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weaselandfriends · 2 years ago

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The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic

I. Context

After I finished Chicago in 2019, a powerful and persistent fatigue gripped me: the fabled "burnout." The next two years would be the least productive of my literate life. As one day ebbed into the next, I wondered if I would ever be able to write again. I thought of Andrew Hussie, who, after years of feverish activity on Homestuck, seemed now capable of only short spurts of creation, heavily assisted by amanuenses.

It wasn't an issue of knowing what to write. I had been developing the idea for Cockatiel x Chameleon since 2015. I knew its plot, characters, scenes, themes. But when I tried to manifest it into reality I felt drained. What I managed to scrawl was junk, far below my standards. Goaded by a lurking terror of infinite lassitude, I forced myself to blurt 60,000 words of an initial draft; loathing it, I scrapped it entirely.

That was when I got the idea to write a "fun" story.

My vision for Cockatiel x Chameleon was technically complex and emotionally demanding. Maybe something simpler, a straightforward adventure, would be a stepping stone to recovery. I thought back to Fargo, which I had written (unlike most of my works) with relative ease and minimal forethought. How could I emulate that experience? What made Fargo so easy compared to Chicago and Cockatiel x Chameleon?

After reflection, I concluded that Fargo was, at its core, a revenge story. Revenge stories are older than dinosaur dirt. They are fundamental to human experience, easily understood, all structure inherent in their premise. The hero, wronged, seeks revenge on the villain. From that sentence alone you understand the protagonist's motivation and the plot's direction: trending inexorably toward final confrontation. With such a powerful core, it'd been easy to add details and complications to Fargo as they popped into my head, without warping the story's innate trajectory.

If I wanted another "easy" writing experience, I decided, I needed a similar type of story. Something with a clear premise that removes the burden of planning. A "template plot," where beginning/middle/end is fundamentally present and the writer merely adds their own spin. It took little time to think of such a story type. After all, it had been ubiquitous in Japanese media for the past decade. Not only was it popular with readers, it was appealing to amateur authors; many of its biggest examples originated as web fiction.

I decided I would write an isekai.

II. The Isekai Genre

A person from the real world is transported to a fantasy world.

Not quite as old as the revenge story. Nonetheless, this narrative concept has existed for over 100 years. The premise immediately informs the challenges the protagonist will encounter. They will adapt to a world they know little about, introduce knowledge from modern Earth society, and rise in power and prominence. Toss in a Demon King hellbent on world domination and you get a clear narrative climax. The details can be changed nearly any way without issue.

(Or so I thought.)

In retrospect, I myself was being transported to a new world. If we ignore The Chronicles of Narnia or The Pagemaster or Digimon Adventure and focus solely on the contemporary isekai genre (say 2012 on), which is what I intended to emulate, my experience extended to only the following titles:

1. Sword Art Online

2. Log Horizon

3. No Game No Life

4. The Saga of Tanya the Evil (or Youjo Senki)

5. KonoSuba

This is not only a pitiful sample size, but a specifically poor representation of the genre. Sword Art Online and Log Horizon exist in their own subgenre—trapped in a video game—and have many oddities unseen in more traditional isekai. No Game No Life and Tanya the Evil are "real" isekais, but both have unique worlds that eschew most traditional fantasy elements (especially in Tanya's case). And KonoSuba is a parody.

Nonetheless, I felt that, via cultural osmosis, I "understood" the isekai genre. Based on a few video essays I once watched that roasted dreck like Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone, and reverse engineering KonoSuba's parody, I conceived an impression of isekai as wish fulfillment: A loser gets another chance at life, often with some boon to ensure they don't muck it up this time. They become the hero, triumph with their strength and modern intelligence, and meet lots of attractive women.

I smirked. Heh, I thought. What if I made an isekai... that wasn't wish fulfillment! Truly novel. Let us take the premise of KonoSuba—a benevolent god gives a loser a second chance in a fantasy world—and turn it on its head. Instead of a benevolent god, what if the main character was sent by... a devil? The loser protagonist makes a Faustian bargain to become a hero. They get exactly what they wish for, except they're still a loser at heart, and inevitably bungle everything due to their own social incompetence.

That was the flashpoint. Ideas came together quickly, exactly as I hoped. Soon I had a narrative. It went like this:

III. The Original Idea

Our protagonist is a bumbling failure who lives with his mother. One day he sees an advertisement for a devil's wish-granting service. Being a fan of isekai anime, he goes to the devil and wishes to be sent to another world, one where he'll be the most powerful person. The devil, a sleek and professional businesswoman, agrees to the unusual wish, but pushes the work of actually creating the world to an overstressed, chain-smoking intern. The intern cobbles the world together in a matter of hours and our protagonist embarks on his journey.

He arrives to find the human kingdom besieged by the Demon King's army. The humans are outnumbered; total defeat is imminent. Just as he wished, though, the protagonist possesses incredible power. He charges into the fray, destroys the demon army singlehandedly in instants, and slays the Demon King himself soon after. The protagonist enters the human kingdom hailed as a hero.

Soon, the Human King emerges from his castle to express his immense gratitude. He offers the hero anything, including his daughter's hand in marriage. The hero takes one look at the princess―named either Mayfair or Viviendre, I wasn't sure which―sees she is exceedingly beautiful, and eagerly agrees. He's gotten exactly what he always wanted!

Unbeknownst to him, the king is a schemer. Advised by two strange beings—the rotund fairy Tetzel and the living plant Tintoretto—the king believes the hero is too popular; the people would side with him if he sought the throne. The king offers his daughter not in goodwill but to tie the hero to his side. His ultimate goal is to control the hero's power to imperialistically expand his kingdom.

Meanwhile, the princess has her own schemes. She's a lesbian and has zero intention of sleeping with the hero. In a comic scene, she gives the hero excuse after excuse why they can't sleep in the same bed despite being married; the hero naively buys it. Eventually he catches on, but while he's upset by the situation, he's too morally upstanding to do anything but accept it. (This would be a recurring theme: The hero could use his strength to force people to do what he wanted, but constantly shirks from doing so because he refuses to act in a way unbecoming of a hero. His morality and desires exist in a constant state of push and pull.)

Eventually, the hero and his wife compete for the affections of various female characters, with the wife always winning. Temporary the elf was part of this subplot: A dimwitted ambassador to be competitively wooed. To keep the hero sated, his wife buys him a female slave to use "as he likes." The hero, possessed of modern anti-slavery sensibilities, is appalled. He instantly frees the slave girl and enters a crusade to abolish slavery in the kingdom. Unfortunately, because he is not particularly smart, when he debates the slaveowners over the evils of slavery they routinely trounce him (using many arguments real-world slaveowners once used). Again, he could use his incredible power to kill the slaveowners, but they're law-abiding members of society. Murdering them would be "immoral" in the hero's eyes despite his staunch belief in the immorality of their actions.

Around this time, the hero finally uses his power for something good and sends gold back home to his financially poor mother. Unfortunately, this charitable act also goes awry when his sister, an IRS agent, thinks his disappearance is a ploy to evade taxes. She gathers a posse: her coworker boyfriend, his two friends (I called them Aaron Van Zandt and Allen Van Langevelde, envisioning an American Psycho vibe), and a private detective. Using security camera footage they track the protagonist's last known movements to a dingy apartment building, where they find the overworked devil intern who created the world and force him to send them there too.

They roll out in a huge SUV: Five people plus the hapless intern, armed with guns and equipment. The king, not wishing to lose the hero, decides he must intercept them before the hero learns of their existence. In a big setpiece-style scene reminiscent of Children of Men, a horde of knights ambush the SUV on a forest road. Arrows fly through the front windshield, killing the boyfriend (passenger seat) with an arrow to the neck and wounding Aaron Van Zandt (driver). The SUV crashes into a tree and the sister flees on foot, followed by Allen Van Langevelde, who has barely spoken before then but who now reveals themselves to be a badass marksman as they dispatch knight after knight with efficient hunting rifle shots. The private detective is wounded in the leg and forced to remain behind, while the devil intern cowers in the backseat. Aaron Van Zandt limps out of the driver's seat and attempts to follow Van Langevelde, but a knight on horseback rushes past him and knocks him down a steep incline, where he smashes his head on a rock and seemingly dies.

The knights surround the vehicle. The private detective fights back, but is overwhelmed and killed. The devil intern is captured to be burned at the stake later. The sister and Van Langevelde escape on foot, but without the intern, they can't leave the world. They need to rescue him before he is executed. Meanwhile, Van Zandt, clinging to life, is discovered by fairies and brought to their court.

And then...

IV. The Problem

And then I got stuck.

First, it should be clear by now that I did not actually have a plot. I had a series of incidents, loosely organized. Vaguely I knew the main character would work to overcome his social ineptitude and ultimately truly succeed, accomplishing the character growth his get-rich-quick Faustian bargain could never provide. But nothing came together in a coherent structure. Despite my intention to stick to a template plot, I instantly destroyed the template by killing the Demon King in the first chapter. I still had character conflicts and ideas to pursue, but no actual story.

Plus, the main character being a loser made him—well, a loser. Even if he eventually grew, he still ate shit again and again before vanishing entirely from the big action setpiece.

So my original idea of quickly and easily constructing an isekai plot hit a roadblock. Luckily, it was now 2021. After two idle years my fatigue seeped slowly out of me. Finally I regained my energy; I no longer needed to write a "fun" story. I decided to shelve the isekai, potentially permanently, and worked on Cockatiel x Chameleon in earnest.

This time, the draft of Cockatiel x Chameleon―which would be the final draft―progressed acceptably. It consumed my entire focus and I might not have thought about the isekai at all if not for two hiccups. First, though I now had the mental willpower to technically execute my ideas, the emotionally intense material of Cockatiel x Chameleon still left me sometimes wistfully longing for a story not quite so bleak and harrowing. Second, I revisited the isekai genre.

V. The Isekai Genre, Part 2

The anime analysis YouTuber Ygg Studio (formerly known as Digibro) posted a video called Is Mushoku Tensei The Most Influential Isekai? (History of Isekai) that outlined the isekai genre's chronology in Japanese pop media. Watching the video, I discovered some surprising origins to the "contemporary" isekai genre. Though there were many isekai stories―even popular ones―before, the current isekai craze seemingly began in 2012 on a Japanese webfic site called syosetsu.com, where several popular isekai were written in close temporal proximity to one another.

The main titles of note were Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei—followed by KonoSuba, which was specifically a parody of Mushoku Tensei, instead of (as I once believed) a general cultural conception of isekai. In fact, it was these three works that created the current cultural conception, establishing many now obligatory tropes.

So, I decided to watch Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei.

I was shocked! As it turned out, my clever and subversive idea―treating the hero as the loser he was instead of as a wish fulfillment badass―had not only already been done, it was foundational to the genre! Both works feature loser protagonists whose social ineptitude constantly causes problems for them despite their cheat mode powers. Both protagonists are forced to develop as people rather than rely on their advantages, and the development of their relationships with the other characters is a crucial consideration of both works.

As it turned out, Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone (which I also haven't seen) wasn't the beginning and end of the genre. I had underestimated isekai. In retrospect, the languid existence of my 2019 and 2020 led to me ironically attempting the same cheap wish fulfillment of my imagined isekai protagonist. I wanted a "fun," "quick," "easy" story and intended to use isekai for that purpose, the same way an isekai protagonist assumes being sent to another world is an easy way to becoming a hero.

It was time to return to the planning stage. This time, I wouldn't take things for granted.

VI. The Original Idea, Part 2

First, I revisited my protagonist. Originally an afterthought: a punching bag who failed whenever he exhibited any agency. I decided on another direction. My hero wouldn't be a loser by incompetence, but by choice. He would be clever and intelligent, but unwilling to apply himself. He wanted a new world because the original didn't seem worth it; too rigid, too structured, too immune to change. His journey would be discovering it wasn't the world holding him back, but himself. Believing nothing could be changed, he stopped himself from changing. Thus, Jay Waringcrane came into existence.

Earlier ideas were remixed around this new protagonist. I merged the devil boss lady and the devil intern into a single character, a semi-hapless sort for Jay to outwit. That was Perfidia Bal Berith. The hero's sister, whose subplot originally lacked any connection to him, now became a foil to his ideology. She exhibited utter faith in the "real world"—its mechanisms, its processes—and applied herself diligently to maintenance of its status quo. That was Shannon Waringcrane.

