#Rated 70-74

[maltrunners]

Lagavulin 8 Year vs. 9 Year Game of Thrones

Review by: ZoidbergOnTheRocks Two young Lagavulin to mix things up a bit. In general I’m a fan of young Islays, and I was really happy to see Lagavulin make the 8 an annual release. I can’t honestly say that I remember how the GoT bottle stacks up, so let’s find out. Tasted on 11/7/2020, neat in a Glencairn. Lagavulin 8 Year 200th Anniversary This is the first 8 year old Lagavulin bottled for…

[euthymiya]

I cannot believe I’m finally free of this curse dear god

[todayisawthewhxlewxrld]

Spellbound

you might be void of feelings i fear i haven’t felt for anyone

synopsis// by no means did you hate soulmates, you just hated that he was your soulmate. not like megumi was ecstatic that he was your soulmate either. but that’s fine, both of you found someone else to keep you company.

status// finished!

updates// everyday unless said otherwise

warning// dating app!au, soulmate!au, college!au, no curses!au, enemies(?) to lovers, profanity, megumi and y/n are edgy pieces of shit <3, kys jokes, crack humor? i’m going back to my cringe 2020 smau roots with reaction images id say i’m sorry but i’m not, if any characters or dynamics r ooc take that up with the universe not me !!

☆ this smau wasn’t inspired by a song but the title was!! ‘twas inspired by spell strike by provoker, so besides the title and lyrics on here the song holds little to no relevance :) ☆

you might be the only one

might be the only one for me

feeling 1. young and stupid

feeling 2. child of divorce

feeling 3. no schedule just vibes

feeling 4. six feet under

feeling 5. this is my fight song

feeling 6. success rate

feeling 7. lone wolf

feeling 8. dumpster fire

feeling 9. retail therapy

feeling 10. be normal

feeling 11. the enemy has been defeated

feeling 12. enemies to lovers irl

feeling 13. exorcism

feeling 14. shut ur up

feeling 15. winner

feeling 16. hip hip hooray

feeling 17. swiped right!

feeling 18. silly little mystery

feeling 19. for no reason

feeling 20. i guess so

feeling 21. sigh of relief

feeling 22. relationship territory

feeling 23. don’t hmu

feeling 24. major in loser

feeling 25. fight club

feeling 26. jigsaw

feeling 27. ghosting

feeling 28. cold shoulder

feeling 29. before marriage

feeling 30. meant to be

feeling 31. a hunch

feeling 32. survival of the fittest

feeling 33. he knows

feeling 34. so close yet so far

feeling 35. (disrespectfully)

feeling 36. regressing

feeling 37. take pity

feeling 38. telepathy

feeling 39. betrayed

feeling 40. two birds with one stone

feeling 41. dead end

feeling 42. mass hysteria

feeling 43. an apology

feeling 44. baby’s first reciprocated love

feeling 45. psychological warfare

feeling 46. jealous

feeling 47. a facade

feeling 48. learning to coexist

feeling 49. with you

feeling 50. useless E information

feeling 51. good idea

feeling 52. break the peace

feeling 53. enjoy the peace

feeling 54. revenge

feeling 55. tolerable

feeling 56. catastrophic

feeling 57. fumbled

feeling 58. easier than you think

feeling 59. no downtime

feeling 60. caught red handed

feeling 61. for good

feeling 62. replace megumi with megumi

feeling 63. delicate

feeling 64. best bet

feeling 65. valid question

feeling 66. devils incarnate

feeling 67. patience is a virtue

feeling 68. grow and change as a person

feeling 69. megumi truthers

feeling 70. knock on wood

feeling 71. come find me

feeling 72. cryptic

feeling 73. more than aware

feeling 74. see the future

feeling 75. trying to be nice

feeling 76. why do you hate me

feeling 77. knight in shining armor

feeling 78. perfect paradox

feeling 79. idgaf war

feeling 80. stay like this forever

feeling 81. baby bird

feeling 82. found your way back

feeling 83. heart racing

feeling 84. loverboy activities feeling 85. megumi this megumi that feeling 86. protect you feeling 87. flirt back feeling 88. wingmen feeling 89. in love with megumi allegations feeling 90. more broken feeling 91. gets shirtless again feeling 92. 1 new message!

feeling 93. protecting your peace

feeling 94. tired of waiting

last feeling. a kiss and a fight

epilogue/bonus feeling. spy

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The two tracts of land at the edge of the ancient forest in Borneo were relatively small: One was just 74 acres, the other 195. They had also been heavily degraded by human activity. One site consisted of abandoned rice paddies, leaving barren spaces largely devoid of wildlife. The other was deforested grassland that caught fire every year.

But starting in 2009, people from neighboring communities were hired by a local environmental group to help restore the land. They planted native seedlings, yanked out weeds, dug firebreaks and watered the area during droughts. Aided by the region’s heat and abundant rain, the young plants, which included native hardwoods and fruit trees, grew swiftly, and soon created a canopy.

Late in 2020, cameras were set up on the replanted tracts. The land bordered Gunung Palung National Park, home to endangered orangutans, pangolins, white-bearded gibbons and macaques, and researchers wanted to see if wildlife was coming back.

Their findings were heartening. The cameras documented 47 species of mammals, birds and reptiles, 18 of them at risk for extinction, including an endangered Sunda pangolin and two endangered Bornean orangutans.

The study, recently published in the journal Tropical Natural History, shows that community involvement can play a vital role in restoring wildlife habitat and forest ecosystems, according to researchers.

“When we do community-run reforestation, things really grow back faster,” said Nina Finley, the research manager at Health in Harmony, an American nonprofit organization that conducted the study along with an affiliated organization in Indonesia, Alam Sehat Lestari, and staffers from the national park.

Earlier reforestation efforts with less community involvement resulted in young plants that were vulnerable to weeds and wildfires, Ms. Finley said. But after villagers were hired to regularly weed and water the land, the survival rate of saplings rose substantially, and is now above 70 percent.

Ms. Finley said that addressing the needs of the people living nearby first was key to the project’s success.

[femsolid]

TW: Trans activists

For more than a decade now, trans activists have been harassing those who belong to a feminist philosphy we call radical feminism or the women’s liberation movement.

Radical feminists, like most feminists, believe that men use sex to oppress women. Meaning they oppress women through sexual exploitation and by perpetuating sexist discrimination towards those who belong to the female sex. They were the first to research and expose violence against women as endemic and traumatizing, and to create shelters for rape and domestic violence victims. Those shelters are now being vandalized and defunded by trans activists.

Because radical feminists don’t believe in gender identities, gendered souls, gender roles or any form of innate personality based on sexist stereotypes, they have been receiving rape and death threats on a daily basis. The acronym “terf” was soon invented and is now used to describe any person who doesn’t support the trans movement, even if they’re not feminists, just as long as they're women, though lesbians and feminists tend to be the primary targets.

