#Virtual Trial Management

[theconcinnitycompany]

5 Ways To Streamline Virtual Trial Management With The Right Tech Stack

As the world becomes increasingly reliant on technology, it is no surprise that the clinical trial field is following suit. Virtual trials, also known as remote or decentralized clinical trials, involve using technology to collect data and monitor patient health remotely instead of in a traditional brick-and-mortar clinic setting. Successful virtual trials are built on a technology stack that meets the critical needs of virtual trials. This blog post outlines five essential technical requirements that your tech stack must support to drive successful virtual trial completion. 

[sunderwight]

Liushen AU where SY transmigrates into SJ's older brother, and subsequently nopes them right out of the slavery backstory by using his general knowledge of the story and actually being an adult in a kid's body to just leave (basically) with SJ and YQ.

SY carts them both up to Cang Qiong for the next sect trials. It's actually not all that hard, the trickiest part is getting enough to eat and finding safe places to sleep between leaving the slavers and taking the trials (SY manages just barely, with considerable help from his new little brothers.) Nobody bothers to go after them because it's before Qiu Jianluo and this style of human traffickers mostly operate by virtue of their merchandise having nowhere else to go. Chasing down runaways is an expense not worth indulging, given that most of them either come straight back or die of exposure.

Anyway, they take the trials, and as expected YQY gets chosen to become a personal disciple for the sect leader, and SJ gets chosen by the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but also as (kind of) expected (by SY alone) nobody wants SY. He's older the Yue Qi, so too old, and unlike YQ and SJ his cultivation potential isn't striking enough to make any exceptions for him.

SY, however, can't leave it at that. He's spent more than five minutes with the street kid codependency gang, so he's gotten attached to both of them. And he knows what will happen if they're left to their own devices and The Plot proceeds accordingly. (Also, they keep threatening to not stay at the sect if SY doesn't stay too, for some reason.) So with a heavy heart and internal candle lit for himself, SY heads to Bai Zhan Peak. Which is the only peak that accepts disciples by way of them turning up and refusing to leave.

SY's not much of a fighter. He actually really hates the atmosphere on BZP, he's not bad at physical cultivation (his health's pretty good in this life, ironic considering how much worse his situation was) but the random ambushes and survival-of-the-fittest stuff is just not his brand. But that's okay, because it turns out that BZP actually DESPERATELY needs disciples on the actual peak who are interested in things other than fighting and cultivating their own strength. Stuff like, filling out requisition requests for An Ding every time things break, apologizing to An Ding every time things break again, organizing schedules, browbeating senior disciples into actually teaching, educating disciples on virtually any artistic or social skill, hosting lectures on how to beat vicious beasts without just overpowering them, and etc.

Okay so some of this stuff isn't and has never actually been on Bai Zhan's curriculum but Shen Yuan is going to make this place tolerable. And stop these children from needlessly getting acid burns or lyme disease or scurvy or whatever. He keeps internally chewing out Airplane for designing a sect system that means there are a lot of largely unsupervised 12-year-olds running around the wilderness on a mountain picking fights all the time. (When he actually meets Shang Qinghua and figures him out he switches to doing it in person, of course, in twice-monthly bitching sessions that look a lot like budding friendship.)

Of course one of the worst offenders is the Liu kid, who SY would suspect was actually raised by wolves if he didn't know for a fact that Liu Qingge has a younger sister, and also the kinds of nice clothing and letters from home that strongly imply not only does he have a family, but that the family is pretty well-off. Liu Qingge is at first deeply offended by SY being a BZP disciple. He rarely fights anyone, and uses tricks and evasion tactics whenever a fight can't be avoided. And he does other annoying stuff, like pestering him about meals and baths and lecturing him on identifying dangerous plants and the early signs of qi deviation. This is not what their peak is about! He should get with the program already! Just fight stuff until you're too tired to keep fighting stuff!

Also SY's younger brother, SJ, is pure evil (at least according to baby Liu Qingge) even though his other younger brother (?) is cool and nice.

Anyway, Liu Qingge stops complaining about SY after their first mission together, where Liu Qingge doesn't lose a fight but does get into a kind of pyrrhic victory situation where he's really badly hurt, and it's SY who helps him win (correctly identifying the monster and then pointing out its weakness) and takes care of him afterwards and gets him safely back to Cang Qiong. SY expresses surprise at LQG actually being polite to him, and LQG realizes that he's been a colossal ass if people think he wouldn't be grateful to someone who saved his life, so the usual Liushen dynamic proceeds from there. Liu Qingge starts bringing SY fans he leaves behind and hunts down animals that are supposed to be useful for bolstering weak cultivation, SY invites LQG to tea and keeps the critters as pets, etc etc.

SY doesn't get the Head Disciple position, because that's only acquired via beating the current peak lord in combat and lol no. Also he's not interested in stealing it from Liu Qingge, to whom it rightfully belongs (in his mind). But that's fine, because Liu Qingge takes the position when the next generation ascends and then he lets SY exclusively handle all the peak duties SY actually likes (mainly teaching). It's perfect -- Liu Qingge gets to focus on his War God antics and occasional administration/meetings without having to deal with students his has no patience for, but the disciples of BZP don't get neglected because SY is actually teaching and organizing classes and student care. BZP hasn't enjoyed a golden age like this since it was founded!

Things are pretty good overall, but Shen Yuan knows that it's only a matter of time before The Plot shows up, and so he can't rest completely easily.

Meanwhile, the will-they-or-won't-they bets on Liushen have been going strong for a while now. The thing is, most of their martial siblings are convinced that these two are already "together", and just being circumspect about it. Those who know SY well (like SJ, YQY, and SQH) know better but think that SY's romantic obtuseness is to blame, whereas those who know LQG well (LMY, WQW, and MQF) are pretty sure that it's actually LQG's obtuseness that's the problem. Of course it's actually both of them, so efforts to "fix" matters by getting through one of their thick skulls inevitably run afoul of the other's.

An additional complication is of course: SJ doesn't like LQG (mutual), and now that he's the leader of his own peak, he wants to poach SY to come and live there. Not only so he can have one of the 2 people he trusts actually close at hand, but also because SJ also hates actually teaching the atrocious little brats on his peak, and would like to have SY come and do it for him. YQY is still a total pushover for him too, and is also now the sect leader, so YQY agrees that SY can change peaks if SY and LQG both agree to it.

Liu Qingge, of course, is a no, but he's a variable "no". He's not going to hold Shen Yuan against his will or anything.

As for Shen Yuan, it's... complicated. He doesn't really like BZP, but it's gotten a lot better than it was at the start. These days he's actually pretty proud of his accomplishments, and it's more comfortable, but it's still a rough and rowdy place with fewer creature comforts, libraries, or other appealing points than QJP. Also, if he goes to Qing Jing to teach, he can personally ensure that SJ doesn't go around persecuting any of his students!

But... SJ never lived with the Qiu family in this AU, and even though SY's not totally clear on what the PIDW backstory for SJ was, he knows he's a better guy now than the scum villain in the book was. He has a reputation for making cutting remarks, not for being an abusive snake or a lecher. SY's honestly less worried about him doing anything bad at all, and there are other people on QJP who can teach. It might even be good for SJ to promote more people to fill out a social circle he can rely on! That guy needs more friends, seriously.

And QJP really doesn't need more layabout literary intellectual types who get into pointless arguments, which is all SY would be if he went there. Just yet another nerdy scholar for the rich kids with middling cultivation that the peak favors to ignore. At least on BZP he's filling a gap.

SY is clearly torn, and the fact that SY's considering it has LQG upset, and LQG doesn't handle being upset very well, so of course they have an argument about it. SY storms off to cool his head and LQG is like, this is it, he's gone to Qing Jing Peak, I've drive him off by being too aggressive and he's probably remembering all those times I told him he didn't belong here and oh no what have I done maybe if I build him a heated bath and get him books he will come back???

Turns out that SY just went to An Ding to vent at SQH while SQH was like "I think you would have fewer problems if you and Liu Qingge just got married and my disciples could call you Shigu to your face instead of behind your back" and SY threw melon seeds at him and sulked on his fainting couch (which is always cold for some reason...)

Thus begins the Liushen Divorce Arc where SY tries to be anywhere but BZP or QJP, Liu Qingge tries to figure out what thing he can punch to fix this not-punchable problem, SJ is like "I don't see what the big deal is they should break up Liu Qingge is awful and I want my brother to teach my classes for me" like the spoiled youngest sibling he's finally allowed to be, YQY is trying to moderate this Hades vs Demeter situation and is all "well maybe SY could spend half the year on QJP and half on BZP?", and Liu Mingyan is going "I know my brother if this doesn't work out he is going to die single and pining like an idiot" and so keeps conscripting other disciples to y'know, lock SY and LQG into storage closets together (ineffective: LQG can punch through walls) or at least get them in the same room (underestimating SY's willingness to yeet himself out of windows to avoid awkward social interactions.)

By the time Luo Binghe joins the sect (as a Qiong Ding disciple), the drama is in full swing and is the main topic of gossip across most of the peaks.

