2019)

[lauramalchowblog]

Disease Detectives: The role of a field logistician in international disease outbreaks

Being deployed into an international disease outbreak situation is a reasonably stressful experience.

The stress starts the minute you get the call to leave; how big is the outbreak? What’s the pathogen? How dangerous is the living and working environment? Should I pack my Aeropress? Questions that all pale into insignificance when you’re explaining to your kids why you’re flying to a distant country with ‘a really nasty disease that’s killing lots of people’.

But stress and excitement are a hairs width apart, and deploying to an outbreak can also be an incredibly rewarding, challenging and humbling experience and for me it’s an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the world.

Being ready to deploy anywhere in the world

Having to be ready to deploy anywhere in the world within 48 hours means that occupational health have you jabbed up against every possibly nasty they can think of. Most of the pathogens we deal with don’t have vaccines but these jabs help rule out the obvious ones if we were to get sick whilst abroad.

The logistics team have issued all deployable staff with suitcases and grab bags full of items that make life easier when operating in a fragile or difficult environment. These include things like multi region Wi-Fi dongles, indestructible smartphones, state of the art mosquito nets and a little orange whistle. My kids like to imagine these gadgets get handed out to me by some Q-like figure in a Bond film.

When the call comes to deploy, the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) Operations team spring into action and send out pre-deployment briefings that include any and all details about the country we are deploying to, the pathogen, the outbreak status, the response and any security, political and logistical information that we might need.

Flights are booked, accommodation is secured in Foreign Office approved, security vetted hotels and transport arrangements in-country are planned.

One of the more unsettling aspects of a deployment for family members is that we never know how long we will be gone, it could be two weeks but it could be six depending on the situation we find, the span of the outbreak and our ability to make a difference to the response whilst there.

The role of Field Logistician

My job as Field Logistician for the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team is broadly twofold; to provide the logistical support to the wider team, hopefully allowing them to do their jobs more effectively and to provide technical logistics advice and training to host governments on outbreak logistics.

Supporting a team of epidemiologists, clinicians, data scientists and microbiologists to ensure they have adequate transport, security, accommodation, communications and field support whilst in an outbreak in a developing country can be likened to herding squirrels whilst riding a unicycle blindfolded.

It is not an easy job and can frequently be one that doesn’t go to plan, but this is all part of the work.

My background and training were originally in existential psychotherapy, the treatment of complex drug and alcohol addictions and the commissioning of city wide addiction services, so I have much experience of dealing with what could be chaotic situations and heavy workloads.

When the opportunity arose to volunteer and head to Sierra Leone in 2014/15, during the Ebola outbreak, I jumped at the chance and started working in the Kerrytown Ebola treatment centre under the guidance of PHE’s Neil Bentley (who’s fascinating career you can read more about here).

Neil recognised that the lab supply chain, was causing significant issues for the PHE teams working in all of Sierra Leone’s labs, as they were running out of essential items to run diagnostic tests and were having to use often inadequate personal, protective equipment. Neil tasked me with coming up with a logistics plan to remedy the situation.

The problem was that there were too many links in the supply chain, too many people getting involved in the ordering and shipping process and high staff turnover in the labs. This meant that often orders got lost along the way and nobody could remember who ordered what.

I designed a simple, single point of contact system for the labs to complete all orders and track shipments. Four years later I am still working on supply chain issues in outbreak situations.

Supporting the Nigerian Government through a Lassa Fever outbreak

Images: Nigeria Centre for Disease Control

In February 2018, the UK-PHRST sent a small team to support the response to a larger than normal Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria.

The team consisted of two epidemiologists, a clinician and myself as the Field Logistician. As this was a ‘bi-lateral’, government to government deployment, which means one government working alongside another, logistical arrangements were the responsibility of the Rapid Support Team.

In bilateral deployments like this one, the UK-PHRST adheres wherever possible to Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) guidelines for UK civil servants travelling and working abroad.

For the Nigeria deployment we arranged logistical support in the form of transport and local procurement through the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), who continued to support us throughout the duration of our stay.

Challenges during the deployment

Having the dual remit of providing team support and technical advice in Nigeria presented a number of challenges. One day I was conducting field visits, investigating supply chain issues in the Irrua and Owo Lassa treatment centres where we were witnessing the highest concentration of patients, and the next day I was spending several hours procuring local SIM cards in Abuja for the team to use in their deployment phones.

Something as simple as buying a SIM card, which in the UK would take 5 minutes to procure, requires official registration in Nigeria and you have to take your passport and wait in an extremely long queue before filling out multiple forms and finding out that you can only procure 3 SIMs per day so will need to do it all again tomorrow.