As a whole, the trans movement claims that its biggest enemy and threat, its most pressing matter, its most dangerous opponent is the women’s liberation movement or what they call “radfems” or “terfs”. This is where their energy and anger is directed, typically in the form of sexist and sexual harassment, intimidation techniques, violence, censorship and social isolation. So let’s talk about that.

From the book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace:

Cyber harassment involves threats of violence, privacy invasions, reputation-harming lies, calls for strangers to physically harm victims, and technological attacks.

Victims’ in-boxes are inundated with threatening e-mails. Their employers receive anonymous e-mails accusing them of misdeeds. Even if some abuse is taken down from a site, it quickly reappears on others. Victims’ sites are forced offline with distributed-denial-of-service attacks.

While some attackers confine abuse to networked technologies, others use all available tools to harass victims, including real-space contact. Offline harassment or stalking often includes abusive phone calls, vandalism, threatening mail, and physical assault.

The Internet extends the life of destructive posts. Harassing letters are eventually thrown away, and memories fade in time. The web, however, can make it impossible to forget about malicious posts. And posts that go viral attract hundreds of thousands of readers.

Online harassment can quickly become a team sport, with posters trying to outdo each other. Posters compete to be the most offensive, the most abusive. An accurate name for such online groups is cyber mobs. The term captures both the destructive potential of online groups and the shaming dynamic at the heart of the abuse.

Cyber harassment disproportionately impacts women. The U.S. National Violence Against Women Survey reports that 60 percent of cyber stalking victims are women, and the National Center for Victims of Crimes estimates that the rate is 70 percent. Of the 3,393 individuals reporting cyber harass-ment to WHOA from 2000 to 2011, 72.5 percent were female. The most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that 74 percent of individuals who were stalked on or offline were female, and 26 percent were male.

Researchers found that users with female names received on average one hundred “malicious private messages,” which the study defined as “sexually explicit or threatening language,” for every four received by male users.

According to the study, “Male human users specifically targeted female users.” By contrast, men are more often attacked for their ideas and actions. John Scalzi, a science fiction author and popular blogger, has found online invective typically situational. When he writes something that annoys people, they tell him so. People do not make a “hobby” out of attacking his appearance and existence as they do female bloggers.

The nature of the attacks similarly attests to bigotry’s presence. Hate expresses something uniquely damaging. It labels members of a group as inhuman “others” who do not possess equal worth. It says that group members are inferior and damaged. Bigotry conveys the message that group members are objects that can be destroyed because they have no shared humanity to consider.

Cyber harassment exploits these features by exposing victims’ sexuality in humiliating ways. Victims are equated with their sexual organs, often described as diseased.

Once cyber harassment victims are sexually exposed, posters penetrate them virtually with messages that say “I will fuck your ass to death you filthy fucking whore, your only worth on this planet is as a warm hole to stick my cock in.” 

Rape threats profoundly impact women: over 86 percent of rape victims are female. Virtual elimination may follow the imagined penetration: “First I’ll rape you, then I’ll kill you.”

One woman who faced online abuse noted, “Someone who writes ‘You’re just a cunt’ is not trying to convince me of anything but my own worthlessness.” Despite the gravity of their predicaments, cyber harassment victims are often told that nothing can or should be done about online abuse. Journalists, bloggers, lay observers, and law enforcement officials urge them to ignore it. Victims are called “whiny baby girl[s]” who are overreacting to “a few text messages.” Often victims are blamed for the abuse. They are scolded for sharing their nude images with loved ones or for blogging about controversial topics. They are told that they could have avoided the abuse had they been more careful.

A related message sent to victims is that the benefits of online opportunities are available only to those who are willing to face the Internet’s risks. They are advised not to expect anything different if they want to make a name for themselves online. The choice is theirs: they can toughen up or go offline.

The Internet is governed by society’s rules. Life online bleeds into life offline and vice versa. The notion that more aggression should be tolerated in cyberspace than in real space presumes that virtual spaces are cordoned off from physical ones.

Most victims do not report cyber harassment to the police because they assume that nothing will be done about it. Sadly, they are right. Law enforcement frequently fails to act on victims’ complaints even though criminal law would punish some of the behavior. Victims are told to turn off their computers because “boys will be boys.” Online harassment victims are told that nothing can be done; they are advised to ignore rape and death threats. During the summer of 2013, high-profile women were subjected to a torrent of online threats. The feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez received hundreds of graphic rape threats via Twitter after her successful campaign to feature more female images on British banknotes.

Members of Parliament and female writers who publicly supported Criado-Perez faced the same, including bomb threats. One tweet featured a picture of a masked man holding a knife with the message, “I’m gonna be the first thing u see when u wake up.”

Because the Internet serves as people’s workspaces, professional networks, résumés, social clubs, and zones of public conversation, it deserves the same protection as offline speech. No more, no less.

Without doubt, the free speech interests at stake are weighty. Free expression is crucial to our ability to govern ourselves, to express our thoughts, and to discover truths. For that reason, government cannot censor ideas because society finds them offensive. Truthful speech must not be banned just because it makes people uncomfortable.

But credible threats, certain defamatory falsehoods, social security numbers, and nude images posted without consent contribute little to discourse essential for citizens to govern themselves and discover truths. Their net effect is the silencing of victims. Victims could blog, post videos, and engage on social networks without fear of destructive cyber harassment. They could raise money using networked tools unencumbered by rape threats, reputation-harming lies, and distributed- denial- of- service attacks. They could take advantage of all of the expressive opportunities available online. Protecting against online harassment would secure the necessary preconditions for victims’ free expression.

With the help of law and the voluntary efforts of Internet intermediaries, parents, and teachers, we might someday achieve a free and equal Internet. We need to take action before cyber harassment becomes a normal feature of online interactions. A hostile online environment is neither inevitable nor desirable. We should not squander this chance to combat discriminatory online abuse; it is early enough in our use of networked tools to introduce equality of opportunity as a baseline norm of interaction.

[katyspersonal]

Let's try to count female (?) characters in Elden Ring!

1) Marika

2) Malenia

3) Melina

4) Trina

5) Ranni

6) Rennala

7) Rellana

8) Moonrithyll

9) Finlay

10) Tiche

11) Alecto

12) Lansseax

13) Florissax

14) Sellen

15) Dolores

16) Therolina

17) Nepheli

18) Roderika

19) Fia

20) Vyke's Maiden

21, 22) Irina and Hyetta

23) that Finger Maiden who is found dead at Church of Anticipation

24) Enia

25) Tanith

26) Rya

27) Dancer of Ranah

28) Rakshasa

29) Tricia

30) Lhutel

31) Latenna

32) Phillia

33) non-respawning Albinauric woman behind Gaius' boss battle (it is still hysterical that she is the one who drops pants from his set btw fffkffkf)

34) Loretta

35) Adula

36) Leda

37) Freyja

38) Gloam-Eyed Queen

39) Romina

40) Hornsent Grandam

41, 42) Jolan and Anna

43) Hilde

44) Meera

45) Blue Dancer / Water Fairy

46) Devonia

47) Siluria

48) Formless Mother (?)

