#Plague 12.7

[its-wormin-time]

skitter after the first Mannequin fight

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

One of the cool things about Worm is all the puzzle bosses, the way Taylor beats enemies with these unusual and creative ways.

On the other hand, that's also one of the most annoying, when you step back, because a lot of them feel like they tailor-made (hah!) to be beaten by Taylor.

And l kinda... I feel like that makes the world almost feel too small?

Like the Mannequin fight was really badass, but it almost feels like the specifics of the rather absurd way he built himself was built to be beaten, or at least blocked off so well, by Taylor's swarm gumming up his works so much the way she did with the silk?

It's a tough hair to split right, balancing 'MC is clever and solved a problem' vs 'enemy had to be made in such a way they were beatable by Mc', I guess. Sometimes Wildbow makes it land, and the Mannequin fight was an intense read, for all that Manny the Kinless didn't fucking talk and was boring in of himself, but I dunno. Didn't quite feel organic.

I guess what continues to get me is that Manny's body and the way be built himself remains so fucking baffling to me it's hard to imagine a reason why he actually made those specific choices that aren't just 'specifically crafting a boss fight for Taylor to beat in this way'.

YMMY

[thexsilentxwordsmith]

Dom!Simon "Ghost" Riley x sub!reader, John "Soap" Mactavish x reader

Fandom: Call of Duty

Characters: Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Soap" Mactavish, reader

Summary: When a one time sexual encounter leaves you wanting more, but the rules were set the moment he entered you and now he does his best to avoid you, what is a girl to do to get what she wants? That's right, make him jealous. And if it works a little too well maybe he will give you the night of your life. Good thing you have a flirty Scotsman to mess with, perhaps if you can't get your way, you can still have fun. Only time and a bit of effort on your part will tell what goes down.

Word Count: 12.7 k

Warnings:

Part 2: What's Mine You'll Never Have

You knew what you were getting yourself into before it even started. The rule was simple enough: this was a one time thing, a no strings attached fuck that would end and never be spoken of again because it just so happened to be with a man in a higher rank than you who had a reputation to uphold. Agreeing was the easy part; honestly, you would have done whatever was asked of you in that moment for a ride  as the heat between you both rose, his touch sending shocks down your limbs, and if one and done was all you got you were going to jump on it with complete pun intended. It wasn’t as if you care for him; really you could barely stand him on a good day, though you would have been a liar to deny there wasn’t something erotically toxic about him.

Your superior office was a fucking beastly specimen of masculinity: broad, full chest, arms big enough that they looked like they could bend steel, thighs so fucking thick and juicy you could comfortably ride his massive cock for hours. Though you had never fully seen the face of this quiet and serious man nor knew more than the most basic information about him it did not matter, you knew before you ever saw it that what was rubbing against your thigh as he pinned you to that wall was mouth-filling enough that you needed to get your hands on it and by god you loved when were absolutely right.

That one random night had found you at the right place and the right time, when tensions were high along with his aggression and a good screwing would help take the edge off of an otherwise frustrating and fruitless mission. Things went fairly quick from when he had grabbed you by the waist and before you knew it you found yourself naked in his bed, filling the room with your whimpers as muscles pumped, bodies writhed and bucked, and sweat stained the sheets along with the rest of your combined fluids. You were made to come several times as your lieutenant unleashed himself upon you with a voracious appetite for your body that didn’t let up until your poor little cunt couldn’t take another orgasm. Exhausted and satisfied, you left him in bed with a cigarette pressed to his smirking lips set free from his mask and that was that; you’d go about your merry way a little more satisfied than usual, but otherwise not putting up a fight about the arrangement.

…Or so you thought.

It was only a couple of weeks later that the ache really set in, that one deep inside you that no matter how many times you touched yourself with those sore fingers stroking away for what felt like hours, you simply could not satisfy. Shit, you were feral with desperation for Ghost's fat fucking cock and thick tongue to make your pussy their property once more and you needed to rectify the situation fast before you developed carpal tunnel. Since your lieutenant was avoiding you like the plague ever since that night, only being near when absolutely necessary and nothing more, you would have to take matters into your own hands. 

There was so much you did not know about Ghost when it came to more personal matters, but he was a man after all and though they came in different flavors, they all could be manipulated in the same ways. You owned all you needed to bring them to their knees and with your devious little mind always working overtime you were easily able to concoct your plan to make that hulking man jealous enough to hopefully break the terms of his agreement. These were indeed desperate times and that is when desperate measures are called for. Nothing is more desperate than using jealousy as a weapon and that meant pitting two men against each other to get what you wanted, but you would deal with the moral ramifications of your actions later.

You first needed someone to use in your quest of jealousy and it was completely obvious from the moment the thought entered your mind the exact person you wanted to use to get Ghost’s attention, one that the sting of seeing you with him would hopefully cause him to act  irrationally and that person was none other than Sargent MacTavish. The two officers were close, well as close as anyone could get to Ghost, at least you were certain it would be enough that if you pulled out all the stops and put all your effort into flirting with the Scotsman, it would surely light a fire in your target. And if not, maybe if you started to give him the extra attention he seemed to want, Soap would be down to help you alleviate your little ‘problem.’ It wouldn’t be exactly what you wanted, but if you couldn’t have your first choice, then you wouldn’t be picky.

It wasn’t a huge secret around the base that the mohawked pretty boy had a bit of flirtatious nature when it came to you and so it would be nearly effortless to play into that to get the effect you wanted. Briefly you had the thought to actually tell Soap what it was you were up to, but you concluded that that left too much up to chance; what if he didn’t agree to helping you or what if knowing that you were intentionally flirting with him to get to Ghost made his reactions not as sincere or worse yet he actually tried to sabotage you? No, this had to seem spontaneous and so you kept everything tight lipped. Settling on your victim, now all you needed was a place for this little show to happen. It had to be public, preferably somewhere that alcohol was involved; liquor always heightened emotions and made for bad decisions to magically come true. If that’s what it took for Ghost to give in to you, then that was absolutely fine. 

There were times when the entire task force would venture out into the night for a bit of fun, usually after a successful mission when the mood seemed just right to let loose, so all you had to do was wait for something to happen that would be a cause for a trip to the local bar and that was the part in all of this that nearly broke you. Nothing you had done up to this point had ever been harder; your poor vibrator was begging you for a damned break and you were sure the thing would fall apart before you got the chance to implement your plan.

Finally though, you had your sinful prayers answered and you seized the opportunity with both of your devious hands. The mission you had just returned from had not been easy in the slightest, but in the end it was a success and after all the preparation and execution that had happened over the course of a few weeks, the whole team was ready to let off a little steam. The minute you heard Soap suggest the usual group outing, your filthy heart skipped a beat.

Soap was the one to ask you himself if you were going to be joining on this little rendezvous as he caught up to you right after debriefing. The way he made sure to specifically invite you stuck out as odd, as he had not done anything like this before now, but you let the thought slip to the back of your mind as the timing was just too perfect not to take full advantage of as a certain someone just so happened to be within range when he asked. 

“C'moan, lassie,” he picked, giving you a playful shove and plastering that sad puppy dog look over his face. “Please. Wilnae be na fun witoot ye.”

Just out of the very corner of your vision, you could see that brooding tower of man watching this conversation like a hawk stalking a mouse through the grass. You wondered if he could hear everything being said as well as he could see what was happening and just in case you laid it on thick; can’t waste him being around to see you getting a bit more friendly with the Sargent, given how you usually interact. 

“And what’s in it for me?” you picked back.

“Th' chance tae git wit a charmer who’s guid at chattin,” he was quick to shoot back as if the response had been rehearsed. 

You smirked. “Oh, and when will I meet this good conversationalist? Will he be joining us there?” God you were laying it on with a paint roller.

Soap shook his head with a chuckle. “Ye know as well as ah that a nicht oot wi' me is yin tae rememer,” he met you with the same energy. “ 'sides, it’ll be lonely 'ere a' by yersel' sin a' body is goin'.”

“Everyone?” you repeated, pretending to give the idea some serious thought. Waiting a few more seconds you finally gave Soap your brightest smile with a firm nod of your head as if you had just decided right then and there and hadn’t been plotting all this time like the devil you were. “Alright, I’m in. A night off base sounds like just what I need anyway. It’s about time we go out.”

“That’s whit ah lik' tae hear,” he beamed, glad you had accepted the personal invitation. 

You gave him a playful nudge from your elbow. “I just can’t say no to you, ya know? Not when you look at me like that. Just makes me fold every time.”

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Try as he might to hide it, there was no stopping the physical signs that triggered whenever you were around to give away the thoughts inside. “I’ll come grab ye at 8 'n' we kin head ower th'gither, if that’s a'right. Don’t want ye aff goin' after dark a' by yer lonesome.”

“My protector,” you gave his bulking bicep a short hug. “I’ll be waiting for you.” With a nod you parted ways and headed back to your barracks to get ready as a certain skulking member of 141 went stomping off back in the opposite direction to his own quarters in a rush.

And just as promised, right on the dot Soap was there knocking, ready to escort you off into the night. The moment you opened the door to your barracks he was stopped dead in his tracks at your appearance; it wasn’t often you got the chance to wear something other than the tactical gear that covered you from head to toe and you definitely put in the effort tonight to look your best. Your light blue crop top hugged your tits just right and matched the way your jeans clung to the curves of your hips and down the lines of your toned legs. You opted to wear your hair down with a loose curl to it and you had put on just the hint of makeup to play up your eyes and make them sparkle. It wasn’t over-the-top, but it was enough to make Soap pause and that meant you had done a good job.

“What?” you asked with a light-hearted laugh at his reaction, even though you knew exactly what it was that had left him speechless.

“Nothing,” he said while diverting his gaze. “Ye just look nice is all.”

“Don’t I always?” you sassily replied.

 Nodding his head with a raise of his eyebrows, he agreed. “Weel, can’t argie wit' that. Ye could mak' a garbage bag look guid.” 

“That’s what I thought,” you shot him a playful smile, making his temperature rise. 

Soap had to clear his throat before he could respond, already getting flustered before anything had actually happened. “Ready a' go?” he asked.

“Let’s do this,” you said as you both went off, ready to let the liquor take your cares away.

There was already a gathering at the bar when you both arrived, others getting there, grabbing a table large enough for the entire group, and diving in to the drink to get the night started. Luck, or a very well timed conversation, was on your side tonight as surprise, surprise, you found Ghost himself in tow with the gang. What made him break his streak of isolation was of no consequence, all you cared about was that this had the best potential to work and you were confident that what transpired here would make your tight hole soon be filled to the brim with him.

He sat at the opposite end of the table from you, though opting to sit on the side that gave him the best vantage point to keep his eyes on you if he wanted. His usual over-the-top skull mask had been exchanged tonight for a simple black balaclava with a white painted jaw bone structure on the bottom of it. It was interesting to actually see more of those autumn-colored iris’, though he still had his customary eye black rimming them to keep them dark and mysterious. He had also opted for jeans and a black shirt with matching jacket, something that showed off more of his body and especially that spectacular ass; fuck, you had to remember not to salivate.

The moment you and Soap walked in Ghost’s sight was drawn to you, making him freeze with his glass half raised to his lips as he took in what exactly it was you were wearing. It had been a hot fucking minute since he had the pleasure of seeing more of your curves being accentuated by something other than bulky tactical gear that hid away all this delicious full figure from his gaze. It wasn’t very hot inside the bar, but a cold sweat began to spread out across Ghost’s body as you joined the group with a playful smile on your lips, effortlessly falling into the light-hearted conversation happening around him.

It had stayed pretty innocent through the first part of the evening until you began enjoying a rousing game of Never Have I Ever that included Captain Price nearly having an aneurysm and Ghost choking on his drink when you gleefully lifted your glass to your lips for the statement “never have I ever masturbated while on night patrol”, but you weren’t bothered. There was no room to be shy when your teammates were mostly comprised of men and especially when you needed to make one squirm.

“Are you serious?!” Gaz asked astonished that you had been bold enough to admit such a thing.

You nodded your head and you downed the last of your beer. “Look, you gotta do what you gotta do when you’re bored,” you smirked and you were sure Soap was going to pass out from all the blood gathering in one particular area from the image being conjured in his imagination. The night really got fun after that with mini raucous arguments exploding over who was the better at accents, with contest to match, and which song was the best to get you pumped for a raid and soon you realized you had downed another couple drinks as the laughter flowed as good as the liquor.

“Anither round boys?” Soap joyfully asked around at all present as the night had continued on. This was about round three or four, you couldn’t rightly remember at this point. He turned his attention to you sitting at his side, wanting to ask you personally with an inebriated smile spread across his lips. “How aboot it, ye up fur annur? Don’t tell me you’re gonnae tap oot noo, th' nicht is aye young.”

His eagerness to be in your close company all evening was indeed charming and if you didn’t have your eyes focused on the man who could use you like a rag doll and not even break a sweat, you might have liked to see where this would lead, but the heart wants what it wants. Or rather you should say the cunt, as that was the organ calling all the shots now. 

Shaking your head, you shot him a smile back. “Never,” you stated firmly. “I’m still in it as long as you are, pretty boy.”