Without local SIMs the team cannot operate and communicate, both with each other and with the local NCDC experts on the ground. The local SIMs also allow us to use our global dongles and have roaming internet and access to emails which is vital in fast moving outbreak scenarios.

The coordination of transport in these situations is always a minefield and we need to make plans for several people, often wanting to go in different directions, at different times and to meetings that are invariably vitally important.

In Nigeria this also meant coordinating internal flights, making sure we had cars and drivers to meet us in remote locations and ensuring that local hotels were safe and appropriate to our needs. The key to success in field logistics is to ensure that your team communicate their needs effectively and in a timely manner. Failure to plan in an outbreak, in a challenging environment, can have unforeseen and potentially catastrophic consequences.

The uninterrupted supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medicines was a particularly challenging issue during the outbreak and there were ‘stock outs’ in a number of locations, requiring emergency action by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This essentially means none left to hand out to people.

A stock out of vital PPE could force front line staff into unsafe practices such as reusing gloves or gowns that have the potential to spread disease, which is something we have to stop from happening.

Training others

Since the deployment we have worked closely with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to develop a package of training to upskill local logisticians in the importance of maintaining effective supply chain management in an outbreak situation.

In March 2019 three members of UK-PHRST staff delivered a two day ‘train the trainer’ event that was well attended by six different states and a number of NCDC logistics staff. All attendees committed to take the materials presented by NCDC, UK-PHRST and WHO representatives, and use it to train front line staff on the importance of stock management and supply chain in outbreaks.

The event also allowed the opportunity for laboratory staff from the National Reference Lab to address their own logistical concerns and seek ongoing support to ensure effective supply chains for diagnostic services.

The opportunity to work on capacity building training and follow up with local staff to implement the changes they identify has been a hugely rewarding facet of the job. It has helped identify new areas that the UK-PHRST can support NCDC in driving forward meaningful change on the front line of logistical support and supply chain management.

If you liked this blog, you can read more from our Disease Detectives series by clicking the links below:

Using supermarket loyalty cards to trace an E Coli outbreak

keeping track of new and emerging infectious diseases

  Disease Detectives: The role of a field logistician in international disease outbreaks published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[edsenger]

Disease Detectives: The role of a field logistician in international disease outbreaks

Being deployed into an international disease outbreak situation is a reasonably stressful experience.

The stress starts the minute you get the call to leave; how big is the outbreak? What’s the pathogen? How dangerous is the living and working environment? Should I pack my Aeropress? Questions that all pale into insignificance when you’re explaining to your kids why you’re flying to a distant country with ‘a really nasty disease that’s killing lots of people’.

But stress and excitement are a hairs width apart, and deploying to an outbreak can also be an incredibly rewarding, challenging and humbling experience and for me it’s an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the world.

Being ready to deploy anywhere in the world

Having to be ready to deploy anywhere in the world within 48 hours means that occupational health have you jabbed up against every possibly nasty they can think of. Most of the pathogens we deal with don’t have vaccines but these jabs help rule out the obvious ones if we were to get sick whilst abroad.

The logistics team have issued all deployable staff with suitcases and grab bags full of items that make life easier when operating in a fragile or difficult environment. These include things like multi region Wi-Fi dongles, indestructible smartphones, state of the art mosquito nets and a little orange whistle. My kids like to imagine these gadgets get handed out to me by some Q-like figure in a Bond film.

When the call comes to deploy, the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) Operations team spring into action and send out pre-deployment briefings that include any and all details about the country we are deploying to, the pathogen, the outbreak status, the response and any security, political and logistical information that we might need.

Flights are booked, accommodation is secured in Foreign Office approved, security vetted hotels and transport arrangements in-country are planned.

One of the more unsettling aspects of a deployment for family members is that we never know how long we will be gone, it could be two weeks but it could be six depending on the situation we find, the span of the outbreak and our ability to make a difference to the response whilst there.

The role of Field Logistician

My job as Field Logistician for the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team is broadly twofold; to provide the logistical support to the wider team, hopefully allowing them to do their jobs more effectively and to provide technical logistics advice and training to host governments on outbreak logistics.

Supporting a team of epidemiologists, clinicians, data scientists and microbiologists to ensure they have adequate transport, security, accommodation, communications and field support whilst in an outbreak in a developing country can be likened to herding squirrels whilst riding a unicycle blindfolded.

It is not an easy job and can frequently be one that doesn’t go to plan, but this is all part of the work.

My background and training were originally in existential psychotherapy, the treatment of complex drug and alcohol addictions and the commissioning of city wide addiction services, so I have much experience of dealing with what could be chaotic situations and heavy workloads.