Still needed a plot. Since my hero was no longer a social bumbler, I discarded the original beginning where he annihilates the Demon King's army and toyed with a new idea. The human kingdom, besieged by the Demon King's army, becomes aware via prophecy that a hero is about to appear in their world. The king sends a party led by the gallant prince to find the hero and bring him safely to the kingdom. When Jay arrives, he meets the prince and his crew, but they are immediately beset by demons, who kill most of the party and grievously wound the prince. Jay, the dying prince, and the sole other survivor―a taciturn, dark-skinned mage named Viviendre who is secretly the prince's lover―barely escape. The prince succumbs to his wounds shortly afterward, leading to an emotionally-charged moment in which Viviendre laments his death and blames Jay for causing it. Leading to an adversarial relationship between Jay and Viviendre that, after much character development, would eventually turn into romance.

Then Jay would lead the kingdom against the Demon King, constituting the main plot.

This idea improved on the previous in several ways: exciting start, high drama, and a long-term goal. However, as I became more engrossed in this project, I came to dislike the "default fantasy world" I'd used as my setting thus far. When my goal was "quick and easy," the Dragon Quest-inspired medieval fantasy tropes sufficed. Now, they struck me as banal. In particular, a generic "Demon King" villain disinterested me (which was why I summarily disposed of them in the idea's first iteration), so even if it outlined a clear direction, it wasn't a direction that enthralled. I realized that to continue, I needed to do some worldbuilding.

VII. Worldbuilding

I dislike worldbuilding.

I prefer the real world―or the real world distorted by urban fantasy and surrealism―to an entirely fictitious fantasy world. In writing an isekai, I had wanted to maintain the connection between the real world and fantasy world (hence why one of my earliest ideas was for Shannon and her cadre to follow Jay in a modern vehicle with modern weapons). But by relying on stock fantasy tropes, I only exacerbated the core issue. I decided to think deeply about my setting and design it to both stand out and clearly relate to our world.

To determine a deeper connection between fantasy and related, I pondered the historical development of the fantasy genre, from chivalric romance to Tolkien. (I collected my thoughts into this essay.) Tracing this lineage, I considered writing a fantasy world modeled on Arthurian and Carolingian romance. Then I took the idea deeper. Much of the early modern fantasy genre, up to and even to an extent including Tolkien, was rooted in nostalgia for an imagined and idealized past. Many pre-Tolkien fantasy works were born out of Victorian fascination with medieval Europe, as evidenced by the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, the Arthurian poems of Lord Tennyson, and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The original isekai, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, parodied this idealized medievalism (Twain blaming Walter Scott specifically for the genteel Southern culture that propagated slavery and rendered the Civil War inevitable).

Then I realized that, 200 years before this nineteenth-century craze, there was another major literary work that parodied excessive love of chivalric romance: Don Quixote.

As soon as I made that connection, everything clicked. Rather than Perfidia whipping up a new fantasy world on demand, she would reuse one she created in the 1600s for a Don Quixote-esque figure. Rather than Spanish, my Don Quixote would be British, a royalist in the English Civil War seeking escapism in face of the collapse of monarchy. Pursuing standard chivalric romance activities, he would overthrow a corrupt Catholic church analog, slay a few dragons, and war against a Pagan nation that he later converted to Christianity.

What happened to this world 400 years after Don Quixote used it as his playground? I imagined the ex-Pagan nation a vassal to the Christian nation, while secretly plotting an uprising. Don Quixote's descendants, legitimate or illegitimate, grasping to maintain control in face of their weakening bloodline. Dragons hunted to extinction. A stasis that prevented sweeping change without the intercession of a true human, yet gripped by slow decay. Prayers cast for a new hero to save them from this stupor.

I also wondered how the Christians of this world reckoned with a Christianity whose foundational text is clearly meant for a different world entirely. While Don Quixote's scion, still ruler, promoted the religion uncritically to maintain their grip on the culture, underground grew a nihilist cult that believed nobody in their world was saved, that Christ died on Earth and thus only cleansed Earth's sins. All of this intermixed with the same historical devolutionary forces that ended feudalism and gave rise to mercantile oligarchy.

That was the world Jay Waringcrane entered. A world rife with thematic potential. Finally, a plot was forming.

VIII. Starting the Story

This last stretch of planning happened quickly. (Evidenced by traces of the earlier idea remaining in Cockatiel x Chameleon, specifically in the brief descriptions of the in-universe isekai from which Temporary the elf hails.) Rather than fight a Demon King, Jay's mission would be more chivalric in nature; he would rescue a princess from the evil wizard who led the heretical cult. Liking my earlier idea about the princess who first seemed like an ordinary damsel but turned out to ulterior motives, I decided for an end-of-arc twist where the princess secretly worked with the cult all along. Thus, Princess Mayfair came into existence. For the evil wizard, I reused one of the original king's advisors, the living plant.

The gallant prince and his secret lover from the second iteration returned as Jay's companions, although I changed the lover from a mage to a ranger. Shannon would still pursue Jay, but I merged Van Zandt and Van Langevelde into a single character named Wendell Noh and cut the private detective entirely, giving the sleuthing job to Shannon's boyfriend, Dalt Swaino. I rearranged the big action setpiece where Shannon's group meets disaster: Instead of fighting knights, they would fight a dragon, and this time, Jay would be involved.

After that, keeping with the chivalric romance aesthetic, I threw some faeries into the mix (I love faeries): the obnoxious Olliebollen, who would play off the more sullen Jay, and Flanz-le-Flore, a mid-arc complication. I also decided to make the cult members monstrous demi-humans with magic powers; the Christian anathema against magic must necessarily make it actively corrupting in this world run on Christian precepts.

On top of these plans, several long-term ideas already bubbled: The eventual introduction of the devil world, Sansaime's pregnancy, Viviendre, a battle with elves, Mayfair uniting the two worlds. The ideas flowed one after another now that I established a solid base. Sketchy outlines of the full story stood limned in the distance. I was ready to write.

I decided the work would be published serially at a one-chapter-per-week pace, identical to Fargo and Chicago. That decision was baked directly into my original desire to write a "fun" story. With a serial work, there is less burden of technical execution; the focus is on a fluid pace with regular updates instead of unimpeachable prose. Furthermore, serial writing lends itself to story speculation as readers comment every week, turning the work into a collaborative experience. Some readers of Chicago have told me that the reviews on fanfiction.net are an integral part of the experience, for instance.

When I post serial works, I first build up a "backlog." Essentially, that means I write several chapters ahead of what I'm posting online. The backlog ensures I can regularly post chapters even if one chapter takes longer to write than usual. (I can generally write a 6,000- to 7,000-word chapter in one week.) For this work, I decided to complete four chapters before posting the first. This generous backlog allowed me to post the entire first arc weekly, without a break prior to the climactic chapter that took two weeks to write.

When establishing the backlog, I also gave myself more time than usual to edit, which allowed me to polish the beginning for a better first impression. I meticulously pruned the first chapter to make the dialogue between Perfidia and Jay as snappy as possible while also minimizing exposition. (Originally, Perfidia explained the Seven Princes and their increased quotas in an internal monologue, since I knew they would become important much later in the story, but I cut it for streamlining purposes.) Additionally, I spent a long time deciding when Chapter 2 would end and Chapter 3 would begin; originally, the scene at the beginning of Chapter 3 was at the end of Chapter 2, but I moved it because it better matched the tone and scope of the third chapter. Olliebollen was originally far more in-your-face obnoxious; I toned them down. Lastly, I added the part in Chapter 4 where Jay remembers being beat up by Shannon's past boyfriend, which not only hinted at a soon-to-be-introduced major character, but gave Jay a reasonable chip on his shoulder to cause friction between him and Makepeace.

With four chapters completed, I was ready to post. Almost. I still needed a title. The entire time I operated only thinking of the story as "my isekai story." Thinking long and hard, I came up with titles such as American Isekai, The Waringcranes, 144k Angels, and—my personal favorite—Hellbrowned, the last of which I was strongly advised not to use by every single person I know.

(Side note: Setting the story in Cleveland had been an easy decision. It's such a funny city, taking Detroit's tragic Rust Belt decay and removing all grandeur. The Jon Bois video The Browns Live in Hell and the famous Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video sum it up neatly. Setting the story in 2017, the same year the Browns infamously went winless, was also a snap decision.)

Finally, I thought back to Don Quixote, the impetus for much of the worldbuilding, and the title revealed itself.

IX. Writing the Story

Because of my fast-paced schedule, I lacked the luxury to make major changes to my plans as I wrote. I started with a plan for the first arc and scattered ideas for the future. As I wrote the first arc, I planned the second, and as I wrote the second, I planned the third.

Room remained for tweaks, though. Each time I write a story, I try to do at least one thing outside my technical repertoire. This time, I wanted more flexibility in my characters. I usually only introduce the bare minimum necessary, and aggressively cut or merge characters to reduce the total number. In Cockatiel x Chameleon, however, some commentators criticized how the Consortium's limited number of characters gave the impression it was as dead and empty as Harper's real life. While that impression doesn't necessarily conflict with the story, it did expose limitations to my economical approach.

I dislike having limitations. (Unfortunately I have many.) Thus, I decided to write more characters whose storylines were not plotted from the onset, characters I would develop spontaneously as the story progressed.

An example is Lalum. I introduced Lalum in Chapter 5 as an enemy with a unique power for Jay to fight. Zero subsequent intent for her at the time. Then I realized her power would interact well with Flanz-le-Flore's, so I kept her around for that fight as well. When Lalum is attacked in the Flanz-le-Flore fight, I was 50/50 on whether she would live or die. However, a friend reading the story really liked her and wanted her to live, and I realized it might streamline the plot if someone was around to point Shannon and her crew in Jay's direction.

Having spared Lalum from death twice, and also conceptualizing more concretely the second arc—including Viviendre's role in it—I decided I had a use for Lalum after all. I conceived of Viviendre and Lalum being foils, envisioning their eventual confrontation in the last arc. Thus, Lalum went from monster-of-the-week to major character. To a lesser extent, characters like Theovora were introduced offhandedly, and while they did not become major characters, I found small uses for them later.

Speaking of Viviendre, that was another challenge for myself. With her, I wrote something I wouldn't normally: A romance. Cockatiel x Chameleon, believe it or not, was originally intended to be a straightforward romance, but I found myself incapable of writing one and pivoted to its current direction. Nestled within the sprawling undertaking of Cleveland Quixotic, the romance between Viviendre and Jay was my attempt to write two people who genuinely liked each other. Their three-chapter mini-arc in the middle of the story moves at a more lax pace than usual, but allowed me to develop a relationship I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

In general, Cleveland Quixotic is larger than my other works. More characters, more plot threads, more locations, more everything. Though Fargo and Chicago are also large, they operate in a more enclosed and linear space. My thought process with Cleveland Quixotic was to open up and express that feeling of world-spanning storytelling the fantasy genre is so known for. It pushed my limits, but I accomplished that goal more than in any previous work.

The real challenge is, once you go big, how do you reel it back? So many of the isekai I mentioned remain ongoing, proceeding through arc after arc without end in sight. Today's most notable ongoing fantasy literature, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is likewise mired in endless expansion the author seems incapable of curtailing. On RoyalRoad, it's easy to find million-word works with early reviews uniformly positive, but recent reviews expressing a new sentiment: "Dropped after nothing happened for the past 200 chapters."

Above all else, I wanted to avoid that trap. My solution resided in the second arc's climax, which I developed midway into writing the first arc. Uniting the two worlds made it natural for all the distinct groups of characters to join up for the finale, tying every plot thread together. As such, I cultivated multiple storylines in the long and less immediately plot-focused second arc, secure in my knowledge of how it all eventually connected.

Even so, at times it grew overwhelming herding so many characters. Many characters wound up less prominent than I initially intended, sacrificed for the good of the overall pacing. Fortunately, few characters wound up utterly vestigial, and those that did were minor. (There's no worse feeling than a character given loads of screentime and dialogue only for them to end up inconsequential when the curtains finally close. Homestuck reeks of it.)

A few miscellaneous changes that occurred while writing:

I intended for Viviendre's brother, the "mad king" of California, to appear in the final arc, wielding ten relics for an epic duel with Jay. Given the large amount of characters already prominent in the story, I cut him.

I intended for Sansaime to die at the end of the second arc and for Avery to live. This was mainly because I wanted Jay and Shannon to have a cathartic moment with Avery in the final arc (Avery still would have died afterward). I realized that, using Pandaemonium, I could have that cathartic moment anyway, and Avery wound up saving Sansaime's life both outside and inside the story.

On the flip side, I originally intended for Mallory to die at the end of the second arc, but decided I wanted her and Mayfair to have a climactic conflict, which could only be done if Mallory were still alive.