“Atta lassie,” he praised enthusiastically as he got to his feet to go order another round with the bartender, hoping you wouldn’t notice how strong he was coming on; the liquor was hitting a bit harder than he realized and it was becoming increasingly obvious that he was struggling to hold it together, but you didn’t mind; in fact, you kind of liked the way it sounded. If Ghost didn’t do anything by the end of the night then you were sure you could easily get Soap to take you back to his private quarters.

You watched him go, letting your eyes linger on his objectively fine looking taut ass, before you managed a sideways glance over towards the other end of the table where he sat. Your eyes hadn’t even fully clocked Ghost yet and you could already feel that grumpy, silent, mask-clad man’s eyes boring holes into you as if he were trying to set you ablaze. There was no seeing any of his features other than his eyes through the mask, but his agitated body posture alone was evident enough that he had taken notice of your closeness with his colleague.   

Time to turn up the heat and really stick it to him; Ghost was going to regret ever taking away the pleasure of his body from your immediate access by being forced to watch you give away your own to someone else. The night was still young and you had ample opportunity to make sure he knew just how far you were willing to go to get his attention. 

Soap returned moments later with a slew of beers in hand, distributing them around those still partaking, but saving the last for you specifically just to give you that bit of extra attention. You gratefully accepted it from him, your fingers lingering over the backside of his hand as you took the glass into your grip. 

Across the way you noticed one of the two pool tables had suddenly become free as the two older gentlemen playing had called it a night. Now that’s one game that can get two people close real quick, especially if one of them pretended they didn’t know how to play at all and would need a lot of help. Soap had tried to get you to join a game with him and Gaz or Price on several occasions, but you had always said you enjoyed being a spectator more than a player, so you never took him up on it… until now.

Soap’s attention was still on you as he took a swig off his glass and you used that opportunity to nod over towards the now empty table. “Seems we’re in luck,” you pointed out and he followed your eyeline over. “Maybe it’s a full moon or some shit, but I’m in the mood to try something new and I know how many times you’ve tried to get me to have a go. Feel up to finally giving me a free lesson?”

“Ye don’t hae tae ask me twice, lassie,” he smiled. There wasn’t a chance in hell he wasn’t going to jump at the opportunity and jump he did, setting down his drink with a slosh and pushing out of his chair quick before grabbing your hand to drag you over so that another group couldn’t claim it for themselves first.

Back across the room your eyes locked on to Ghost’s and you raised a seductive eyebrow menacingly at him. It was obvious the way his upper body bristled as Soap came back with your cues and stood close beside you; it was about to get even more intimate when he showed you how to hit the billiard balls and both of you currently eye-locked knew it. Don’t like it, do something about it bitch, the look in your eyes challenged, but sadly he still sat there nursing his whiskey, though with more aggression than he had previously.

You were handed the wooden stick and you held it uncertain in your grip. “You are gonna have to start at the very beginning with me,” you chuckled, “I have no idea what I’m doing and the liquor isn’t helping.”

Soap chuckled and gave you a look. “I’ve git ye, don’t ye worry.” 

And got you he indeed did. After quickly explaining the scant amount of rules in excited and quick fashion, he demonstrated the stance you would need to take as he broke up the balls to start. Now it was your turn and you would have to be convincing. 

“Like this?” you questioned as you leaned over the table; you left plenty of room for improvement by not fully getting it right.

“Almost,” Soap said as he walked back over to where you stood in front of the shot you wanted to take. “'ere, let me hulp.”

Leaning against you to marionette your body where he wanted it to go, he maneuvered you around until you were in better form. Your back was pressed to his chest and you could feel the muscles brace against you through his t-shirt. He fit perfectly against the curve of your spine as you both tilted your bodies lower over the table and the warmth that hit your back half felt nice. Those bulked out arms covering your own definitely didn’t feel bad either. 

Not too shabby, Sargent, you silently praised. 

“Lik' this,” he said. “Ye juist pull back 'n'…”

Just as he was about make your cue strike the ball, you pretended to accidentally step back so that your ass got firmly pressed up against his crotch, making him twitch and completely butcher the hit. The stick made contact with the cue ball and sent it flying just off the edge of the table to roll across the floor away from you both. 

“Sorry,” you feigned innocence. “I fucked that up royally.”

“Nah,” he laughed with a wink as he went to grab the ball and return it to the table, “just git a unique technique is a'. We kin wirk oan that, bit ah think yu''ll need tae let me hulp ye a bit mair.” 

You both devolved into flirty laughter before continuing on with the game, Soap taking every available opportunity to correct your form just to be close to you as much as possible. And you didn’t shy away from ‘accidentally’ grinding against him from time to time just to watch him get flustered all over again. For a moment it felt nice for someone just to enjoy the pleasure of your company along with your body. 

It wasn’t until nature called that you said that you had enough for one night with a promise that you’d pick this up another time before you headed off to the bathroom to relieve yourself. It gave you a good chance to check and make sure you looked as good as you did when you got here. Although the rose had bloomed in your cheeks from the heat and the drink, you still looked just as you hoped and giving yourself a satisfied smile in the mirror, you left.

Stepping out of the bathroom, you began to head back to the table when you noticed that all the seats seemed to be filled suddenly. You counted heads, but there was one that you hadn’t seen before. Some tart had decided to take the moment to chat up Gaz and so you had no place to sit… or did you? Honestly this could not have gone better if you had written it out because now you had an excuse to do what you did next, not that you needed one, but damn was it too perfect not to take advantage of.

Ghost’s eyes were already on you again as you made your way across the bar floor and for the second time tonight you pointedly locked eyes with him, raising your eyebrow cockily, before stepping up next to Soap. As soon as he looked up to see who it was, you swung a leg over him and then the other until you were sitting in his empty lap. You could feel him freeze beneath your ass as he was surprised by this sudden change of events, but he didn’t protest this new development. Instead, one of his strong arms scooped itself around your back to your hip, making sure that you were secure on his lap so you wouldn’t think about leaving it too soon. 

“Hi,” you mischievously flashed him a smile, your faces close together.

He cleared his throat, trying to calm himself from your contact and the perky breasts near his face he was currently trying not to stare at. “Hi back,” he stammered out.

In a smooth motion, you laced one of your arms around his shoulders. “I hope this seat wasn’t taken, seems mine was though. Can’t expect me to stand the rest of the night, right?” 

“I’m nae complaining,” he admitted, giving the exposed small of your back a rub with his thumb; he felt weak at how soft your skin was beneath his touch.

“Good, that’s what I like to hear,” you gave him a subtle wink as you situated yourself better on his lap. “It’s a pretty good seat anyway, very comfortable. Plus it doesn’t hurt to being this close to you, get a better look at the scruffy mug.”

“Och is it?” he smirked, watching you struggle to grab your now half-empty glass and reaching across, handed it back. “Well, it's aye open tae ye, bonnie, as lang as ye lik'.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” you said, taking a sip. 

You swallowed fast as you felt him risk more of a touch as he slipped his fingers just inside the back waistband of your jeans. “Nah, that’s reserved juist fur ye.”

That was it; without warning, Ghost slammed down his drink so that it splashes liquid onto the surface of the table and he quickly stood from his chair. He didn’t address anyone that had turned towards him at the outburst or even give some bullshit excuse for his departure, instead just storming out into the night without a sound. You weren’t entirely sure, but you could swear his fists were clinched tight down at his sides and nothing made you more ecstatic; that was exactly the sign you had been looking for that gave you hope that all this had not been in vain.

After another lengthy round you feigned exhaustion and made your excuses to the group to leave, commenting about how your bed was calling your name as you could barely keep your eyes open. Soap was definitely the most visibly saddened by your decision to call it a night already; he wanted to ask you to stay with him longer, but ultimately decided to keep quiet about it. Perhaps he didn’t want to rock the boat and ruin an otherwise spectacular evening spent in your company by complicating things or maybe he had gotten the vibe that there was something more to Ghost’s sudden outburst and exit, but whatever it was he gave you a smile and a wish that you get back to base safely and sent you on your merry way.

All the way back to your barracks you had a smirk plaster across your inebriated face, certain that your little ruse had achieved the outcome you had been plotting for and now all you would have to do was wait for your lieutenant to get riled up enough to come crawling back to you. Your wicked little mind wondered if his hand was already down his pants, frantically stroking his cock in an attempt to rid his mind of you or if he had already taken several ice cold showers to stop his body from burning for your own.

It filled you with a malicious glee to have this effect on such a stoic and impassible man and as you reentered your quarters, inebriated and full of yourself, you found your bed and fell back against the surface with a slew of delightful images concerning your lieutenant’s neediness floating around your head to keep you company as the alcohol wore off. 

You weren’t sure how long you’d been daydreaming for when you heard the door to your barracks open. That wasn’t uncommon as it was a shared room, but what happened next absolutely was. 

*SLAM*

The force with which the door was shut rang through the room loud enough to shake the walls. The noise startled you, though you could probably take one single guess as to what the reason for such an intrusion could be and you’d be correct. Turning your head you could see all 6’4” of your superior standing there, taking up the entire doorway with his impressive form. Seems that your little ruse had worked to perfection and you could not help feeling smug about making him crack.

Ghost clocked you in your bed and could plainly see you had noticed his entry and yet you had not moved from your spot, even though decorum dictated you get to attention since he was a superior officer. Fine, you weren’t going to do as you should then you were going to be given orders and be forced to.

“Come here,” he demanded shortly, those intense brown eyes staring back at you unblinking from behind his balaclava. 

That devilish grin spread out all across your entire face as you sat up and crossed your arms over your chest. “Or what?” you pushed back to your masked superior. “It’s late, after hours in fact. Right now we are off the clock and I believe that means I don’t have to.”

One low, gravely chuckle was released from him. “Keep this up, luv, and you will find out what it means to disobey,” he threatened, his voice metered and firm. “I’ll give you one more chance before the consequences of your actions get you in fucking deep water. Come here, that’s an order.”

Doe-eyed and playing dumb you stared back before rotating your body until your legs were hanging off the side, but still you stayed seated. “What did I do, hmm?” you asked with a tilt of your head, playing pretend, but not exactly trying hard to hide the fact that you knew what it was you were being accused of. 

“Don’t you sit there and act like you don’t know, you little bitch,” he snapped, his scolding tone harsh and biting. “Everyone there tonight could see what you were doing clear as day, so there is no use in denying it. Making a spectacle of yourself and disrespecting your place on this task force.”

Shaking your head, you glared him down. “And why, sir, do you care? Didn’t like the show?” again you boldly fought back. “There is nothing saying that I can’t have a bit of extracurricular excitement with those on this team. Did Price send you to reprimand me? Cause if not I don’t see what problem you have. Or is there more to it than that that I’m just not getting? Wanna come clean about anything, sir? Was it really about what I was doing or was it more who I was doing it with. You jealous of MacTavish getting a little action?”

What had gotten in you today? You hadn’t had this much fight in you in quite a while and though he secretly enjoyed your fire as it was what drew him to you in the first place, you had disrespected him and that came with consequences. The way you used ol’ Johnny boy for your sick fucking attempt at clearly making him jealous had worked and he was not pleased with the amount of control you seemed to hold over him because of it. His cock had been hard as a rock since he left the bar and he could do nothing to ease the ache; you were going to pay for that by the end of the night.  

“Get. Up.” he growled with enough power behind it to send a shiver down your spine. “Now.”

The authority in his voice boomed through the room, intimidating enough to make you follow orders as you knew he had reached his limit and you could do nothing except genuinely fold and comply out of sheer intimidation alone. He meant business.

“You want to act a brat and sass me, then you get punished as one. Or did you forget I am still your superior?” he seethed as he gripped your wrist and yanked you towards him once you were within range. His grip around your arm was strong; there was no way you were getting out of his grasp even if you fought it. “You’re coming with me and I don’t want to hear any arguing, so don’t try it. Fight me and you will regret it.”

“And just where are we going?” you asked. If this was really a reprimand for your behavior, wouldn't your barracks be just fine? No, this was something more.

He whetted his lips under his mask, but ultimately kept quiet. Talk could come later once you had gotten to the destination, right now he had to focus on not loosing his mind before he had a chance to let you have it for what you did. You watched wide eyed and silent as he dragged you out of your barracks and through the facility back to his own private quarters, not caring who saw what, and once there he was pulling you inside and bolting the door behind the both of you. No one would be hindering his disciplining now, nor what he planned to do to you afterward. 

Satisfied that the entrance to his room was secured, he threw your back against the door, the sound from the hit ringing through the silence. Another bang sounded from his tattooed forearm also hitting the door just above your head as he rested it there so that he could lean down enough to get into your face. His chest was almost pressed to you and you could feel the heat radiating off of him along with a strong scent of whiskey and cigarette smoke on his breath and gunpowder on his fingers that all mixed together to drive you mad. 

“What the fuck do you think you are doing, hmm?” he spat angrily in your face, the outline of his lips just visible through the fabric of his skull-painted balaclava. “Throwing yourself at Johnny like a fucking trashy whore. The whole bar could see you being a pathetic mess and for what? I knew I was right in going tonight to keep an eye on you because you just can’t help yourself, can you? How fucking dare you pull that shit in front of everyone.”

You kept your eyes on his, never letting his gaze drift from your own. “So what if I did? Like I already said, it shouldn’t matter because you don’t own me. I didn’t make you come keep an eye on me, you did it all on your own and now you have to suffer the consequences.”