[fight-nights-at-freddys]

MASTER POST OF PROSHIP RESOURCES!!! <3<3

this is just for links (bc i just have No Way of formatting this properly), so for more in-depth stuffs and credits, head to the google doc, or the carrd !! :3c

Fiction ≠ Reality

Violent media -

Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When

Video Game Violence Use Among “Vulnerable” Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms

Extreme metal music and anger processing

On the Morality of Immoral Fiction: Reading Newgate Novels, 1830–1848

How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games

Examining desensitization using facial electromyography:Violent videogames, gender, and affective responding

'Bad' video game behavior increases players' moral sensitivity

Fiction and Morality: Investigating the Associations Between Reading Exposure, Empathy, Morality, and Moral Judgment

Comfortably Numb or Just Yet Another Movie? Media Violence Exposure Does Not Reduce Viewer Empathy for Victims of Real Violence Among Primarily Hispanic Viewers

Fantasy Crime: The Criminalisation of Fantasy Material Under Australia's Child Abuse Material Legislation

Being able to distinguish fiction from reality -

Effects of context on judgments concerning the reality status of novel entities

Children’s Causal Learning from Fiction: Assessing the Proximity Between Real and Fictional Worlds

Reality/Fiction Distinction and Fiction/Fiction Distinction during Sentence Comprehension

Reality = Relevance? Insights from Spontaneous Modulations of the Brain’s Default Network when Telling Apart Reality from Fiction

How does the brain tell the real from imagined?

Meeting George Bush versus Meeting Cinderella: The Neural Response When Telling Apart What is Real from What is Fictional in the Context of Our Reality

loli/shota/kodocon -

If I like lolicon, does it mean I’m a pedophile? A therapist’s view

Virtual Child Pornography, Human Trafficking and Japanese Law: Pop Culture, Harm and Legal Restrains

Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan

Report: cartoon paedophilia harmless

‘The Lolicon Guy:’ Some Observations on Researching Unpopular Topics in Japan

Robot Ghosts And Wired Dreams Japanese Science Fiction From Origins To Anime [pg 227-228]

Australia's "child abuse material' legislation, internet regulation and the juridification of the imaginationjuridification of the imagination [pg 14-15]

Multiple Orientations as Animating Misdelivery: Theoretical Considerations on Sexuality Attracted to Nijigen (Two-Dimensional) Objects

Positive Impact on Mental Health

Art therapy -

The effectiveness of art therapy for anxiety in adults: A systematic review of randomised and non-randomised controlled trials

Efficacy of Art Therapy in Individuals With Personality Disorders Cluster B/C: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Effectiveness of Art Therapy With Adult Clients in 2018 - What Progress Has Been Made?

Benefits of Art Therapy in People Diagnosed With Personality Disorders: A Quantitative Survey

The Effectiveness of Art Therapy in the Treatment of Traumatized Adults: A Systematic Review on Art Therapy and Trauma

The clinical effectiveness and current practice of art therapy for trauma

Writing therapy -

Optimizing the perceived benefits and health outcomes of writing about traumatic life events

Expressive writing and post-traumatic stress disorder: Effects on trauma symptoms, mood states, and cortisol reactivity

Focused expressive writing as self-help for stress and trauma

Putting Stress into Words: The Impact of Writing on Physiological, Absentee, and Self-Reported Emotional Well-Being Measures

The writing cure: How expressive writing promotes health and emotional well-being

Effects of Writing About Traumatic Experiences: The Necessity for Narrative Structuring

Scriptotherapy: The effects of writing about traumatic events

Emotional and physical benefits of expressive writing

Emotional and Cognitive Processing in Sexual Assault Survivors' Narratives

Finding happiness in negative emotions: An experimental test of a novel expressive writing paradigm

An everyday activity as treatment for depression: The benefits of expressive writing for people diagnosed with major depressive disorder

Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process

Effects of expressive writing on sexual dysfunction, depression, and PTSD in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse: Results from a randomized clinical trial

Written Emotional Disclosure: Testing Whether Social Disclosure Matters

Written emotional disclosure: A controlled study of the benefits of expressive writing homework in outpatient psychotherapy

Misc -

Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: Effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity

Treating complex trauma in adolescents: A phase-based integrative approach for play therapists

Emotional expression and physical health: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation?

Disclosure of Sexual Victimization: The Effects of Pennebaker's Emotional Disclosure Paradigm on Physical and Psychological Distress

Kink/Porn/Fantasies

Sexual fantasies -

A Critical Microethnographic Examination of Power Exchange, Role Idenity and Agency with Black BDSM Practitioners

Women's Rape Fantasies: An Empirical Evaluation of the Major Explanations

History, culture and practice of puppy play

What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy?

The Psychology of Kink: a Survey Study into the Relationships of Trauma and Attachment Style with BDSM Interests

Punishing Sexual Fantasy

Women's Erotic Rape Fantasies

Sexual Fantasy and Adult Attunement: Differentiating Preying from Playing

What Is So Appealing About Being Spanked, Flogged, Dominated, or Restrained? Answers from Practitioners of Sexual Masochism/Submission

Dark Fantasies, Part 1 - With Dr. Ian Kerner

Why Do Women Have Rape Fantasies

The 7 Most Common Sexual Fantasies and What to Do About Them

Sexual Fantasies

Pornography -

The Effects of Exposure to Virtual Child Pornography on Viewer Cognitions and Attitudes Toward Deviant Sexual Behavior

American Identities and Consumption of Japanese Homoerotica

The differentiation between consumers of hentai pornography and human pornography

Pornography Use and Holistic Sexual Functioning: A Systematic Review of Recent Research

Claiming Public Health Crisis to Regulate Sexual Outlets: A Critique of the State of Utah's Declaration on Pornography

Pornography and Sexual Dysfunction: Is There Any Relationship?

Reading and Living Yaoi: Male-Male Fantasy Narratives as Women's Sexual Subculture in Japan

Women's Consumption of Pornograpy: Pleasure, Contestation, and Empowerment

Pornography and Sexual Violence

The Sunny Side of Smut

Other -

Fantasy Sexual Material Use by People with Attractions to Children

Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters

Exploring the Ownership of Child-Like Sex Dolls

Are Sex and Pornograpy Addiction Valid Disorders? Adding a Leisure Science Perspecive to the Sexological Critique

Littles: Affects and Aesthetics in Sexual Age-Play

An Exploratory Study of a New Kink Activity: "Pup Play"

Jaws Effect

The Jaws Effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia

The Shark Attacks That Were the Inspiration for Jaws

The Great White Hope (written by Peter Benchley, writer of Jaws)

The Jaws Myth [not a study BUT is an interesting read and provides some links to articles and studies]

Slenderman Stabbings

Out Came the Girls: Adolescent Girlhood, the Occult, and the Slender Man Phenomenon

Jury in Slender Man case finds Anissa Weier was mentally ill, will not go to prison

2nd teen in 'Slender Man' stabbing case to remain in institutional care for 40 years

Negative effects of online harassment

How stressful is online victimization? Effects of victim's personality and properties of the incident

Prevalence, Psychological Impact, and Coping of Cyberbully Victims Among College Students

Offline Consequences of Online Victimization

The Relative Importance of Online Victimization in Understanding Depression, Delinquency, and Substance Use

Internet trolling and everyday sadism: Parallel effects on pain perception and moral judgement

The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online

Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement

When Online Harassment is Perceived as Justified

Violence on Reddit Support Forums Unique to r/NoFap

"It Makes Me, A Minor, Uncomfortable" Media and Morality in Anti-Shippers' Policing of Online Fandom

[mariacallous]

If Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted defeat in June 2021, finally yielding the stage to a coalition of his opponents, he could have retired at the age of 71 with a decent claim to having been one of Israel’s more successful prime ministers.

He had already surpassed the time in office of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, becoming the country’s longest-serving prime minister in 2019. His second stretch in office, from 2009 to 2021, coincided with perhaps the best 12 years Israel had known since its founding in 1948. The country enjoyed relative security, with no major wars or prolonged Intifadas. The period was one of uninterrupted economic growth and prosperity. Thanks to its early adoption of widespread vaccination, Israel was one of the first countries in the world to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. And toward the end of that span came three agreements establishing diplomatic relations with Arab countries; more were likely on the way.

Twelve years of Netanyahu’s leadership had seemingly made Israel more secure and prosperous, with deep trade and defense ties across the world. But this wasn’t enough to win him another term. A majority of Israelis had tired of him, and he had been tainted by charges of bribery and fraud in his dealings with billionaires and press barons. In the space of 24 months, Israel held four elections ending in stalemate, with neither Netanyahu nor his rivals winning a majority. Finally, an unlikely alliance of right-wing, centrist, left-wing, and Islamist parties managed to band together and replace him with his former aide Naftali Bennett in June 2021.

At that point, Netanyahu could have sealed his legacy. A plea bargain on offer from the attorney general would have ended his corruption trial with a conviction on reduced charges and no jail time. He would have had to leave politics, probably for good. Over the course of four decades in public life, including 15 years as prime minister and 22 as the Likud party’s leader, he had already left an indelible mark on Israel, dominating the second half of its history. But he couldn’t bear the thought of giving up power.

Within 18 months, he was back as prime minister for the third time. The unwieldy coalition that replaced him had imploded, and this time around, Netanyahu’s camp of far-right and religious parties ran a disciplined campaign, exploiting the weaknesses of their divided rivals to emerge with a small parliamentary majority, despite still being virtually tied in the vote count.