I intended to kill off the minor character Gonzago of Meretryce the entire story, probably by having him jump in front of Shannon to take some attack or another. I never found a way to work it in, and I feel like the actual use I got out of him in the climactic fight, though minor, was far more unique. I likewise considered killing Mademerry by having her take an attack for Mayfair, but I prefer her current ending. I did not intend to kill Pythette, but found at the last moment it would be more convenient if she died.

Beyond that, I wrote the story generally according to plan. Leaving aspects of my plans malleable meant I could write quickly without needing absolute certainty in the precision of every line and action. Only in Chapter 45, the climactic chapter with Beelzebub and Moloch, did I sit down and carefully outline what each character would do at each moment in the chapter. (The chapter's seven-minute time limit made such meticulousness essential.) Otherwise, even in other climactic fights, I relied only on general ideas about what should happen and when.

Ultimately, I successfully completed the longest story, with the largest number of characters, I'd ever written. It pushed my limits, but in a way that didn't leave me gasping for air. Instead, I feel ready and eager for my next story. What'll it be? I have an idea and I've already begun research. I hope to start writing it by the end of the year, and publish it by mid-2024. I'll let you know more as things become more concrete.

X. Names

Before I end this post, a few name origins.

Perfidia Bal Berith: As mentioned in the story itself, "Bal Berith" (or Balberith, Baalberith, et cetera) is a false idol mentioned in the Bible. It is also a demon of the Ars Goetia. My familiarity with the name primarily comes from a weapon used in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Olliebollen is based on oliebollen, a Dutch pastry.

Mayfair is the name of a character in Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, the first video game I ever played. Her middle name, Lyonesse, is a character from Arthurian legend.

Makepeace came from an attempt to make a name that would pair well with Mayfair. My primary knowledge of the name comes from British author William Makepeace Thackeray. His middle name, Gaheris, is an Arthurian knight.

John Coke's name was modeled on the character Wicks Cherrycoke in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I only found out after I posted the first chapter that John Coke was the actual name of a person involved in the English Civil War notable enough for a Wikipedia page. I was more than happy to pretend this incredible serendipity was actually my plan all along.

Sansaime's name was modeled on the characters Sansloi ("without law"), Sansfoi ("without faith"), and Sansjoi ("without joy") in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which was the primary inspiration for the romance elements of Whitecrosse. "Without love" is also a notable phrase in the visual novel Umineko When They Cry.

Whitecrosse's name also comes from The Faerie Queene, being modeled on the Redcrosse Knight, an allegorical representation of England (with its red cross flag).

Many names in Cleveland Quixotic have an "allegorical" sense, being words that suggest a clear, often moral meaning. Charm, Charisma, Mayfair, Makepeace, Mademerry, Theovora ("god eater"), Condemnation, Obedience, Tricia (short for "patrician"), Meretryce ("meretricious"), Mordac ("mordacious"), Malleus ("malleable"), Astrophicus ("space plant"), Viviendre ("life ender"), Perfidia ("perfidy"), and so forth. These allegorical names are a play on The Faerie Queene being an allegory, although many of the names in Cleveland Quixotic are not an accurate representation of their character, indicating the breakdown of allegory and thus clear moral meaning.

California is the name of a location in Amadís de Gaula, Don Quixote's favorite romance.

Dalton Swaino is the real name of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Wendell Noh's surname comes from a professional League of Legends player. His given name is the name of a character in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

Kedeshah is a Hebrew word that possibly refers to sacred or temple prostitutes.

Ubiquitous is an ordinary word with a clear meaning, but its abbreviation, Ubik, is a Philip K. Dick novel that was also the name of one of the demons in Berserk.

The Seven Princes, rather than refer to the traditional Ars Goetia representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, are pulled from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which was the primary inspiration for most devil theology.

Flanz-le-Flore is a corruption of Blanchefleur, a name that appears in a few romance legends.

Lalum is an alternate translation of Larum, a character in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.

Pluxie is a feminization of a semi-pro League of Legends player's screen name.

Tintzel is a corruption of the character's original name, mentioned earlier, which was taken from historical corrupt priest Johann Tetzel.

Jreige is the surname of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Justin "Just" Vance is a play on J.D. Vance, an Ohio politician.

Temporary, one of the earliest names that persisted into the final form of the story, is modeled on the elves in No Game No Life, who have names like "Think" and "Feel."

The other names in the story do not have any particular meaning or genesis.

XI. Conclusion

I believe that covers the generation of Cleveland Quixotic from beginning to end. If I missed anything, or if there's anything you want to know more about, please send me an ask and I'll be certain to answer. Thank you again for reading and stay tuned for my next work!

#cleveland quixotic #cq #bavitz #writing #the making of #isekai #fantasy

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cynicalone94 · 1 year ago

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Rope Burns

Read on AO3 here.

Hailey gets home and her husband isn’t there and she’s confused and worried.

Even with her run, she’s over an hour behind him so even if he got her takeout or something he should still be home. Especially since his truck is in his parking space.

She calls him and he doesn’t answer. She calls Will just to see if he’s with him. Then she calls in a ping on his cellphone.

And then finds it in their parking lot. And suddenly their poor team who just got off work are back on shift trying to find Jay.

Again.

Damn it Halstead, we just wanted one night not working.

They find a lot of leads and chase them down to a lot of dead ends. Around nine the next morning, everyone is getting tired and frustrated and worried.

Platt is at her desk working, trying to deal with the everything else going on but also worrying about Jay. A young woman walks into the station and up to her desk.

“Are you Trudy Platt?”

“Who’s asking?”

“You need to search the Winchester Junk Yard.” The woman says without giving a name.

“And what, exactly, is it that we’re searching for?” She asks, looking over her glasses at her.

“Detective Halstead.” She says and Platt looks up to see a cold smirk on her face, “The car I locked him in must be around 105 degrees by now.”

Platt’s eyes go wide with panic as the woman simply turns and walks away. She picks up her phone and calls Voight.

“I’ve got a lead on Jay. Get down here.” She snaps before hanging up and getting the ball rolling on pulling together officers to search the junkyard.

The entire Intelligence squad comes thundering down the stairs, Hank at the front.

“What do we have?” He demands.

“I just had a woman in here telling me he’s locked in a car in the Winchester Junkyard.” She reports.

“Who?” Hailey demands, looking around.

“She left.” Platt says dismissively. “If Chuckles is locked in a car somewhere we need to find him. She’s on cameras, we’ll track her down later.”

Hank nods.

“We’re gonna head out and get the ball rolling.” He announces, “Can you get some patrol officers to help with the search?”

“Already working on it.” She promises, “we’ll meet you there.”

Trudy has already made contact with the junkyard to get them access by the time Intelligence rolls up.

“I’ve got a van rolling through the gates on camera about two am this morning.” The owner says as he meets them at the entrance. “I don’t recognize it and I don’t know how they got in.”

“Any idea where they went from there?” Voight asks.

“Just toward the stacks. Unfortunately we don’t have cameras out in the yard.”

“We’ll need that footage.” Voight tells him. “Do you have a diagram of the yard? Additional search teams are going to be rolling in soon and we’ll need to track what areas have been searched.”

“I’ll get it,” the man says, nodding back toward the office. “I’ve got two employees onsite that I can lend to help with the search.”

“Appreciate the offer but given that one of them may be how they got in we can’t risk it.” Voight dismisses, turning back to the team. “Move in pairs. Hailey and Kevin take the left. Kim and Adam move right. Keep your radios on.”

The team heads out and Voight turns back to the owner as he returns carrying a blueprint of the yard. Squad cars start rolling up as they lay it out on the hood of Voight’s SUV.

Hailey peers through the windows of a blue dodge while Kevin pops the trunk with the pry bar. They’ve been searching for nearly an hour already and there’s been no sign of Jay.

It’s a relatively cool day for May in Chicago but she knows that inside a vehicle the temperature could still be as high as 120 degrees. Not seeing anything, she turns away from the car, looking to Kevin and sighing as he shakes his head.

As she moves to the next car, she sees footprints in the dust. Signaling to Kevin to check the next car, she follows them two rows over to a dark blue Honda Civic. The windows are heavily tinted and it isn’t until she’s right up against them that she can see into the car.

“Kevin!” She shouts, “I got him!”

She tries the door as he shouts back, frustrated to find it locked. Jay is lying fully reclined in the driver’s seat, motionless and with his eyes closed.

“Hang on.” She whispers, “just hang on, Jay. I’m here.”

Kevin reaches her, immediately slotting the pry bar into the gap between the door and the frame. The door gives way easily and he steps back, radioing in the update and requesting EMTs as Hailey leans over Jay, pressing her fingers into his throat.

The pulse is weak and terrifyingly fast but there and she blinks back tears of relief as she removes the gag from his mouth before turning her attention to his hands.

Thick ropes have been wound around his forearms, securing them together and to the metal frame of the headrest.

Kevin opens the rear door and leans in, using his knife to start cutting the ropes away. Hailey mutters a thank you before redirecting her attention. Once the seatbelt has been removed and the steering wheel shifted up she finds steel cables binding his ankles to the pedals.

“Can I get the bolt cutters?” She calls and Kevin passes them over the seat while continuing to cut the ropes away from Jay’s arms.

There’s a low moan and Hailey looks up to see Jay’s eyes still closed as his head rolls slightly to the side.

“You’re okay.” She soothes, sliding the bolt cutters into place and cutting his left ankle free.

“Easy brother.” Kevin says and she looks up to see Jay pulling against him, trying to pull his arms free.

His eyes are still closed but his face is tense. She hurries to cut his right leg free, dropping the bolt cutters to the ground before putting a hand on Jay’s face.

“Jay?” She whispers. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’ve got you.”

His only response is a low whine, his head jerking away from her. She pulls her hand back. He’s still trying to yank his arms free and Kevin shakes his head, sheathing his knife and starting to unwinding the ropes to avoid cutting him.

“I’m guessing disorientation and heat aren’t a good combination for him.” He says, catching her eyes. “His arms are already torn to hell from trying to get loose.”

“Jay.” She repeats, resisting the urge to touch him again, “it’s Hailey. You’re in Chicago. Kevin’s working on getting you loose and we’ll get you cooled down real soon.”

She hears motion behind her and turns to see paramedics wheeling a stretcher toward them.

She turns back to Jay to find him still again, head dropping to the side. Kevin pulls the last of the ropes away from his arms and they drop. Hailey helps maneuver them to his lap and then she and Kevin sit the seat up. Jay tips forward and Hailey catches him, letting him rest against her.

“I got you.” She whispers, running fingers through the sweaty hair at the back of his neck.

He doesn’t react and she presses her fingers into his pulse point, finding it even weaker than before.

“Pulse is barely there and way too fast.” She tells the paramedics as they reach them.

With Kevin’s help they are able to get him out of the car and onto the stretcher.

A rectal temperature check comes back with 105.7 degrees and he is quickly stripped out of his jeans and t-shirt.

The paramedics work quickly, getting ice packs nestled into his armpits and groin before draping a cooling blanket over his frame.

True to Kevin’s words, his forearms are shredded from his struggles against the ropes, forcing the paramedics to start their IV in his neck.

An oxygen mask is fitted over his face while the junior paramedic checks his vitals. Hailey takes his hand.

They get him loaded into the ambulance and Hailey jumps up alongside, never relinquishing her grip on his hand. His skin is heated and dry and she rubs her thumb over it while studying his face as he breathes in shallow pants.

When they arrive at Med, he’s taken directly to the OR, Will holding her back and saying things she doesn’t understand about lavages, ARDS and kidney function.

Its several hours before Hailey finds herself being shown to his bedside. He’s still moving erratically and she’s devastated to see soft restraints fastened over the thick bandages covering his forearms.

She knows Will wouldn’t have allowed it to happen if it wasn’t necessary for the safety of the hospital staff and their presence speaks volumes to the emotional turmoil he’s experiencing under the surface.

The IV line is still running into his neck, providing a constant flow of saline and whatever medications the doctors deem will help. She glances up at the monitors, pleased to find his heart rate back in normal range and his temperature down to a low 100.

“He got here just in time.” Will says behind her. “But he’s going to be okay. Kidney function is improving steadily and he’s breathing better.”

“When can the restraints come off?”

“Normally, it would be as soon as we can get him awake and lucid.” he hedges. “But he’s disoriented and hot and its triggering some incredibly vivid flashbacks. As much as I hate it, they should probably stay on until we can get his temperature fully stable. And that might be tomorrow or even the day after. It’s going to stay a little higher than normal, with the occasional spike at least that long.”

She nods, finally stepping forward and curling her fingers around his hand. His skin is warm, more so than usual, but much less than it had been in the car and its no longer as dry as it had been.