49) Metyr

50) Nanaya

51) Jori

52) Grandmother

53, 54) those Nox women whom puppetry originates from

55, 56) Aurelia and Aurelitte

57) the first Astrologer who discovered a Moon

58) Anastasia

59) Daedicar

60) Lanya

61) Lacrima

62) Boc's mother

63, 64, 65, 66) Gilika, Maggie, Margot and Marigga (named Demi-Human Queens)

67) Grana (it is a name of the one behind Witch Crown from cut content, but basically it is the woman among the portraits in Debate Parlour! I doubt this is Sellen because why would they keep face of enemy of the Academy?)

68) the woman whose body was used for Sellen to live in it again (she has Witch Crown too but it's crystal is not cracked like Sellen's, and given that 'witch' conspectus did exist.. yeah this is more likely a person another Seluvis's victim than not)

69) Millicent

70, 71, 72, 73) Mary, Maureen, Amy and Polianna (Millicent's sisters)

74) the sixth sister (there is a scarlet flower near Malenia but she is said to only bloom second time in her boss battle, and near that flower you find the same set as what other two are wearing)

75) Greyoll

76) Eleonora

77) Bernahl's Maiden

78) Miriam

79) Arghanthy

80) Twinbird

81) Cleanrot Knight in Stillwater Cave (what makes her stand out is that you find the set Gowry wears here! otherwise this set doesn't have connection with Scarlet Rot (which this cave is filled with) but is simply a set of sorcerers that got kicked for herecy. maybe this cave is where Gowry did something with his glintstone to be able to possess any Kindred of Rot body, and perhaps she helped him with it?)

82) single Nox Swordstress as a boss in Sellia

83) a Black Knife with unique wounded model unlike any other of them in Deathtouched Catacombs

84) wife of Garris

85) Jar Bairn

Potentially:

86) there is 'Gaia' mentioned as someone who studied Gravity Magic along with Gaius, and apparently it is not mistranslation of Ogha. the only one it could be is his BOAR xD this name sounds feminine though, so maybe boar is a she?

87) Fortissax's gender is not confirmed; Japanese description doesn't have any pronouns at all, so English just said 'it'! However, Godrick monologues to the dead drake that they're "both relatives of the dragons", which could be literal considering Godwyn and Fortissax were so close 🤔

88) Eiglay (Eglė is "the Queen of the Serpents" in Lithuanian folklore, and I don't think you need me to tell you the two names are similar ahahah)

89) Asimi (cut content but Mimic Tear was supposed to be the girl who bonded with us first, it is hard to tell whether we can count the final one as Asimi or not)

90, 91) two 'female' Mimic Tears from four of these hostile NPCs (I feel like Silverfolk origin for Tarnished descends from Silver Tears rather than Albinaurics, so they can become solid people! these two perhaps are just fleshed out in this form at this rate! these do respawn though, so it is hard to tell if they count, or if this is actually their gender and not just mimicry)

92) Miranda (in cut content it was the first floral Crucible known, for now this is the name of the big flowers, two of which are also Dungeon bosses! however, ALL of them are called 'Miranda flowers', so maybe the actual character Miranda whom flowers with the same name descended from is still palatable!)

[redistrictgirl]

As of September 22nd, 2024, Kamala Harris is moderately favored (74% chance) in the race for the presidency.

Never mind, something happened.

Not in Nebraska, mind you, where it seemed Republicans would get their wish of a winner-take-all system. The effort appears to have fallen short by just one vote.

But state-level polling has reflected a post-debate bounce for Vice President Harris in a way that national polls just haven't, especially in the Rust Belt. As such, former President Trump's paths to victory seem to be getting narrower and narrower. The battlefield at large has also narrowed as about a tenth of last week's undecided voters have committed to a candidate, with states like Iowa, Florida, Virginia, and Maine showing over 19-in-20 odds for their favorite. With that said, let's go over the closest states:

Arizona (50% chance for Trump) - The Grand Canyon State is about as neck-and-neck as you'd expect from 2020, with both candidates leading polls here this week. Mr. Trump did hit 50% in an Emerson poll, which is enough to maintain an edge in that department, but the overall rating, once you factor in fundamentals, is a genuine coin flip.

North Carolina (51% chance for Trump) - Ms. Harris at this point holds a slim lead in polling in the Tar Heel State, but my model expects some reversion to the mean in a highly polarized southern state. Overall, the advantages each candidate holds here are actually opposite to Arizona, so I feel like the median outcome really is each party winning one of these coveted Sun Belt tossups.

Georgia (70% chance for Trump) - The narrowing window for upsets really puts an exclamation mark on this state, where the former president gets his first 50% and consistently leads in the polls. There's still a meaningful window for the Vice President - the southern trend of reversion to the mean actually helps her somewhat here.

Nevada (75% chance for Harris) - Now, we move onto vulnerable states for Democrats, though we remain in the Sun Belt. Ms. Harris hit 51% in a Morning Consult poll this week - genuinely impressive! - but my model isn't convinced that she's truly consolidated majority support here.

Wisconsin (79% chance for Harris) - The polls say that Mr. Trump is down by two points and that only about 3.5 percent of voters remain undecided for a head-to-head. Remember that not all undecideds will commit to a candidate (historically this number is about two-thirds), so... yes, he's in deep trouble here, though it's not insurmountable, especially if the polls actually miss. As always, the fundamentals point towards a substantially closer race.

Now, let's go over the elephants in the room... or perhaps the donkeys?

Pennsylvania (80% chance for Harris) - The Keystone State rocketed towards Democrats this week on the heels of an extremely robust polling sample. Only one out of ten polls showed Ms. Harris under 49% of the vote here or gave the Republican a lead. That's a very brutal combination. The polling still isn't as commanding for Democrats as it is in Wisconsin, but the fundamentals are a lot rosier for them.

Michigan (90% chance for Harris) - Good lord. If you're wondering why this number is so high, look at this week's polling. 52% for Harris, 52% for Harris, 50%, 51%. It seems clear at this point that she has the support of a majority of voters in the state.

Overall, this race has very much begun slipping away from the former President. At this point, he needs at least one genuine upset in the Blue Wall while holding onto two coin flips in the Sun Belt. That math is tricky, and unless the Vice President's numbers start coming back down to earth or a genuine polling error happens, it will be an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk. And things could still change - he still has one-in-four odds, after all - but all the pressure is clearly on him.