Nine months later, Netanyahu, the man who promised, above everything else, to deliver security for Israel’s citizens, presided over the darkest day in his country’s existence. A total breakdown of the Israeli military and intelligence structure allowed Hamas to breach Israel’s border and embark on a rampage of murder, kidnapping, and rape, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostage. The calamities of that day, the failures of leadership leading up to it, and the traumas it caused will haunt Israel for generations. Even leaving completely aside the war he has prosecuted since that day and its yet-unknown end, October 7 means that Netanyahu will always be remembered as Israel’s worst-ever leader.

How does one measure a prime minister?

There is no broadly accepted ranking of the 13 men and one woman who have led Israel, but most lists would feature David Ben-Gurion at the top. Not only was he the George Washington of the Jewish state, proclaiming its independence just three years after a third of the Jewish people had been exterminated in the Holocaust, but his administration established many of the institutions and policies that define Israel to this day. Other favorites include Levi Eshkol, for his shrewd and prudent leadership in the tense weeks before the Six Day War, and Menachem Begin, for achieving the country’s first peace agreement with an Arab nation, Egypt.

All three of these men had mixed records and detractors, of course. Ben-Gurion had autocratic tendencies and was consumed by party infighting during his later years in office. After the Six Day War, Eshkol failed to deliver a coherent plan for what Israel should do with the new territories it occupied and the Palestinians who have remained under its rule ever since. In Begin’s second term, Israel entered a disastrous war in Lebanon, and his government nearly tanked the economy. But in most Israelis’ minds, these leaders’ positive legacies outweigh the negatives.

Who are the “worst prime ministers”? Until now, most Israelis regarded Golda Meir as the top candidate for that dismal title. The intelligence failure leading to the Yom Kippur War was on her watch. Before the war, she rejected Egyptian overtures toward peace (though some Israeli historians have recently argued that these were less than sincere). And when war was clearly imminent, her administration refrained from launching preemptive attacks that could have saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

Other “worst” candidates have included Ehud Olmert, for launching the second Lebanon war and becoming Israel’s first former prime minister to go to prison for corruption; Yitzhak Shamir, for kiboshing an agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein that many believe could have been a significant step toward resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and Ehud Barak, for spectacularly failing to fulfill his extravagant promises to bring peace with both the Palestinians and Syria.

But Benjamin Netanyahu now surpasses these contenders by orders of magnitude. He has brought far-right extremists into the mainstream of government and made himself, and the country, beholden to them. His corruption is flamboyant. And he has made terrible security decisions that brought existential danger to the country he pledged to lead and protect. Above all, his selfishness is without parallel: He has put his own interests ahead of Israel’s at every turn.

Netanyahu has the distinction of being the only Israeli prime minister to make a once reviled movement on the right fringe of the country’s politics into a government stakeholder.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of a Jewish-supremacist group called Kach, won a lone seat in the Knesset in 1984. He openly called for replacing Israeli democracy with a constitution based on the laws of the Torah and for denying Israel’s Arab citizens equal rights. During Kahane’s single legislative term, the entire Israeli political establishment shunned him. When he got up to speak in the Knesset, all of its members would leave the plenum.

In 1985, Likud joined other parties in changing election law so that those who denied Israel’s democratic identity, denied its Jewish identity, or incited racism could be barred from running for office. Under this provision, Kach was never allowed to compete in another election. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. Four years later, a member of his movement killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron, and the Israeli government proscribed Kach as a terror organization and forced it to disband.

But the Kahanists didn’t go away. With each Israeli election, they tried to rename their movement and adjust its platform to conform with electoral law. They remained ostracized. Then, in 2019, Netanyahu saw a roadblock on his path to reelection that they could help him get around.

Several Israeli parties had pledged not to serve in a government led by an indicted prime minister—quite possibly, enough of them to shut Netanyahu out of power. To prevent that from happening, Netanyahu needed to eke out every possible right-wing and religious vote for his potential coalition. The polls were predicting that the latest Kahanist iteration, the Jewish Power party, which is led by the thuggish but media-savvy Itamar Ben-Gvir, would receive only about 10,000 votes, well below the threshold needed to make the party a player on its own; but Netanyahu believed that if he could persuade the Kahanists and other small right-wing parties to merge their candidates’ lists into a joint slate, together they could win a seat or two for his potential coalition—just what he needed for a majority.

Netanyahu began pressuring the leaders of the small right-wing parties to merge their lists. At first the larger of these were outraged. Netanyahu was meddling in their affairs and, worse, trying to coerce them to accept the Kahanist outcasts. Gradually, he wore down their resistance—employing rabbis to persuade politicians, orchestrating media campaigns in the nationalist press, and promising central roles in future administrations. Media figures close to Netanyahu accused Bezalel Smotrich, a fundamentalist settler and the new leader of the religious Zionist party, of “endangering” the nation by making it easier for the hated left to win the election. Soon enough, Smotrich’s old-school national-religious party merged not only with Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power but with an even more obscure, proudly homophobic party led by Avi Maoz.

Netanyahu did worry a bit about the optics. Throughout five stalemated election campaigns from 2019 to 2022, Likud coordinated closely with Jewish Power, but Netanyahu refused to be seen in public with Ben-Gvir. During the 2022 campaign, at a religious festival, he even waited backstage for Ben-Gvir to leave the premises before going up to make his speech.

Two weeks later, there was no longer any need to keep up the act. Netanyahu’s strategy succeeded: His coalition, merged into four lists, edged out its squabbling opponents with 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

Netanyahu finally had the “right-wing in full” government he had often promised. But before he could return to the prime minister’s office, his allies demanded a division of the spoils. The ministries with the most influence on Israelis’ daily lives—health, housing, social services, and the interior—went to the ultra-Orthodox parties. Smotrich became finance minister; Maoz was appointed deputy minister in charge of a new “Agency for Jewish Identity,” with power to intervene in educational programs. And Ben-Gvir, the subject of numerous police investigations for violence and incitement over a period of three decades, was put in charge of a newly titled “Ministry of National Security,” with authority over Israel’s police and prison services.

As Netanyahu signed away power to the Kahanists, he told the international news media that he wasn’t forming a far-right government. The Kahanists were joining his government. He would be in control. But Netanyahu hadn’t just given Israel’s most extreme racists unprecedented power and legitimacy. He’d also insinuated them into his own formerly mainstream party: By March 2024, Likud’s candidates for local elections in a handful of towns had merged their slates with those of Jewish Power.

Likud long prided itself on combining staunch Jewish nationalism, even militarism, with a commitment to liberal democracy. But a more radical stream within the party eschewed those liberal values and championed chauvinistic and autocratic positions. For much of the past century, the liberal wing was dominant and provided most of the party’s leadership. Netanyahu himself espoused the values of the liberal wing—until he fell out with all the main liberal figures. By 2019, none was left to oppose the alliance with Ben-Gvir’s Kahanists.

Now more than a third of Likud’s representatives were religious, and those who weren’t preferred to call themselves “traditional” rather than secular. They didn’t object to cooperating with the Kahanists; indeed, many had already worked with them in the past. In fact, many Likud Knesset members by that point were indistinguishable from the Jewish Power ones. Israel’s worst prime minister didn’t just form an alliance of convenience with the country’s most irresponsible extremists; he made them integral to his party and the running of the state.

That Netanyahu is personally corrupt is not altogether novel in the history of the Israeli prime ministership. What makes him worse than others is his open contempt for the rule of law.

By 2018, Netanyahu was the subject of four simultaneous corruption investigations that had been in motion for more than a year. In one, known as Case 4000, Netanyahu stood accused of promising regulatory favors to the owner of Israel’s largest telecom corporation in return for favorable coverage on a popular news site. Three of the prime minister’s closest advisers had agreed to testify against him.

Investigations of prime ministers are not rare in Israel. Netanyahu was the subject of one during his first term. The three prime ministers who served in the decade between his first and second terms—Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert—had all been investigated as well. Only in Olmert’s case did police deem the evidence sufficient to mount a prosecution. At the time, in 2008, Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition.

“We’re talking about a prime minister who is up to his neck in investigations and has no public or moral mandate to make fateful decisions for Israel,” Netanyahu said of Olmert. “There is a concern, I have to say real, not without basis, that he will make decisions based on his personal interest of political survival and not on the national interest.”

Ten years later, Netanyahu would be the one snared in multiple investigations. Then he no longer spoke of corruption in high office but of a “witch hunt,” orchestrated by rogue police commanders and left-wing state prosecutors, and egged on by a hostile news media, all with the aim of toppling a right-wing leader.

Netanyahu was determined to politicize the legal procedure and pit his supporters against Israel’s law-enforcement agencies and judiciary. Never mind that the two previous prime ministers who had resigned because of corruption charges were from the center left. Nor did it matter that he had appointed the police commissioner and attorney general himself; both were deeply religious men with impeccable nationalist backgrounds, but he tarred them as perfidious tools of leftist conspiracy.

Rather than contemplate resignation, on May 24, 2020, Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to go on trial. He has denied all wrongdoing (the trial is still under way). In a courthouse corridor before one session, he gave a 15-minute televised speech accusing the legal establishment of “trying to topple me and the right-wing government. For over a decade, the left wing have failed to do this at the ballot box, and in recent years have come up with a new idea. Elements in the police and prosecutor’s office have joined left-wing journalists to concoct delusional charges.”

The law didn’t require Netanyahu to resign while fighting the charges against him in court. But doing so had seemed logical to his predecessors under similar circumstances—and to Israel’s lawmakers, who had never envisaged that a prime minister would so brazenly challenge the justice system, which he had a duty to uphold. For Netanyahu, however, remaining in power was an end in itself, one more important than preserving Israel’s most crucial institutions, to say nothing of Israelis’ trust in them.