Being this close to you again was agony, your body within his reach that all he had to do was take what he wanted, and the ache in his cock that started in the bar was too much to ignore anymore; goddamn the pressure was enough that he felt himself about to explode. There was no more waiting if he wanted this interaction to last longer than a few minutes, and he definitely wasn’t going to be letting you go anytime soon, so reaching down the front of him he undid his pants with his free hand. 

Buckle jingling and the audible zip of a fly lowering hit your ears and he was able to release that thick, fat cock of his. He looked back up into your eyes with a predator’s gaze and groaned low and guttural as he gave his phallus several drawn out strokes, wetting his length with the bit of precum that had dripped out of the uncut tip.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” he snapped as he seethed at your audacity. “You are on thin ice so I suggest you stop while you are ahead.”

His anger only confirmed it for you that you had gotten under his skin. A short, quick breath was pushed out of your nose as you shook your head. “With full disrespect sir,” you breathed, “why don’t you make me.”

Oh you had done it now. “You wanna tease me like the dirty slag you are, deliberately misbehaving clearly just to get my attention, then you have to accept the consequences when you get it the way that you did,” his words were sharp and firm, punctuated with grunts as he worked himself. 

“Let me guess, sir, I’m gonna have to suck it to make up for my act,” you balked with a sassy roll of your eyes, still a bit of fire in you that he had yet to quell. “How creative.”

Ghost shook his head with a low, malicious laugh. “You that greedy for me, princess? Gonna take whatever you can get your lips around? You are pathetic.” 

He knew just how to take care of a bratty little bitch like yourself; he was a true master at knowing exactly how to make bad girls fold and come to heel for him. “Don’t stand there and act like I don’t know how much you would enjoy that, choking on this fat dick until your eyes are watering. I remember how your makeup ran down your cheeks that night and how it felt like you’d rather suck me off then breathe. If you think I’m about to give you exactly what you want, you’re fucking mistaken baby. No, I have something worse in store for you.”

Tucking his throbbing cock back into his pants, he grabbed both of your bare wrists in one of his large hands while the other went to his belt. With a sharp tug, he wrenched it free from the belt loops and quickly wrapped it around your wrists to bind your hands together before opening the door just enough to place the tail end in between the top of the door and the door frame, shutting and locking it again once he had it secure. A sharp jerk as he pulled it tighter around your wrists made the leather dig into your flesh and you gasped at the feeling.

Once he was sure you weren’t going anywhere, Ghost slid himself off of you so that he would have full unbridled access. Nothing could stop him now from taking the hem of your jeans and yanking them down without undoing the button and off your legs, leaving you exposed to him in nothing but your delicate panties, the same ones he remembered from that damned night that sealed his fate now. 

“You want to come clean about what you were doing at the bar or will I be forced to fuck the confession out of you?” he asked. “Say that you did all that just to make me jealous and I may go easier on you.”

Slowly you opened your eyelids to him, tilting your head upward with a devious smirk. “I don’t have to admit to shit,” you returned with bite to your tone, “not when whatever the answer could be is irrelevant; all that is important is that it worked.”

He shook his head side to side; he should have known you were still too spicy to come to heel yet, but you would. By God you would bend to him. “ Suit yourself, sweetheart. You are about to be taught a good, hard lesson; brats like you need to be disciplined well or else they get too full of themselves. You should have never made me watch that disgusting display of you throwing yourself at another man,” he growled angrily. 

He wasted no time in collecting the crotch of your delicate panties with his fingertips and wrenching them to the side. He didn’t stop until he had ripped them from your body and tossed the delicate shreds away behind him. “I could smell the desire leaking off Soap like goddamn cologne, just as much as I smell the scent of your arousal for me now. I was so close to caving his skull in to see him put his hands you on like that and you just fucking let him. Baby girl, you need to learn who it is you belong to right here and fucking now.”

Shit, you may have just bratted yourself too close to the sun on this one, but there was no turning back now. You knew the consequences were going to be dire as that primal side of your lieutenant took over and you would simply have to accept every single delicious bit of his wrath that he gave you. Oh no, how horrible it would be to get exactly what you wanted. 

There was no warning about what he was plotting until you felt his hand slip down between your thighs, parting them easily as a knife in warm butter, and one of those thick fingers sliding between the petals of your sex towards your entrance, gathering as much of your slick as he could on his digit before inserting it fully into your core up to the knuckle. “Greedy bitch, I can feel you taking in my finger like it’s nothing,” the backhanded praise sent shivers down your spine as he began to work feverishly at your G spot, with rough and intense movements; there would be no easing into this, you did not deserve that luxury. 

Rhythmically he pumped that finger in and out of you as his opposite hand held your pelvis in place while you writhed and arched your back against the door. Instinctively, your hips bucked against his hand, trying to make as much contact with him as possible as you struggled with your hands above your head; you needed more, you needed it all. You had waited too long for this.

“Does my greedy girl need another?” he asked slyly, though not waiting long enough for your reply before slipping in another digit into your already dripping cunt.

“God,” you groaned, head back and mouth open as you were deliciously stretched out even further.

Ghost chuckled at how easy you were breaking for him. “God isn’t here sweetheart. You’ll have to deal with me right now.”

His pace was relentless and even with those tough, calloused fingers he knew how to use them better than any toy. It was too much to handle and your body responded in kind, your back arching wildly each time he struck that lovely little bean over and over again, the sweat clinging to your forehead as your body took every bit of his relentless assault on your sanity while your toes curled against the hard floor. Minute after minute, his full attention focused solely on you, each stroke along that incredibly sensitive bundle of nerve endings drawing you increasingly closer to that razors edge and threatening to violently throw you off. 

There was no need for you to speak it aloud first, Ghost knew you were close just by the way your body spoke to him: your head falling back against the surface of the door with eyes fluttering closed and your breathing quickening as that pressure built to the peak. It was in that moment where your orgasm was in sight that you whispered its arrival was near and he made his move; you were going to regret confirming it for him. Suddenly his fingers were ripped completely out of you, leaving you mewling for the feeling of him again as the sensation dissipated. 

“Goddammit, I was so close,” you snipped at him, shooting daggers through your irate glare.“I thought you liked me and then you pull this shit.”

The absurdity of your statement made him scoff. “And what would ever give you that idea? I don’t have to like you to fucking own you sweetheart.”

“Fuck you.” Your body shook as you squeezed your bare thighs together tightly, hoping that the friction would be enough to finish it, but the moment was gone and you were just left frustrated. 

Ghost’s knee found your thighs and slipped between them to kept them separated as your wetness soaked into his pants leg; you weren’t going to come yet until he was ready for you to and that would be some time as your penance had not been paid in full quite yet. “That is the goal, isn’t it babe? Why you went to all this fucking trouble? That’s why you’ll stand there and take what I give you like the good little whore you are and maybe when I’m finished I’ll give you what you crave most and stuff you completely full.”

From the moment you left him that night weeks ago, his cock still slathered in your cum as he sucked down cigarette after cigarette to calm himself from the intensity of that first encounter, he instantly regretted making you agree to this being a one time ordeal. No one had ever made his body come alive like that, nor had anyone been able to keep up with his incredible stamina like you could. The moment he buried himself in you he was addicted and desperately needed more and try as he might to keep himself sane by jacking off at a rate that would rival that of a teenage boy, it would never come close to the way your silky, tight walls felt clamped down around him. 

“And what if I don’t?” you shot back. “What if I continue to push you for making me go to all this trouble to get you to fuck me again? You were the one who set that fucking ridiculous rule about it being one time and yet the moment I try and get my fix somewhere else, here you come again.”

“I can bloody well change my mind,” he stated firmly, laying down his ruling to supersede everything else that had come before. “The way that watching Soap touch you made my blood boil, watching him take something away from me that I alone had, I cannot let that slide not even with him. I want to be the only one that knows that you feel like, what you taste like, what you fuck like. No one can have you, no one can touch you, ever again. I don’t give a fuck what I have to do, I will make sure that you belong to me and only me, little girl.”  

Pulling up his balaclava just above the tip of his nose as leaned over your body, his raw, yearning mouth latched on to the thick of your hip as he sucked and bit down at the place he had seen Soap’s hand touch, removing any trace of him from your body and replacing it with visible marks that belonged to him. There was no stopping there, though; he wanted markings across all parts of your body so that everyone could see where he had been, where you had been claimed by him, and he wanted you to be reminded each time you looked in the mirror. 

“This is mine and this and this,” he whispered desperately as he released your skin from his mouth intermittently to breathe as his handiwork continued along up and down your burning flesh. “No one can touch you like this ‘cept me.”

Already being stimulated and denied release, every single embrace of his mouth left you reeling in pleasure and the way those soft lips caressed your body mixed with the sharp pain from his bites left you a puddle in his hands. “Please,” the plea fell from your lips before you could clamp your mouth shut to keep it from escaping.

That whimper sent a trail of goosebumps across his skin, making Ghost moan deep in the back of his throat. Hearing you beg was the most beautiful music that had ever graced his ears and it only added fuel to the fire raging inside of him. All at once his shirt felt ungodly hot clinging to his body and so releasing you from his mouth he stood up and wrenched it off quickly over the top of his head to throw it away haphazardly to the floor. 

There it was, that fucking gorgeous broad chest lightly covered with a sparse amount of blonde hair amassed in the center of his pectorals that thinned out as it spread and continued in a line down his wide torso and into his pants, leading directly to that glorious appendage. His line of work made sure to keep him in top physical condition so that he exuded a virile energy that made your fucking knees buckle out from under you and even though his chest was a mix of scars and marks like a road map of the type of life he had lived, it did not matter; he was a god amongst men and you would do anything for even a single glimpse of that mouth-watering happy trail. You could not take your hungry eyes off of it. If your hands weren’t bound you would have already been running your fingers along it before your lips could follow.

“Turn around,” he order roughly, breaking you out of your stupor at his bare chest, “face the door and arch your back. Now, princess.”

It was a struggle to rotate yourself around with your hands locked above your head, but with the promise that he was about to fuck you senseless you got into position before him, rotating your body around and putting enough curve in your back that he could enter you easily. You waited not so patiently to have that feeling of his hands digging into your hips so that he could thrust into you, but what you found instead was the sharp sting of his palm connecting with your bare ass, making it vibrate. 

“Fuck, so beautiful the way it bounces like that,” he groaned as another smack was placed directly on top of the first. “You body was made for punishment. Isn’t that right, baby? Let’s get in a few more for good measure.”

Another smack, but the sting did nothing other than make you whine for more as that large mitt of his cupped the entirety of your backside. His intensity was obviously best when he was given free reign to do what he deemed necessary, even his discipline felt like ecstasy as the sting of it mixed with the pleasure coursing through your veins to make you delirious and ride that razors edge between pain and desire. A few more swift smacks and his handprint was a bright red sign upon your cheek; he couldn’t help but smile at his handiwork and knowing you’d have a glaring reminder tomorrow of him when you couldn’t sit down properly without wincing. 

You were ready to take as much as he was willing to give when you felt him pulling your hips forward a little more so your were on the balls of your feet before he  dropped down onto his knees. His face was now perfectly aligned with your as and  with a firm grip he spread your legs open as far as he could comfortably get them before he was leaning his face in; he needed a fucking taste. Those full lips placed a few quick kisses to your silky, bare petals before his wide tongue opened you up slowly and deliberately as he dragged it the length of your sex to collect as much of your juices as he could on his tongue. Goddamn you were so fucking sweet. 

“Mmm,” he hummed, his vocal chords vibrating against your entrance as the taste of you filled his mouth and tingled on his taste buds. The pad of his tongue hit your clit and your jolted into the door, the over-stimulation sending shock waves through your needy body. The lieutenant became no better than a dog lapping at you with reckless abandon, a man possessed and intoxicated by how the heat from your thighs felt against his face as he absolutely worshiped that sweet little pussy. Those fingertips digging into the meat of your hips tingled as his hunger for you consumed him; he would have been content to lap at your juices for hours until his face was smothered, until he couldn’t breathe and his mask had your scent fused into the fibers.

Even faster than before, the feeling of that beefy tongue playing around your clit with his nose nudging eagerly against your entrance brought you back to the edge of your orgasm. Tears streamed out from the corner of your eyes and onto your chest as your overstimulated sex yearned for completion, hoping that at least this time you would be allowed to come all over his mysterious face. You gripped your finger tighter in your bound hands to hold on for dear life.

“That tongue is gonna kill me,” you cried out, your legs shaking as they did their best to keep you upright. “Fuck, yes baby, make me come.”

That was the one thing that Ghost did not want to hear yet, as it meant that his feast would have to end even though he wasn’t done with his teasing yet. He meant every single word of the promise he made to discipline you for your disrespect and he intended to keep it; you weren’t going to leave his bed this time without being completely and utterly obsessed with him and all he could do for you. With a frustrated but ultimately satisfied sigh, he pulled his tongue away and locked your hips into place with his hands to keep you from backing up against him until he was clear of your cunt. 

You whimpered and whined so pathetically you did not even care about sounding tough anymore. This was too much for anyone to handle and all you wanted was for him to give you your deserved release. Burying your face against the hard surface of the door, you continued your barrage of annoyed and desperate sounds until a gentle touch helped you to turn over to face him once again.

As he came into view, you could see just how much damage had been done to the beast of a man before you. That mask of his was soaked from your juices and his saliva had rolled down to his chin making him look feral. The fabric was so stuck to the center of his face that it was gonna be a bitch to remove, but that twisted grin plastered on his face let you know that he had enjoyed every last second of being buried between your legs. 