[ratethisalbum]

#175) UNDERTALE Soundtrack

Toby Fox

Suggested by: Anonymous

-

Spotify ~ Youtube

(Remember to listen first, then rate!)

-

Tracklist:

1 Once Upon a Time

2 Start Menu

3 Your Best Friend

4 Fallen Down

5 Ruins

6 Uwa!! So Temperate

7 Anticipation

8 Unnecessary Tension

9 Enemy Approaching

10 Ghost Fight

11 Determination

12 Home

13 Home (Music Box)

14 Heartache

15 sans.

16 Nyeh Heh Heh!

17 Snowy

18 Uwa!! So Holiday

19 Dogbass

20 Mysterious Place

21 Dogsong

22 Snowdin Town

23 Shop

24 Bonetrousle

25 Dating Start!

26 Dating Tense!

27 Dating Fight!

28 Premonition

29 Danger Mystery

30 Undyne

31 Waterfall

32 Run!

33 Quiet Water

34 Memory

35 Bird That Carries You Over A Disproportionately Small Gap

36 Dummy!

37 Pathetic House

38 Spooktune

39 Spookwave

40 Ghouliday

41 Chill

42 Thundersnail

43 Temmie Village

44 Tem Shop

45 NGAHHH!

46 Spear of Justice

47 Ooo

48 Alphys

49 It's Showtime!

50 Metal Crusher

51 Another Medium

52 Uwa!! So HEATS!!

53 Stronger Monsters

54 Hotel

55 Can You Really Call This A Hotel, I Didn't Receive A Mint On My Pillow Or Anything

56 Confession

57 Live Report

58 Death Report

59 Spider Dance

60 Wrong Enemy !?

61 Oh! One True Love

62 Oh! Dungeon

63 It's Raining Somewhere Else

64 CORE Approach

65 CORE

66 Last Episode!

67 Oh My…

68 Death by Glamour

69 For the Fans

70 Long Elevator

71 Undertale

72 Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans

73 The Choice

74 Small Shock

75 Barrier

76 Bergentruckung

77 ASGORE

78 You Idiot

79 Your Best Nightmare

80 Finale

81 An Ending

82 She's Playing Piano

83 Here We Are

84 Amalgam

85 Fallen Down (Reprise)

86 Don't Give Up

87 Hopes and Dreams

88 Burn In Despair!

89 SAVE The World

90 His Theme

91 Final Power

92 Reunited

93 Menu (Full)

94 Respite

95 Bring It In, Guys!

96 Last Goodbye

97 But the Earth Refused to Die

98 Battle Against A True Hero

99 Power of "NEO"

100 MEGALOVANIA

101 Good Night

[crevicedwelling]

hi.. i want to get a pet centipede (a flagtail centipede), but looking at places online isnt helping me figure out how much space they need or if they need extra heat. what do you recommend?

well, I’ve tried just about everything and 8/10 of the wild caught Alipes grandidieri I’ve kept have died without ever eating anything and I’ve heard more or less the same from nearly everyone who’s kept them. they are very fragile and almost always in poor shape after being imported, so expect yours to die. it’s beginner-friendly in terms of size and habit, but I would rate it as extremely difficult to establish in captivity, at least in the US where the imports are so unhealthy.

successes:

one female on eggs; brooded, molted, lived for about 2y with me and ate live prey. kept at room temp (~70-74°F), died of unknown causes.

one unsexed individual; eats live prey. have had for several months at same temperatures and is experiencing bizarre “bleaching” of all pigmented tissues, still seems active and healthy otherwise. still alive

the rest needed to be assist fed, and none of them molted before withering away.

try something warmer, maybe? I still can’t figure out if they like drier or wetter environments and have mostly given up trying to rehabilitate wild caught and am trying to get a gravid female again to start from a blank slate. the captive hatched babies thrived in captivity in fairly similar conditions and grew very quickly, but unfortunately desiccated when I was away for a while.

[tropic-havens]

April 3 is Haitian Women’s Day.

The literacy rates for Haitian young women aged 15 to 24 years is 70% against 74% for young men. They are likely to leave school at the secondary earlier than boys.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Chris Dall, MA

New data published yesterday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) show older adults continue to be hospitalized for COVID-19 at a much higher rate than other age groups.

The data analyzed by the COVID-Net Surveillance team, which includes researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state public health departments, show that cumulative rates of COVID-19 hospitalization from October 2023 through April 2024 were the lowest for all adult age groups during the October-to-April surveillance period since the first year of the pandemic. An estimated 40,761 COVID-19–associated hospitalizations occurred during the surveillance period, 38,900 of them in adults ages 18 and older.

But adults ages 65 and older accounted for 70% of all adult COVID-associated hospitalizations, and hospitalization rates were highest among those ages 75 and older, with nearly one COVID-associated hospitalization for every 100 persons. Relative to adults ages 18 to 49 years, cumulative hospitalization rates among adults aged 65 to 74 and over 75 years during the surveillance period were 7.3 and 24.1 times as high, respectively.

"These findings suggest that COVID-19–associated hospitalization among adults aged ≥65 years remains a public health concern," the study authors wrote.

Racial and ethnic disparities, low vaccination rates The data, collected from 90 counties across 12 states, also showed that disparities in COVID-19 hospitalization by race and ethnicity have decreased but continue to persist.

During the surveillance period, hospitalization rates were highest among non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) and non-Hispanic black adults; rates among both groups were 1.4 and 1.3 times higher than those among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White adults, respectively. Data from the July 2021 to August 2022 surveillance period showed that age-adjusted COVID hospitalization rates were twice as high for AI/AN and Black adults compared with White adults.

Another significant finding from the report is that among a sample of 1,320 adults hospitalized for COVID-19, 88.1% had not received the 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine and 57.7% had not received the 2022-23 vaccine.

"Receipt of COVID-19 vaccine has been demonstrated to reduce the risk for COVID-19–associated hospitalization," the authors wrote.

Further analysis of that sample found that 80% had at least two underlying medical conditions and 16.6% were residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Among all in-hospital deaths, 45% occurred in patients aged 75 and older.

The authors say that adults 65 and older can reduce their risk for COVID-19–associated hospitalization by receiving recommended COVID-19 vaccines, adopting measures to reduce their risk of infections, and seeking early outpatient COVID-19 antiviral treatment.

Antiviral treatments underused in older adults But in another study published yesterday in MMWR, a team led by CDC researchers found that COVID-19 antiviral treatment remains underutilized in older adults.