Netanyahu placed extremists in positions of power, undermined confidence in the rule of law, and sacrificed principle to power. Little wonder, then, that last summer, tensions over the role of Israel’s judiciary became unmanageable. The crisis underlined all of these reasons that Netanyahu should go down as Israel’s worst prime minister.

For 34 of the past 47 years, Israel’s prime ministers have come from the Likud party. And yet many on the right still grumble that “Likud doesn’t know how to rule” and “you vote right and get left.” Likudniks complain about the lingering power of “the elites,” a left-wing minority that loses at the ballot box but still controls the civil service, the upper echelons of the security establishment, the universities, and the media. A growing anti-judicial wing within Likud demands constitutional change and a clamping-down on the supreme court’s “judicial activism.”

Netanyahu had once minimized these complaints, but his stance on the judiciary changed after he was indicted in 2019. Indeed, at the start of his current term, Likud’s partners demanded commitments to constitutional change, which they received. The ultra-Orthodox parties were anxious to pass a law exempting religious seminary students from military service. Such exemptions had already fallen afoul of the supreme court’s equality standards, so the religious parties wanted the law to include a “court bypass.” Netanyahu acceded to this. To pass the legislation in the Knesset, he appointed Simcha Rothman, a staunch critic of the court, as the chair of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee.

He also appointed Yariv Levin, another fierce critic of the court, as justice minister. Just six days after the new government was sworn in, Levin rolled out a “judicial reform” plan, prepared by a conservative think tank, that called for drastically limiting the court’s powers to review legislation and gave politicians control over the appointment of new justices.

Within days, an extremely efficient counter-campaign pointed out the dangers the plan posed, not just to Israel’s fragile and limited democracy, but to its economy and security. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested in the streets. Likud began to drop in the polls, and Netanyahu privately urged the leaders of the coalition parties to delay the vote. They refused to back down, and Levin threatened to resign over any delay.

Netanyahu’s motives, unlike those of his partners, were not ideological. His objective was political survival. He needed to keep his hard-won majority intact and the judges off-balance. But the protests were unrelenting. Netanyahu’s independent-minded defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pointed to the controversy’s dire implications for the Israel Defense Forces as hundreds of volunteer reserve officers threatened to suspend their service rather than “serve a dictatorship.”

Netanyahu wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with the judicial coup, but the idea of one of Likud’s senior ministers breaking ranks in public was unthinkable. On March 25 of last year, Gallant made a public statement that the constitutional legislation was a “clear and major threat to the security of Israel” and he would not be voting for it. The next evening, Netanyahu announced that he was firing Gallant.

In Jerusalem, protesters besieged Netanyahu’s home. In Tel Aviv, they blocked main highways. The next morning, the trade unions announced a general strike, and by that evening, Netanyahu backed down, announcing that he was suspending the legislation and would hold talks with the opposition on finding compromises. Gallant kept his post. The talks collapsed, protests started up again, and Netanyahu once again refused to listen to the warnings coming from the security establishment—not only of anger within the IDF, but that Israel’s enemies were planning to take advantage of the country’s disunity to launch an attack.

The debate over judicial reform pitted two visions of Israel against each other. On one side was a liberal and secular Israel that relied on the supreme court to defend its democratic values; on the other, a religious and conservative Israel that feared that unelected judges would impose incompatible ideas on their Jewish values.

Netanyahu’s government made no attempt to reconcile these two visions. The prime minister had spent too many years, and all those toxic electoral campaigns, exploiting and deepening the rift between them. Even when he belatedly and halfheartedly tried to rein in the radical and fundamentalist demons he had ridden back into office, he found that he could no longer control them.

Whether Netanyahu really meant to eviscerate Israel’s supreme court as part of a plot to weaken the judiciary and intimidate the judges in his own case, or whether he had no choice in the matter and was simply a hostage of his own coalition, is immaterial. What matters is that he appointed Levin as justice minister and permitted the crisis to happen. Ultimately, and despite his professed belief in liberal democracy, Netanyahu allowed Levin and his coalition partners to convince him that they were doing the right thing—because whatever kept him in office was right for Israel. Democracy would remain strong because he would remain in charge.

Trying to diminish the powers of the supreme court isn’t what makes Netanyahu Israel’s worst prime minister. The judicial reform failed anyway. Only one of its elements got through the Knesset before the war with Hamas began, and the court struck it down as unconstitutional six months later. The justices’ ruling to preserve their powers, despite the Knesset’s voting to limit them, could have caused a constitutional crisis if it had happened in peacetime. But by then Israel was facing a much bigger crisis.

Given Israel’s history, the ultimate yardstick of its leaders’ success is the security they deliver for their fellow citizens. In 2017, as I was finishing my unauthorized biography of Netanyahu, I commissioned a data analyst to calculate the average annual casualty rate (Israeli civilians and soldiers) of each prime minister since 1948. The results confirmed what I had already assumed. In the 11 years that Netanyahu had by then been prime minister, the average annual number of Israelis killed in war and terror attacks was lower, by a considerable margin, than under any previous prime minister.

My book on Netanyahu was not admiring. But I felt that it was only fair to include that data point in his favor in the epilogue and the very last footnote. Likud went on to use it in its 2019 campaigns without attributing the source.

The numbers were hard to argue with. Netanyahu was a hard-line prime minister who had done everything in his power to derail the Oslo peace process and prevent any move toward compromise with the Palestinians. Throughout much of his career, he encouraged military action by the West, first against Iraq after 9/11, and then against Iran. But in his years as prime minister, he balked at initiating or being dragged into wars of his own. His risk aversion and preference for covert operations or air strikes rather than ground operations had, in his first two stretches in power, from 1996 to 1999 and 2009 to 2021, kept Israelis relatively safe.

Netanyahu supporters on the right could also argue, on basis of the numbers, that those who brought bloodshed upon Israel, in the form of Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks, were actually Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the architects of the Oslo Accords; Ehud Barak, with his rash attempts to bring peace; and Ariel Sharon, who withdrew Israeli soldiers and settlers unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, creating the conditions for Hamas’s electoral victory there the following year. That argument no longer holds.

If future biographers of Israeli prime ministers undertake a similar analysis, Netanyahu will no longer be able to claim the lowest casualty rate. His 16th year in office, 2023, was the third-bloodiest in Israel’s history, surpassed only by 1948 and 1973, Israel’s first year of independence and the year of the Yom Kippur War, respectively.

The first nine months of 2023 had already seen a rise in deadly violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as terrorist attacks within Israel’s borders. Then came the Hamas attack on October 7, in which at least 1,145 Israelis were massacred and 253 kidnapped and taken to Gaza. More than 30 hostages are now confirmed dead.

No matter how the war in Gaza ends, what happens in its aftermath, or when Netanyahu’s term finally ends, the prime minister will forever be associated above all with that day and the disastrous war that followed. He will go down as the worst prime minister because he has been catastrophic for Israeli security.

To understand how Netanyahu so drastically failed Israel’s security requires going back at least to 2015, the year his long-term strategic bungling of the Iranian threat came into view. His mishandling didn’t happen in isolation; it is also related to the deprioritization of other threats, including the catastrophe that materialized on October 7.

Netanyahu flew to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to implore U.S. lawmakers to obstruct President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Many view this gambit as extraordinarily damaging to Israel’s most crucial alliance—the relationship with the United States is the very bulwark of its security. Perhaps so; but the stunt didn’t make subsequent U.S. administrations less supportive of Israel. Even Obama would still go on to sign the largest 10-year package of military aid to Israel the year after Netanyahu’s speech. Rather, the damage Netanyahu caused by presuming too much of the United States wasn’t to the relationship, but to Israel itself.

Netanyahu’s strategy regarding Iran was based on his assumption that America would one day launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. We know this from his 2022 book, Bibi: My Story, in which he admits to arguing repeatedly with Obama “for an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Senior Israeli officials have confirmed that he expected Donald Trump to launch such a strike as well. In fact, Netanyahu was so sure that Trump, unlike Obama, would give the order that he had no strategy in place for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program when Trump decided, at Netanyahu’s own urging, to withdraw from the Iran deal in May 2018.

Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs had been far from enamored with the Iran deal, but they’d seized the opportunity it presented to divert some of the intelligence resources that had been focused on Iran’s nuclear program to other threats, particularly Tehran’s network of proxies across the region. They were caught by surprise when the Trump administration ditched the Iran deal (Netanyahu knew it was coming but didn’t inform them). This unilateral withdrawal effectively removed the limitations on Iran’s nuclear development and required an abrupt reversal of Israeli priorities.

Senior Israeli officials I spoke with had to tread a wary path here. Those who were still in active service couldn’t challenge the prime minister’s strategy directly. But in private some were scathing about the lack of a coherent strategy on Iran. “It takes years to build intelligence capabilities. You can’t just change target priorities overnight,” one told me.

The result was a dissipation of Israeli efforts to stop Iran—which is committed to the destruction of Israel. Iran sped further than ever down the path of uranium enrichment, and its proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, grew ever more powerful.