When the opportunity arose to volunteer and head to Sierra Leone in 2014/15, during the Ebola outbreak, I jumped at the chance and started working in the Kerrytown Ebola treatment centre under the guidance of PHE’s Neil Bentley (who’s fascinating career you can read more about here).

Neil recognised that the lab supply chain, was causing significant issues for the PHE teams working in all of Sierra Leone’s labs, as they were running out of essential items to run diagnostic tests and were having to use often inadequate personal, protective equipment. Neil tasked me with coming up with a logistics plan to remedy the situation.

The problem was that there were too many links in the supply chain, too many people getting involved in the ordering and shipping process and high staff turnover in the labs. This meant that often orders got lost along the way and nobody could remember who ordered what.

I designed a simple, single point of contact system for the labs to complete all orders and track shipments. Four years later I am still working on supply chain issues in outbreak situations.

Supporting the Nigerian Government through a Lassa Fever outbreak

Images: Nigeria Centre for Disease Control

In February 2018, the UK-PHRST sent a small team to support the response to a larger than normal Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria.

The team consisted of two epidemiologists, a clinician and myself as the Field Logistician. As this was a ‘bi-lateral’, government to government deployment, which means one government working alongside another, logistical arrangements were the responsibility of the Rapid Support Team.

In bilateral deployments like this one, the UK-PHRST adheres wherever possible to Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) guidelines for UK civil servants travelling and working abroad.

For the Nigeria deployment we arranged logistical support in the form of transport and local procurement through the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), who continued to support us throughout the duration of our stay.

Challenges during the deployment

Having the dual remit of providing team support and technical advice in Nigeria presented a number of challenges. One day I was conducting field visits, investigating supply chain issues in the Irrua and Owo Lassa treatment centres where we were witnessing the highest concentration of patients, and the next day I was spending several hours procuring local SIM cards in Abuja for the team to use in their deployment phones.

Something as simple as buying a SIM card, which in the UK would take 5 minutes to procure, requires official registration in Nigeria and you have to take your passport and wait in an extremely long queue before filling out multiple forms and finding out that you can only procure 3 SIMs per day so will need to do it all again tomorrow.

Without local SIMs the team cannot operate and communicate, both with each other and with the local NCDC experts on the ground. The local SIMs also allow us to use our global dongles and have roaming internet and access to emails which is vital in fast moving outbreak scenarios.

The coordination of transport in these situations is always a minefield and we need to make plans for several people, often wanting to go in different directions, at different times and to meetings that are invariably vitally important.

In Nigeria this also meant coordinating internal flights, making sure we had cars and drivers to meet us in remote locations and ensuring that local hotels were safe and appropriate to our needs. The key to success in field logistics is to ensure that your team communicate their needs effectively and in a timely manner. Failure to plan in an outbreak, in a challenging environment, can have unforeseen and potentially catastrophic consequences.

The uninterrupted supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medicines was a particularly challenging issue during the outbreak and there were ‘stock outs’ in a number of locations, requiring emergency action by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This essentially means none left to hand out to people.

A stock out of vital PPE could force front line staff into unsafe practices such as reusing gloves or gowns that have the potential to spread disease, which is something we have to stop from happening.

Training others

Since the deployment we have worked closely with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to develop a package of training to upskill local logisticians in the importance of maintaining effective supply chain management in an outbreak situation.

In March 2019 three members of UK-PHRST staff delivered a two day ‘train the trainer’ event that was well attended by six different states and a number of NCDC logistics staff. All attendees committed to take the materials presented by NCDC, UK-PHRST and WHO representatives, and use it to train front line staff on the importance of stock management and supply chain in outbreaks.

The event also allowed the opportunity for laboratory staff from the National Reference Lab to address their own logistical concerns and seek ongoing support to ensure effective supply chains for diagnostic services.

The opportunity to work on capacity building training and follow up with local staff to implement the changes they identify has been a hugely rewarding facet of the job. It has helped identify new areas that the UK-PHRST can support NCDC in driving forward meaningful change on the front line of logistical support and supply chain management.

If you liked this blog, you can read more from our Disease Detectives series by clicking the links below:

Using supermarket loyalty cards to trace an E Coli outbreak

keeping track of new and emerging infectious diseases

  Disease Detectives: The role of a field logistician in international disease outbreaks published first on https://brightendentalhouston.weebly.com/

[googletranslatemessups-blog]

Bees (But Put Through Google Translate 16 times)

Introduction: What does this mean? After the operation, SCP-███-3 was released, and the truth of life must be black. This is mentioned on every page. log in

   March 17

   Today I think as a driver, I think there are 30 doctors, they do not buy. In addition, my grandfather is Moni. There is no excuse for the value of the second hell. This is a very good piece of blood.