The findings, based on electronic health record data on 393,390 patients aged 65 and older who received a COVID-19 diagnosis at 28 US healthcare systems, show that from April 2022 through September 2023, only 45.9% received recommended COVID-19 antivirals treatments (nirmatrelvir-ritonavir, molnupiravir, monoclonal antibody, or remdesivir). The percentages were even lower among those ages 75 to 89 (43.5%) and over 90 (35.2%).

Patients aged 75 to 89 and over 90 years had 1.17 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.15 to 1.19) and 1.54 (95% CI, 1.49 to 1.61) times the adjusted odds of being untreated, respectively, compared with those aged 65 to 74 years.

Although the study did not investigate the reasons why older patients didn't receive COVID-19 antiviral treatments, the researchers note that frequent self-reported reasons for nonuse of antivirals include the presence of mild signs and symptoms, lack of awareness of eligibility, and absence of a provider recommendation. Other reasons cited include delays in seeking treatment and missing the treatment window (5 to 7 days after symptom onset) and concerns about drug interactions.

Whatever the reason, the authors say improving COVID-19 antiviral use among older adults should be a public health priority, given that older age is a strong risk-factor for severe COVID-19–associated outcomes.

"In addition to vaccination and access to early sensitive diagnostics such as polymerase chain reaction testing, COVID-19 treatment should be routinely discussed with older adults with mild or moderate COVID-19," they wrote. "Public health efforts to address provider hesitancy and patient knowledge of COVID-19 antivirals and to eliminate barriers to COVID-19 diagnostics and treatment are needed, especially among older adults."

Studies referenced: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7339a3.htm?s_cid=mm7339a3_w www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7339a2.htm?s_cid=mm7339a2_w

[maltrunners]

Bruichladdich 16 Year The Sixteens First Growth Cuvée A: Pauillac (Château Lafite-Rothschild)

Review by: TOModera So that’s a long name… may have missed the last part. This is part of the reviews for the recent Feather’s Pub meetup , with other redditors, out beyond our natural habitats, drinking like fools. I’m also going in reverse order due to a tick that burrowed into my brain when I was younger. Or rather, because I wanna. So the night is going well. I’ve skipped Lowland…

[girlactionfigure]

🟦 Latest Updates from Israel  

✡️ Tonight is SUKKOT.. Sukkot celebrates the gathering of the harvest and commemorates the miraculous protection G‑d provided for the children of Israel when they left Egypt. We celebrate Sukkot by dwelling in a foliage-covered booth (known as a sukkah) and by taking the “Four Kinds” (arba minim), four special species of vegetation.   https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4784/jewish/What-Is-Sukkot.htm

⚠️HOME FRONT COMMAND NOTICE.. Staying in the Sukkah during the holiday? The sukkah is not a protected space (from rockets)! If a warning is received, you should leave the sukkah and enter a protected space or a shelter in a nearby building. 

.. It is important to leave the access to the protected space LIT and clear of obstacles, so that it can reached it in a calm and safe manner. 

♦️INTERROGATION of captured Hezbollah Rawan invasion force terrorist, English subtitles:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yrj0bjqw_PqTpZm1EOnCRvcULcR9hqAx/view?usp=sharing

“Everyone fled, the commander of the area and his deputy, from the beginning, they already fled.  Lack of faith, people without religion, came to receive money and that’s it, they were afraid [of Israel]... they wanted to respond to an attack, advance into the Galilee, but after the assassination of Hassan (Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader), no one has seen any of them.”

♦️BEIRUT.. The IDF confirms: after six days, an attack was carried out in Dahiya, Hezbollah’s Beirut neighborhood, on an underground weapons warehouse.  The IDF is calling on the residents to evacuate the Da'ahia.

♦️ASSASSIN!  Iranian assassin caught.. thwarting of Iran's attempts to recruit Israelis continues: the Shin Bet and Yahbal Lahav 433 arrested a resident of Petah Tikva, who agreed to carry out an assassination in Israel for $100,000 and had already acquired a gun and ammunition.

♦️IDF ATTACKS.. A wave of attacks by the IDF in Beirut this morning.

♦️IDF CAPTURES.. its 5th Hezbollah Radwan invasion force terrorist.  From a soldier in the field: most of the Hezbollah terrorists fled and did not fight against our soldiers - and some also surrendered.

.. And Israeli flag spotted flying over Meiss El Jabal, south Lebanon.

♦️COUNTER-TERROR.. (Enemy report) Significant IDF forces moved from Kiryat Arba into Hebron overnight.

.. IDF security forces foiled two terrorist attacks, entering Jenin to kill a terrorist who was planning to carry out an attack in the immediate time frame, and the IDF captured a terrorist armed with weapons near the border fence seam-line area.

⭕HEZBOLLAH ROCKET HIT civilian home in SAFED overnight, 2 lightly injured - damage to the house.

🔹THE INTL POLITICS.. Iran informed the UN Secretary General last night of its intention to respond firmly if Israel attacks it.

🔹SYRIAN REBELS ON THE MOVE.. Intense gun fire reported on Aleppo front line between Syrian Army forces and Syrian Rebels.

🔸GAZA HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. The American administration: Hamas leader Sinwar shows zero interest in continuing the talks, so there is no negotiation taking place.  The Qatari’s however blame Israel: The Prime Minister of Qatar, on the deal for the release of the kidnapped-  "An agreement cannot be reached when one of the parties is not interested in it," he added, “especially in recent times, the side that failed was the Israeli.”

▪️HEALTH.. In the last decade and a half, decrease in the incidence of prostate cancer in Israel with survival rate increase.  Based on age and per 100,000 people, the incidence rate of invasive prostate cancer is 45.  From 2006-2021, a decrease of 7.5%.  

The main incidence of prostate cancer is at the age of 50 and over, with the majority age 70-74.

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against ASIA

Between 1996-2006, The US has given money and weapons to royalist forces against the nepalese communists in the Nepalese civil war. ~18,000 people have died in the conflict. In 2002, after another civil war erupted, President George W. Bush pushed a bill through Congress authorizing $20 million in military aid to the Nepalese government.

In 1996, after receiving incredibly low approval ratings, the US helped elect Boris Yeltsin, an incompetent pro-capitalist independent, by giving him a $10 Billion dollar loan to finance a winning election. Rather than creating new enterprises, Yeltsin’s democratization led to international monopolies hijacking the former Soviet markets, arbitraging the huge difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities and the prices prevailing on the world market. Much of the Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, and as a result of persistent low oil and commodity prices during the 1990s, Russia suffered inflation, economic collapse and enormous political and social problems that affected Russia and the other former states of the USSR. Under Yeltsin, Between 1990 and 1994, life expectancy for Russian men and women fell from 64 and 74 years respectively to 58 and 71 years. The surge in mortality was “beyond the peacetime experience of industrialised countries”. While it was boom time for the new oligarchs, poverty and unemployment surged; prices were hiked dramatically; communities were devastated by deindustrialisation; and social protections were stripped away.