He jerks his hand away from her, their fingers just barely touching when the restraints bring him up short. His head tosses from side to side as he mutters incoherently. Tears spark in her eyes as she pulls her hand back.

Will steps forward, hand curling gently around the back of his brother’s neck, fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his neck.

“Shhh.” he hushes, “It’s okay, Jay.”

Jay stills but Hailey can still see the tension and fear thrumming through his muscles. Then Will starts talking again, his tone a slow, steady cadence as he recites what Hailey realizes is a poem

She watches, a small smile forming on her face as the tension slowly leeches from her husband as his brother talks. Will repeats the words twice before Jay is finally calm, sleeping peacefully.

“I learned it in high school.” Will says after a moment, keeping his voice smooth and even. “Had to memorize it for an English class. Jay had a massive panic attack at mom’s funeral. And I couldn’t… nothing I said seemed to get through to him. So I just… started reciting it. It took a minute but it calmed him down. He swears to this day that its just that its so lame that it has to be me which helps him remember he’s back in the states.”

Hailey huffs a wet laugh at that, tugging forward a chair for Will to sit in before towing one up next to it for herself.

“It’s sweet.” she says, “He’s lucky to have you.”

“He wasn’t always.” Will says, eyes fixed on his brother’s face, “Especially since there was a time when he didn’t really have me. I let so much distance form when I went to college.”

“The past can’t change.” Hailey tells him, “And it can’t change us anymore unless we let it. You’re here now. It means a lot to him.”

Will sits back, letting his hand fall on the bed next to his brother’s, their fingers not quite touching.

“Not enough to invite me to your wedding.” he jokes.

“You were working.” Hailey scoffs, taking up Jay’s line in an oft rehearsed argument between the brothers.

“I could have gotten someone to cover for me for thirty minutes.” Will whines.

“You were invited to the cheesy ring ceremony we had for everyone.” Hailey reminds.

“And drank most of the champagne.” Jay tiredly interjects from the bed and they look over to see him looking at them through hooded eyelids.

“You bought good champagne.” Will says with a shrug as he slides his hand closer to brush against his brother’s. “How do you feel?”

“Toasty.” Jay whispers. “What happened?”

“Some psycho locked you in a car on a bright, sunny May morning.” Hailey says, leaning forward to put a hand on his leg.

“I hurt anybody?” he asks, eyes flickering to the restraints.

“You didn’t.” Will is quick to assure. “But you had a doozy of a flashback in PACU so, better safe than sorry. Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Jay says, glancing around. “When can they come off?”

“We’re still working on getting your temperature stabilized.” Will says hesitantly, “You’re still a lot warmer than we’re happy with. And there’s expected to be at least one major spike before everything’s said and done.”

Jay just nods.

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” his brother sf4uggests. “You’ve been through the wringer.”

“Hot.” Jay says, eyes slipping closed before blinking back open.

“I’ll get you some fresh ice packs.” Will tells him. “Don’t fight it, okay? Just let yourself sleep.”

“K.” Jay breathes out, eyes falling closed.

Hailey takes his hand again, pleased when he doesn’t fight her or try to pull away this time.

“He’s okay.” Will tells her, a hand resting briefly on her shoulder, “I’m gonna go get some more ice. You good here?”

“Yeah.” she says, smiling at Jay’s peaceful face, “Yeah, I’m good.”

#febuwhump 2024 #febuwhumpday5 #rope burns #jay halstead #chicago pd #whump fic

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newstfionline · 2 months ago

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Monday, November 25, 2024

Large Swath of US Faces Power Supply Risk During Extreme Cold (Bloomberg) The entire US Northeast faces an elevated threat of electricity shortages this winter in case of extreme cold weather, in part due to limited capacity on natural gas pipelines that supply power plants. All US regions have sufficient electricity supplies to meet their needs in normal weather conditions, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday in its annual winter reliability assessment. But harsh weather could threaten energy reserves across a broad swath of the country, from the Northeast to the Midwest and Texas. Prolonged cold can cause power plants to break down even as electricity demand soars, while short days with low winds can slash renewable generation. The Northeast, according to NERC, faces the added problem of limited natural gas pipeline capacity hampering the ability of power plants to burn more of the fuel when needed. In last year’s winter assessment, only New England was flagged for pipeline constraints—now, the problem extends as far west as Chicago and as far south as North Carolina.

The rising price of paying the national debt is a risk for Trump’s promises on growth and inflation (AP) Donald Trump has big plans for the economy—and a big debt problem that will be a hurdle to delivering on them. Trump has bold ideas on tax cuts, tariffs and other programs, but high interest rates and the price of repaying the federal government’s existing debt could limit what he’s able to do. Not only is the federal debt at roughly $36 trillion, but the spike in inflation after the coronavirus pandemic has pushed up the government’s borrowing costs such that debt service next year will easily exceed spending on national security. The higher cost of servicing the debt gives Trump less room to maneuver with the federal budget as he seeks income tax cuts. It’s also a political challenge because higher interest rates have made it costlier for many Americans to buy a home or new automobile. And the issue of high costs helped Trump reclaim the presidency in November’s election.

Can RFK Jr make America's diet healthy again? (BBC) Robert F Kennedy Jr has set his sights on changing how Americans eat and drink. From the dyes in Fruit Loops cereal to seed oils in chicken nuggets, Kennedy—who is President-elect Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services—has long spoken out against ingredients that he says hurt Americans' health. “We are betraying our children by letting [food] industries poison them,” Kennedy said at a rally in November, after he had ended his independent presidential bid and backed Donald Trump. But if Kennedy hopes to target junk food, he will first have to shake up the country's food regulations—and run up against Big Food. “What he's suggesting is taking on the food industry,” said former New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle. “Will Trump back him up on that? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Afraid of losing the US-Canada trade pact, Mexico alters its laws and removes Chinese parts (AP) Mexico has been taking a bashing lately for allegedly serving as a conduit for Chinese parts and products into North America, and officials here are afraid a re-elected Donald Trump or politically struggling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could try to leave their country out of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. Mexico’s ruling Morena party is so afraid of losing the trade deal that President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday the government has gone on a campaign to get companies to replace Chinese parts with locally made ones. While Sheinbaum claimed Mexico had been working on that effort since t he 2021 global supply chain crisis—when factories around the world were stalled by a lack of parts and particularly computer chips from Asia—it appears to be an uphill battle. Even the United States has faced big challenges in moving chip production back home despite billions in subsidies and incentives.

Haiti wonders what’s next as gang violence surges and UN peacekeeping mission flops (AP) When Kenyan police arrived in Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed mission earlier this year to tackle gang violence, hopes were high. Coordinated gang attacks on prisons, police stations and the main international airport had crippled the country’s capital and forced the prime minister to resign, plunging Haiti into an unprecedented crisis. But the crisis has only deepened since the international policing contingent arrived. The main international airport closed for the second time this year after gangs opened fire on commercial flights in mid-November, striking a flight attendant. Gunmen also are attacking once-peaceful communities to try and seize control of the entire capital, taking advantage of political infighting that led to the abrupt dismissal of the prime minister earlier this month. Now, a new prime minister is tasked with turning around a nation that sees no escape from its troubles as Haitians wonder: How did the country reach this point?

US bribery and fraud charges are a big test yet for India’s Adani, one of Asia’s richest men (AP) Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, one of Asia’s richest men, may be facing his biggest challenge yet with an indictment by U.S. prosecutors for alleged fraud and bribery. But it’s unclear just how the case will affect his businesses and own future—as well as the Indian economy and government. Adani, a major power player in India perceived as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was charged Wednesday with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud at a court in Brooklyn, New York. The test for the tycoon and his multibillion dollar empire spawning everything from energy and ports to media and agriculture, comes just after the 62-year-old founder and his sprawling business empire had bounced back after losing more than $60 billion in market value in early 2023 following allegations of stock price manipulation and fraud by the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research. It also raises questions about corporate governance and crony capitalism in India’s economy, which Modi has vowed to make the world’s third largest, intensifying scrutiny on the outsized influence of large, family-run conglomerates. Asia’s richest man is another Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries.

Russia says US using Taiwan to stir crisis in Asia (Reuters) The United States is using Taiwan to provoke a serious crisis in Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told TASS news agency in remarks published on Sunday, reiterating Moscow's backing of China's stance on Taiwan. "We see that Washington, in violation of the 'one China' principle that it recognises, is strengthening military-political contacts with Taipei under the slogan of maintaining the 'status quo', and increasing arms supplies," Rudenko told the state news agency. "The goal of such obvious U.S. interference in the region's affairs is to provoke the PRC (People's Republic of China) and generate a crisis in Asia to suit its own selfish interests." China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a claim that Taiwan's government rejects.

Israeli Strike in the Heart of Beirut Kills at Least 20 (NYT) An Israeli airstrike on a residential building in central Beirut killed at least 20 people on Saturday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, part of an intensifying Israeli military campaign that appears aimed at pressuring Hezbollah into a cease-fire deal. The strike was an attempt to assassinate a top Hezbollah military commander, Mohammad Haidar, according to three Israeli defense officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. Hezbollah officials on Saturday afternoon said that none of the group’s leaders were at the site of the airstrike, and later in the day, one of the Israeli officials said Mr. Haidar was not killed. The death toll in the latest strike was expected to rise, and at least 66 people were injured, according to the Health Ministry. The strike came just after 4 a.m., jolting Beirut residents awake with thundering explosions that left much of the city enveloped in acrid smoke. It was the third strike this week in central Beirut, an area that had largely been spared since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.

War fatigue deepens in Israel as deaths mount and fighting expands (Washington Post) Ari Krauss, a reservist in the Israeli military’s elite Golani Brigade, said he spent his days inside Gaza exploding underground tunnels. At night, he recalled, he would join the other fathers in uniform on a sandy hill, trying to get enough cellphone bars to FaceTime his infant daughter. His day job seemed like a distant memory. Early in the war, the brigade sent a letter to his company apologizing for drafting him but committing to no date for his full return. Being a soldier, the letter made clear, was now his main calling. Krauss’s situation, or some version of it, is shared by some 80,000 Israeli reservists who are planning to leave, or have already left, families, jobs and studies to serve on the front lines of Israel’s grinding wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Increasingly, some are choosing not to report for duty, putting further strain on an overextended military amid an ever-widening regional war. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said in a briefing last week that the army’s enlistment numbers are down by about 15 percent since the period after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. More than 800 soldiers have been killed since October 2023. “Wherever you look—the economic crisis, the toll on the reservists and their families, and of course the dead and the wounded—Israeli society is definitely at the edge of its capacity,” said Gayil Talshir, a political analyst at Hebrew University.

More aid workers have been killed in 2024 than in any other year, UN says (AP) More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations reported Friday. Bloodshed in the Middle East has been the single-biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Humanitarians “are working courageously and selflessly in places like Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine and so on. They show the best humanity has to offer, and they are getting killed in return—in record numbers,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. A total of 268 of the humanitarians killed—including from non-U.N. organizations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent—were national staff, while 13 were international staff.

Giving thanks (AP) It’s the season of giving thanks, and being in the mood for gratitude shapes who we are as a species and how we connect with the people around us. “This is something that is part of our human DNA,” said Sarah Schnitker, a psychologist at Baylor University. “It is a glue, in a sense, that holds us together.” Giving thanks might be good for you, too: A 2016 study found that people who wrote letters of gratitude reported better mental health and saw changes in their brain activity—even months down the line. But researcher Jenae Nelson pointed out that recognizing the giver, not just the gift, is key. So, if Thanksgiving has you in a mood for gratitude, she suggested focusing on thanking the people in your life, rather than just making “gratitude lists” of the stuff you have. “It’s not just about stuff and materialism,” Nelson said. “It’s about relationships, and the things that people do for you, and then the things that you can in turn do back for other people.”

#headlines #news

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xprojectrpg · 6 months ago

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This Day in X-Project - July 27

2015: Namor’s demand that someone explain Cheetos to him results in a junk food and alcohol party. Operation: Wonderwall: The media reports on an altercation between actor Simon Williams and Tony Stark at a movie premiere; a drunken Rogue posts about the Williams/Stark incident.

2016: Maya emails Wade asking if she can go on a hiking trip. Quentin texts Kyle to say ‘yo.’ John makes a journal entry about going to Chicago and seeking help with paid cleaning services. Tandy makes a journal entry about fashion week coming up in a few months’ time, and passing all her classes. Rogue makes a journal entry seeking Netflix recommendations.

2017: Gabriel sends Kevin an encrypted email about, well, old-fashioned encrypted messages.