Write the results

   the 20th of March

   No text in plastic boxes    Who pays for a tattoo is the difference. O. The brain seems to be burning on the floor, I don't care about my hand. I think we are an old man WTF? I don't want to know if it's a ring or not.

   March 21

   Make sure you have a control mode. For example, the food, because the seller and the manufacturer of the plant are usually very But I'm afraid he returned to killing Therefore, I agree. Not all results are fair. You can do it yourself

The rest of the page is the most important person. (Sometimes asking my mother) She looks like a tough warrior. "I have a good mouth in the morning, especially if they are still in Gher.

   March 22nd

   Today [top of monomer] We have received API information, often the oldest, so there should be places like Vienna that are impossible (not eating). But it is not a foreign compliance with this woman: I am very angry.

   This product has not been rejected, but it is very difficult, so the work is not worth it. I looked outside the room and stayed with them and my brother. This word is quite different.

   March 23

   We're white and black, we don't know it's black. What is a Cemetery? I want to be patient before it takes a little old age!    * * Find information now ... Why below?

   Use your nose when you pour your nose.

[Age seems to be in chapter 9]

   Don't let anything go from your shoulder.    What if it were the height of the hill?   ��What happens if one-third of the beans are there?    If you have a mobile phone, can't you use the phone?    If you are a good photographer?    How are hairs at the corner of the room?    If dinosaur bones die?    What happened to the bee    If you have Facebook    If so, is it better on the Facebook page?    If someone comes to you, write a good article:    What happens when a child commits adultery?    Säävalokuvat?    Enter the boat and eat her good    Updated when:    What happened in Benny Benny's life?    If so, don't forget the bad things and their neighbors?    What is a computer screen image?    If he becomes part of human rights

   Is this a big poster?    When is SAG an agreement?    What happens when a bottle is in China?    What is the Century?    Ceithir Bee    Want to know what you're doing?    How to make beans    when    What do you think this week, what should we do?    If we have a movie    How do you have a good body    When does Mother's Price Depend on Hawaii Price?    If so, you forgot Mardi Gras - Soldier - Well?    How do I re-write to you?    Is it made of clay and springs?    If they are good    Should You Work With Your Child?    What happens when people talk to TYPE    If you fall across the snow in the nursery?    Is it true that the animals are <<

   What does this mean?    Is this a bird case because she is proud of this?    Is he strong when it's right?    If we send to your phone    If you do business with people?    What should I do when the paper is good?    If I say that my son's clothes are his mirror?   This young man killed!   If you're sick   But what's open?   Start learning and, if possible, stop them?   Do you want other songs?

If plants grow and destroy! When are these people It was the first reason we were in the car so when traveling abroad Did you find Wi-Fi compatibility? What happens when the number is greater than this number? If not good Good or good If you want it, it's a bad culture. If you're a leader, what would you do if they were good? When does mirroring differ from each member? With a diabetic and night What if a fisherman thinks of himself? What happens if the dog doesn't see! With a pot When he knew it was expensive: many people? If there is a good government, right? What opportunities does this person have? Create rules that were created once a week or not. In the grave, where is sin? If this happens, we may not change the monthly email address on the page.

What is a bee writer? Install the computer Beans? What is the difference between hand and foot boats? However, if you delete the code, I accept you at the bottom of the Trinity. Don't you want to be William Wincan's young man from Hirom? If this happens, coffee bags How is the cow wall different? What happens when you select a pixel for this station? If we want to help it in Russia? What happens if it is part of a mental health service? But if you tell the story of the actor If you love bees, if that week is a day? What to do when you cook in Wikipedia! What happened on the road if he died?

Other parts from outside, such as your mother, must be in a dark tree path. In science, small tires like fishing before you quit "Z"

Close the animal

March 31st

No, I mean very little. Older events

I like Ponn, this is the main attack. But to help blood One of them was Avon, who started in Hawaii within 14 hours. They said they stopped drinking. Oh, the phone shakes.

Monday It was sixty actors in 1646. What am I going to enjoy best? I don't know what you write, I don't work!

I think he tried and decided to go to Zelt Pin and go to work and start working on the bed

One Friday [Heavy paper window and haze

I tried to write Sanskrit for Chaita Thermo Shaw in bed.

What happened It is not good

On the next page, human blood is reported to have venous thrombosis after the first treatment. Place the area in the registered area.