In the 1970s-80s, wikileaks cables revealed that the US covertly supported the Khmer Rouge in their fight against the Vietnamese communists. Annual support included an end total of ~$215M USD, food aid to 20-40k Khmer Rouge fighters, CIA advisors in several camps, and ammunition.

In December 1975, The US supplied the weaponry for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. This incursion was launched the day after U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia where they had given President Suharto permission to use American arms, which under U.S. law, could not be used for aggression. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” The result was an estimated 200,000 dead out of a population of 700,000. Sixteen years later, on November 12, 1991, two hundred and seventeen East Timorese protesters in Dili, many of them children, marching from a memorial service, were gunned down by Indonesian Kopassus shock troops who were headed by U.S.- trained commanders Prabowo Subianto (son in law of General Suharto) and Kiki Syahnakri. Trucks were seen dumping bodies into the sea.

In 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis, the CIA helped topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, by telling Governor-General, John Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, to dissolve the Whitlam government.

In 2018 after the release of a suppressed ISC (International Scientific Commission) report, and the release of declassified CIA communications daily reports in 2020, it was revealed that the US used germ warfare in the Korean war, 2. Many of these attacks involved the dropping of insects or small mammals infected with viruses such as anthrax, plague, cholera, and encephalitis. After discovering evidence of germ warfare, China invited the ISC headed by famed British scientist Joseph Needham, to investigate, but the report was suppressed for over 70 years.

Between 1963 and 1973, The US dropped ~388,000 tons of napalm bombs in vietnam, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945. US also sprayed over 5 million acres with herbicide, in Operation Ranch Hand, in a 10 year campaign to deprive the vietnamese of food and vegetation cover.

In 1971 in Pakistan, an authoritarian state supported by the U.S., brutally invaded East Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. The war ended after India, whose economy was staggering after admitting about 10 million refugees, invaded East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and defeated the West Pakistani forces. The US gave W. pakistan 411 million provided to establish its armed forces which spent 80% of its budget on its military. 15 million in arms flowed into W. Pakistan during the war. Between 300,000 to 3 million civilians were killed, with 8-10 million refugees fleeing to India.

In 1970, In Cambodia, The CIA overthrows Prince Sihanouk, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, whose forces suppressed the large-scale popular demonstrations in favour of Sihanouk, resulting in several hundred deaths. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer Rouge (another CIA supported group), who achieve power in 1975 and massacres ~2.5 million people. The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, carried out the Cambodian Genocide, which killed 1.5-2M people from 1975-1979.

In 1969, The US initiated a secret carpet bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia, called, Operation Menu, and Operation Freedom Deal in 1970. An estimated 40,000 - 150,000 civilians were killed. Nixon lied about this campaign, but was later exposed, and one of the things that lead to his impeachment.

US dropped large amounts of Agent Orange, an herbicide developed by monsanto and dow chemical for the department of defense, in vietnam. Its use, in particular the contaminant dioxin, causes multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, still births, poisoned breast milk, and extra fingers and toes, as well as destroying local species of plants and animals. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange.

US Troops killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians, including women, children, and infants, in South Vietnam on March, 1968, in the My Lai Massacre. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Soldiers set fire to huts, waiting for civilians to come out so they could shoot them. For 30 years, the three US servicemen who tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned and denounced as traitors, even by congressmen.

In 1967, the CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in villages, in the Phoenix Program. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had executed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters.

In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.

Between 1964 and 1973, American pilots flew 580,000 attack sorties over Laos, an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes for almost a decade. By the time the last US bombs fell in April 1973, a total of 2,093,100 tonnes of ordnance had rained down on this neutral country. To this day, Laos, a country of just 7 million people, retains the dubious accolade of being the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita.

From the 1960s onward, the US supported Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The US provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, which was crucial in buttressing Marcos’s rule over the years. The estimated number of persons that were executed and disappeared under President Fernando Marcos was over 100,000. After fleeing to hawaii, marco was suceeded by the widow of an opponent he assasinated, Corazon aquino.

Starting in 1957, in the wake of the US-backed First Indochina War, The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos’ democratic elections, specifically targeting the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a member of any coalition government, and perpetuating the 20 year Laotian civil war. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an “Armee Clandestine” of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA’s army suffers numerous defeats, the U.S. drops more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves. This was later called a “secret war,” since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War, but got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed.

In 1955, the CIA provided explosives, and aided KMT agents in an assassination attempt against the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai. KMT agents placed a time-bomb on the Air India aircraft, Kashmir Princess, which Zhou was supposed to take on his way to the Bandung Conference, an anti-imperialist meeting of Asian and African states, but he changed his travel plans at the last minute. Henry Kissinger denied US involvement, even though remains of a US detonator were found. 16 people were killed.

From 1955-1975, the US supported French colonialist interests in Vietnam, set up a puppet regime in Saigon to serve US interests, and later took part as a belligerent against North Vietnam in the Vietnam War. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was later found to be staged by Lyndon Johnson. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward.

In the summer of 1950 in South Korea, anticommunists aided by the US executed at least 100,000 people suspected of supporting communism, in the Bodo League Massacre. For four decades the South Korean government concealed this massacre. Survivors were forbidden by the government from revealing it, under suspicion of being communist sympathizers. Public revelation carried with it the threat of torture and death. During the 1990s and onwards, several corpses were excavated from mass graves, resulting in public awareness of the massacre.

In 1984, documents were released showing that Eisenhower authorized the use of atomic weapons on North Korea, should the communists renew the war in 1953. The 2,000 pages released show the high level of planning and the detail of discussion on possible use of these weapons, and Mr. Eisenhower’s interest in overcoming reluctance to use them.

In the beginning of the Korean war, US Troops killed ~300 South Korean civilians in the No Gun Ri massacre, revealing a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Trapped refugees began piling up bodies as barricades and tried to dig into the ground to hide. Some managed to escape the first night, while U.S. troops turned searchlights on the tunnels and continued firing, said Chung Koo-ho, whose mother died shielding him and his sister. No apology has yet been issued.

The US intervened in the 1950-53 Korean Civil War, on the side of the south Koreans, in a proxy war between the US and china for supremacy in East Asia. South Korea reported some 373,599 civilian and 137,899 military deaths, the US with 34,000 killed, and China with 114,000 killed. Overall, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs—including 32,557 tons of napalm—on Korea, more than they did during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II. The US killed an estimated 1/3rd of the north Korean people during the war. The Joint Chiefs of staff issued orders for the retaliatory bombing of the People’s republic of China, should south Korea be attacked. Deadly clashes have continued up to the present day.