“Are you going to behave for me from now on?” he growled as he wiped his exposed mouth with the back of his hand. Silently you nodded, but that wasn’t enough. “Use your words, baby girl,” he demanded. “Say ‘I will be a good girl for you’, say ‘I’ll never stray again’.”

You licked your parched lips. “I will be a good girl for you,” you whined. “So good, I’ll never stray again.”

“Say ‘I belong to you and only you’. Moan it, loud. I want them to hear it outside that fucking door.”

“I belong to you and only you, I promise baby,” you reassured as loudly as you could, not giving a fuck who heard it and secretly wanting someone to. “I don’t want anyone, but you.”

“You’re fucking right, luv. You are my property. Mine,” he growled and just like that it was over; you had served your time and now you both had earned that little death that would drown you in ecstasy.

Those lips that had touched everywhere except your own finally connected as Ghost leaned into your trembling naked body. You could taste yourself on his mouth as his lips danced aggressively with your own, pressing so hard you could feel a swelling from the pressure; another part for him to needlessly claim as it was already his. Reaching above your head he undid the restraints to let your wrists fall free, returning your arms back to you. Immediately you made your way to the waistband of his pants still loosely hanging on about his waist and hungrily tried to push them down off his hips; that cock was yours and you weren’t taking no for an answer anymore. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” he scolded as he held your hand against his hip, “you want me to fuck you good and proper, you know what I’m going to want.”

Fuck, your clit was so swollen you thought you would pass out, your body sweaty and aching something fierce. All you wanted was to relieve the pressure, have him to throw you onto his bed and open your legs so that he could rut into you like the absolute cum slut you were. You whimpered when you realized he still had enough sense to continued to torture you. 

Simon leaned in closer, his chest firm against your scant top so that your breasts were pressed to him. “Just start moving those beautiful lips for me,” he purred in that gravely tone that he played up for the effect of making you throb harder for him, “and beg. If you want me to get that fucking ache deep inside, I’m going to need a bit more from you.”

There was no more fight left in you to disobey him; whatever he wanted you would give in without question just to have him let you come. “P-please,” you said with agitation that you had been broken. 

His strong, rough grip found your jawline to hold still as he ran his large thumb across your lips before he leaned in forward. His warm breath hit your earlobe as he rested at the side of your head. “Please, what?” he pushed, his voice lowering into that register that made you wild. “Use your words and say my name; I need you to get used to using it. You’ll be screaming it often after tonight. Say: Fuck me Simon, please.”

Through gritted teeth you tried to remain sane. “Please, fuck me Simon,” you repeated the phrase he had given you to parrot. This was the first time you had ever used his real name and fuck did it feel perfect tumbling off your tongue. 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” his tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, “that wasn’t good enough.”

He scooped you up in his arms and quickly moved you both over to his bed where to shoved you down onto the surface while pulling your crop top and bra up over your head in one move. Those pants that had somehow stayed put around his hips all this time were finally shoved off the curve of his ass and onto the ground, leaving him exposed in all his beautiful glory as he took his seat next to you on the mattress. 

Roughly you were pulled directly over his lap, his throbbing phallus waiting impatiently between your dripping thighs. He took one leg into each of his large hands to spread you wide and tilted you both back so that he could better position himself under your entrance and when he was aligned he situated his cock between your petals and rocked you back and forth to coat him as he teased your core. You squirmed in his grasp, trying to move your hips so that he would enter you, but it was no use; he had you in his grasp and at his mercy.

“Now,” he cleared his throat, breathing deeply to slow his rapid heartbeat as he stroked himself through you. “Repeat it again or you will have to wait longer, luv.”

Goddamn him for having so much fucking control. How could anyone be expected to be anything less than a fucking mess when a giant of a man is encompassing your entire body with his massive one as his cock was teasing your aching hole by being so close and yet so far from hitting the back of your cervix? Under those circumstances you were doing quite fucking well. 

“P-please, Simon, fuck me,” you said louder and more enthusiastically this time. “Fuck me until I can’t take it anymore. Until the walls know the sound of my moans, until the entire unit knows how well I scream your name. Fuck, please baby I need it.”

Those hands holding up your thighs dug in further to the supple flesh with strong fingertips enough to make you gasp. “Good girl,” he praised. “You’re such a fucking whore for me, aren’t you? And now I am going to ruin you for anyone else.”

He rocked you both back and then forward quickly to where you were pushed down over top of his cock as he thrust upward with his pelvis. The action made you take him in down to the hilt all at once and filled you completely until you could not take another centimeter. 

“Fuck,” he groaned forcefully as you took him all in… so tight, so wet, he could feel his muscles strain as he bottomed out inside you.

You mewled at the feeling of him stretching you out so quickly, his girth almost more than the walls of your pussy could handle. Fuck, you were so full of him that when he finally pulled out of you it would feel so goddamn empty it would physically hurt. A twitch of that ungodly thick appendage inside you made you whine. 

“That’s right,” he praised, “take it all, I know you can, you little bitch. Uuugh…goddamn.”

Those powerful arms locked themselves around your waist as he used your body as his own personal fleshlight, making you bounce with force up and down on him at his unyielding pace; you may have been the one to be punished, but making him wait was just as much torture and he had to reclaim every last second of time he was not inside of you by fucking you with a ferocity that left you completely destroyed. You could only sit and take every last delectable inch that he gave you as his massive girth stretched your walls with every thrust of his pelvis upward. The room was filled with the wet, sticky music of your bodies slapping against each other as he worked your hole as if this was the last chance he would get to fuck you and he needed to make it count. This wasn’t love, not something tender, but only pure animalistic lust and the more he stroked in and out of you the more he needed. Simon’s mind was consumed with only you and how you made him feel in that moment: powerful.

“I should call Soap in here and make him watch you get fucked like this by me,” the gravel in his thickly accented voice getting even deeper with the ungodly feeling of you wrapped so tight around him as he pounded slow and hard into you over and over again. “Would you like that, hmm? Making your little boy toy watch you get fucked by a real man, letting him know that what he got tonight is all he is ever going to get from you? You want him to hear you screaming my name while I fill this sweet pussy with all I got?”

Fucking hell he was voracious in his need to claim you and it made your body shiver from being overwhelmed with animalistic prowess. No one had ever wanted you this much, especially a man at the peak of his masculine power, and the exhilaration of being so completely desired beyond reason was overwhelmingly euphoric. 

“Yes,” your slack-jawed mouth breathed out. “I want everyone to know I’m yours. That they can’t touch me or else. I want to show everyone what a good girl I am for you and only you.” 

“Oh, fuck baby,” he whimpered as your words made your body respond by contracting around him as you bore down with the conviction of your statement, “I can feel you clenching around me. My little whore loves to think about everyone knowing our secret, doesn’t she?”

Goddammit, that was such an erotic thought, making Johnny or anyone really watch as he owned you. It was like the type of domination a dog feels when marking its territory; Simon would have loved for the whole damn team to see your tits bounce as you rode his cock, your cries of pleasure being the soundtrack to the show.  

Harder and faster, his frenzied pace drilled his cock into you relentlessly as those thoughts  filled his mind and made him ravenous for the sensation of your body. He had waited so long for this, dreampt of this, pleaded for this, and it felt just as exhilarating as that first time if not more because now he knew he could have this whenever the fuck he wanted. If he could have kicked his own ass for trying to deny you both from this bliss, he would have in an instant, but never again would he let this go.

Those strong arms wrapped around your middle to keep you steady as he held on so tightly you felt your torso being crushed, but it did not matter as the angle of his penetration hit its mark consistently each and every time. You leaned fully back into him, your arms wrapping backward around his shoulders so that you could rest your head on them while your ear was filled with the sound of his primal grunting. 

His view was instantly filled with your perky chest jiggling as each of his thrusts sent shock waves through you to make them dance and goddamn was it a delicious sight. Since your arms secured you more to him, he was able to release one of his from around your waist and it slithered up so that his hand could find it’s place around your neck; such a perfect necklace for his special girl, one befitting of your unique tastes. 

“Do you even know what I would do for you? Do you know how deep my lust for you goes? How much I want to possess you?” he growled as his hand tightened around your slender throat. 

Without warning he had pulled out of you only briefly so that he could aggressively flip you over onto your back, getting into position by kneeling in front of you as he threw your legs onto his broad, sculpted shoulders before he gripped your hips and instantly reentered you. The new position helped him to reach even deeper and you mewled loudly, your head flying back as your hands clenched his sheets in your fists at the sensation. You pulled your head up to look into his eyes as he again picked up his desperate pace, his abs glistening with sweat as they contracted and released after each thrust. Those brown eyes sparkled with a fire you had never seen before and you loved it. 

“I would burn this place to the fucking ground just to bury myself in that perfect cunt as much as I please,” he growled deep and primal. “Fucking hell baby, I won’t be able to ever get enough.” 

Those words were the catalyst for the warmth now spreading out from within your belly to making your limbs tingle as everything was focused on your orgasm. It was so close you could taste it and you felt confident that this was the time he would let you finally release; there was no way he could stop himself, not with the way his hips were pounding into you. 

“I am yours to use whenever you please,” you groaned as your body writhed wildly. “Use me, fucking use me.”

You keep talking like that and you wouldn’t be able to perform your duties for the 141 because you’d be kept far too exhausted to function by him making sure you stayed plastered around his dick constantly. That wasn’t a bad idea at all, having you at his beck and call whenever he needed it: after a stressful mission, during the middle of an uneventful one, at all hours whenever he needed a quick fix where he could simply pull you into any secluded space. This was the start of something destructive, but screw it this is what he wanted and god did that put him on the very edge of his own orgasm.

“Oh God, oh fucking God, Simon,” your husky breath carried the words upon it for the third and hopefully final time, breaking him from his thoughts as your cries to the heavens could only mean one this.  

And shit did that make Simon smile; after all the time he had edged you this night there was no chance in hell you wouldn’t come with fury. “That’s it, luv,” he praised as he kept the pace steady, “you going come for me? Your orgasm belongs to me and I demand it.��

“Fuck, Simon, just don’t stop,” you whined.

That is exactly what he did, not changing a single thing that would disrupt the gathering sensation of ecstasy inside your core. No, this train was barreling down the tracks faster by the minute and he craved above all else to be brought to his own end by your climax alone. To feel those silky walls flutter around him before you clamped down hard, squeezing him just right so that he would be forced to come; he wouldn’t settle for anything less.

“Come for me,” he demanded as he tried desperately to hold off from bursting, “let me feel that pussy clench.”

A few more pumps of him deep in your core and that was it, like a hot flash of white light you cried out in shaky whimpers as your orgasm tore through with such force you nearly shot off the bed as your back arched and your hips bucked harshly into him. “Goddammit Simon, fuck.”

Through your cries he picked up the pace and finally the warmth that had been building shot through his body, coursing like a burning river of fire through his veins as he ripped his cock out of you and through your thighs from your legs still perched on his shoulders to cover your stomach in his steaming hot semen. The roar he released as his body shook while he drained his cock dry over top of you until he had no more left in him to give sounded like a wild animal and you could not have enjoyed it more than you did; you were the one to make him come with such force he was reduced to his more basic instincts.

Simon’s head hung slack against your calves as his unsteady breath slowly returned to a more tolerable rhythm and only then did he remove your legs from his shoulders and rolled over to sit beside you, an exhausted sack of flesh completely sated for the moment. Leaning over he reached under the edge of the bed, producing an old t-shirt out from under it which he handed to you so that you could wipe his milky fluids off your torso.

He was already sitting back propped against his pillows with a cigarette in his mouth by the time you finished up and you moved back in the bed to join him. Holding out his fingers with the lit stick of tobacco between them, he offered you a hit and you graciously took it; this was an intense night worthy of a bit of nicotine to take the edge off. 

With a more relaxed gaze he looked upon  you, admiring the bright flush of your cheeks that was also spread across your chest and the contented glisten in your eyes, all evidence that he had done his job. Bringing his hand up he combed his fingers through your hair until he reached the back of your head where he held them wrapped in the strands a moment. “You did so well for me baby,” his stern praise soothed. “And are you going to continue to be my perfectly little slut?”

You nodded your head, just gazing back into those amber eyes that looked on your wrecked state as if you were a masterpiece. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” the corners of his mouth upturned slightly as he took back his cig from you to take another lazy drag. “I suggest you rest up now sweetheart because once I can get it back up we are going to go at least one more round before I’m finished. We still got plenty of night left and we are going to take full fucking advantage of it.”

A main course and dessert? That was more  than agreeable, considering how long you had waited for this to happen in the first place. “Fine,” you said as you rolled onto your side, resting your arm on your hip with a sudden renewed sense of entitlement quickly coming back on, “but this time I will be the one on top. Otherwise you can kiss this sweet ass goodbye as I walk right out that door.”

Simon chuckled. “Oh you are a tough one to crack, sweetheart. Best be glad that precious little cunt you have resting between those legs is more than worth the trouble. And that I am a man that loves a challenge. This whole thing is just getting started and I am more than confident that by the end I will have broken this feral kitten into a perfectly docile house cat.”