In the months leading up to October 7, Israel’s intelligence community repeatedly warned Netanyahu that Iran and its proxies were plotting a major attack within Israel, though few envisaged something on the scale of October 7. By the fall of 2023, motives were legion: fear that an imminent Israeli diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia could change the geopolitics of the region; threats that Ben-Gvir would allow Jews greater access to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners; rumors that the deepening tensions within Israeli society would render any response to an attack slow and disjointed.

Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings. The senior officers and intelligence chiefs who issued them were, to his mind, conspiring with the law-enforcement agencies and legal establishment that had put him on trial and were trying to obstruct his government’s legislation. None of them had his experience and knowledge of the real threats facing Israel. Hadn’t he been right in the past when he’d refused to listen to leftist officials and so-called experts?

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was the result of a colossal failure at all levels of Israel’s security and intelligence community. They had all seen the warning signals but continued to believe that the main threat came from Hezbollah, the larger and far better-equipped and trained enemy to the north. Israel’s security establishment believed that Hamas was isolated in Gaza, and that it and the other Palestinian organizations had been effectively deterred from attacking Israel.

Netanyahu was the originator of this assumption, and its biggest proponent. He believed that keeping Hamas in power in Gaza, as it had been for nearly two years when he returned to office in 2009, was in Israel’s interest. Periodic rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the south were a price worth paying to keep the Palestinian movement split between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank enclaves and Hamas in Gaza. Such division would push the troublesome two-state solution off the global agenda and allow Israel to focus on regional alliances with like-minded Arab autocracies that also feared Iran. The Palestinian issue would sink into irrelevance.

Netanyahu’s disastrous strategy regarding Gaza and Hamas is part of what makes him Israel’s worst prime minister, but it’s not the only factor. Previous Israeli prime ministers, too, blundered into bloody wars on the basis of misguided strategies and faulty advice from their military and intelligence advisers.

Netanyahu stands out from them for his refusal to accept responsibility, and for his political machinations and smear campaigns since October 7. He blames IDF generals and nourishes the conspiracy theory that they, in alliance with the protest movement, somehow allowed October 7 to happen.

Netanyahu believes that he is the ultimate victim of that tragic day. Convinced by his own campaign slogans, he argues that he is the only one who can deliver Israel from this valley of shadows to the sunlit uplands of “total victory.” He refuses to consider any advice about ending the war and continues to prioritize preserving his coalition, because he appears incapable of distinguishing between his own fate, now tainted by tragic failure, and that of Israel.

Many around the world assume that Israel’s war with Hamas has proceeded according to some plan of Netanyahu’s. This is a mistake. Netanyahu has the last word as prime minister and head of the emergency war cabinet, but he has used his power mainly to prevaricate, procrastinate, and obstruct. He delayed the initial ground offensive into Gaza, hesitated for weeks over the first truce and hostage-release agreement in November, and is now doing the same over another such deal with Hamas. For the past six months, he has prevented any meaningful cabinet discussion of Israel’s strategic goals. He has rejected the proposals of his own security establishment and the Biden administration. He presented vague principles for “the day after Hamas” to the cabinet only in late February, and they have yet to be debated.

However one views the war in Gaza—as a justified war of defense in which Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties it has cynically hidden behind, or as an intentional genocide of the Palestinian people, or as anything in between—none of it is Netanyahu’s plan. That’s because Netanyahu has no plan for Gaza, only one for remaining in power. His obstructionism, his showdowns with generals, his confrontations with the Biden administration—all are focused on that end, which means preserving his far-right coalition and playing to his hard-core nationalist base.

Meanwhile, he’s doing what he has always done: wearing down and discrediting his political opponents in the hope of proving to an exhausted and traumatized public that he’s the only alternative. So far, he’s failing. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Israelis want him gone. But Netanyahu is fending off calls to hold an early election until he believes he is within striking distance of winning.

Netanyahu’s ambition has consumed both him and Israel. To regain and remain in office, he has sacrificed his own authority and parceled out power to the most extreme politicians. Since his reelection in 2022, Netanyahu is no longer the center of power but a vacuum, a black hole that has engulfed all of Israel’s political energy. His weakness has given the far right and religious fundamentalists extraordinary control over Israel’s affairs, while other segments of the population are left to pursue the never-ending quest to end his reign.

One man’s pursuit of power has diverted Israel from confronting its most urgent priorities: the threat from Iran, the conflict with the Palestinians, the desire to nurture a Westernized society and economy in the most contested corner of the Middle East, the internal contradictions between democracy and religion, the clash between tribal phobias and high-tech hopes. Netanyahu’s obsession with his own destiny as Israel’s protector has caused his country grievous damage.

Most Israelis already realize that Netanyahu is the worst of the 14 prime ministers their country has had in its 76 years of independence. But in the future, Jews might even remember him as the leader who inflicted the most harm on his people since the squabbling Hasmonean kings brought civil war and Roman occupation to Judea nearly 21 centuries ago. As long as he remains in power, he could yet surpass them.

[datamined]

Because it's relevant to the blog: TLDR; The United States' Justice Department have Google in an Antitrust lawsuit over it's ability as a monopoly to corrupt search engine results and more people need to understand what's going on and why this is important. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198558372/doj-google-monopoly-antitrust-trial-search-engine At work one of my bosses threw a fit (justifably) because Google is doing a lot shittier things with advertising and their algorithm than you think. I feel like most people know at this point that Google search results are essentially bunk- the top searches is influenced by how much a company directly works with and pays google. People bid to make their names or businesses at the top of the search results. But it goes a little deeper in that. Recently, I learned that top bidders do not actually get the top result. Why? Because Google wants to make it look less bad when Amazon always gets the top result for virtually anything you're looking for. Top bidders get second top search, the NEXT top bidders actually get the top spot. I could be wrong, but this is essentially my understanding of it at our office in super simple terms. But the biggest issue right now is that Google actually quietly (but significantly) raised their prices for bidding and nobody has any fucking say in it. This makes large corporations (such as Amazon) more likely to be only ones that can manage to take up these top spots, and smaller companies continue to get shafted because they simply cannot compete and Google is essentially stiffing the competition, so to speak, harder than ever before. BUT ON TOP OF THAT, my boss also found that Google is actively making it harder to find information about this and the incoming huge fucking lawsuits thrown at them. They're trying to make it difficult for their users (and basically, the entire world considering so many devices automatically use google search, as Google has deals with Apple and Samsung) to find out anything about their corporate greed and corruption. When searching for the same thing in a different Search Engine like Bing, the lawsuits are the first things to come up. It's huge fucking news but few people know about it or are talking about it. The results of this lawsuit are going to permanently and drastically change the internet and how people find their information.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I'm a show-only fan who never read the book but I learned that Lestat had an very incestuous relationship with his mom Gabrielle in the book (which I'm here for it. Sorry for being a sickko who enjoy inappropriate relationships). And today I learned that Gabrielle also kissed Armand (on the lips???) and combed his hair and showed motherly affection towards him. However, Armand doesn't seem to like her very much? So we're not only gonna get some Lestat/Nikki/Armand love triangle but also gonna get some Lestat/Gabrielle/Armand (incestuous) triangle???

Wow. I can't wait to see how the show runners & Rolin are gonna handle those messy relationships. This is too good... Just imagine Louis and Daniel's face when they get this information...

Armand... hates her guts, later on. I wouldn't necessarily see them as a triangle... but we'll see.

I think the main reasons for his feelings are as follows:

When Lestat and Gabrielle leave Paris, Armand wants to come with them, but Lestat rejects him, though he says he wants to. Gabrielle is a bit more clear on that: "The Devil's Road is what we want, " she said. "And we are enough for each other now. Maybe years and years into the future, when we've been a thousand places and seen a thousand things, we'll come back. We'll talk then together as we have tonight." This "we are enough for each other now" (Lestat and Gabrielle) had to eat at Armand, who only a short time before had warned Lestat: "Remember that when your dark children strike out at you, when they rise up against you. Remember me. " and who had, only just before, fought so hard to "have" Lestat for himself. And failed.

Gabrielle fails, except on the most outrageous instances, to come to Lestat or to Lestat's aid - in Armand's eyes. Other than Armand, btw, who comes when called, or requested - I think in an attempt to make up for his refusal to help Lestat when he did come for help to him in Paris (pre trial, book canonically Lestat came to Armand for help and healing, and Armand tortured him instead because he felt used and rejected again) - a help which he had offered, before Lestat had left him. And Armand despises Gabrielle for that: Gabrielle. She's around now. She was around on The Night Island. Everyone hates her. She is Lestat's Mother, and abandons him for centuries, and somehow doesn't manage to heed Lestat's periodic and inevitable frantic cries for help, which though she could not receive them, being his fledgling, could certainly learn of them from other vampiric minds which are on fire with the news round the world when Lestat is in trouble. Gabrielle, she looks just like him, except she's a woman, totally a woman, that is, sharper of feature, small-waisted, big- breasted, sweet-eyed in the most unnerving and dishonest fashion, gorgeous in a black ball gown with her hair free, more often dusty, genderless, sheathed in supple leather or belted khaki, a steady walker, and a vampire so cunning and cold that she has forgotten what it ever meant to be human or in pain. Indeed, I think she forgot overnight, if she ever knew it. She was in mortal life one of those creatures who always wondered what the others were carrying on about. Gabrielle, low- voiced, unintentionally vicious, glacial, forbidding, ungiving, a wanderer through snowy forests of the far north, a slayer of giant white bears and white tigers, an indifferent legend to untamed tribes, something more akin to a prehistoric reptile than a human. Beautiful, naturally, blond hair in a braid down her back, almost regal in a chocolate-colored leather safari jacket and a small droopy brimmed rain hat, a stalker, a quick killer, a pitiless and seemingly thoughtful but eternally secretive thing. Gabrielle, virtually useless to anyone but herself. Some night she'll say something to someone, I suppose. ... I mean, maybe they'll dip their toes into this as well, and add "rejected lover" to the list of reasons. It could... fit. But later on he hates her guts, at least when he does speak of her.