Mom, today tears well. This is a woman I don't know why I'm not short. Are you sure you want a better way? Buidhe

Create Wei

March 17

Go to the Pixel Tani light and garden when you go to the hospital. Forcing the boy to move the truck to God, I didn't go long

March and 119 days

            I ate food with the dentist. The other bees saw me But they're heavier

            I'm tired             Number 3

[Five items are five]

            I'll do this

[Crime]

This article differs from last year's entertainment SCP-3 softMicrosoftMe If you want to go to Bridget Private Prose because of deep knowledge

They know they are usually an SCP company. If it happened in the article Mobile phone

Afterword: The original Bees story is on the SCP Wiki. I don’t know who exactly wrote it, but I highly recommend that you read the original. It’s a fantastic dark comedy/psychological horror story that on one hand is funny because the main horror is “What if everything was bees?”, but scary because the main horror is “What if EVERYTHING was bees?”

Check it out here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/bees

[613526362]

There’s a Storm Inside of Me

I checked in that pocket, like five times, and the number 7 wasn't in there

Brad talked to a lot of girls tonight,  but few talked back

Of course all the ones I chose talked back, but only because I choose humble women

I checked my jacket

Not really

They hunted me down and said you have to check your jacket

And of course it was 3 dollars

But I wasn't sweating

I pulled out the huge stack of ones that we didn't spend at the strip club because the strip club was dead

Kitty didn't remember us from last time

That hurt

Harmony was awesome though. That almost sounds like a fucking Christian name

We wound up on the loudest club in the big city

Brad seemed hesitant to wait in line. I told him, look through the fucking glass

It will be worth it

It was

We lit that fucker on fire

I was dancing with chicks like crazy

Black girls

31 year old hipster girls

I turned out a 31 year old hipster girl

She was super timid and STILL

till I approached

And then she did all the shit she can't do with her hipster husband of 13 years

That mother fucked probably works at a factory designing modern furniture

He has a beard

And somehow, he hasn't gotten her prego yet

Where

The

Fuck

Is

The

Kid

Bro

But it's ok

She had the time of her life celebrating her friend's 30 lb weight loss

Brad got me some girl's number at the club before

We were the only white dudes in that one

We even asked the bouncers and they were like, yeah, you're the only white dudes in here

Brad says she was nurse and going for nurse practitioner

But aren't they all

He said she's from Columbia

This is the drunkest I've ever been

We'll see what dyhydromyrecitin can do

I'm on the floor

What the fuck

Who got me sick

I think it was Brad

Fuck

It had to happen

So that

I can go to Africa

Healthy

By my calculation

drinks

Bumping into things

Brief moments of intimacy

Sharing lip balm with a 13 year married woman

Grabbing her hands from behind and grinding ass to ass for a whole song

That was hours after the stripper kissed me

Harmony

Harmony

Brief moments of intimacy

Tonight was the last night

I'm done

No more drinking

Ever

It's time to go to work

---

I just watched Zero Dark Thirty

2018 has been huge for me

The most valuable take away from this year

I have absolutely no shame or hesitancy left in my body

Last year I would have feared to look my father in the eye and say, no, dad, I'm not going to work a single day as a doctor in the United States

Now I'll be proud when I do it

I almost want to add, "

Dad, I don't dream about the Island every night, but I do dream about it every week. All the worst years of my life, all the most horrible human emotions and all the darkest corners of the world - they were and are all here in this shithole country. This country has a simple story - Europeans came and killed native Americans to take the country (and eventually pretended to make reparations to them and apologize). Then the descendants of those Europeans destroyed entire societies in Africa to steal people from there and build America into a superpower (and eventually pretended to make reparations to them and apologize). Now, the descendants of those Europeans live in a divided country, because some of those who they enslaved and oppressed have shone a bit of truth on the national narrative. The question that you and I should ask dad, is, if we didn't participate in killing native Americans or enslaving Africans - or sit idly by as our peers did so - what great travesty are we complicit in? The wars of this country, and the lack of economic outreach to communities of poverty - communities in our nation and abroad - is just as abhorrent as the slavery or genocide our people committed in the past. I choose not to stay here and attempt to tune out my people's evil. I choose instead to trade my life for the lives we have destroyed - and become a slave to what is righteous and right in this world. I am limited only by what I can believe is possible. You are limited by what you have seen in your life. Look at my life, father. It has already exceeded yours. By not listening to you, look what I have accomplished. I will not back down. I will not bring my Father shame."

I need to fix the organization financially. Eventually I'll get sued. And if we're incorporated, I can kill the name and put up a new name. Maybe. I'm trying to build in ultrasound training next. And after that, a program to take pre-med students overseas and get them medical experience working with refugees in refugee camps.