You hoped he would fucking try cause what a ride that would be, but if anyone could break you it would be him. He handed the cig back to you one more time and you again accepted it. “We shall see, sir,” you breathed out the smoke from the side of your mouth. “We shall see.”

Challenge accepted. 

*** 

On the other side of the door, a set of unaware prying ears had caught wind of noise as they passed by. They had not meant to, but curiosity is a bitch of a temptress and soon they were within range enough to clearly hear the moans and whimpers, the groans and growls, currently reverberating off the walls of the room. The person had not realized where it was they found themselves as they had simply been taking a walk to clear their head, but soon it became apparent that this was the private quarters of that misanthrope of a lieutenant. 

At first they couldn’t help but snicker under their breath, congratulating the quiet man at getting some action because why not? It wasn’t until the voice of the female had actually began to speak instead of moan that their blood pressure rose and they could feel their heartbeat in their ears. It was you that Ghost was currently making come and that did not sit right with them, not at all. 

Who said he got to lay claims when they were the one putting in all the effort, when there had clearly been chemistry between you both? No, this wasn’t how it was going to be. He would not take this lying down, rolling over and showing his belly in intimidation by the much bigger officer as he stole you away all to himself. The eavesdropper had as much stake in you as him and if Ghost thought he could simply take you as easily as that, then he had another thing coming.

A mohawked head quickly turned about face and headed back to his own quarters, drunkenly promising himself that it did not matter what Ghost had made you promise or what you had just declared through your sated ecstasy, he would show you that he could be just as every bit as good as the old lieutenant himself.    

[ua-stranger]

THREATS FROM LOWER WATER LEVELS/ЗАГРОЗИ ЗНИЖЕННЯ РІВНЯ ВОДИ

The water level in the Kakhovsky Reservoir continues to fall. The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources explained what could happen next. Therefore, with a decrease in the water level of 14.5 meters, Ukraine will lose 14% of the export potential of Ukrainian wheat. This will happen due to problems with its irrigation in Zaporizhia , Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions. A drop of 14 meters will mean that Nikopol, Marganets and nearby settlements will be left without drinking water. 13.2 meters will pose a threat to nuclear safety due to the cessation of cooling of the reactors of the Zaporizhia NPP. A drop of 13.1 meters of water will affect a million Ukrainians without drinking water. A mass plague of fish and birds will begin.Well, an ecological disaster will happen if the water level drops to 12.7 meters.

Рівень води в Каховському водосховищі продовжує падати.У міністерстві захисту довкілля і природних ресурсів роз'яснили що може статися далі.Відтак за змншенням рівня води у 14,5 метрів Україна втратить 14% експортного потенціалу української пшениці.Це станеться через проблеми з її зрошенням Запоріської, Дніпропетровської та Херсонських областей.Падіння в 14 метрів означатимуть що Нікополь, Марганець та прилеглі населені пункти залишаться без питної води.13,2 метри становитимуть загрозу ядерній безпеці через припинення охолодження реакторів Запоріської АЕС.За падінням води у 13,1 метрів мільйон українців будуть без питної води.Розпоч��еться масовий мор риби, птахів.Ну і екологічна катастрофа станеться якщо рівень води впаде до 12,7 метрів.

NEWS RELEASE

NEWS RELEASE WITH TIMECODE

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Roland Fryer

Published: Jun 20, 2022

I have spent hundreds of hours in diversity training over the past two decades–from descriptions of federal anti-discrimination laws to academic-style seminars on the perils of implicit bias, microaggressions, or misgendering.

Advocates of this kind of training have their hearts in the right place. We are all familiar with comparisons showing that Black people earn 50% less than white peers and women earn 70 cents for every dollar that a man earns.

However, the most popular tools used to combat disparities in the workplace have produced almost no measurable results.

The average impact of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training is zero and some evidence suggests that the impact can become negative if the training is mandated.

“Statistical Snapshots,” which describe how employee outcomes differ by demographic group, are another popular tool. These numbers cannot provide proof of bias. Simple averages often mislead and, importantly, crafting strategies based on misleading data often does more harm than good.

Some business leaders, in their determination to increase diversity, leap directly from observing raw disparities to removing some information from application forms, another common practice meant to make workplaces more equitable. However, hiding information on applications often leads to worse outcomes for those it was intended to help–likely because hiring managers use race itself as a proxy for the information they’re no longer allowed to see.

Our intuition for how to decrease race and gender disparities in the workplace has failed us for decades. It’s time to stop guessing and start using the scientific method. Remember when we thought that the Bubonic Plague was caused by a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius?

Here is a three-step approach that can turn earnest intentions into good science.

Understand disparities

For decades, social scientists have shown that raw gaps in employment outcomes like hiring or wages–the type of data typically provided to C-suite executives–misstate the amount of actual bias in an organization. This data omits many factors that are key to personnel decisions, factors that often vary by group, owing to disparities in society at large. Business leaders can and should work to address inequality in their communities, but they should not mistake society-wide gaps for bias by their own employees.

One of the most important developments in the study of racial inequality has been the quantification of the importance of pre-market skills in explaining differences in labor market outcomes between Black and white workers. In 2010, using nationally representative data on thousands of individuals in their 40s, I estimated that Black men earn 39.4% less than white men and Black women earn 13.1% less than white women. Yet, accounting for one variable–educational achievement in their teenage years––reduced that difference to 10.9% (a 72% reduction) for men and revealed that Black women earn 12.7 percent more than white women, on average. Derek Neal, an economist at the University of Chicago, and William Johnson were among the first to make this point in 1996: “While our results do provide some evidence for current labor market discrimination, skills gaps play such a large role that we believe future research should focus on the obstacles Black children face in acquiring productive skill.”

Recently, I worked with a network of hospitals determined to rid their organization of gender bias. The basic facts were startling: Women earned 33% less than men when they were hired and their wages increased less than men once on the job. Yet, accounting for basic demographic variables known about individuals prior to hiring, these differences decreased by 74%. A problem remained, but it was an order of magnitude smaller than the unadjusted numbers implied.

Find the root causes of bias

Social scientists tend to categorize bias into one of three flavors: preference, information, and structural. Preference bias is good old-fashioned bigotry. If company A prefers group W over group B then they will hire and promote them more even if they are similarly qualified.

Information bias arises when employers have imperfect information about workers�� potential productivity and use observable proxies, like gender or race, to make inferences (gender stereotypes are a classic example).

Structural bias occurs when companies institute practices, formally or informally, that have a disparate impact on particular groups, even when the underlying practices are themselves group blind. Employee referral programs can fall into this category.

Over the past fifty years, economists and other social scientists have developed brilliant ways of statistically distinguishing between different types of bias. Gary Becker, in his 1993 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, outlined one such statistical procedure known as the “outcomes test.” It operates by comparing the success rate of decisions across groups and then inferring whether different decision rules were used for different groups. For example, if women CEOs statistically outperform male CEOs, all else equal, that would suggest that a higher standard was applied to women in the selection process. This type of statistical test can be used for hiring, promotions, and attrition across an organization.

In 2013, collaborators and I developed a similar test to detect information-based bias. Our approach uses the insight that if employers have information-based biases at the time of hiring, but then learn more about an employee’s productivity once they are on the job, one would expect to see the returns to tenure within the company to be higher for the group that faced the initial bias. Using a nationally representative dataset of thousands of individuals, we found that there was a significant gap at the time of hiring for Black candidates relative to white peers but that, as predicted, Black candidates experienced a 1.1 percentage point higher return to tenure.

With the aforementioned hospital network, the data pointed to a structural bias in scheduling. Women and men who worked the same number of hours earned exactly the same wage, but men worked more hours due to how the company assigned schedules, not women’s desire to work less.

This is the key step that is missing in every DEI initiative I have seen in the past 25 years: a rigorous, data-driven assessment of root causes that drives the search for effective solutions. In other aspects of life, we would not fathom prescribing a treatment without knowing the underlying cause. Hiding information on resumes when information bias is present is as effective as using alcohol baths to treat fever.

Evaluate

We must rigorously evaluate what works and what doesn’t. The old cardiac test–where you “feel it in your heart”–is not good enough. Once we know where potential biases exist, determine what caused them, and curate a set of solutions to test, we must meticulously evaluate what’s working and what’s not.

Solutions that yield measurable results can be substantiated into company policy, while those that don’t should be discarded. In the case of the hospital network, once a small change was made to the structure of their scheduling, gender differences were reduced. Despite countless hours spent in training and seminars, their results were unchanged for years. The solution was hidden in plain data.

This will seem heretical to some–but it barely scratches the surface of what’s possible with a data-first approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion. More corporate leaders should be trying to solve diversity challenges in the same way they solve problems in every other aspect of their business: through intelligent use of data, rigorous hypothesis testing, and honest inference about what is working.

Roland Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard University, founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

==

It cannot be overstated that ideologically-driven trainings, such as those derived from the mental diarrhea of Robin DiAngelo and Henry Rogers (Kendi), not just don't substantiate or quantify their effectiveness, but can't.

It's much like measuring the effectiveness of prayer. Not only is there nothing to substantiate any kind of effectiveness, but you're not allowed to "test god." Similarly, actually expecting definable, measurable results from "White Fragility" or BLM training makes you an istaphobe, too focused on white empiricism and not on the presumed feelings and trauma of PoC... even if they've expressed nothing of the sort.

It's a faith.

Fryer has defined what we could regard as a "scientific" approach. In addition to actually understanding and solving problems, it has the side-effect of weeding out ideologues, as their priority is not actually improving anything, but creating converts. It's better if you can't measure it, because they can keep selling you more of their useless snake oil.

[3liza]

let's do some math

per the CDC:

For all U.S. adults, the new data show:

Overall, 1 in 13 adults in the U.S. (7.5%) have “long COVID” symptoms, defined as symptoms lasting three or more months after first contracting the virus, and that they didn’t have prior to their COVID-19 infection.

Older adults are less likely to have long COVID than younger adults. Nearly three times as many adults ages 50-59 currently have long COVID than those age 80 and older.

Women are more likely than men to currently have long COVID (9.4% vs. 5.5%).

Nearly 9% of Hispanic adults currently have long COVID, higher than non-Hispanic White (7.5%) and Black (6.8%) adults, and over twice the percentage of non-Hispanic Asian adults (3.7%).

Bisexual adults and transgender adults (7.5%) were more likely to have current long COVID symptoms than adults of other sexual orientations and gender identities. 12% of bisexual adults have current long COVID symptoms, compared to 7% of straight and gay and lesbian adults. An estimated 15% of transgender adults have current long COVID symptoms, compared to 5% of cis-gender male adults and 9% of cis-gender female adults.

The prevalence of current long COVID symptoms differed between states. The states with the highest percentage of adults who currently have long COVID symptoms were Kentucky (12.7%), Alabama (12.1%), and Tennessee and South Dakota (11.6%). The states with the lowest percentage of adults who currently have long COVID symptoms were Hawaii (4.5%), Maryland (4.7%) and Virginia (5.1%).

---

so if 1 in 13 adults in the USA currently has long covid, and the population is around 300 million, that means

>25 million people in the usa currently have a dysautonomic condition. hope every single GP in the country is reading the Wikipedia article about POTS right now

two entire generations of Americans being crippled by a lingering plague probably won't have any long term repercussions. don't worry about it

Hey, thanks for sharing that info on the post about drinking water? I didn't have POTS on my radar at all and bc that little seed was in my mind it just clicked together that the 160bpm heart rate spikes I'm seeing on my fitbit every morning when I stand up are something I should tell a doctor about. Looking it up there's a lot of shit (like syncope) I've been dealing with that docs have just handwaved and said "Happens sometimes, lay down if you feel bad." Considering I have a little graph on my phone literally showing the results of the actual diagnositic test, gonna talk to my doc. I had no idea that wasn't normal.

doctors are under the impression that dysautonomic conditions are "rare" so they will give you a lot of static about this shit. good luck comrade

[lostjulys]

now i wanna draw worm art sooooooooooo fucking bad oh my gdddddddddddd taylor hebert ym fuckign beloved oh she is tge most capable bisexual alive actually.

[dwellordream]

“...Because if we want to ask “What was life as a woman like in Sparta?” we really need to ask “What was life like as a helot woman?” because they represent c. 85% of all of our women and c. 42.5% of all of our humans. And I want to stress the importance of this question, because there are more helot women in Sparta than there are free humans in Sparta (as from last time, around 15% of Sparta is free – men and women both included – but 42.5% of Sparta consists of enslaved helot women). If we want to say absolutely anything about the condition of life in Sparta, we simply cannot ignore such a large group of human beings living in Sparta.

...The primary economic occupation of helot women was probably in food preparation and textile production. And if I know my students, I know that the moment I start talking about the economic role of women in ancient households, a very specific half of the class dozes off. Wake Up. There is an awful tendency to see this ‘women’s work’ as somehow lesser or optional. These tasks I just listed are not economically marginal, they are not unimportant. Yes, our ancient sources devalue them, but we should not.

First: let’s be clear – women in ancient households (or early modern households, or modern households) were not idle. They had important jobs every bit as important as the farming, which had to get done for the family to survive. I’ve estimated elsewhere that it probably takes a minimum of something like 2,220 hours per year to produce the minimum necessary textile goods for a household of five (that’s 42 hours a week spinning and weaving, every week). Most of that time is spent spinning raw fibers (either plant fibers from flax to make linen, or animal fibers from sheep to make wool). The next step after that is weaving those threads into fabric. Both weaving and spinning are slow, careful and painstaking exercises.