2018: Sins of the Father: Maya sneaks into medlab to make sure Amanda isn't dead yet, not when they have unfinished business; Grace decides to pay a visit to Topaz; Topaz is tortured again and this time gives up the names they want; her usefulness over, they prepare her for sale and Jasmine makes the decision to betray her family.

2019: Fear in the Dark: Jean announces her return from South America and posts the mission debrief about the Worthies. Cecilia says goodbye to Jean; Cecilia announces her departure. Case File: Take Me to Church: A father approaches Bobbi and Lorna about his missing daughter and it’s revealed his anti-mutant estranged wife was connected to the Church of Humanity; Lorna emails the rest of X-Factor to let them know they have a case; Quentin, Lorna and Maya research the missing girl and the Church of Humanity on the internet, while Sue and Bobbi look into the mother; Alex posts to xp_teams asking about others’ experiences with the CoH and Angelo responds.

2020:

2021: Breakdown: Maya and Nica join Jean at the Claremont Hospital; in the ER, Jean treats a mysterious gunshot wound patient, Esme; Purifiers arrive at the hospital, claiming to be looking for a woman; Maya, Nica, and Jean find each other while the hospital goes into lockdown; the group's attempt to get out is thwarted by Purifiers; Quentin arrives at the hospital just in time to help Jean; Nica is able to access the CB radio in the ambulance bay and alert the X-Men; when faced with a pair of Purifiers, Quentin witness a strange power in Jean; the X-Men - featuring Betsy, Clarice, Garrison, Kurt, Logan and Sooraya - are able to track down Esme's daughter; at the hospital, the combined forces of Jean, Maya, Nica, and Quentyn push the Purifiers into enacting their next steps; Jean and Maya learn more about the plan; the team inside the hospital is finally able to get a call out; Jean and Mayateam up to disable the bomb; Nica works on making sure everything isn't blown sky high by Esme; with the bomb situation handled, Maya and Nica take a different turn to deal with the shield surrounding the hospital; the arrival of the X-Men helps wind down the mansionites who'd been in the hospital, and a surprising proclamation from Esme; Garrison informs the remainder of the mansion residents to what happened, as well as alerting them the lack of footage by outside sources.

2022:

2023: Hope A. messages Sue about Warren’s promises. Clarice asks people if they want to go to the beach or Dairy Queen. Clint asks about holding a weekend long pool party. Haller wishes Sooraya a happy birthday. Forge reaches the testing phase for Darcy’s new Faraday Cage.

#this day in xproject #xprpg #xproject #x-project #rp #rpg #plots #plot

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kennyfischerconsulting · 1 year ago

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Brilliant scrap men - Ben Fixman -#3

What usually happens is the original owners leave or they buy their company back at 10 to 20 cents on the dollar, when the company who bought them realizes that it was the original owner who founded and built the company that made the company work.

Diversified also went out of their genre and bought a pen company and thankfully failed to buy a printing company and ice cream chain. But what did Benny do that no one else had done?

Besides perfecting a cold method for chopping and separating copper and aluminum from their insulation and taking his company public and buying 30 + other companies, he cornered the copper futures market. What does that mean? It means he owned or controlled enough copper futures to hold the “shorts” for ransom.

I am not equipped to give a seminar on futures trading, so Google it.

I am not proud to say he did it on Yom Kippur, when he knew the Jewish traders wouldn’t be present, but he did what he did and they were stunned, amazed, confused, flummoxed, and pissed off.

Here some uneducated junk dealer just showed them how smart they really weren’t.

Professional New York commodities speculators and traders were done in by a brash junk dealer.

Back to going public, which is an incredible wealth creator but also a pain in the ass having to deal with CPAs, stockholders, and the SEC.

You need to follow this. It really isn’t too hard to follow, but ingenious to conceive and execute. You decide to go public. Wall Street comes a courting. You pick a company to underwrite the IPO, you argue and settle on a price and then argue about how many shares to sell. The underwriter actually commits to take, pay for, and sell an agreed upon number of shares. The company always wants to sell the most shares possible on the IPO. The underwriters, who have to take a position on the stock, want to take a smaller more comfortable number. That is the norm, but Benny and norm hardly ever appear in the same sentence

The price of 9 dollars a share was agreed upon by Benny and to the incredible surprise of the underwriters the number of about 135,000 shares was also agreed upon. Benny still owned over 600,000 shares so at 9 dollars he was a millionaire 5 times over. Or let us say that this was probably the thinking of those super slick Wall Street guys as to why he so quickly agrees to such a small IPO.

Now another possible way to look at this might be: Let us say that with only 135,000 tradable shares on the market and let’s say that between a friend of yours in Chicago (whose two metal companies would eventually be sold to DMC, making this friend DMC’s second largest stockholder) and your army of friends, that this army owned a large percentage of the tradable shares. What would happen as the buzz grew, and people clamored to buy the stock? Big demand- short supply. I think that might be one reason that the stock shot up from 9 dollars to 132 dollars a share in less than 2 years.

Stay tuned.

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andrewthomson8779 · 2 years ago

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Chicago's Top Cash for Junk Cars: Turn Your Clunker into Cash!

When it's Time to Say Goodbye: A Complete Guide on How to Sell Your Car in Kansas City

Introduction

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the-firebird69 · 2 years ago

Text

Wisconsin

Lake Michigan is now being taken over by us and the line is the border of Illinois and Indiana and Wisconsin is within our limits Indiana and Michigan States are next in our sights and then it's just Ohio and the western Pennsylvania area and the upper Midwest is ours. But lake Michigan is going to take some time there's a lot of muck in lake Superior and lake Michigan but there are things that we can grow with it because a lot of people died and went in there and we can use it as fertilizer that boy does it attract bugs boy and really we kill the bugs and we don't have much use for them except to burn them and it takes energy unfortunately so he's suggesting one of his crazy solar gatherers just kill dead bugs to dump it in and they incinerate almost immediately and just from a spaceship and we're going to go ahead and do that the solar collector tastes no money at all and you can shut it down pretty easy and we're going to but here's another thing we can use that to fire off a laser you know how to do that we know how to do that so we're going ahead with it and we're going to teach you a lesson we need some of your solar collectors just in case so we're building a bunch I'm putting it in for it now there are a lot of people objecting but like Michigan is full of stuff junk there's tons of junk in there and if we disturb it all all that crap is going to come out of there and go down the rivers and you're there and the edges pretty much all the way down we did clear out most of it but towards the middle of your like a hundred miles to either side of the rivers and in the middle so we might send it down there and it will preempt all the other stuff and we need to do that now so I'm going to do one like at a time and just drive around in it ripping out all the stuff and of course we can do a different way but we have a lot of stuff to take out of there including ships that you left behind so you expect resistance and pretty fierce and we're doing it now and Michigan Chicago those areas are partially BG and he has eyes on the ships for a long time and sat around listening to what we're doing did nothing and I was trying to demand it and it doesn't happen. It's going to take a while to explain if you go over there you're going to get killed that's all but Michigan is still yours for the time being as is Indiana but come tomorrow we're going to start infiltrating then you'll be out don't resistance is very weak it's more long they just start evacuating and they will be pushed out and they are down there building missiles and we do have a good idea what to use with them for there's a huge war going on now I'm putting it out to our people how many conflicts and how many people involved how many people we need for each conflict to make it much more secure with what we need and the risk. And our people are suffering and then they tell them that I have to talk to them

Thor Freya

And their father and she's saying she's their mother and we are going to talk to them

Olympus

0 notes

thevioletjones · 4 years ago

Note

31, because I can’t see it fitting Ian/Mickey easily and know you’re a good enough writer to prove me wrong ☺️

Thanks! I tried. 🙂

Prompt 6: “I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you.”

Ian’s Box of Crap

Being currently unemployed, Mickey didn’t have much of a leg to stand on when attempting to deflect Ian’s demands that he get chores and household tasks done while his husband was out earning an honest paycheck. He wasn’t even allowed to shake people down anymore, let alone pull robberies, or get back into the drug trade. Ian had made it clear that divorce wasn't off the table if Mickey deliberately did something stupid that got him thrown back in prison for a long stretch.

He didn’t much like being told what to do, but what he liked even less was not having Ian in his life. He’d had to go too many years without him in the past, and nothing good ever came during those times. Unfortunately, Ian Gallagher was it for Mickey Milkovich. That meant that he actually had to stay in line and put in the work if he didn’t want to lose him again. Ian wasn’t as soft as he used to be. Never really had been at his core, but the maturity of age had cemented his backbone rather rigidly, and Mickey was actually loathe to piss him off too badly these days.

So he did the bullshit grunt work requested of him, just to keep the peace. He was tired of fighting every day of his life, and what was the point of marrying Ian if they weren’t going to try and make each other happy?

In the past couple weeks, Mickey had done everything from laundry and dishes, to vacuuming and mopping. He’d patched up a couple of big holes in the wall that Frank had made, and fixed the loose parts of the wooden outdoor steps and banisters, both front and back. He’d even gone so far as to babysit the tiny, helpless Gallagher spawn a few times, which had been interesting and somewhat terrifying. Then Ian had given him this look when he caught the scene one afternoon, eyes shining, smile beaming. It reminded him of that brief time they’d helped take care of Yevgeny, which made Mickey’s head spin. He didn’t need Gallagher getting the whole ‘having kids’ thing back in his head right now. Mickey was in no way ready for all that. Hadn’t been the first time, and they’d all seen how that turned out.

Today, he was supposed to clean out the attic. He told Ian that asking someone outside the family to do it sounded like a bad idea. How was he supposed to know what shit the Gallaghers wanted to keep, and what they wanted to get rid of? What if he made a mistake? If anyone had asked him what to keep from the hoarded piles of shit in the Milkovich house, he would’ve laughed in their face, then set everything on fire. Mickey wasn’t the sentimental type. So did Ian want him to just toss everything?

Ian had rolled his eyes, clarified that Mickey was a Gallagher now, and given him a run-down. Anything that had obviously been made or cherished by a Gallagher kid, any family photos and albums, or small boxes of keepsakes, those stayed. Anything that wasn’t being used by anyone, but could be of use and handed down to the youngest or recently shacked up of them, set them aside to be put in rotation. Anything that worked, but they already had one of or didn’t need, donation box (because apparently they actually sometimes donated shit to the local shelter). And anything that looked completely unnecessary for anyone, throw it in a Best Choice trash bag, but don't take them to the curb yet. Ian would go over everything when he got home to make sure it was sorted correctly.

“So you’re gettin' me to do all this boring-ass grunt work, then you’re gonna have to go through it anyway? What the fuck, man?” he’d asked.

“It'll make the whole thing way easier on me, so can you just shut the fuck up and do me the favor? I’ll blow you later for your trouble.”

“Like you wouldn’t be doin’ that anyway.”

Ian had shrugged. “If you don’t, I won’t.”

“Threatening to withhold sex? That’s a bitch move if I ever heard one.”

“Whatever, deadbeat. You want me to support you, gotta help out when I ask. A blowjob would just be a bonus, because I’m generous of spirit.”

“I’m not gonna forget this hardcore manipulation, Firecrotch. I’ll get my revenge eventually.”

Ian merely kissed him on the nose. “Sounds like a plan. See ya.”

And he was out the door.

“Asshole,” Mickey’d muttered under his breath.

And now, a few hours later, here he was; sitting on the dusty, hard planks of the weird-smelling Gallagher attic, sorting through the memories and forgotten things of the family he’d married into less than six months ago. He’d dawdled as long as he could on the couch, eating junk food and watching his favorite daytime game shows, judge shows, and salacious ‘who’s the baby daddy?’ shows. The only hint of fun left in the remainder of his day was in the bong and the beer he’d brought with him up the rickety ladder. After every box sorted, he’d take a rip or two and chase the smoke with a long swig of cheap alcohol.

The most interesting things he’d found so far were some old pictures of Ian when he was little, his hair a curly mess, and his pale skin covered in dark freckles. His smile was too big for his face, and he looked goofy as all hell. Nothing like the hot hunk of man he was today. It was the Ian Mickey remembered from Little League a million years ago. And maybe he’d set one of the photos aside to keep for himself and taken some pics of others with his phone, so what?

Mostly he’d had to sift through little Debbie’s ridiculous girly shit, and Frank’s completely random assortment of insignificant trinkets with a side of what looked like bondage gear. He’d since moved on to a group of boxes obviously labeled by Carl when he was younger. He recognized the scrawl, occasional backwards lettering, and lack of possessive apostrophes. The words were short enough not to be atrociously misspelled, and consisted of a Gallagher first name in plural, followed by: ‘box of crap.’