We have to keep making money

And I need to work on my personal financial situation

Most of the loans to do the things the Organization has done have fallen back on me.

I'm concerned about my next tuition bill.

I am dedicated to finishing my MD.

So I need to keep my ducks in a line.

I think it's funny that Brad's big brother (don't remember his name) isn't responding to texts much anymore. He's done. He's finally encased his pride in gold. Finally, a staff surgeon. Finally, a wife. Kids soon I hear. A dog. A big house.

So what's next.

I know the answer to that. Mediocre medical work overseas or an affair.

In his case, probably both.

And for Brad, his divorce is underway, his daughter is becoming more and more like her mom, and he's about to start the Academy to be a government operative.

I tip my hat to them all. They've accomplished everything they ever wanted by 30 or 32.

Now it's my mother fucking turn.

Very few questions still remain:

-Can the organization's profit over the course of a year be stabilized, or will there be big, inevitable downturns?

-How should the organization be staffed? How should I recruit and hire?

-Can I finalize our legal standing? Can I find people to come on board and stand behind this organization?

-Will my personal finances place a limit on what can be done through the organization and it's growth?

-Can I diversify our streams of income so we are not so vulnerable to changes from outside actors

2018 has come to a good end, because none of those questions,

"Can I make it alone? Will I kill myself? Can I cope with bipolar? Should I take meds?"

Those questions were around a couple months ago. Then I put shit in high gear, and I've grown our organization, hired new employees, and excelled in school.

Yes, the low points of this year did not leave me unscathed. I probably spent $5,000 on girls and on fucking around with Brad this year. And it damaged my health and my mind.

The damage to my hearing was completely unnecessary. But maybe the psychological struggles were necessary.

I feel strong now. I feel like I don't need a woman.

And I know God will back me up and keep them away from me.

We're a team.

When I think of Barack Obama's presidency, I think of how one extremely well intentioned and dedicated individual ran some positive projects and helped some people. Most of all, he did not make everything worse in a time and place of extreme greed and evil.

I'm going to shoot for the stars. If I don't save a whole nation from poverty, it's ok. At least I'm not perpetuating evil, or standing idly by as it occurs.

An abusive mother and a book called The Devil Came on Horseback made me who I am. I will continue what they started. I will force people of this sick land to see what their parents committed and ignored. I will show love to people in the places our people have ignored or raped.

The evil of this shithole country runs deep. And affected by it, and part of it, I understand and rise above it.

--

"There's a storm inside of us. I've heard many team guys speak of this. A burning. A river. A drive. An unrelenting desire to push yourself harder and further than anyone could think possible. Pushing ourselves into those cold dark corners. We wanted that fight at the highest volume. A loud fight. The loudest, coldest, darkest, most unpleasant of the unpleasant fights."

He proposed that maybe rather than continual exposure to mild violence, it may be better to expose them to extremes of violence. He responded, “It's the opposite. What will happen is I'll just overwhelm you with violence. If you're overwhelmed, you won't do anything, you'll just become prey. You'll have a fear for violence. I don't want you to have a fear for violence, I want you to thrive in violence. I want you to treat it as if it's ordinary."

[clubofinfo]