Food preparation is similarly essential, as you might imagine. As late as 1900, food preparation and cleanup consumed some 44 hours per week on average in American households, plus another 14 hours dedicated to laundry and cleaning (Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness (1993)). So even without child rearing – and ask any parent, there is a TON of work in that – a small peasant household (again, five members) is going to require something like 100 hours per week of ‘woman’s work’ merely to sustain itself.

Now, in a normal peasant household, that work will get split up between the women of the house at all ages. Girls will typically learn to spin and weave at very young ages, at first helping out with the simpler tasks before becoming fully proficient (but of course, now add ‘training time’ as a job requirement for their mothers). But at the same time (see Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005) on this) women often also had to engage in agricultural labor during peak demand – sowing, harvesting, etc. That’s a lot of work to go around. Remember, we’re positing a roughly 5 individual household, so those 100 hours may well be split between only two people (one of whom may be either quite old or quite young and thus not as productive).

...Let’s start textiles. Spartiate women do not engage in textile manufacture (Xen. Lac. 1.4) as noted previously, nor do they seem (though the evidence here is weaker) to engage in food preparation. In the syssitia, at least, the meals are cooked and catered by helot slaves (Plut. Lyc. 12.5, 12.7). In the former case, we are told explicitly by Xenophon that it is slave labor (he uses the word doule, “female slave,” which clearly here must mean helot women) which does this.

So helot women now have an additional demand on their time and energy: not only the 2,200 hours for clothing their own household, but even more clothing the spartiate household they are forced to serve. If we want to throw numbers at this, we might idly suppose something like five helot households serving one spartiate household, suggesting something like a 20% increase in the amount of textile work. We are not told, but it seems a safe bet that they were also forced to serve as ‘domestics’ in spartiate households. That’s actually a fairly heavy and onerous imposition of additional labor on these helot women who already have their hands full.

We also know – as discussed last time – that helot households were forced to turn over a significant portion of their produce, perhaps as high as half. I won’t drag you all through the details now – I love agricultural modeling precisely because it lets us peak into the lives of folks who don’t make it into our sources – but I know of no model of ancient agriculture which can tolerate that kind of extraction without bad consequences. And I hear the retort already coming: well, of course it couldn’t have been that bad, because there were still helots, right? Not quite, because that’s not how poor farming populations work. It can be very bad and still leave you with a stable – but miserable – population.

Let’s talk about seasonal mortality. As the primary food-preparers in the helot household, helot women are going to have the job of managing a constrained but variable flow of food through an extended family that may include their husband, children, older relatives, etc. Given the low productivity of ancient farming, this is a tricky operation in systems where rents are extracting 10% or 20% of the farming yield every year, but given the demands of supporting an entirely unproductive class of elites, it becomes even harder. The key task here is stretching one harvest through the next planting to the next harvest, every year. That means carefully measuring out the food consumption of the household against the available reserves, making sure there is enough to last over the winter. If too much food is extracted by the elites, or the harvest fails or (likely) some combination, the family will run into shortage.

Now, the clever helot woman knows this – peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc. are idiots who don’t know what they are doing. These people have survived for generations with very few resources, often in situations of significant volatility and violence; they’re not stupid, they’re poor, and there is a difference!) – so she will have strategies to stretch out that food to try to keep herself and her family alive.

But that in turn often means inflicting a degree of malnutrition on the family unit, in order to avoid outright starvation – stretching the food out. It also probably means a lot of related strategies too: keeping up horizontal ties with other farming households so that there is someone to help you out in a shortage, for instance. Canny survivors. That said – especially in a situation where shortages hit everyone at once – a shortfall in food is often unavoidable.

But, we need to note two things here: first: humans of different ages and conditions react to malnutrition differently. Robust adults can tolerate and recover from periods of malnutrition relatively easily. For pregnant women, malnutrition increases all sorts of bad complications which will probably kill the child and may kill the mother. For the elderly and very young children, malnutrition dramatically increases mortality (read: lots of dead children and grandparents), as compromised immune systems (weakened by malnutrition) lead to diseases that the less robust old and young cannot fight off.

Second – and this is the sad and brutal part – feeding the agricultural workers, meaning the adult males (and to a lesser extent, adult females), has to come first, because they need to make it to the planting with sufficient strength to manage the backbreaking labor of the next crop. If it’s a choice between the survival of the family unit, and taking a chance that you lose Tiny Tim, our helot mother knows she has to risk Tiny Tim.

So in a good year, there is food enough for the entire household. Families expand, children grow up, the elderly part of the family makes it through another winter, imparting wisdom and comfort. But the bad years carry off the very young and the very old (and the as-yet unborn). For children who make it out of infancy, a series of bad years in early childhood – quite a common thing – are likely to leave them physically stunted. It was very likely that most helots were actually physically smaller and weaker than their better nourished spartiate masters for this reason (this is a pattern visible archaeologically over a wide range of pre-modern societies).

The population doesn’t contract, because the mortality isn’t hitting adults of child-bearing age nearly as hard, meaning that in future good years, there will be new children. In fact, societies stuck in this sad equilibrium tend to ‘bounce back’ demographically fairly quickly, because massive external mortality (say from war or plague) frees up land and agricultural surplus which leads to better nutrition which leads to less infant mortality which leads to rapid recovery.

...And so helot women must have spent a lot of time worrying about food scarcity, worrying if their sick and malnourished children or parents would make it through winter. Grieving for the lost child, the lost pregnancy, the parent taken too quickly. Probably all while being forced to do domestic labor for the spartiates, who were both the cause of her misery and at the same time did no labor at all themselves and yet were better fed than her family would ever be. Because peasant labor of any kind is so precariously balanced, we can really say that every garment woven for the spartiates, every bushel turned over, represented in some real sense an increase in that grief. Subsistence farming is always hard – but the Spartan system seems tailor made to push these subsistence farmers deeper and deeper into misery.

The instances of brutality against the helots – the murders and humiliations – which our sources preserve are directed at helot men, but it seems an unavoidable assumption that helot women were also treated poorly. Spartiate women were, after all, products of the same society which trained young men to ambush and murder helot men at night for no reason at all – it strikes me as an enormous and unsubstantiated leap to assume they were, for some reason, kind to their own female domestic servants.

In fact, the one thing we do know about spartiates – men and women alike – is that they seem to have held all manual laborers in contempt, regarding farming, weaving and crafting as tasks unbefitting of free people. I keep returning to it, but I want to again mention the spartiate woman who attempts to shame an Ionian woman because the latter is good at weaving, which in the mind of the spartiate, was labor unbecoming of a free person (Plut. Mor. 241d, note Xen. Lac. 1.4). The same attitude comes out of a spartiate man who, on seeing an Athenian convicted for idleness in court, praised the man, saying he had only been convicted of being free (Plut. Mor. 221c). This is a society that actively despises anyone who has to work for a living – even free people. Why wouldn’t that extend to its treatment of helot women?

To this, of course, we must add now the krypteia and incidents like the 2,000 murdered helots recounted by Thucydides (Thuc. 4.80). While the murdered are men, we need to also think of the survivors: the widowed wives, orphaned daughters, grieving mothers. This must have been part of the pattern of life for helot women as well – the husband or brother or cousin or father or son who went out to the fields one day and didn’t come back. The beautiful boy who was too beautiful and was thus murdered by the spartiates because – as we are told – they expressly targeted the fittest seeming helots in an effort at reverse-eugenics (Plut. Lyc. 28.3).

Finally, we need to talk about the rape. We are not told that spartiate men rape helot women, but it takes wilful ignorance to deny that this happened. First of all, this is a society which sends armed men at night into the unarmed and defenseless countryside (Hdt. 4.146.2; Plut. Lyc. 28.2; Plato, Laws 633). These young men were almost certainly under the normal age of marriage and even if they weren’t, their sexual access to their actual spouse was restricted.

Moreover (as we’ll see in a moment) there were clearly no rules against the sexual exploitation of helot women, just like there were no laws of any kind against the murder of helot men. To believe that these young men – under no direction, constrained by no military law, facing no social censure – did not engage in sexual violence requires disbelieving functionally the entire body of evidence about sexual violence in combat zones from all of human history. Anthropologically speaking, we can be absolutely sure this happened and we can be quite confident (and ought to be more than quite horrified) that it happened frequently.

But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers. There is a strong reason to believe that these are the same as the mothakes or mothones which begin appearing with greater frequently in our sources. Several of these mothakes end up being fairly significant figures, most notably Lysander (note Plut. Lys. 2.1-4, where Plutarch politely sidesteps the question of why Lysander was raised in poverty and seemed unusually subservient and also the question of who his mother was).”

- Bret Devereaux, “This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women.”

[biracialdiaries]

The Biracial Diaries

America is known for being a diverse country. 17.8% of Americans are of Latin American descent. 12.7% are African Americans. 73% of Americans are Caucasian, and 2.9% of Americans identify as multiracial. 

Racism is something that’s a divide in America. Racism towards any race or party is very prominent. What’s not talked about as often is Racism inside the races themselves. 

(Before I continue, of course not all people are racist. I am not generalizing a specific people.)

I am half black and half white. I was adopted when I was 9 years old, by a white family and to this day I am the only person of color in my family. Growing up in predominantly white towns and schools, I always felt I acted a little more white. Therefore, I felt like I was neglecting my black side. I would seek out black people to spend time with them and try to be more like them. I’d watch their movies and listen to their music. 

Then I would feel too black. There was no way I could win. I looked up to famous women that I saw were biracial as well. Whitney Houston, Halle Berry, Nicole Ari Parker, Misty Copeland, and Paula Patton. I always wondered how they didn’t act too black or too white they had that perfect balance. Which I never thought I would achieve.

Growing up I was always told I look exotic. Or that I didn’t care if they used the N-word because I’m only half black. I learned how to do my curly hair by watching Youtube. My least favorite was to get asked,”What are you?” 

One of my coworkers once told me I wasn’t really black, because she’d be out in the fields and I’d be in the house. I’ve had black people tell me I would need a little more melanin before I could become a “sister.” 

Members of my family would call me a “darkie” or a “negro” not thinking it was offensive because it’s not the N-word. I would get told that I needed to stop hanging out with black people because it was obviously affecting the way I act and talked. 

I had a constant desire to straighten my hair, or get light colored contacts. In elementary school I was bullied because kids didn’t want to get the “black plague.” Lord knows what that means.

I knew it was bad when I came home from school and I begged my mom to let me bleach my skin. I begged and begged and she said no. She said one day I’ll grow up and realize just how beautiful, and blessed I was. That I had to learn to love myself. Because if I didn’t love myself, then I couldn’t expect anyone else to love me.

So I tried. I started to try to embrace my curls, I started to try to become the woman I wanted to be one day. It took years. A lot of crying myself to sleep, and crying in the bathroom. Looking at myself, hating myself. Trying to scratch the black away.

Hating God because he didn’t make me white. It was years of depression and anger. I had to change my whole thought process. Now I love myself, I’m the woman I want to be. I’m not just black and I’m not just white. I’m both and I’m proud. My diverse background defines where I come from, not who I am or how I act. 

That “perfect balance” was not about being the perfect caramel mixture of black and white. It was about accepting where I come from, who I am, and what I look like. Understanding that not everyone will accept me or love me. But, as long as I love myself, I am not alone. I am happy, I am whole. I am black, and I am white. I am Sedona.

[naxiens]

The Rise of Depression and the Cannabis Response

Are you experiencing depression? If so, you are not alone and are among the millions of Americans plagued by this mood disorder. A recent article shared new statistical details about how depression in the U.S. is on the rise.

Apparently the diagnosis of depression increased 33% between years 2011 and 2014. (1) Previously, The National Center for Health Statistics reported that antidepressant use jumped 65% in 15 years between 1999 and 2014: from 7.7% of Americans to 12.7% for those 12 and older, twice as high for women than men, and 19.1% for those 60 and older. (2)

The good news, they say, is that "universal depression screenings" are happening more routinely, and that this mood disorder is no longer in the closet: people are talking about it and treating it... with pharmaceutical drugs.

I am left to wonder why this depressive state has grown by leaps and bounds? For one thing, there's a whole lot that has changed in the world since January 1, 2000. It's enough to make anyone depressed. I probably missed something, below, but here are the examples I can recall:

September 11, 2001

The Patriot Act

Ongoing terrorist attacks both domestic and international

Mass murders at schools

Increasing opioid addiction and deaths

Multiple wars in the Middle East

Intense natural disasters: fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding, blizzards and droughts

The Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011

The economic crisis of 2008

Overpriced real estate

Earnings that don't match the cost-of-living

Increased homelessness

The divisive presidential election of 2016 and presidency of Donald Trump

Of course, this list does not include challenging personal situations most of us experience from time to time.

Pharmaceutical companies are the big winners.

Though most of the antidepressant-package inserts warn of one or another side-effect, pharmaceutical antidepressants are the ubiquitous 'go to" solution and coping mechanism for depression. Additionally, besides the side effects, many people report difficulty in getting off antidepressants when they are ready to do so.

Depression has been linked to increased neuro-inflammation. It is common knowledge now that inflammation is a precursor to many different disease processes.

Enter therapeutic cannabis.