Everybody had one, including Fiona, who hadn’t taken it with her when she’d left Chicago, and the kids she’d raised as her own, behind. The most scandalous item in there was a dildo of decent size that Mickey definitely would’ve packed in his suitcase if he’d been the one moving away as a single chick. The thought crossed his mind to pilfer it for his own collection, but he figured that Ian would be weirded out by the association. Sex toys were probably the only thing Gallaghers never shared between them.

Carl had a box of his own, semi-well-hidden compared to the others, and Mickey discovered why when he’d managed to get the copious amount of packing tape off. It was full of straight porn mags with big-tittied women and shaved pussies, underneath an array of dangerous weapons the family had forbidden him to have when he was underaged. He found everything from nunchucks, to throwing stars, to switchblades, to brass knuckles. No guns or attempted homemade bombs, thank fuck. He chucked the porn in the trash pile, cuz nobody needed to see that shit, and set the switchblade aside for himself, deciding to give the rest to Ian to sort out.

He saved Ian’s box for last, opening it up to find a grab bag of old army decorations, tattered paperbacks, comics, a bunch of loose paper covered in scribbles, and a stack of notebooks.

Mickey didn’t realize Ian was such a huge nerd that he’d kept his high school notebooks, but giving a quick flip through the first two revealed they weren’t school-related at all. He remembered Ian going through a phase when he was always writing shit down, ranting about having great ideas he needed to save for posterity. Before he went to the hospital. A manic phase. Probably one of many he’d cycled through, yet Mickey had missed some of those extremes.

Everything had been so chaotic then. He’d pushed Ian away, then gotten the same treatment in return. Their typical messiness pervaded everything back then. And now, he had in his hands Ian’s unfiltered thoughts about what happened back then.

“Fuck,” he said to himself, setting the notebooks down and going for the beer/weed combo again.

There were exactly two ways to go about this: he could put the notebooks back into the Ian box and not invade his privacy, or he could skim through them and hone in on the interesting relevant bits and maybe get a few long-pondered answers. On the one hand, Ian would probably get pissed if Mickey read them. On the other hand, Ian never had to know about it, did he?

It really wasn’t much of a choice… he’d always been curious as to what the hell was going through Ian’s head back in the day. They’d never exactly been great at talking things out, and he didn’t have it in him to try and make Ian relive some of the lowest moments of his life just to give Mickey some peace of mind. Plus, they were always facing some new bullshit obstacle head-on, so the past always just kind of got lost in the shuffle of their present difficulties.

Mickey took a deep breath and opened one of the notebooks again. The pages weren’t dated, and a lot of it didn’t make much sense. There were many lists with lines crossed out, but they didn’t describe things ‘to do,’ more like an endless inventory of concepts and feelings. The thought patterns were totally abstract, and Mickey couldn’t really make heads or tails of them. It hit him sharply in the chest when he realized that when Ian had been out of it, he’d really and truly been fucking out of it. These seemed like the crazed rantings of an unmedicated schizophrenic babbling on public transportation. It pained Mickey to the core, and it scared the shit out of him too.

He flipped through it fairly quickly, then opened the next one. It seemed to be calmer, more legible, and less unintelligible. It was more like a diary with bad poetry sprinkled in, and it only took a few pages for Mickey’s own name to jump out at him among the wall of words. It must have been written during Ian’s lost months, after going AWOL from the Army when he was 17.

He described running away from Chicago, scamming his early enlistment, crashing and burning his way out of bootcamp, shaking and selling his ass as a club boy, snorting, smoking, and swallowing all manner of substances, and crashing anywhere from penthouses to flophouses with sexual favors sprinkled in liberally. It was like the chronicle of a person going mad and coping in all the wrong ways. It surprised Mickey how emotional it made him to read these things in vivid detail. He’d completely forgotten how worried he used to be about Ian. When he was gone, when he went missing again, and when he started doing irrational things that could’ve ended so much worse than they did.

Ian was the one that had to live out all the drama and trauma of his disorder, but Mickey was the one caught on the sidelines, not having a single clue what to do or how to fix it. He’d never felt so useless or helpless in his entire life, even through all the bullshit he’d suffered growing up with Terry as a father. Maybe it was because of his age, or how Ian made him feel a certain way he’d never felt before. He just remembered hating it, and being so fucking sad.

These pages reminded him that through the mania, Ian was a bottomless well of sadness himself.

It was tough text to get through, and more than once, he felt like maybe he shouldn’t be reading it at all. Ian had never intended for other people to see his innermost thoughts, even Mickey. But it was impossible to stop now that he’d opened that floodgate. It was like reliving a part of their shared history through the eyes of his partner in crime. It was too fascinating.

After countless pages of dark tales from the void, Mickey came upon a page that was actually addressed to him. Surely, Ian had never intended to hand it over, but it was his nonetheless.

Mickey— I never had the balls to tell you this, But you’re the only boy I’ve ever loved. I thought you loved me too, But now I’m not so sure. I’m so confused and I go back and forth, Never really knowing what to actually think, Or what the truth is. All I really realize now is that I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you. It took you forever to let me, And now I just do it with anyone, Cuz I don’t fucking care. I just miss you, And I wish you were here. But also, I don’t, Cuz I don’t want you to see me like this. I’m having a great time on my own adventure, But also not. You shouldn’t be a part of it right now. You’re on your own strange journey, I guess. Maybe one day we’ll be on the same road together again, And also for the first time, since we never really were.

Mickey barely had enough time to sniff and wipe away the stray tear that had fallen, when his husband’s voice startled him out of his reverie.

“You’re still up here?”

“Jesus Christ!” he cried out with a visible jolt of his body.

His head snapped toward the attic hatch, where Ian’s dumb red head was surveying the musty space. Mickey let the notebook fall from his grasp, but Ian was already climbing the rest of the way in before it occurred to him that he was about to be caught red-handed with journals that were supposed to be deeply private. He could only flip it closed and grab his beer to polish it off, before Ian was crouching in front of him and taking a seat.

“Can’t believe you actually did this for me, to be honest,” Ian said with a chuckle, glancing at the bong. “Anything left?”

“Baggie’s right there,” Mickey replied nodding his head to the left.

“Nice.”

Ian got distracted with loading a bowl, so Mickey very subtly tried to nudge Ian's notebooks aside with his foot, like maybe if they were slightly farther away, he could claim complete innocence as to knowing what they were.

He watched Ian take a couple hits before passing it to him, and Mickey welcomed the opportunity to temper his suddenly sullen mood.

“How was work?” he asked between hits, before passing back to Ian.

Ian snickered and furrowed his brow. “You never ask me about work.”

Mickey shrugged. “Don’t mean I don’t care.”

“Uh huh.” Ian looked even more skeptical, and finally glanced around at what Mickey had in his vicinity. That sent his brow up high, in a decent imitation of Mickey’s usual expressiveness. “Oh. That my box?”

Mickey gulped and nodded. “Yeah. Just sorting it out. Should’ve just left the whole thing for ya. Sorry.”

Ian’s gaze snapped to his face. “You read stuff.”

It was a statement rather than a question.

“Just a little,” Mickey admitted. “I shouldn’t have. Fuck, I’m an asshole.”

But Ian only shook his head. “Nah, it’s okay.”

“You don’t have to say that. I’d be pissed.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“Really? You’re not mad?”

Ian shook his head again. “No. Actually, I’m kinda relieved.”

“How the fuck so?”

“It's all stuff I wanted you to know. I mean, part of me used to be really ashamed, maybe still is, but… another part of me always just wanted to be totally honest with you. In a way I haven’t ever been with anyone. Even Lip. But I didn’t have the words to say it, you know? And I know a lot of it is just scary rambling. I don’t even understand what some of it means, but the stuff that’s real… the lucid stuff… it’s depressing as fuck, but it’s the truth. We didn’t always tell each other the truth, but we showed each other. And this was something I couldn’t really show you. So maybe you were meant to find these. Do my dirty work for me.”

“Damn, Gallagher, that’s kinda heavy. These were… kinda heavy. Made me feel shit I’d forgotten about, you know?”

Ian nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t read ‘em in years, but I remember. It’s why I wanted to put ‘em away, I guess. Plus, I didn’t want someone else snooping around and finding out too much. I mean, you never know in this house. It’s possible every fucking Gallagher already read them, but I hope not.”

“Ian…” Mickey started, but didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say. Words of reassurance? It was all in the past, and Ian was doing so well now. He was diligent about his medication, and he hadn’t spun out of control since before prison. Anything Mickey said now would just be cold comfort, since that notebook version of Ian barely existed anymore. Ian was always afraid that it would recur, but Mickey wasn’t. They were truly in it together now, and he’d never let Ian cross the threshold into the uncontrollable. “I wish I coulda been what you needed me to be back then. However impossible it was. Some of it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even my fault, really. It was some shitty shit that happened to me. I reacted the only way I thought I could. There’s no use in either of us wishing we’d done things differently now. At least we got the right outcome, right? We’re together.” He clasped their left hands so that their wedding rings touched. “Forever.”

Mickey couldn’t help but snort. “Okay, you didn’t have to get that gay about it. I already had to suffer through a buncha your faggy teen poetry. I deserve a break from the high drama of it all.”

Ian laughed, kissed his hand, dropped it, then smacked him on the cheek. “Fuck you.”

“Just say when,” Mickey responded with a smile.

“After we go through all this shit, Romeo. Explain the piles.”

“Well,” said Mickey, pointing to the nearby corner, “Carl has a shitload of contraband in there. Weapons, not drugs. Frank has some shit that might be S&M gear, not sure, then aside from your lunatic journal ramblings, everything else is boring as shit. Oh, and Fiona left a big blue dildo.”

#ian x mickey #fanfic #gallavich #fanfiction #asks #answers

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protego-et-servio · 5 years ago

Text

((Not created by me. Copy-pasted, in case it gets taken down from Google Docs. Not linking to keep original safe.))

#blacklivesmatter

PLEASE SIGN PETITIONS, DONATE, CALL AND EMAIL TO DEMAND JUSTICE, AND SHARE

Reply to this tweet if I am missing anything

Re: the man who maced a young girl at the Seattle protest

Jared Campbell #8470

Office of police accountability: (206) 684-8797 [email protected]

Chief: Carmen Best

File an anonymous complaint

Re: the woman who drove over a pedestrian during a peaceful protest in Denver

Jennifer Watson

Owner of JP Watson Interiors

Denver sheriff: (720) 337-0194

Hate crime hotline: (720) 913-6458

Re: Trump supporters who ran over protesters

Jacob Robles (jacob_robles98) and Dylan Mota (@dylan_mota_)

8JUK695

Also in the car: Alyssa Mackovitch (@alyssa_mackovitch)

Re: cop responsible for telling others to turn off their body cameras

Tobias Raya

(310) 253-6318

[email protected]

*The White House has a history of giving vague, unhelpful responses or ignoring these petitions but I’d still suggest signing and making your voices as loud as possible. It can’t hurt to try.

@icatboy on Twitter: “you guys don’t sign those white house petitions sadly they don’t do shit, those were only effective under obama’s administration and mean nothing in 7rump’s term. they aren’t obligated to give us a statement after 100k signature sadly”

I still have them linked below in the petitions section for those who want to sign

WOMAN KIDNAPPED - LICENSE PLATE EEV701

Stop sharing videos of Black people being murdered. “Seeing all sides” doesn’t mean watching someone’s murder. Believe Black people. It’s gratuitous and exploitative. Imagine being his kin right now.

BLM carrd

BLM doc

If you live internationally and cannot sign petitions without an american postal code feel free to use any of these:

90015 - Los Angeles, California

10001 - New York City, New York

75001 - Dallas, Texas

More resources for international people

Petitions

*Do not donate to change.org

Text FLOYD to 55156 OR sign the petition here: Color of Change - #JusticeforFloyd: Demand the officers who killed George Floyd are charged with murder.

Color of Change - #JusticeforBre: Police officers who killed Breonna Taylor must be FIRED.

Color of Change - #JusticeforAhmaud

change.org - Justice for George Floyd

change.org - The Minneapolis Police Officers to be charged for murder after killing innocent black man

change.org - Justice for George Floyd

change.org - Justice for Breonna Taylor

change.org - Julius Jones is innocent. Don't let him be executed by the state of Oklahoma.