[boinkingbattlemechs]

Highlander

The Highlander is one of the most well-known Star League Defense Force assault 'Mechs, serving with distinction for almost two centuries since first entering service in 2592. Initially designed as a dedicated city and installation defender, the original model featured a variety of weaponry along with fifteen and a half tons of ferro-fibrous armor, but perhaps its most useful asset were the three HildCo jump jets giving it a jumping range of 90 meters. Among the heaviest 'Mech designs to feature jump jets at the time, their original task was to allow the Highlander the ability to jump over inconvenient obstacles such as buildings and outpace other 'Mechs with a faster ground speed, but because of this increased mobility and its versatile weaponry the Highlander proved to be a capable fighter on any battlefield and within decades nearly every BattleMech regiment of the Regular and Royal Armies featured them. However it was during the design's initial trial runs that pilots began using these 'Mechs in what would infamously become known as the "Highlander Burial". Leaping into the air and landing directly on their enemy, a Highlander could literally drive a light 'Mech into the ground. So successful was this maneuver that the design team reengineered the legs to withstand repeated death-from-above attacks and turned what had been a desperation move into an art form, giving Highlander pilots an additional psychological edge.

(the above excellent video by @a-rebellious-waffle)

As with other Star League era designs the Highlander would suffer the loss of technology brought about by the Succession Wars, and when StarCorps' factory on Son Hoa was devastated towards the end of the Second Succession War the original HGN-732 became virtually extinct. An agreement between StarCorps and Hollis Incorporated to rebuild destroyed chassis from scratch using readily-available technology kept the line going until the mid-3030s when limited production was restarted by StarCorps on Son Hoa and Corey, producing barely a dozen new 'Mechs per year. These HGN-733 Highlanders were used in small numbers by the Capellan Confederation and Lyran Commonwealth, commonly as part of lances containing Exterminators, Victors, Grasshoppers and Catapults.

Unbeknownst to many, ComStar also maintained a large stock of Highlanders left over from the Star League, some of which they gifted to the Draconis Combine��during the War of 3039. The appearance of so many seemingly rare 733s, along with a few 732s whose advanced technology managed to slip through ComStar screening, had a large impact on Lyran morale during that conflict. ComStar would also use the design in their own military forces, the Com Guards, and even during the Clan Invasion a few original 732s would take to the field as part of the Clans' fighting forces. The Northwind Highlanders especially favored this namesake BattleMech. In fact, during the Succession Wars, they were the only Inner Sphere army to keep a large number of them operational, along with ComStar. The Highlanders are especially skilled in delivering the famed Highlander Burial maneuver. By 3057 StarCorps' Son Hoa line was at full production, producing brand-new original-spec Highlanders for Lyran units of the Federated Commonwealth, just in time to take part in the FedCom Civil War. Highlanders would continue to be produced all the way through to the Jihad, where advanced variants fought both for and against the Word of Blake.

The Highlander carries a weapons mix that is more at home when fighting a ranged battle, but when the ranges close the Highlander has the right equipment for the job. The primary weapon is an M-7 Gauss rifle that is capable of stripping armor off of an enemy a ton at a time. The Gauss is backed up at long ranges by a Holly-20 LRM-20 launcher. For close range work, it carries two Harmon Starclass medium lasers and a Holly-6 SRM-6 launcher. Two tons of ammo for the gauss rifle, LRM and SRM launchers each provide good endurance while the use of CASE grants added protection. Low heat buildup from the weapons allows for a nearly continuous barrage without taxing the twelve heat sinks, though pilots must still exhibit caution.

[aspoonofsugar]

Do you have a post rating every HxH arcs and the details why and how you rate them? would love to read them

Hi!

I don't think I have, so I am writing it now :)

The Hunter Exam Arc: 8/10

It is a solid introduction arc! It sets up the characters, their objectives and their dynamics. Not only that, but I love how creative the tests are. Togashi managed to come up with pretty original trials and to solve them in meaningful ways for the characters. Finally, I love how its ending beautifully leads into the next arc. It does not feel like an ending, which is kind of the point and it enforces the theme that it is the journey that matters... not the objective.

The Zoldyck Arc: 9/10

It is one of my favourite arcs! It gets 9 simply because it is very short and lacks a climax. Not a flaw (Togashi is the master of anti-climax), but I love good climatic moments. The Zoldyck Arc instead is simply an ontroductioin to the Zoldyck plot-line. The family of assassin in itself is glorious and one of my favourite narrative inventions ever <3<3<3.

The Celestial Tower Arc: 7/8

A good introduction to nen, but not one of my favourite arcs. I think it is needed, though. Cause before we delve into the complexity of nen with the Spiders' cool and layered powers we need to break it down into simpler ideas. Without this arc I don't think York Shin and the following arcs would be understandable. Moreover, Killua's development and Gon and Hisoka's final fight are both great!

York Shin City Arc: 10/10

It is one of the best written arcs imho. The plot, characters, themes all come together beautifully. It is also the arc where you start to see how much creative nen can be. So, there is that. I also love many of the secondary characters introduced: Neon, Paku, Senritsu are all genuinely great. All in all every character has a role and everyone's arc is excellent!

Greed Island Arc: 8/10

This arc is similar to the Celestial Tower Arc, but I prefer it because Greed Island's setting is more interesting than the tower to me. The twist of the game not being virtual, but somewhere in the real world is great. Biscuit is a way more charismatic character than Wing and a great deconstruction of the cute little girl archetype. Her relationship with Gon and Killua is genuinelly sweet too, I think. Moreover, Killua and Gon start growing into powerful nen users here. Not only that, but this arc sets up everything the CAA is going to deconstruct later on: Gon's single-minded determination is mostly celebrated (but not completely) and Gon and Killua's dynamic is described as beautiful. Both things are gonna be throughfully destroyed in the next arc...

Chimera Ants Arc: 10 +/ 10

I think this arc is honestly the first real arc of the series, with everything before being a very long introduction. The CAA is glorious and it manages to do beautifully very complex things. Like balancing out tons of characters, all with their own arc and impact on the plot. It gives Gon and Killua's arcs a climax, by subverting expectations. Even more amazingly, the art starts with Gon and Killua as its protagonists (as per usual), but it slowly shifts the focus on Meruem, who by the end becomes the real protagonist of the Arc. And Meruem's arc itself is probably one of my favourite ones ever in all of fiction.

Election Arc: 9+/10

Same as with the Zoldyck arc. It is one of my favourites, but it lacks a powerful climax because the point is to deliver a meaningful anti-climax. And it does so in 3 ways: on the Killua and Alluka's plot-line, on the Election's plot-line and on the Gon and Ging's plot-line. It works as a denouement to the CAA and to the first part of the story, as a whole. Killua and Gon finds their conclusions (for now) and shifts their dynamic. Now Killua is the one with an objective, while Gon is trying to figure out who he wants to become. I also like Leoria is given some focus in what is hopefully a set-up for a future arc. Alluka is one of my favourite fictional characters ever <3<3<3 Finally, I like how it concludes a part of the story, but it sets up the second half!

Royal War Arc: ?/10

I am personally enjoying this arc a lot, but it is too soon to rate it. I think that to fully see if it works or not it is necessary to see it in its entirety because it all depends if Togashi is able to make good use of all the characters and subplots he is introducing. So far, I am loving the family theme, though. I also love the nen beasts and the potential for Kurapika and the Spiders' arcs! Moreover, the Spiders' flashback was beautiful and heartbreaking!

Thank you for the ask!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:

KRISTA HARDING’S DAUGHTER was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, but I’m coming in! Don’t panic. Harding’s registration tag was expired. She figured the officer would write her a ticket and she’d be on her way, but when he came back after running her driver’s license, he had handcuffs out. There was a felony warrant out for her arrest, he said: “Chemical endangerment of a child.” Harding used her most patient customer-service tone to ask the officer if he’d please check again. But there was no mistake, the cop confirmed: He was taking her to the Etowah County Detention Center, almost an hour’s drive away. “I’m in the back of the cop car just bawling my eyes out, like, ugly-face-snot-bubbles crying,” Harding remembers. She was worried about being away from her newborn, and she was confused: Chemical endangerment of a child? “I think of somebody cooking meth with a baby on their hip,” she says. 

She’s right to think that: The Alabama law, passed in 2006, was intended to target those who expose children to toxic chemicals, or worse, explosions, while manufacturing methamphetamine in ad-hoc home labs.  Harding says it took at least eight hours to be booked into a cell that night, and it was more than a week before she was finally allowed to see a judge. She was still leaking breast milk, and desperately missing her two daughters. Her family wasn’t allowed to bring her clean underwear, so every day she washed her one pair, saturated with menstrual blood, in the cell sink, then hung them to dry.