From 1948-1949, the Jeju uprising was an insurgency taking place in the Korean province of Jeju island, followed by severe anticommunist suppression of the South Korean Labor Party in which 14-30,000 people were killed, or ~10% of the island’s population. Though atrocities were committed by both sides, the methods used by the South Korean government to suppress the rebels were especially cruel. On one occasion, American soldiers discovered the bodies of 97 people including children, killed by government forces. On another, American soldiers caught government police forces carrying out an execution of 76 villagers, including women and children. The US later entered the Korean civil war on the side of the South Koreans.

In 1949 during the resumed Chinese Civil War, the US supported the corrupt Kuomintang dictatorship of Chiang Kaishek to fight against the Chinese Communists, who had won the support of the vast majority of peasant-farmers and helped defeat the Japanese invasion. The US strongly supported the Kuomintang forces. Over 50,000 US Marines were sent to guard strategic sites, and 100,000 US troops were sent to Shandong. The US equipped and trained over 500,000 KMT troops, and transported KMT forces to occupy newly liberated zones as well as to contain Communist-controlled areas. American aid included substantial amounts of both new and surplus military supplies; additionally, loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars were made to the KMT. Within less than two years after the Sino-Japanese War, the KMT had received $4.43 billion from the US—most of which was military aid.

The U.S. installed Syngman Rhee,a conservative Korean exile, as President of South Korea in 1948. Rhee became a dictator on an anti-communist crusade, arresting and torturing suspected communists, brutally putting down rebellions, killing 100,000 people and vowing to take over North Korea. Rhee precipitated the outbreak of the Korean War and for the allied decision to invade North Korea once South Korea had been recaptured. He was finally forced to resign by mass student protests in 1960.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US tested 23 nuclear devices at Bikini Atoll, using the native islanders and their land as guinea pigs for the effects of nuclear fallout. Significant fallout caused widespread radiological contamination in the area, and killed many islanders. A survivor stated, “What the Americans did was no accident. They came here and destroyed our land. They came to test the effects of a nuclear bomb on us. It was no accident.” Many of the islanders exposed were brought to the US Argonne National laboratory, to study the effects. Afterwards the islands proved unsuitable to sustaining life, resulting in starvation and requiring the residents to receive ongoing aid. Virtually all of the inhabitants showed acute symptoms of radiation syndrome, many developing thyroid cancers, Leukimia, miscarriages, stillborn and “jellyfish babies” (highly deformed) along with symptoms like hair falling out, and diahrrea. A handful were brought to the US for medical research and later returned, while others were evacuated to neighboring Islands. The US under LBJ prematurely returned the majority returned 3 years later, to further test how human beings absorb radiation from their food and environment. The islanders pleaded with the US to move them away from the islands, as it became clear that their children were developing deformities and radiation sickness. Radion levels were still unacceptable. The United States later paid the islanders and their descendants 25 million in compensation for damage caused by the nuclear testing program. A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem yr−1, well above the established safety standard threshold for habitation of 100 mrem yr−1. Similar tests occurred elsewhere in the Marshall Islands during this time period. Due to the destruction of natural wealth, Kwajalein Atoll’s military installation and dislocation, the majority of natives currently live in extreme poverty, making less than 1$ a day. Those that have jobs, mostly work at the US military installation and resorts. Much of this is detailed in the documentary, The Coming War on China (2016). 

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Douglas MacArthur pardoned Unit 731, a Japanese biological experimentation center which performed human testing of biological agents against Chinese citizens. While a series of war tribunals and trials was organized, many of the high-ranking officials and doctors who devised and respectively performed the experiments were pardoned and never brought to justice. As many as 12,000 people, most of them Chinese, died in Unit 731 alone and many more died in other facilities, such as Unit 100 and in field experiments throughout Manchuria. One of the experimenters who killed many, microbiologist Shiro Ishii, later traveled to the US to advise on its bioweapons programs. In the final days of the Pacific War and in the face of imminent defeat, Japanese troops blew up the headquarters of Unit 731 in order to destroy evidence of the research done there. As part of the cover-up, Ishii ordered 150 remaining subjects killed.

In 1945 during the month-long Battle of Manila, the US in deciding whether to attack Manila (then under Japanese occupation) with ground troops, decided instead to use indiscriminate carpet-bombing, howitzers, and naval bombardment, killing an estimated 100,000 people. The casualty figures show the US’s regard for filipino civilian life: 1,010 Americans, 16,665 Japanese and 100,000 to 240,000 civilians were killed. Manila became, alongside Berlin, and Warsaw, one of the most devastated cities of WW2.

US Troops committed a number of rapes during the battle of Okinawa, and the subsequent occupation of Japan. There were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa prefecture alone.1 American Occupation authorities imposed wide-ranging censorship on the Japanese media, including bans on covering many sensitive social issues and serious crimes such as rape committed by members of the Occupation forces.

From 1942 to 1945, the US military carried out a fire-bombing campaign of Japanese cities, killing between 200,000 and 900,000 civilians. One nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. During early August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing ~130,000 civilians, and causing radiation damage which included birth defects and a variety of genetic diseases for decades to come. The justification for the civilian bombings has largely been debunked, as the entrance of Russia into the war had already started the surrender negotiations earlier in 1945. The US was aware of this, since it had broken the Japanese code and had been intercepting messages during for most of the year. The US ended up accepting a conditional surrender from Hirohito, against which was one of the stated aims of the civilian bombings. The dropping of the atomic bomb is therefore seen as a demonstration of US military supremacy, and the first major operation of the Cold War with Russia.

In 1918, the US took part in the allied intervention in the Russian civil war, sending 11,000 troops to the in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions to support the anti-bolshevik, monarchist, and largely anti-semitic White Forces. 

In 1900 in China, the US was part of an Eight-Nation Alliance that brought 20,000 armed troops to China, to defeat the Imperial Chinese Army, in the the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-imperialist uprising. 

In 1899, after a popular revolution in the Philippines to oust the Spanish imperialists, the US invaded and began the Phillipine-American war. The US military committed countless atrocities, leaving 200,000 Filipinos dead. Jacob H Smith killed between 2,500 to 50,000 civilians, His orders included, “kill everyone over the age of ten” and make the island “a howling wilderness.”

Throughout the 1800s, US settlers engaged in a genocide of native Hawaiians. The native population decreased from ~ 400k in 1789, to 40k by 1900, due to colonization and disease. In 1883, the US engineered the overthrow of Hawaii’s native monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani, by landing two companies of US marines in Honolulu. Due to the Queen’s desire “to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life” for her subjects and after some deliberation, at the urging of advisers and friends, the Queen ordered her forces to surrender. Hawaii was initially reconstituted as an independent republic, but the ultimate goal of the US was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which was finally accomplished in 1898. After this, the Hawaiian language was banned, English replaced it as the official language in all institutions and schools. The US finally apologized in 1993, but no land has been returned.