Expert: In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern ‘conventional’ weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, are extremely potent in allowing Western ‘humanitarians’ to justify ‘intervention’ in response to crimes – real, hyped or imagined – that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder. Noam Chomsky has observed that ‘propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state’. This is certainly true for social control at home, but propaganda also allows nominally democratic states to wield their military bludgeons abroad in much the same way as totalitarian states. Thus, in April, it happened again: the entire corporate media system rose up with instant certainty to damn an enemy state for crimes against humanity on April 7, in Douma, Syria. This was not acceptable death by bomb and bullet; this was a nerve gas attack. The villainous agent on every journalist’s lips: sarin, a highly toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound that has no smell or taste, but which quickly kills through asphyxiation. As we discussed at the time, there was no question that this was a repetition of the fake justification for war to secure non-existent Iraqi WMDs, or to prevent a fictional Libyan massacre in Benghazi. Instead, the Guardian editors insisted that this certainly was ‘a chemical gas attack, orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad, that left dead children foaming at the mouth’. From the safety of his Guardian office, assistant editor Simon Tisdall hammered the drum for a war that risked even nuclear confrontation: ‘It means destroying Assad’s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad’s and Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war.’ By contrast, Scott Ritter – a former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq who understands the issues – was more cautious: ‘The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons…’ No matter, on April 14, three days after Ritter’s article appeared, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Robert Fisk of the Independent visited Douma and spoke to a senior doctor who works in the clinic where victims of the alleged chemical attack had been brought for treatment. Dr Rahaibani told Fisk what had happened that night: ‘I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’ When Fisk’s report wasn’t ignored, it was sneeringly dismissed. A headline in The Times read: ‘Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack’ The Times, which is no stranger to controversy, suggested that there were big question marks over Fisk’s record: ‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’  No Organophosphates Found On 6 July 2018, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), issued an interim report on the FFM’s investigation regarding the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. The passage that jumped out of the report: ‘No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties.’ No sarin! But is it possible that any nerve agents had degraded and disappeared before OPCW investigators reached the site? An April 17, Guardian article had reported: ‘The OPCW has been racing against the clock to collect samples from the site of the attack, a three-storey house in Douma, in which scores of people died in a basement. Jerry Smith, who helped supervise the OPCW-led withdrawal of much of Syria’s sarin stockpile in 2013, said samples of nerve agent rapidly degrade in normal environmental conditions… The Russian military and Syrian officers have had access to the house since last Thursday, raising fears that the site may have been tampered with. However, Smith said it was likely that residual samples of nerve agent would remain for at least another week, even after an attempted clean-up.’ The OPCW later commented: ‘On 21 April 2018, after security concerns had been addressed, the FFM team conducted its first visit to one of the alleged sites of interest, and it was deemed an acceptable risk to enter Douma…’ In other words, OPCW’s race ‘against the clock’ appeared to have been successful. Charles Shoebridge a former Scotland Yard detective and counter terrorism intelligence officer, observed: ‘if OPCW find no traces, likely not due to any inspection delay’ Before we examine ‘MSM’ reaction to the OPCW report, particularly to the failure to find ‘organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products’, let’s look at their initial reaction to claims of a nerve agent attack on April 7. Initial Response: ‘Those Symptoms Don’t Come From Chlorine’ CNN reported on April 14: ‘Senior US officials expressed confidence Saturday that both chlorine and sarin gas were used in Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack on the Damascus enclave of Douma last week…’ CNN cited reports ‘from media, nongovernmental organizations and other open sources’ that ‘point to miosis – constricted pupils – convulsions and disruptions to central nervous systems. Those symptoms don’t come from chlorine. They come from nerve agents… It’s a much more efficient weapon, unfortunately, the way the regime has been using it, and it’s resulted in higher deaths, it resulted in terrible pictures.’ The Financial Times cited Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the UK’s chemical biological radiological and nuclear regiment (see here on his credibility as an impartial source): ‘There’s no doubt this was a major chemical weapons attack. The big question is whether it was chlorine or sarin. I am favouring a mix of the two.’1 A Telegraph article opened with this harrowing line: ‘The victims were found exactly where they had been when the gas hit. Their silent killer had given little warning.’ This clearly suggested a very powerful nerve agent, as the article explained: ‘Medics on the ground reported smelling a chlorine-like substance, but said the patients’ symptoms and the large death toll pointed to a more noxious substance such as nerve agent sarin. ‘”The number of casualties is so high and that’s not typical for chlorine,” said Dr Ahmad Tarakji, president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which assists hospitals in Eastern Ghouta. “Unfortunately, because of a lack of resources, we can’t take blood samples.”