Harding says she eventually learned the warrant for her arrest had been issued because of a urine test taken at a doctor’s visit early in her pregnancy. Sitting alone in her cell, she conjured a vague memory of her OB-GYN warning her local authorities had begun to crack down on weed. The comment had struck her as odd at the time: Nine years earlier, when she was pregnant with her first child, the same doctor at the same hospital had told Harding, who’d smoked both pot and cigarettes before she was pregnant, that she’d rather Harding kick the nicotine than the weed. (Studies are unequivocal about the fact that cigarettes contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes, but the research on weed is less conclusive, with some doctors arguing it at least has therapeutic benefits, like helping with morning sickness.)

But in the years between her first child and her second, something had changed in certain parts of Alabama. In Etowah County, in 2013, the sheriff, the district attorney, and the head of the local child-welfare agency held a press conference to announce they intended to aggressively enforce that 2006 law. Instead of going after the manufacturers of meth, though, they planned to target pregnant women who used virtually any substance they deemed harmful to a developing fetus.

“If a baby is born with a controlled-substance dependency, the mother is going to jail,” then-Sheriff Todd Entrekin said at the time. Police weren’t required to establish that a child was born with a chemical dependency, though — or even that a fetus experienced any harm — a drug test, a confession, or just an accusation of substance use during pregnancy was enough to arrest women for a first offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. One public defender would later call these “unwinnable cases.” Over the following decade, Etowah County imprisoned hundreds of mothers — some of whom were detained, before trial, for the rest of their pregnancies, inside one of the most brutal and inhumane prisons in the country, denied access to prenatal care and adequate nutrition, they say — in the name of protecting their children from harm. 

[...]

In the past two decades, Alabama has become the undisputed champion of arresting pregnant women for actions that wouldn’t be considered crimes if they weren’t pregnant: 649 arrests between 2006 and 2022, almost as many arrests as documented in all other states combined, according to advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, which collected the statistics. Across the U.S., the vast majority of women arrested on these charges were too poor to afford a lawyer, and a quarter of cases were based on the use of a legal substance, like prescription medication.

Today, Marshall is the attorney general of Alabama, and just a few months ago, the state’s Supreme Court used the same logic — that life begins at conception, therefore an embryo is legally indistinguishable from a living child — in a decision that was responsible for shutting down IVF clinics across the state. The ruling was a triumph for the fetal-personhood movement, a nationwide crusade to endow fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses with constitutional rights. Personhood has been the Holy Grail for the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but outlawing abortion — at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason — is just the start of what legal recognition of embryos’ rights could mean for anyone who can get pregnant. Experts have long warned that elevating an embryo’s legal status effectively strips the person whose body that embryo occupies of her own rights the moment she becomes pregnant.

Across the country, this theory has led to situations like in Texas, where a hospital kept a brain-dead woman alive for almost two months — against her own advanced directive and the wishes of her family — in deference to a state law that prevents doctors from removing a pregnant person from life support. (The hospital only relented after the woman’s husband sued for “cruel and obscene mutilation of a corpse.”) Or in New Hampshire, where a court allowed a woman who was hit by a car while seven months pregnant to be sued by her future child for negligence because she failed to use “a designated crosswalk.” Or in Washington, D.C., where a terminally ill cancer patient, 26 weeks pregnant, requested palliative care, but was instead subjected to court-ordered cesarean section. Her baby survived for just two hours; she died two days later.

Or in Alabama, where, in 2019, Marshae Jones walked into the Pleasant Grove Police Department with her six-year-old daughter expecting to be interviewed for a police investigation. Months earlier, Jones, four and a half months pregnant at the time, had been shot by her co-worker during a dispute. In the hospital after the shooting, Jones underwent an emergency C-section; her baby, whom she’d named Malaysia, did not survive. Rather than indicting the shooter, though, a grand jury indicted Jones, who they decided “intentionally” caused the death of her “unborn baby” because she allegedly picked a fight “knowing she was five months pregnant.” The charges were ultimately dismissed, but Jones’ lawyer says her record still shows the arrest, and Jones, who lost her job after the incident, struggled to find work after her case attracted national attention.

The threat this ideology poses to American women is not contained to Alabama: Recognition of fetal personhood is an explicit policy goal of the national Republican Party, and it has been since the 1980s. The GOP platform calls for amending the U.S. Constitution to recognize the rights of embryos, and representatives in Congress have introduced legislation that would recognize life begins at conception hundreds of times — as recently as this current session, when the Life at Conception Act attracted the co-sponsorship of 127 sitting Republican members of Congress.

[...]

Taking inspiration from Black Americans’ fight for equal rights, the anti-abortion movement began thinking of its own crusade as a fight for equality. “The argument that the unborn was the ultimate victim of discrimination in America was really resonant with a lot of white Americans, a lot of socially conservative Americans — and it was vague enough that people who disagreed about stuff like feminism, the welfare state, children born outside of marriage, the Civil Rights Movement” could find common ground, Ziegler says.  By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, the idea that a fetus was entitled to constitutional protections was mainstream enough to be a central piece of Texas’ argument that “Jane Roe” did not have a right to get an abortion.  

The justices rejected that idea. “The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. But he gave the movement a cause to rally behind for the next half-century by adding: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”  Making that happen became the anti-abortion movement’s primary focus from that moment on. One week after Roe was decided, a U.S. congressman first proposed amending the Constitution to guarantee “the right to life to the unborn, the ill, the aged, or the incapacitated.” It was called the Human Life Amendment, and though it failed to make it to a floor vote that session, it would be reproposed more than 300 times in the following decades.  By 1980, the idea had been fully embraced by the Republican Party: Ronald Reagan’s GOP adopted it into the party platform — where it remains to this day — and in 1983, the Republican-majority Congress voted, for the first and only time, on the idea of adding a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That vote failed. 

After their 1983 defeat, activists turned their attention away from the U.S. Capitol and toward the states, where they sought to insert the idea of fetal personhood into as many state laws as possible: everything from legislation creating tax deductions for fetuses or declaring them people for census-taking purposes, to expanding child-endangerment and -neglect laws.  Activists pursued this agenda everywhere, but they were most successful at advancing it in states that share certain qualities. “You could draw a Venn diagram of American slavery and see that what’s happening today is in common in those states,” says Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor and author of the book Policing the Womb. “Some would say, ‘Well, OK, how is that relevant?’ Slavery itself was explicitly about denying personal autonomy, denying the humanity of Black people. Now, clearly, these laws affect women of all ethnicities. But the point is: If you’re in a constitutional democracy and you found a way to avoid recognizing the constitutional humanity of a particular group of people, it’s something that’s not lost in the muscle memory of those who legislate and of the courts in that state.”

Rolling Stone has a solid in-depth report on the war on women and reproductive health in Alabama, going into detail the fetal personhood movement.

[thatsatricky1]

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 || 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: Eight of the top ten most popular players in Korea are invited to be the first people to test out the newest device and gameplay by NEO a video game company known as of recent to be the best of the best. An opportunity of a life time handed to them to be able to trial and get a contract to promote it later on. The eight couldn’t resist as they gladly accepted the invitation. Not being able to predict what was to come. A trail test that wouldn’t just be focused on graphics and playablity, no this would test relationships, strength, resolve and many more unpredictable things.

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Nct Dream ot7 x Reader

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Angst, Fantasy, Fluff, Gaming, Humour, Romance, Smut (in future chapters), Thriller.

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1,7k+

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: None in prologue.

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫: This does not depict an accurate picture of Nct Dream and this is strictly fantasy/fiction for entertainment purposes.

“Good morning, welcome to KBS! Today’s first story will interest our younger audience and may just worry all our parents out there.” A well put together broadcast reporter spoke all the while giving the audience watching her through the screen a bright pearly white smile.

“The youth these days seems to be focusing widely on entertainment in the video game area. Well, everyday there seems to be new things coming out but what we have today is something quite extraordinary.” She recited off the teleprompter hidden from sight pointing behind her at the big green screen that showed images and videos to the audience.

“The biggest competitors in gaming in Korea with well known usernames most teens know have all recently been invited to a new project.”

As she spoke on screen were several very well known professional gamers, some showed streaming while others were seen celebrating recently won titles at gaming competitions.

“The project in question is Project Impact. We have all heard of VR, virtual reality but the people at NEO have taken a large step for the gaming community. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of information on the current project but we will explain what we have.”

“They have worked on a way to make virtual reality more real and as the CEO has promised an experience unlike any other, they have created a way for the player to be able to be in the game with their conscience attached all the while the player is in a sleep-like state.”

As the woman spoke images appeared of people wearing a certain tech wear headgear, seemingly ‘in game’ while their bodies were either laying down or in a sit up position on comfortable chairs.

“The game attached to this new device has also been developed by Neo and is seen to be an in world game with all sorts of challenges and filled with interesting plots. They have confirmed the game is finished.”

“Neo has requested from top players in Korea to test out the tech wear headsets and gameplay, getting many replies and contracts from said players and is due to start testing tonight around 8pm. Though for those interested to see how it plays out, unfortunately it will be under wraps to test out any bugs and glitches at first, but if deemed playable will be streamed and shortly available to the public in only a few months.”

“We have yet to see the whole list of top players that will be testing Neo’s new device and game but those we do have we can list off for you video game enthusiasts, you may just see some of your favourites.”

The reporter, now gesturing at the backdrop once again.

“Mark Lee, also known as Lee Minhyung with the tag name Mork is a Canadian, Korean competitive player known for playing Elden ring, Fortnite and Wow, keeping his place in the top 10 popular Korean players for the sixth year in a row now.”