[delicatebluebirdruins]

the creeping shadow reread

30th October

6 I hope Lucy kept the mirror for some reason

11 Poor Ted and Tina, lmao Dave "an angry tree stump"

Thursday 31st October

21 it IS an honest profession Skull

24 "Lucy, Lucy... it nevers end well"

33 "Lucy has been gone ages" bless Dave

37 adults can be helpful not this one

49 interesting word choice bud "why don't you hook-up with Anthony Lockwood again?" and why do we need a rating Harold? why would you need a rating of danger when you're going to destroy the Source????

60 is it Lockwood? Yeah it is "As I met his gaze, he smiled- and that smile was a world away from the 100-gigawatt version you saw in the papers. It was warm but somehow hesitant, as if it hadn't been used recently" it'd be so funny if she just closed the door on him, also the specific type of mess? him holding her laundry? I would rather die

66 I loved the tea making scene in the first read of this book and I love it now

70 just like how I love Lucy wanting Lockwood to beg for her return to the company "on bended knee"

[hey guys I wonder how this scene would play out in the show would we see Lockwood approach her door? or would we see him leave and smile at the baby steps I want option two because Cameron has an adorable smile]

74 Poor Georgie "George was pretty cut up about it"

76 hey more Listeners for my glossary card and the wiki

80 hey a Lockwood smile

85 complimenting Marissa

96 "mad and bad" just the way you lunatics like it right? "Penelope Fittes knew I had a reputation too." hahaha

103 "Studious unconcern" what are you think about bud?

108 black market hunting

111 was Holly going to ask what Lucy found in Jessica's room? (I think I had the same question last time as well)

Friday 1st November 2024

115 so glad we can't see Guppy

126 What's up Skull? "for a moment I thought I felt..."

131 Kipps being punished for being independent

134 big guy indeed

154 lmao Kipps "what do you idiots want now?"

157 happy Lucy "I couldn't help smiling back at him"

160 crowbars whoop!

176 "You waltzed off on a whim and left us to pick up the pieces"

184 I love this description and the emotional lockdown Lucy is on realising her place was broken into and the Skull was gone

191 "what's that rank smell?" Now is not the time + comments that kind of ruin the tension a little bit

195 (chapter 12) such an innocent picture of a guy sitting on bench enjoying the sun

202 chilling moment "its lifeless occupant with the twisted, broken neck"

206 I wonder what would have happened if she used her torch sparingly (and as a weapon? blinding her pursuers?)

218 Lockwood and George going overboard on dressing her wound

222 this hurts very much them keeping her room the same but also storage the idea of Holly staying over and where she would be staying

249 Lockwood not sharing the plan again and lmao Holly "it was like a bomb went off" like she knew Lucy wasn't the tidiest of people at the best of times so she had to realise. Also Lucy avoiding Lockwood's eyes is so funny

253 Poor kitty cats fuck Rotwell

260 folklore is so interesting and I want to know more about their research

264 Did Holly realise Lockwood was why Lucy left and making him look like that is her revenge?

270 what's moving in Flo's bag?

275 Hope the kid is okay?

281 I love you Skull and yes Lockwood and Lucy are dense

2nd Nov 2024

283 "missed you so much Lucy"

289 Ding! Ding dots are connected

291 Leopold recognising Lucy is great

294 Bless Flo

296 "Scariest of the lot" yeah Mrs Winkman is scary in that she doesn't really look it

299 "he pulled me to him" as things exploded

313 compliments "You're an amazing agent, Lucy"

316 "I found Lucy" adorable and I bet you flushed Lucy

321 the secretary is very sweet but alas is a tosser of the Orpheus Society

325 what did happen at the opening of Mrs Barret's coffin?

326 Immortal you say? interesting word choice

328 Jaw dropped competition

342 Fight the kid... do it

348 It is a bit severe execution for selling rotten meat pies

353 "spooning his stew round and round, as if by some alchemy it might become edible" I know that feeling Kipps

357 Electrical interference ding! ding!

363 RIP model ship

378 Lmao Lockwood does have a reputation

380 I love this smile

394 what is Lockwood thinking? "We could always do something much simpler"... when were you guys holding hands?

406 clever boys asking questions of all these coincidences

423 recognition "they stared at the baton, open-mouthed"

425 this is bad "we were loyal enough" and I really can't pinpoint why other than "you have to tell him no"

429 "oh God. Yes" lmao

437 "it was ugly, heavy, brutally functional" and very unwieldy

442 lmao Skull and into the unknown

449 why not name the Fetch instead of saying "a ghost"

450 Locklyle shipping "I'm glad I've got you with me. I think you keep me safe if anything. Right then, the cape wasn't the only thing that kept me warm"

469 Skull helping is great

475 I love George

481 love Lockwood saving Kipps

485 Suck it Steve

496 I love Holly

500 Chips are nice

503 Danny is very cute

510 why not both? Skull enjoys the view and gets to scare the toddlers next door and yes it is awkward

520 fuck off Rupert and always find information

524 Leave Kipps alone

528 dun,dun,dun

[transgenderer]

surprising facts i learned from the wikipedia page for down syndrome

The probability increases from less than 0.1% in 20-year-old mothers to 3% in those of age 45.[4] (1 in 30!)

Many (15%) who live 40 years or longer develop Alzheimer's disease.[67] In those who reach 60 years of age, 50–70% have the disease.[9] (genpop rate of alzheimers past 60 is like 10%!) The dementia that occurs in Down syndrome is due to an excess of amyloid beta peptide produced in the brain and is similar to Alzheimer's disease, which also involves amyloid beta build-up.[120] Amyloid beta is processed from amyloid precursor protein, the gene for which is located on chromosome 21.[120] Senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are present in nearly all by 35 years of age, though dementia may not be present.

they get these little white spots in their irises, call brushfield spots. think theyre harmless though

Although the overall risk of cancer in Down syndrome is not changed,[74] the risk of testicular cancer and certain blood cancers, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) is increased while the risk of other non-blood cancers is decreased.[9] 

People with Down syndrome tend to be more susceptible to gingivitis as well as early, severe periodontal disease, necrotising ulcerative gingivitis, and early tooth loss, especially in the lower front teeth.[87][88] While plaque and poor oral hygiene are contributing factors, the severity of these periodontal diseases cannot be explained solely by external factors.[88] Research suggests that the severity is likely a result of a weakened immune system.[88][89] The weakened immune system also contributes to increased incidence of yeast infections in the mouth (from Candida albicans).[89] People with Down syndrome also tend to have a more alkaline saliva resulting in a greater resistance to tooth decay, despite decreased quantities of saliva,[90] less effective oral hygiene habits, and higher plaque indexes.[87][89][90][91]