Cannabis is known to reduce inflammation and holds  canabi medicinal great promise in studies about depression. (3) Due to its chemical  compounds, especially THC and CBD, actual healing, not just symptom masking, can occur to restore deficient parts of the brain and immune system. (4) It is non-toxic, cost-effective and has little to no side-effects whatsoever.

"... the team analyzed data from Strainprint, a mobile application cannabis users can use to track changes in symptoms after using different doses and cannabis chemotypes. Overall, self-reported symptoms of depression decreased by 50 percent." (5)

So why don't more people try cannabis medicinally before heading down the pharma trail? I suggest there are three main reasons:

The leftover stigma promoted by the Reefer Madness movie propaganda of 1936 and subsequent 1937 Marahuana Tax Act

The preference to trust doctors and what they prescribe

A general lack of knowledge about therapeutic, not recreational, cannabis use

A friend of mine used cannabis medicinally to help her recover from depression after nothing else worked. She said that it gave her back her life, which inspired her to share her experience with others.

As far as I can tell the multiple devastating events of this 21st century have radically changed the world from as we once knew it: disorienting at best and depressing at worst for those who know the difference. That said, I believe it is still absolutely possible to take flight from depression and remain emotionally and mentally well through it all with the assistance of responsible, therapeutic cannabis use.

The world may not change in ways we prefer but we can.

_____

(1) Olivia Goldhill, Depression diagnosis is up 33% in the US, and that's a good thing. May 14, 2018

(2) Laura A. Pratt, Ph.D., Debra J. Brody, M.P.H., and Qiuping Gu, M.D., Ph.D.. Antidepressant Use Among Persons Aged 12 and Over: United States, 2011-2014. August 15, 2017

(3) A. K. Walker, A. Kavelaars, C. J. Heijnen, and R. Dantzer, Neuroinflammation and Comorbidity of Pain and Depression. January 2014

(4) de Mello Schier AR, de Oliveira Ribeiro NP, Coutinho DS, Machado S, Arias-Carrión O, Crippa JA, Zuardi AW, Nardi AE, Silva AC, Antidepressant-like and anxiolytic-like effects of cannabidiol: a chemical compound of Cannabis sativa. 2014

(5) Cuttler C, et al., Cannabis use temporarily eases symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress. April 24, 2018

Susan is a 2018 graduate of the Holistic Cannabis Academy with over 45 years of personal involvement in the spectrum of wellness modalities. Her mission today is to intervene in the noise of modern life and help people identify and remove stressors that trigger their dis-ease while providing strategies towards a living experience of inner calmness, contentment and inspiration.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

End of Plague 12.7

Looks like Taylor has another piece of guilt to plague herself with.

This was a pretty good fight. I was absolutely right - Taylor did end up using a simple but clever tactic to turn the tide of it and stop getting knocked around so much. I really liked a lot of what she did here, including but not limited to playing dead to give herself time to think, the crawleidoscopes and the use of webs, glue and dyes to create a sticky situation for Mannequin.

(Look. I knew. You knew. We all knew, it was just a matter of time before that particular overused pun reared its ugly head. I valiantly held it off as long as I could, but in the end, I’m only human. Supposedly.)

Pacing-wise, it did feel like Mannequin’s last efforts stretched out more than they maybe should near the end, but not so badly that it ruins the experience. Besides, I’m liveblogging, meaning everything is more stretched out for me than for the average reader, so maybe it’s just me.

Other than that, I guess my only complaint is that Taylor found a way to spin her victory to a negative because of events she wasn’t in a position to stop, but that’s more a frustration with Taylor than with Wildbow’s writing. It’s completely in character, I just wish she’d learn to stop doing that, for her own mental health’s sake.

Maybe that’s why we had the bit at the end about Mannequin’s head? I mean this bit:

It was miniscule, but there was a drop of black fluid beading at the seam in the neck where the chain had been threaded.  Apparently that was enough of a flaw for Mannequin to abandon it.  I left it where it was.

Like Mannequin left his head behind because of a tiny flaw, Taylor is letting a (relatively, I mean; four lives is still nothing to scoff at) minor failure overshadow a major victory.

Next chapter, I’m guessing we’ll have Taylor beating herself up some more about the lives she failed to save rather than feeling good about the lives she did save. She’ll probably also be heading back to the Hive and see for herself what it’s like after the Shattering.

If she could, she would probably be trying to contact the Undersiders to hear how Tattletale is doing and tell them about the encounter with Mannequin, but just about every phone in town is busted now, so I don’t think she has any good means of doing so without physically going to their locations.

Actually, maybe that’s where she’s headed. She’s dealt with her territory like Coil wanted, so now she’s going to go follow up on Tattletale and/or Danny? Though I’m not sure she’s actually finished dealing with her territory just like that.

Whatever the case is, I’m looking forward to the next turn Wildbow’s going to throw at me. Maybe Taylor will run into another Slaughterhouse member soon? Who knows. (You do.)

So yeah, that’s it from me for today. See you next time!

[speersport]

Fenerbahce adds Starks to backcourt - News

Fenerbahce adds Starks to backcourt – News

Injury-plagued Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul added another piece to its backcourt by signing guard Markel Starks for the remainder of the season. Starks (1.86 meters, 30 years old) arrives from BC Igokea of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he has averaged 10.2 points on 45.2% three-point shooting, 5.6 assists and 2.1 rebounds in the ABA League as well as averaging 12.7 points and 6.8 assists in the…

[priyablog26]

Free Space Optics (FSO) Market: Analysis,Outlook,Growth Rate & Forecast 2020-2027

Global Free Space Optics (FSO) Market was valued at US$ 404.6 Mn in 2019 and it is expected to reach at US$ 1046.8 Mn by 2027, at a CAGR 12.7 %,( 2019-2027).

Free Space Optics (FSO) is defined as the line-of-sight (LOS) technology which uses directed Laser emitters or LEDs, that offer optical bandwidth Transmitters and Receivers to link video, voice, and data intelligent transfer. A single Free Space Optics link product may incorporate multiple transmitters with receiver/s to ensure adequate performance, in case of interference.

The free space optics is an optics-based technology which mainly deals with light propagation and wireless transfer of data for telecommunications and other networking reasons. FSO technology is usually used in free space that can be air, a vacuum, etc.

  The key operating players in the Global Free Space Optics (FSO) Market are also profiled in detail in the report to offer readers with a complete understanding of the competitive landscape of the target market. Major competitive strategies employed by key operating players in the market are described in detail, so that readers can get an accurate image of what is working in the market & what is likely to bring them sustained success. Along with this, the report also of serves the readers with a handy guide to what to avoid in the Free Space Optics (FSO) Market & remain free from the major concerns plaguing the key players.

 Sample Copy of This Report @ https://qualiketresearch.com/request-sample/Free-Space-Optics-FSO-Market/request-sample

 Free Space Optics (FSO) Market Key Competitors

Various key players are discussed in this report such as   LIGHTPOINTE COMMUNICATIONS, INC., PURELIFI LTD., PANASONIC CORP,  BYTELIGHT, INC., GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V., TRIMBLE HUNGARY KFT., WIRELESS EXCELLENCE LTD., PLAINTREE SYSTEMS INC., FSONA NETWORKS CORP., etc.

  Free Space Optics (FSO) Market Taxonomy

By Application

Disaster Recovery

Defense

Satellite

Healthcare

Security

Engineering and Design

Others

 By Region

 North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East &     Africa

   Get full Study @ https://qualiketresearch.com/reports-details/Free-Space-Optics-FSO-Market

 About Us

QualiKet Research is a leading Market Research and Competitive Intelligence partner helping leaders across the world to develop robust strategy and stay ahead for evolution by providing actionable insights about ever changing market scenario, competition and customers. QualiKet Research is dedicated to enhancing the ability of faster decision making by providing timely and scalable intelligence. We use different intelligence tools to come up with evidence that showcases the threats and opportunities which helps our clients outperform their competition. 

[bna1333]

Delay after alarm puts California spill response in question

Amplify Energy’s emergency response plan for a major oil spill like the one it’s now dealing with in coastal Southern California

 After an alarm went off in a company control room at 2:30 a.m. Saturday — signaling a rupture that would spill tens of thousands of gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean — the company waited more than three hours to shut down the pipeline, at 6:01 a.m., according to preliminary findings of an investigation into the spill.

 The Houston-based company took another three hours to notify the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center for oil spills, investigators said, further slowing the response to an accident for which Amplify workers spent years preparing.

 “How come it took so long? That’s a fair question,” said Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline consultant and private accident investigator from Redmond, Washington. “If you have any doubt, your action should be to shut down and close. ... Something’s not quite right here.”

 Pipeline control room alarms don’t always mean a leak and can be tripped by numerous factors — from a faulty signal from a sensor along the line, to a pump that goes offline and causes a sudden pressure change, according to Kuprewicz and other industry experts. But the alarms also are supposed to trigger immediate follow-up actions to quickly ascertain if anything is wrong.

 It’s uncertain why that process dragged out hours in San Pedro Bay, potentially worsening a spill that left some birds coated with oil and has stirred worries about broader environmental impacts.

 The cause of the pipeline break just offshore from Los Angeles remains under investigation. Early findings point to a ship anchor possibly catching the line and dragging it across the seafloor, tearing a gash in the half-inch-thick (12.7 millimeter) steel pipe.

 The timeline of the company’s response appears to contradict statements from Amplify’s CEO, Martyn Willshire, who told reporters on Monday that the company first became aware of the spill after receiving a report from a boat of a sheen in the water.

 Willshire acknowledged the company’s equipment was supposed to help detect spills, then said, “we did not have any notice that there was a leak” prior to the sheen report.

 In documents released Tuesday detailing the company’s actions, federal transportation officials did not comment on the time lag in shutting down the line or reveal any potential explanation that the Amplify executives may have offered.

Company representatives did not respond to emailed questions about the delay between the alarm and the shutdown.

 Problems with faulty leak detection procedures have plagued the industry for years, including during a massive 2010 oil spill that polluted 40 miles (64 kilometers) of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. In that case, an Enbridge Inc. pipeline leaked at least 843,000 gallons (3.2 million liters) of crude over 17 hours, even as alarms kept going off in a company control room.

 The company later settled pollution violations in the case for $176 million.

 The accident spurred calls for more stringent leak detection rules and the installation of more automatic or remote-control shut-off valves that can quickly halt the flow of oil in a leak.

 A dearth of such valves was also cited in another 2010 pipeline accident — a natural gas transmission line explosion in San Bruno, California, that left eight dead and dozens injured after the line continued burning like a massive blowtorch for almost 90 minutes before the line was shut down manually.

 Federal officials began crafting new leak detection and valve rules under former President Barack Obama, but they were never finalized.

 A new rule proposed last year under former President Donald Trump and now awaiting final approval would mandate more valves only for new or replaced oil pipelines, not the thousands of miles that are already in use. The change came after oil industry lobbying groups including the American Petroleum Institute said retrofitting lines with valves would cost up to $1.5 million per device.

 The pending rule does not set standards for leak detections, giving companies significant leeway in how sensitive to leaks their equipment needs to be, said Bill Caram with the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based group that advocates for safer pipelines.

 “It makes us worry for our country’s aging energy infrastructure,” Caram said. “We fear this could become a bigger and bigger issue.”

 John Stoody with the Association of Oil Pipe Lines said companies and industry groups are working hard to improve leak detection technologies. Fine-tuning equipment is part of that, to make sure companies can detect even small leaks but not have to respond to false alarms.

 “If you’re riddled with false alarms, people have a harder time reacting,” Stoody said.

[newscheckz]

Delay after alarm puts California spill response in question

New Post has been published on https://newscheckz.com/delay-after-alarm-puts-california-spill-response-in-question/

Delay after alarm puts California spill response in question

Amplify Energy’s emergency response plan for a major oil spill like the one it’s now dealing with in coastal Southern California depended heavily on a quick shutdown of the San Pedro Bay Pipeline if its sensors picked up a sudden loss of pressure. That’s not what happened, investigators revealed Tuesday.

After an alarm went off in a company control room at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, signaling a rupture that would spill tens of thousands of gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean, the company waited more than three hours to shut down the pipeline, at 6:01 a.m., according to preliminary findings of an investigation into the spill.

The Houston-based company took another three hours to notify the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center for oil spills, investigators said, further slowing the response to an accident for which Amplify workers spent years preparing.

“How come it took so long? That’s a fair question,” said Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline consultant and private accident investigator from Redmond, Washington. “If you have any doubt, your action should be to shut down and close. … Something’s not quite right here.”

Pipeline control room alarms don’t always mean a leak and can be tripped by numerous factors from a faulty signal from a sensor along the line, to a pump that goes offline and causes a sudden pressure change, according to Kuprewicz and other industry experts.

But the alarms also are supposed to trigger immediate follow-up actions to quickly ascertain if anything is wrong.

It’s uncertain why that process dragged out hours in San Pedro Bay, potentially worsening a spill that left some birds coated with oil and has stirred worries about broader environmental impacts.

The cause of the pipeline break just offshore from Los Angeles remains under investigation. Early findings point to a ship anchor possibly catching the line and dragging it across the seafloor, tearing a gash in the half-inch-thick (12.7 millimeter) steel pipe.

The timeline of the company’s response appears to contradict statements from Amplify’s CEO, Martyn Willshire, who told reporters on Monday that the company first became aware of the spill after receiving a report from a boat of a sheen in the water.