Justice for Julius (more info with how to help and where to send emails)

change.org - Prosecute the murderers who killed George Floyd

change.org - Justice for Belly Mujinga

change.org - Justice For Tony McDade

change.org - Hands Up Act

change.org - Justice For Joāo Pedro

change.org - Willie Simmons has served 38 years for a $9 robbery

change.org - Disbarment of George E. Barnhill

change.org - Justice for Regis Korchinski-Paquet

change.org - Justice for Ahmaud Arbery- Pass Georgia Hate Crime Bill

change.org - Free Anthony Wint

change.org - After The Smoke Clears... Arrest Juan DelaCruz for the MURDER of Pamela Turner RIGHT NOW

change.org - #freejeffersonelie

change.org - Exoneration of Albert Wilson

change.org - Justice for Sean

change.org - Reopen Kendrick Johnson's Case #J4Kendrick

change.org - Justice For Tamir Rice

change.org - Justice for Tamir Rice 2

change.org - Censorship of Police Brutality in France

change.org - Fire Racist Criminal Michael J Reynolds from the NYPD

change.org - Mandatory Life Sentence for Police Brutality

change.org - Criminal Charges for Travis & Greg McMichael in the murder of Black Jogger Ahmaud Arbery

change.org - Justice for Alejandro Vargas Martinez

change.org - Make false 911 calls a criminal offense

‪change.org - RAISE THE DEGREE

change.org - Free Siyanda

change.org - Jennifer Jeffley

change.org - Fire Racist Criminal Michael J Reynolds from the NYPD

change.org - Justice for Darrius Stewart

change.org - Justice for Amiya Braxton

change.org - Justice for Dion Johnson

change.org - Justice for Emerald Black

change.org - Junk the Anti-Terrorism Bill and Uphold Human Rights

change.org - Skip to main content Drop All Charges Against Incarcerated Trafficking Survivor Chrystul Kizer

change.org - Justice for Crystal Mason

change.org - Stop hit and run drivers who kill Innocent people from receiving bond in North Carolina

change.org - Justice for Tete

change.org - Justice for Sean Reed

text “JUSTICE” to 668366

moveon - #JusticeforBre: Police officers who killed Breonna Taylor must be FIRED

moveon - We want justice for 19 year old Darrius Stewart gunned down by a white police officer on last Fri...

Organize For - Take the Pledge: We Are the Movement for Black Lives

Text “ENOUGH” to 55156 - demand justice for Breonna Taylor

Text “JUSTICE” to 55156 - demand DA George Barnhill and Jackie Johnson are removed from office

We the People - Justice for George Floyd Make sure you confirm you signature by checking your email immediately after

We the People - Raise the Degree

We the People - Arrest the Other Three

People's Budget LA Tell your Council Member to reject Mayor Eric Garcetti's proposal to spend 54% of the general fund on the LAPD

reclaim the block - Tell MPLS City Council to Defund the Police

Donate

*Do not donate to any fundraisers hosted by Shaun King - he has an extensive history of collecting funds for pro-Black movements which have disappeared - deleted all petitions by The Action Pac because he is affiliated with them

*Need a Venmo to donate to Minneapolis activists? Donate via Venmo to the Femme Empowerment Project. Be sure to set your donation to "private." You can even specify how you want your donation to be used-- medic training, medic gear, or jail support.

Spreadsheet with places to donate to

gofundme.com - Official George Floyd Memorial Fund (this is the only legitimate gofundme to donate directly to George Floyd’s family)

gofundme - Justice for Kenneth Walker (for his legal representation supporting Breonna Taylor)

gofundme - I Run With Maud

gofundme - Help Coach Steve Parker Get Back in the Game

gofundme - Support Roy Stoddart’s Family

gofundme - Help a front line nurse and baby get proper care

gofundme - COVID19 testing, advocacy & education

gofundme - Jessica Mahone

gofundme - Comfort and Support for the Moncrease Family

gofundme - The Heart of a Chef

gofundme - Marcus Jackson Medical Funds

gofundme - COVID-19 Survivor, Ron's Road to Recovery

gofundme - Greene Family Fire Relief

gofundme - Justice for Regis

This is the only donation page approved by Regis’ mother: gofundme - Justice for Regis

gofundme - RIP Belly Mujinga

gofundme - Homeless Black Trans Women Fund

gofundme - Nadarrius Lundy (Nada) Memorial Fund

gofundme - Destiny Harrison's Legacy (organized by her mother)

Twitter thread full of gofundme’s (most of them were just listed but continue checking in case the thread has been updated)

@theysbianism on Twitter: please retweet! help my girlfriend, a Black trans woman, support her family and get her brother out of prison. the family collectively has been able to get $485 and only $200 more is needed. please boost and donate if you can!

Venmo: @celestialmadonna

Cashapp: $celestialmaddona

the action network - Demand justice for Tony McDade

Donate to Black Lives Matter

Donate to the Northstar Health Fund (medical supplies)

Sybrina Fulton's Campaign (Trayvon Martin’s mother is running for office in FL)

Donate to Reclaim the Block MPLS organization that invests in their community’s safety and fights against the police union

Donate to Black Visions Collective

Know Your Rights Camp their Legal Defense Initiative will pay for legal assistance for people protesting in MPLS + Kaepernick’s charity is funding the project

Oakland Anti Police Terror Project

South Minneapolis food shelves

MN Bail Fund and Relief List

Twitter thread of bail funds

Another twitter thread of bail funds

Pro bono representation of Houston protestors

Minnesota Freedom Fund (on-the-ground bail fund)

Louisville Bail Fund

Brooklyn Bail Fund

The Bronx Bail Fund

Atlanta Bail Fund (atl solidarity fund)

Atlanta Bail Fund (the action network)

LA Bail Fund

Columbus Bail Fund

Philadelphia Bail Fund (philly bail fund)

Philadelphia Bail Fund (philly bailout)

Detroit Bail Fund

Milwaukee Bail Fund

Charlotte Bail Fund: $WereStillHere OR venmo: ResistanceisBeautiful

Silicon Valley Bail Fund

Louisville Bail Fund

Chicago Bail Fund

National Revolving Bail Fund

Gas Mask Fund:

Venmo: @Isak-Douah

Cashapp: $Isakdouah

Paypal: [email protected]

Black owned businesses

Support small online Black owned businesses

Google doc of Black owned businesses

Twitter thread: "here’s a thread of black small businesses that were destroyed that you can donate to to help rebuild"

Donate to the following groups

http://aclu.org

http://joincampaignzero.org

http://nlg-npap.org

http://blacklivesmatter.com

http://advancementproject.org

http://changethenypd.org

http://M4BL.org

http://themarshallproject.org

Support protesters

For their safety, do not post pictures or videos of their faces

How to properly treat someone who has been tear gassed

Tips for protesters

More tips

How to extinguish tear gas

How to treat a bullet wound

Disable tanks

Delete your digital footprint

Disable tanks

Twitter thread masterlist of safety tips for protesting

Protester safety tips

Support the woman pushed by the cop at Barclays $Dounyazayer

Thread of Homeland Security words being monitored on social media sites

Twitter thread: Know Your Rights

Location safety thread

Twitter thread: "how to identify an undercover cop"

If you are arrested for protesting in Minneapolis, call (612) 444-2654 and they will bail you out

Legal Rts Ctr: (612) 337-0030

If you are arrested in NYC call The National Lawyers Guild hotline with name and arrest location: (212) 679-6018

Legal Aid Society: (212) 577-3300

Atlanta jail support: (404) 689-1519

Louisville jail support: (502) 705- 0081

The Bail Project: 1 (833) 425-6827

National Lawyers Guild LA - Legal Defense Hotline: (310) 313-3700

Pro Bono Legal Representation doc

Drop Off Sites in MPLS (as of 5/29)

Epworth United Methodist Church, 3207 37th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55406

MN Youth Collective Office, 2161 University Ave W. Suite 100

2161 University Ave is taking a pause on accepting donations - overflowing

CTUL- CENTRO DE TRABAJADORES UNIDOS EN LA LUCHA - 3715 Chicago Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55407

The Coven (Downtown/North Loop MPLS) - 30 N 1st St, Minneapolis, MN 55401

Bethlehem Lutheran Church - 436 Roy St St. Paul, MN (NOTE POLICE PRESENCE OBSERVED)

Please donate and drop off First Aid, Physical Safety, Covid Precaution and Nourishment Supplies

Educate yourselves

Anti-racism resources

Learn about Black history and activism

Books by Black Activists

Books: how to be actively antiracist

Learn about unconscious bias

Twitter thread of mental health resources for Black people

Twitter thread on why protesters attacked Target in MN

Being Black and LGBTQ

Twitter thread of documentaries

Open Yale course - African American History: From Emancipation to the Present

ALEC Exposed

MPLS Protests

JACOB PEDERSON of the St. Paul PD is widely believed to have been the undercover cop vandalizing stores and starting fires during protests.

Report: What Does it Take to Embed a Racial Equity & Inclusion Lens?

Twitter thread of misinformation

Twitter thread: "how can i help from the uk?"

Contact Officials

GEORGE FLOYD is the name of the man who was murdered by DEREK CHAUVIN (badge 1087), TOU THAO (badge 7162), Thomas Lane, and J Alexander Kueng. If you truly care about getting justice, make phone calls to these numbers and express your anger. We cannot let another killer cop walk free.

UPDATE: As of May 29, Chauvin has been charged for third-degree murder. Continue pressuring officials for harsher charges because what he did was clearly not an accident. Also continue pushing for the other cops who were at the scene to be charged.

Contact Outline and Info

International Affairs Division

City Hall, Room 112

350 South 5th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55415

(612) 673-3074

Velma J. Korbel, Director

Department of Civil Rights

City Hall, Room 239

350 South 5th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55415

(612) 673-3012

Mayer Jacob Frey

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/d189a2276e234cacb9f02db60dac0569

(612) 673-2100

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman

C-2000 Government Center

300 South Sixth Street

Minneapolis, MN 55487

https://www.hennepinattorney.org/about/contact

[email protected]

(612) 348-5550

MPLS FBI field office

(763) 569-8000

MPD 3rd Precinct

(612) 673-5703

MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension

(651) 793-7000

Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis

(612) 788-8444

Louisville Mayor (demand justice for Breonna Taylor)

(502) 753-1784

MN Precinct Inspector

[email protected]

Commander of Training Unit

[email protected]

JUSTICE FOR REGIS CONTACTS

City Councillor Gord Perks - Parkdale - High Park

[email protected]

(416) 392-7919

MPP Bhutilla Karpoche - Parkdale - High Park

[email protected]

(416) 763-5630

MP Arif Virani - Parkdale - High Park

[email protected]

(416) 769-5072

Mayor of Toronto John Tory

[email protected]

(416) 397-2489

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders

[email protected]

(416) 808-2222

Solicitor General - Minister Sylvia Jones

[email protected]

(416) 325-0408

(519) 941-7751

Attorney General of Ontario Doug Downey

[email protected]

(416) 326-2220

(705) 726-5538

Urge the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) for transparency and accountability in handling her case

1 (800) 787-8529 OR (416) 622-0748

https://www.siu.on.ca/en/contact.php

Address concerns to SIU Director Joseph Martino

Sample Email:

Hello [recipient],

I am writing to you in regards to the incident that occurred at 100 High Park Avenue on May 27th, 2020. A 29 year-old Black woman, Regis, has died after allegedly falling off her balcony, despite police being present.

As a concerned citizen, I am very upset and disturbed at the events that took place and the allegations that this caused on the part of the police. I am demanding justice and answers as to the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet.

A complete and transparent public and independent investigation needs to take place. Charges need to be brought to all the officers involved, as well as all information and evidence should be made available to the public.

Sincerely,

[your name]

JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR CONTACTS

Murdered by Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove

Louisville Metro PD

(502) 574-7111

Louisville Mayor Office

(502) 574-2003

JUSTICE FOR TONY MCDADE CONTACTS

Template

Tallahassee Police dept

[email protected]

Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey

[email protected]

Commissioner Jeremy Matlow https://www.talgov.com/Main/email.aspx?emailto=jeremy.matlow

Officer Kevin Bradshaw - Officer on Tony's case

(850) 556-1726

#blm #protests #black lives matter #george floyd

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xprojectrpg · 2 years ago

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PHASE 2

2017: Gabriel sends Kevin an encrypted email about, well, old-fashioned encrypted messages.

2020:

2022:

#this day in xproject #plots #plot #xprpg #xproject #phase 2 #rpg #rp

0 notes

andrewthomson8779 · 2 years ago

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Cash for Junk Cars in Chicago: How to Sell Your Vehicle for Quick Money

Introduction:

If you have a junk car in Chicago that you want to get rid of and earn some cash, it's important to understand the process and make informed decisions. This comprehensive guide aims to provide you with a step-by-step explanation of how to sell your junk cash for junk cars in chicago without mentioning any specific company names. From assessing the value of your junk car to finding reputable buyers and completing the sale, this guide will equip you with the information you need to navigate the process effectively.