‘ The claims did indeed suggest something much more powerful than chlorine, as The Daily Mail made clear in a report also citing de Bretton-Gordon: ‘If it was chlorine, they could have escaped. But they died after just taking a few steps.’2 The Mail cited an ‘activist’ making the same point: ‘Ibrahim Reyhani, a White Helmet civil defence volunteer, said anyone who touched the bodies started getting sick, and said he believed a mixture of sarin and chlorine had been used. ‘He told the Sunday Times: “If it’s just chlorine, if you smell it you can escape. But sarin you breathe and it kills you.” The Telegraph published an op-ed by de Bretton-Gordon: ‘There have been a number of chlorine attacks, but it would appear that chlorine, although outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention, is below the threshold for the UK and France to strike. ‘Saturday’s attack, with so many deaths and casualties, looks possibly to be a mixture of chlorine and the nerve agent sarin, and this atrocity must surely stretch above their threshold for action.’ It is worth reiterating again – as media responses to the OPCW’s latest report, conspicuously, have not – that chlorine was not a sufficiently deadly agent to cause either the claimed level of carnage or the claimed level of Western moral outrage. In 2015, Barack Obama noted: ‘Chlorine itself, historically, has not been listed as a chemical weapon.’ Charles Shoebridge commented: ‘while headlines of chemical weapons are undoubtedly dramatic, the relatively low lethality of chlorine makes it an ineffective – and therefore arguably also unlikely – choice of weapon… ‘Indeed, given the low toxicity of the allegedly small amounts used and the unpleasant bleach smell that always betrays chlorine’s presence, in most instances people could avoid being killed by simply walking away – another indication of its near uselessness as a weapon. Perhaps the only way it could be tactically effective is if used to drive people from trenches or bunkers to allow them to then be killed with bombs and bullets – but again, the amounts of chlorine needed would be far more than is alleged, and the accuracy needed to target in this way is unlikely to be achieved using unguided rockets as alleged this week in east Ghouta, or by dropping a “barrel bomb” from a helicopter.’ Chlorine gas was not included in the list of Syrian chemical weapons reported to the OPCW. It is an unsophisticated weapon that could also be deployed by ‘rebel’ forces and to which they have had access. The OPCW reported in August 2016: ‘Chlorine is available to all parties in the Syrian Arab Republic.’ A Guardian leader also linked the alleged attack in Douma to sarin: ‘Dozens of civilians in the Douma district were killed by Syrian government chemical attacks on Saturday.’ It continued: ‘This is not the first time this has happened. Since the use of sarin at Khan al-Assal in 2013 there have been dozens of chemical attacks by the regime.’ Peter Hitchens commented on the Guardian‘s coverage in the Mail on Sunday: ‘Here is the Guardian, on 9th April 2018: “Aid workers and medics described apocalyptic scenes in the besieged city of Douma, where at least 42 people have died from what appears to be a chemical attack, as they scrambled to save the survivors of the latest atrocity in Syria… ‘”Doctors said the symptoms had been consistent with exposure to an organophosphorus substance.”‘ Hitchens asked: ‘Which doctors? Note the absence of named, checkable sources in a story written some distance from Damascus. This was typical of almost all western media reports of the episode at the time.’ Hitchens observed that OPCW had found no traces of organophosphates but that ‘The quoted “doctors”, being unidentified, cannot now be approached to ask for their response to this.’ Responding To OPCW’s July 6 Report The skwawkbox website noted that the BBC had covered, and distorted, OPCW’s July 6 report. A BBC headline read: ‘Syria attack was chlorine gas – watchdog ‘The deadly attack in Douma in April left dozens of civilians dead and caused and international outcry.’ This was complete invention. As skwawkbox commented: ‘the OPCW report emphatically does not say that chlorine gas was used‘. The report actually said: ‘Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.’ (Our emphasis) Chlorinated organic chemicals are extremely common, found in degreasers, cleaning solutions, paint thinners, pesticides, resins, glues, and many other mixing and thinning solutions. The BBC amended the article, which later read: ‘The report said two samples from gas cylinders recovered at the scene tested positive for chlorine.’ Skwawkbox commented again: ‘This is a classic example of a technically-correct claim that is completely misleading. ‘The [OPCW] report does note the presence of chlorine in some samples tested from the cylinders – but not chlorine gas or the residues that would be expected from its reaction with other substances… ‘The relevant page of the OPCW’s full report states that no ‘relevant chemicals’ were found from a swab inside the opening of one cylinder: ‘In debris and on other items around the cylinder, chlorine compounds were found – but these are common compounds that would be unlikely to be formed simply by chlorine reacting with something on site.’ In similar vein, Alec Luhn, the Telegraph‘s Russia correspondent, tweeted: ‘The April chemical attack in Douma was caused by chlorine gas, the OPCW says. Or it was completely staged, if you still believe the Russian authorities’ Sharmine Narwani, a writer, commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics, replied brusquely but accurately: ‘No, the OPCW didn’t say that. It found traces of chlorine on the scene, which it would find in your house or office or water supply too, if sampled. Try actual #journalism.’ Off-Guardian noted several headlines covering OPCW’s findings. Reuters reported: ‘Chemical weapons agency finds “chlorinated” chemicals in Syria’s Douma’ The Independent wrote: ‘Syrian conflict: Chlorine used in Douma attack that left dozens of civilians dead, chemical weapons watchdog finds’ As Off-Guardian noted, the headlines should have read: No nerve agents found. Remarkably, these rare mentions aside, the OPCW interim report has been ignored by most major newspapers and media, including the Guardian. DE * David Bond and Rebecca Collard, ‘Experts say gas attack proof will take weeks: Civil war. Douma Inspectors are struggling to access site of alleged atrocity as Assad’s troops move in,’ Financial Times, 12 April 2018. * Vanessa Allen, ‘Little girl left foaming at the mouth by horrific gas attack,’ Daily Mail, 16 April 2018. http://clubof.info/