CEO, Martyn Willshire

Willshire acknowledged the company’s equipment was supposed to help detect spills, then said, “We did not have any notice that there was a leak” prior to the sheen report.

In documents released Tuesday detailing the company’s actions, federal transportation officials did not comment on the time lag in shutting down the line or reveal any potential explanation that the Amplify executives may have offered.

Company representatives did not respond to emailed questions about the delay between the alarm and the shutdown.

Problems with faulty leak detection procedures have plagued the industry for years, including during a massive 2010 oil spill that polluted 40 miles (64 kilometers) of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.

In that case, an Enbridge Inc. pipeline leaked at least 843,000 gallons (3.2 million liters) of crude over 17 hours, even as alarms kept going off in a company control room.

The company later settled pollution violations in the case for $176 million.

The accident spurred calls for more stringent leak detection rules and the installation of more automatic or remote-control shut-off valves that can quickly halt the flow of oil in a leak.

A dearth of such valves was also cited in another 2010 pipeline accident, a natural gas transmission line explosion in San Bruno, California, that left eight dead and dozens injured after the line continued burning like a massive blowtorch for almost 90 minutes before the line was shut down manually.

Federal officials began crafting new leak detection and valve rules under former President Barack Obama, but they were never finalized.

A new rule proposed last year under former President Donald Trump and now awaiting final approval would mandate more valves only for new or replaced oil pipelines, not the thousands of miles that are already in use.

The change came after oil industry lobbying groups including the American Petroleum Institute said retrofitting lines with valves would cost up to $1.5 million per device.

The pending rule does not set standards for leak detections, giving companies significant leeway in how sensitive to leaks their equipment needs to be, said Bill Caram with the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based group that advocates for safer pipelines.

“It makes us worry for our country’s aging energy infrastructure,” Caram said. “We fear this could become a bigger and bigger issue.”

John Stoody with the Association of Oil Pipe Lines said companies and industry groups are working hard to improve leak detection technologies.

Fine-tuning equipment is part of that, to make sure companies can detect even small leaks but not have to respond to false alarms.

“If you’re riddled with false alarms, people have a harder time reacting,” Stoody said.

[usgag]

Never has the hold of states over the economy been so strong

From the first confinement to the second, passing through all the intermediate stages, the French have been able to see to what extent the decisions taken by the executive power to try to slow the spread of Covid-19 limit their freedoms. These exceptional measures could be taken because Parliament had authorized it, by voting for a state of health emergency. The extension of this state of emergency until February 16, 2021 has certainly caused a stir - the opposition parliamentarians would have liked to be able to discuss the measures already taken and those which are being considered -, but, in essence, in France as in other countries, it was recognized that governments had to intervene, including by taking very coercive measures unthinkable in normal times. Here as elsewhere, citizens, their representatives and the press are not deprived of sometimes virulently criticizing decisions taken at the top of the State - too early, too late, ill-adapted, ineffective, etc. One fundamental point seems unchallenged: faced with a large-scale threat such as the pandemic, private or public initiatives taken locally cannot be enough. The state has a protective role to play and it must play it. Still rising deficits This intervention in the health sector has a strong impact on economic life, as we saw in a particularly spectacular way during the first confinement, from March 17 to May 11, much stricter than the current confinement, which, according to the first Banque de France estimates, should lead to a GDP loss limited to around 12% in November. Very quickly, activity fell by 30%, forcing the government to take measures to support businesses and help the most affected households. The general state budget for 2020 had been established on the basis of 244.6 billion in net revenue for 337.7 billion in expenditure, which left a deficit of 93 billion euros. Incidentally, it should be noted that from the start, more than a quarter of expenditure was not covered by revenue ... On March 23, a first amending budget law provided for a decline in revenue of 7.1 billion and expenditure in an increase of 6.2 billion, and therefore an increase in the deficit of over 13 billion. The confinement had been announced for two weeks, it was extended twice and the accompanying measures had to be strengthened. The second amending finance law of April 25 provided for a further drop in revenue of 36.1 billion and an increase in expenditure of 37.9 billion, or an increase in the deficit of 74 billion and even 76 billion with the so-called special accounts. On July 30, a third amending finance law reduced revenue forecasts by 24.5 billion and increased expenditure by 12.7 billion, which led to a further increase in the deficit of over 37 billion (39 billion with the special).

A crisis of 186 billion euros for the year 2020 alone ... At that time, we thought we were done with the budget measures, at least for this year. The recovery plan of around one hundred billion euros would be included in the finance bill for 2021. It was without counting without the second confinement. The draft of a fourth amending finance law for 2020, which was not at all planned, had to be tabled in Parliament on November 4. In particular, it provides for around twenty billion euros more to help businesses, employees and households in precarious situations. In total, the health crisis is expected to have cost 186 billion this year: 100 billion in lost revenue and 86 billion in expenditure. As for the deficit of all public administrations (State, local authorities, Social security), which was to stand at 2.2% of GDP this year, it is now expected at 11.3% of GDP, unprecedented since the end of World War II. Another figure showing the gravity of the crisis and the vigor of the government response: the weight of public spending should reach 64.3% of GDP this year, a level never before reached. Since the 2008 financial crisis, public expenditure has exceeded 55% of GDP annually; in 2019, it was possible to reduce them to 54% of GDP. The finance bill for 2021 plans to start a decline again and reduce them to 58.5% of GDP; but it was established before the second confinement ...

In the G20, 11,000 billion dollars disbursed Let those who see Emmanuel Macron as a dangerous socialist (yes, yes, there are still some ...) look at what has been done elsewhere: everywhere, the State has had to intervene, whatever the political color of the or parties in power. Those who have the courage can browse the IMF's regularly updated list of measures taken in 196 countries. Since the start of the crisis, around 11 trillion dollars have been spent by the top twenty world economic powers. As is the case in every crisis (the last time was in 2008-2009), when states, such as Germany or the United States, widely open their portfolios, we see comments like: c t is the rediscovery of Keynesianism, in reference to John Maynard Keynes who, in the aftermath of the 1929 crisis, had developed the theoretical tools to inspire vigorously interventionist public policies in the event of a downturn in economic activity.

Obviously, most of the leaders who take decisions today to support the economy have not read Keynes and their advisers are not all seduced by his theory which mainly inspires political parties on the left.

Even the American federal state intervenes massively The most obvious example is that of the United States, which notably launched an aid program, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economy Security Act (CARES Act), which is expected to cost around $ 2.3 trillion. This program provides, for example, for the sending of checks of 1,200 dollars per person (2,400 for a couple, 3,400 for a couple with two children). Donald Trump had insisted that the Treasury checks that would be sent in this context bear the following mention: "Economic Impact Payment, President Donald J. Trump". This requirement had obviously raised a lively controversy. Asked about this point during one of his press conferences, Trump replied, very comfortable: "I'm sure people will be very happy to receive a big, nice fat check and my name is on it." In an election year, it could be useful ...

Donald Trump Economic Impact Payment: pic.twitter.com/e12DSVHexg

— Ken Dukes (@BeyondKenny) May 11, 2020

We can then notice that in the fall, when Democrats and Republicans were discussing a new support plan in the Senate, Donald Trump, after multiple reversals, seemed ready to accept a plan of 1.8 trillion dollars, lower to the one demanded by the Democratic minority, but still very consistent. The Republican senators did everything to prevent an agreement: they did not want to further increase the federal state's spending and therefore its weight in the economy.

Public interventions demanded, but contested Very clearly, it would be wrong to see in the policies pursued here and there in recent months changes in political doctrine. There is simply a consideration of reality. This reality is both simple and complicated. Simple, because at the base, there is a strong requirement that we find everywhere: in our modern societies, it is no longer considered tolerable to let an epidemic decimate the population, science must provide the means to fight effectively against such plagues. Complicated, because the recommended solutions can cause strong rejection reactions (wearing a mask, curfew, confinement).

Le mouvement "Keep Britain Free" a organisé hier une manifestation anti-masque à Londres, alors que les masques seront obligatoires à partir du 24 juillet 2020 dans les magasins et les supermarchés en Angleterre #AFP @JustinTallis pic.twitter.com/c6BadllvYL

— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) July 20, 2020

The same problem is found in the economic consequences of the fight against the disease: it is not considered tolerable that the measures taken lead to the impoverishment of part or all of the population. But the implementation of this policy turns out to be complicated in a society which is itself complex. We see it with the debates on essential goods and the competition between small businesses, large-scale distribution and distance selling. The simplest solutions, like strict containment, are also the most expensive. As soon as we try to find more flexible methods with differentiated treatment, we inevitably run towards a risk of incomprehension and the rise to the niche of pressure groups defending particular interests. Who should pay? And we are far from being at the end of the difficulties. If the demand for a protective state, whether in terms of health or standard of living, is fairly unanimous, opinions very quickly diverge when the question arises as to who will pay the cost of this protection. Take a simple test. Start the discussion on the topic of expenses to be incurred for our hospitals. Say that we must substantially increase the number of beds in intensive care units, hire doctors, nurses and orderlies and sharply increase salaries in this sector to generate more vocations. And strongly criticize this government for doing nothing. You will for sure be heartily approved. Then observe that the overall deficit of all branches of Social Security, including the Old Age Solidarity Fund, should stand at more than 46 billion in 2021 and that the deficit of the sickness branch alone should approach 30 billion . Emphasize that the situation is serious and that we cannot continue like this, especially if we want to incur new expenditure to strengthen the hospital sector. Then suggest an increase in social contributions or a larger increase in everyone's contribution to the payment of their current health costs. It's a safe bet that this part of your speech will not be very successful. The suggestions are many when it comes to claiming expenses, they are less so when it comes to income.

A kind of recognition However, beyond the still very strong theoretical oppositions on the role of the State and the weight of collective spending, and despite strong tax competition between States, we see in the long term in developed countries, a tendency to increase. the weight of tax revenues in the broad sense (including social contributions). There are certainly very strong differences between countries and periods of stabilization or decline. But in the end, despite all that one can hear against power in general and politicians in particular, there is a kind of recognition of the indispensable role of the state, which cannot be limited enacting laws and maintaining order and security. Criticism is permanent, sometimes violent, but as soon as a serious problem arises, it is on the side of the State that we seek the solution. At the same time, we are also observing a very strong rise in importance of a few very large companies around the world. Faced with Google, Facebook, Apple or Amazon, governments seem to be losing their power. Conspiracy theories that governments are puppets manipulated by hidden financial powers find very fertile ground on which they can prosper. The reality is however quite different, and it will be necessary to refine the attacks against capitalism, which today has many faces.

The many faces of capitalism In China, things are very clear today. The regime adapts very well to the existence of very large private companies alongside public companies and one can easily be a billionaire and a member of the Communist Party. But make no mistake: the only boss is Xi Jinping. More and more often, in their annual reports, large listed companies think of paying homage to his thinking and criticism of government policy is strongly discouraged. Jack Ma, himself a multi-billionaire and a member of the Communist Party, should have known. The founder of Alibaba took the liberty, during a conference organized on October 24, to sharply criticize the organization and operation of the Chinese financial system. The response was quick. On November 3, the authorities announced the suspension of the IPO procedure in Hong Kong and Shanghai of its financial company Ant, an operation that would have enabled it to raise more than thirty billion dollars in funds. The message, no doubt, will be received five out of five by all the big and big bosses. At the other end of the spectrum, in the United States, we have a country that does not know about planning and leaves business behind. This does not mean that it is totally absent from the field of economics. We must never forget that the Internet owes its existence to computer research carried out within the Department of Defense, which has actively supported and continues to support aeronautics, space and, more generally, all high technology. On the other hand, the federal state does not intervene in the life of companies, except when they reach a size considered large to the point of endangering competition and innovation. In the past, this was particularly the case in the petroleum industry and telecommunications.

What to do with GAFA? Renewing the business fleet is a vital necessity for the United States. Lester Thurow, famous economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who died in 2016, explained it to us a few years ago: “It's true, we have a significant trade deficit. But we are always creating new businesses that investors from all over the world come to invest their money in. This influx of capital allows us to finance our imports. ” Today, many voices are raised to denounce the excessive weight of large high-tech companies. Even within the United States, they are criticized in particular for hindering the development of new businesses: as soon as one of them begins to emerge from the lot of start-ups, it is bought out. And, outside the United States, there are concerns about the tax optimization policy of these giants, which deprives states of significant tax revenues. Donald Trump, even if he hardly seemed to carry the big Californian groups in his heart, never did anything against them. Joe Biden could also hesitate to weaken these groups which contribute to the influence of American power in the world. On the other hand, it could be a little more cooperative within the OECD to reform the taxation of the digital activities of these groups. And it would not be negligible. When we see what the States have spent this year and what they will spend again next year to ensure the resumption of activity, we can without taking too many risks predict that the question of knowing who should pay will keep us busy in the next few years. We can certainly consider that the public debt should not be repaid, at least not in full, but we must not kid ourselves: in economics, there is no free meal. State protection comes at a cost. It will have to be paid for. And if we could get the money where it is, it would be better ... Recall that Joe Biden, if he refused to include in his program the most radical proposals of the left aid of the Democratic Party, pledged to reverse the cut in corporate tax and tax on the income of the better-off decided under the Trump presidency.

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