Assessing the Value of Your Junk Car: The first step in selling your junk car for cash is to assess its value. While a junk car may not be operational or in good condition, it may still have valuable components or salvageable materials. Research online or consult with professionals to get an estimate of its worth. Consider factors such as the car's make, model, year, condition, and the demand for its parts.

Gather Ownership and Documentation: Before selling your junk car, gather all the necessary ownership and documentation. Locate the car's title, registration, and any other relevant paperwork. These documents will be required to transfer ownership and complete the sale legally.

Find Reputable Buyers: To ensure a fair and hassle-free transaction, it's important to find reputable buyers who offer cash for junk cars in Chicago. Look for local junk car buyers, salvage yards, or auto recycling companies with positive reviews and a track record of reliable service. Avoid companies that engage in unethical practices or offer unrealistically high prices.

Request Quotes and Compare Offers: Contact multiple reputable buyers and request quotes for your junk car. Provide accurate details about the car's condition to receive more accurate quotes. Compare the offers received, taking into account factors such as the quoted price, towing or removal services, and the reputation of the buyer. Choose the buyer who offers a fair price and provides convenient services.

Schedule Pickup or Drop-off: Once you've chosen a buyer, schedule a convenient pickup or drop-off for your junk car. Some buyers offer towing or removal services, which can save you time and effort. Make sure to provide clear directions to the location of the junk car and be available for the scheduled appointment.

Transfer Ownership and Receive Payment: When the buyer arrives, ensure that you transfer ownership of the junk car properly. Sign the necessary paperwork, including the title, and obtain a bill of sale. Remove the license plates and cancel the insurance coverage for the vehicle. Once the paperwork is complete, the buyer will provide payment in cash as agreed upon.

Conclusion:

Selling your junk car for cash in Chicago involves assessing its value, gathering necessary ownership and documentation, finding reputable buyers, comparing offers, scheduling pickup or drop-off, and completing the sale with proper paperwork. By following the steps outlined in this comprehensive guide, you can navigate the process successfully and earn cash for your junk car in Chicago.

#cash for junk cars in chicago

0 notes

junkondemand · 9 months ago

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Junk OnDemand

Welcome to Junk OnDemand, your local solution for junk removal in Chicago, IL! We prioritize our community and take pride in our 5-star service, fair pricing, and responsiveness. Whether you need clean-outs for old furniture, appliances, mattresses, or a construction clean-up partner for your business, rely on us with confidence. Explore our gallery on the website to see us in action and get in touch to discuss your needs today!

Address: 875 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60616, USA Phone: 331-246-0377 Website: https://www.junkondemand.com

#Junk Removal Chicago Area #Junk On Demand Chicago

0 notes

newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

Shedding light on quarantine weight (Worldcrunch) “There’s a heaviness to the pandemic that’s weighing people down, including in a very literal sense,” writes Sylvain Charlebois, professor in food distribution and policy, in Canada’s daily La Presse. “Polls show that some 40% of Canadians gained weight since mid-March. In developed countries, this long period of self-isolation has caused waistlines to bulge—a serious matter, especially since obesity is a clear COVID-19 risk factor. The issue isn’t, of course, limited to this country. Nor is there one single explanation for why some people have put on a few extra kilograms. But governments are choosing to act now, during the pandemic, to raise awareness among their citizens. Leading the way is the government of Great Britain, where public initiatives include a ban on television and online junk food advertising before 9 p.m. Restaurant menus will also be required to display calories, while over-the-top marketing campaigns for calorie-heavy foods will have to stop: No more chocolate bars near cash registers that encourage impulse buying. About 60% of Britons are overweight, including the prime minister himself. Here in Canada, research suggests that about 25% of the people have used self-isolating as an opportunity to change their habits and adopt healthier behaviors. But there’s also evidence that more than half of the population has had more difficulty staying healthy during this period. Either way, the ‘Great Quarantine’—aside from the stress it caused—has changed our habits. While it is important to stay active to successfully lose and maintain weight, it is also essential to improve diets, as most people consume more calories than they need.”

No federal relief leaves states, cities facing big deficits (AP) State and local government officials across the U.S. have been on edge for months about how to keep basic services running while covering rising costs related to the coronavirus outbreak as tax revenue plummeted. It’s now clear that anxiety will last a lot longer. Congressional talks over another coronavirus relief package have failed, with no immediate prospects for a restart. The negotiation meltdown raises the prospect of more layoffs and furloughs of government workers and cuts to health care, social services, infrastructure and other core programs. Lack of money to boost school safety measures also will make it harder for districts to send kids back to the classroom.

Seattle police chief to resign following department cuts (AP) Seattle’s police chief says she is stepping down, a move made public the same day the City Council approved reducing the department by as many as 100 officers through layoffs and attrition. Carmen Best, the city’s first Black police chief, said in a letter to the department that her retirement will be effective Sept. 2. Cuts to the department have been supported by demonstrators who have marched in the city following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis but strongly opposed by the police chief. Measures that would cut $4 million of the department’s $400 million annual budget this year passed out of committee unanimously last week.

Powerful derecho leaves path of devastation across Midwest (AP) A rare storm packing 100 mph winds and with power similar to an inland hurricane swept across the Midwest on Monday, blowing over trees, flipping vehicles, causing widespread property damage and leaving hundreds of thousands without power as it moved through Chicago and into Indiana and Michigan. The storm known as a derecho lasted several hours as it tore from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois, had the wind speed of a major hurricane, and likely caused more widespread damage than a normal tornado, said Patrick Marsh, science support chief at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. A derecho is not quite a hurricane. It has no eye and its winds come across in a line. But the damage it is likely to do spread over such a large area is more like an inland hurricane than a quick more powerful tornado, Marsh said. He compared it to a devastating Super Derecho of 2009, which was one of the strongest on record and traveled more than 1,000 miles in 24 hours, causing $500 million in damage, widespread power outages and killing a handful of people.

Trump abruptly escorted from briefing after shooting near WH (AP) A uniformed Secret Service officer shot and wounded a man during a confrontation near the White House that led to President Donald Trump being abruptly escorted out of a briefing room during a televised news conference Monday, authorities said. The White House complex was not breached and no one under Secret Service protection was in danger, said Tom Sullivan, chief of the Secret Service Uniformed Division. Trump had just begun a coronavirus briefing when a U.S. Secret Service agent escorted him from the briefing room. The president returned minutes later, saying there had been a “shooting” outside the White House that was “under control.”

Sen. Kamala D. Harris named as Joe Biden’s running mate (Washington Post) Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has chosen Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate. Harris will be the first Black woman and first Asian American to run for vice president, representing a historic choice at a moment when the country is grappling with its racial past and future. The announcement was made in a text and a tweet from Biden. Harris, 55, is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. The first-term senator previously served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.

Belarus’s Leader Vows to Crush Protests After Claiming Landslide Election Win (NYT) A day after the leader of Belarus, often called “Europe’s last dictator,” claimed a landslide re-election victory, his capital slipped into mayhem late on Monday as protesters barricaded streets and riot police officers beat back crowds of demonstrators with violent baton charges, stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. The authorities described what began as peaceful protests as “riots” and vowed to crush demonstrators who have taken to the streets for the past two nights in Minsk, the capital, and in towns across the country. Struggling to contain public fury over a fraud-tainted election that gave Mr. Lukashenko his sixth term in office, the government on Monday shut down subway stations, sealed off roads and poured armed riot police officers into the center of Minsk. By nightfall, security forces and protesters were clashing violently in the capital, and in Brest, a city in the west of Belarus on the border with Poland, as well as in several other towns. In a sign that anger over the election had spread beyond affluent areas in the center of Minsk, Monday night’s protests also convulsed outlying districts of the capital dotted with bleak Soviet-era apartment blocks.

Fallout from Chernobyl’s forest fires (The Atlantic) While forests covered 30 percent of the land in the Chernobyl exclusion zone prior to the explosion of the reactor, today they cover about 70 percent as nature reclaims the poisoned region surrounding the contaminated facility. The problem is that, to some notoriety, trees are quite flammable, and when forest fires hit the forests around Chernobyl they release cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium-238, -239, and -240, and enough of those to expose firefighters to triple the annual limit of radiation for nuclear workers. Fires have become more frequent, and more severe: in April, a blaze consumed 165,600 acres, and researchers as far as Norway noticed a bump in atmospheric cesium.

China’s unrelenting crackdown on Hong Kong (NYT) Weeks after ramming through a controversial national security law, Beijing’s proxies in the city are extending their crackdown on protesters and pro-democracy activists. On Monday, Hong Kong authorities raided the offices of the popular tabloid newspaper Apple Daily and arrested its owner, media tycoon Jimmy Lai; his sons; and a number of executives affiliated with Next Digital, the newspaper’s parent company. Monday’s arrests underscored the speed with which the former British colony’s political freedoms—including rights to assembly and freedom of the press—are being curtailed by Beijing. Chinese authorities argue that their repressive measures are merely bringing law and order to an unacceptably restive city. But governments elsewhere are getting increasingly vocal about the danger inherent in China’s actions. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has locked itself into a punitive cycle of sanctions with China. On Friday, the Treasury Department targeted 11 Hong Kong officials, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam, with sanctions for their role in undermining the city’s autonomy. On Monday, Beijing fired back, slapping its own sanctions on 11 U.S. lawmakers and nongovernmental organization leaders as a symbolic riposte. “An assertive tit-for-tat risks further escalation, but at least sends a consistent message that Beijing is willing to impose costs on the U.S. in response to U.S. actions,” wrote researchers Adam Ni and Yun Jiang at China Neican. “So Beijing will almost certainly continue to adopt a tit-for-tat approach to responding to Washington.”

Lebanese demand change after government quits over Beirut blast (Reuters) Angry Lebanese said the government’s resignation on Monday did not come near to addressing the tragedy of last week’s Beirut explosion and demanded the removal of what they see as a corrupt ruling class to blame for the country’s woes. A protest with the slogan “Bury the authorities first” was planned near the port, where highly explosive material stored for years detonated on Aug. 4, killing at least 163 people, injuring 6,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Prime Minister Hassan Diab, announcing his cabinet’s resignation, blamed endemic graft for the explosion. “I said before that corruption is rooted in every juncture of the state but I have discovered that corruption is greater than the state,” he said, blaming the political elite for blocking reforms. Talks with the International Monetary Fund have stalled amid a row between the government, banks and politicians over the scale of vast financial losses. “It does not end with the government’s resignation,” said the protest flyer circulating on social media. “There is still (President Michel) Aoun, (Parliament Speaker Nabih) Berri and the entire system.” For many Lebanese, the explosion was the last straw in a protracted crisis over the collapse of the economy, corruption, waste and dysfunctional government.

They return to homes damaged in Beirut’s blast to discover someone has already cleaned them (Washington Post) In the days following the Beirut blast, hundreds of volunteers have climbed chipped stairs and through blasted holes that used to be doors, armed with long brooms and shovels. They’ve entered homes, abandoned in the aftermath of the explosion that destroyed much of the Lebanese capital, and scrubbed blood off the walls, swept glass shards, and set aside torn doors and windows. With evident care, they’ve straightened people’s personal belongings: stacking books, hanging up broken paintings, righting religious statues. Often, the owners are nowhere to be found—or they return home to discover that the volunteers have beaten them there. “Every time I would come back to my apartment, which is obviously relatively destroyed, it would still end up being cleaner and cleaner,” said Adam, 32, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used out of security concerns. A few volunteers had let themselves into his home through the hole where his front door once stood. “This has been the worst week of my life in a lot of ways,” he said, choking up. But he added, “I’ve never felt like I’m more part of a community though at the same time.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers have descended onto Beirut’s streets in the past week—some from other Lebanese towns, a few from as far afield as the United States and France—relentless in their efforts to clean up their city.

Violence in Congo (Foreign Policy) Nineteen people were killed in a series of attacks on three villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern province of Ituri, according to Innocent Madukadala, a local chief. Madukadala blamed the Cooperative for the Development of Congo—a paramilitary group that has been accused of carrying out similar attacks in the past. The region has been a hotspot for ethnic tensions, with the farming Lendu people regularly clashing with the herding Hema over land usage. Tensions boiled over into full-scale ethnic conflict in 1999, which was brought under control only after the EU deployed a French-led peacekeeping mission to the region. Tensions between the two groups have recently surged. Since December 2017, violence in the Ituri area has left almost 1,000 people dead and displaced around 500,000 others. At least 636 people have died since the beginning of this year alone.

#headlines #news

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