A video of Mark during his usual streaming was shown with fellow friend Donghyuck, another popular gamer seen in the background screaming his head off at Mark managing to pull his team through for a win.

“Huang Renjun, with the tag name Injeolmi, formally from Jilin ROC now residing in Seoul, SK known very well as a player in Overwatch, King of legend and Fortnite. Placed on the top ten most popular Korean players ranking for the fourth year straight.”

A video of Renjun accepting his award at the most recent gaming event for Overwatch was played also showing a good friend of his, Jeno clapping him on the back for winning.

“Lee Jeno, with the tag name SamoyedJ. Based in Seoul, Sk, another top ten popular Korean player well known for playing Overwatch, King of legend and Valorant.”

A video of Jeno was played from his social media account of his new set up showing off the new branded items he’d received that would help him along. A discord chat with fellow players and friends popped up while he did so.

“Lee Donghyuck, more known by his streaming name Haechan with a gaming tag by the name of Fullsun, holding his top ten most popular Korean gaming title for the fifth year. Known for Valorant, WOW and various odd games.”

A video of Donhyuck appeared of him lounging in his gaming chair animatedly talking with his chat about whatever he had set up for the stream ahead.

“Na Jaemin, with his tag name Nana, another top ten most popular Korean player in his fourth year on the list is well known for Indie games, League of legends and Fortnite.”

Jaemin appeared on screen screaming in terror at another horror indie game playthrough he was doing, camera shaking with him in the dimly lit room.

“Zhong Chenle, also known as Jong Jinrak who goes by the tag name Dolphinlele, formally resided in Shanghai ROC, now currently in Seoul, SK. Having a two year streak being in the top ten most popular Korean players. Known for playing Valorant, Fortnite and Elden ring.”

Chenle was shown on screen one hand moving his mouse clicking around screen with the other arm full with his dog, Daegal sleeping there contently during the stream.

“Park Jisung, with the tag name Jwijwi is based in Seoul, SK a newly added gamer on the top ten most popular Korean players since last year. Mainly known for League of legends, mobile games and Valorant.”

A stream was shown of Jisung sharing food with a friend Y/n on screen as the two spoke to chat while getting ready and picking what two player game to do together.

“The last on the known trail list is L/n F/n, known with the tag T/n, formally based in C/n now residing currently in Seoul, SK, a fresh face this year on the top ten most popular Korean players. Known for Indie games, Cod and Overwatch.”

Y/n was shown on screen playing a game only to be interrupted with a fellow friend and gamer, Donghyuck bursting through the door on screen chasing her cat who went straight towards her desk underneath and between her legs. Y/n scrambling to pause the indie game while Donghyuck whined about her cat not liking him.

Once finished listing off the currently known players entering the trails the reporter pushed aside the small stack of papers on her desk giving the viewers another smile getting ready to say her next rehearsed lines.

“Now I’m sure it’s not needed for me to repeat the list for everyone to have gotten the clue that eight of the top ten most popular Korean players have decided to go through this test trials. Exciting times for their fans I’m sure. These are the current players we know of, the other two most popular gamers could very well have accepted an invitation too but for now we’ll just have to keep our eyes and ears open for any news on that.”

The last photos on screen behind the news anchor was a promotion of the eight players shown wearing similar outfits that were little Easter eggs on previous video games made and produced by NEO to show their official sponsorship with the company.

“We will have more to come on this story later on so stay tuned for that, now onto the weather with my co host who has some exciting news for those who enjoy the warm weather that will surely be quite a good experience for anyone looking to go hiking.”

“Not really sure why we’re wearing outfits for a different old game that has nothing to do with the current game.” Renjun pointed out as he zipped the hood around his face upwards to cover the bottom half of his face.

“Look, we’re matching Junnie, plus who cares this is fun.” Donghyuck nudged his shoulder playfully against Renjun’s, having not zipped his face hood up yet.

“Unfortunately we are.” Renjun grumbled in return harshly zipping up Donghyuck’s zip for him, causing the younger to let out a few muffled complaints.

“Why does Y/n get the grey one?” Chenle whined out his own voice muffled by his knitted mask, hands grabbing and tugging on Y/n’s mask's ears. Her hands flew up to hold onto the mask so it didn’t slip off and ruin anything.

“Let go, it’s not my fault they gave me this character.” Her reply also muffled as she grunted pushing her back into Chenle to make him let go.

“Don’t break it.” Jisung fretted over the duo’s squabble, his hands hanging in the air ready to jump in if needed.

“You look hilarious. Your white hair looks like it’s a part of the mask.” Jaemin teased Jeno pointing at him, holding back a laugh.

“It doesn’t. I’ll smother you right here.” Jeno bit back grabbing onto Jaemin’s mask, tugging it to cover his whole face instead of only half. Jaemin’s muffled screams still loud and clear as his hands flew out blindly slapping at Jeno.

“This is what eight of the top ten most popular Korean players look like, if only people could see us like this our places would be lower.” Mark muttered to himself, his own mask still in hand as he observed his friends' antics.

“Mark! Chenle’s going to rip one of Y/n ear’s off, uh not her real ones the fake ones!” Jisung’s nervous voice cut off Mark’s self monologue as he rushed over to break up the play fight.

“We’ll be taking group photos first before going into individual headshots in two minutes, please be prepared.” The director's voice boomed over to the area the gamers were currently getting their last minute touch ups.

“Two minutes?” A makeup artist asked out in dismay as she and the hairstylist looked over at the eight players who were rough housing.

“Two will be enough to fix up their hair.” The hairstylist spoke reassuring himself since he’d only have to fix the fringes peeking out of their masks.

“How nice for you.” The makeup artist replied to him in dismay, eyeing where Jaemin’s face was currently being messed around underneath his mask.

“You’re right, I’ll ask the director to give us an extra five… ten minutes.” The hairstylist sympathised with his work colleague as he moved away. While the makeup artist rushed over to the eight gamers to do damage control on her previous work hoping she wouldn’t see too many smudges.

𝐓𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭:

(If you want to be tagged in my Nct Dream writing comment, inbox or message me)

Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed. Don’t forget likes, reblogs and comments are always encouraged and help keep writers like myself motivated to continue our stories.

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭:

⤻ Click here.

𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭:

⤻ Click here.

[theconcinnitycompany]

8 Technology Trends That Are Impacting the Clinical Trial Space

Technology’s impact on how clinical trials are managed is profoundly changing how treatments move from research and development to market. This seismic change impacts everything from patient recruitment and retention to study design and execution, as well as affecting compliance and reporting results. Understanding how these trends shape the trial management process can help you successfully navigate this changing landscape. 

Here are eight technology trends changing the pharmaceutical - and thus clinical trial - space. 

[aita-blorbos]

aita for getting 2 people killed so more people could live?

i'm (teenM) trapped in a dumb murder game. one person kills another but if they get found out, they get killed and if they don't get found out, everyone else gets killed. keep this in mind, 'kay? it's reeaaaally important!

so there's this girl who we'll call M (teenF) and she hates my guts. she's really good with machines and all that, too! she made a virtual world thing where there would be "no killing" buuuuut that was total BS. it was actually just an elaborate plan to kill lil old me! which makes total sense since i can be kind of a dick. there's also G (teenM) and he's a total idiot, but he's kiiinda my only friend in this place. again, makes sense. he's super naive though.

basically, if someone takes fatal damage in M's virtual world, they'll die in real life. she removed all objects she deemed fatal for this reason except a hammer she was gonna use to kill me. objects are also unbreakable in the world. i kept these in mind.

the state of the world outside this stupid game is HELL. i'm not sure if this is even getting THROUGH to anyone, but if my theory about this all being a tv show is correct, it proooobably is. since i kinda saw it for myself and it was the motive for murder, i agreed with the thing running this (who won't be brought up again) that we should put it in M's virtual world thingie. but i knew exactly where it was so when we got in, while everyone searched for it, i took G to where it is. i showed it to him (which was mean, i know, but i had to do it) and we came to an agreement to mercy kill everyone! except that was only his thoughts. i may have given him the idea but that was never the plan.

if M managed to kill me successfully, she would've lied about the world SHE made all she wanted and gotten away with it, getting everyone else killed! and she wouldn't give a shit because she's so arrogant! so that's why i got G to kill M because i knew she'd have put some kind of code in there to prevent me from fighting back. if you read the title, you probably know where this is going.

i kinda outed G in the trial. i explained the whole plan! except for what the outside world (is that even real?) i saw is. they don't need to know.

but, even though i had good intentions, i still feel really guilty. so am i the asshole here?

[smokescreenimusprime]

I got two ideas for Early Crash AU. One is fluff and the other is angsty.

Fluff idea: Smokescreen uses a virtual avatar AKA his holoform. He doesn't show it often cause he's trying to lay low here, but since there's the very good possibility that he might be the first VTuber, he gains even more of a following. Maybe this is how Raf starts noticing Smokescreen, wondering how he managed to create a hologram that advanced

Angst idea: Since you brought up the possibility of Fowler not being his first minder, what if it was MECH that first found him when he was wandering around. That's gotta leave some trust issues for your boy

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

Y E S

it takes a few years for Smokescreen to figure out a passable holoform. He was never an inventor, all he had were his memories from datapads in the Archives and some human tech, but eventually he figured it out. Of course, it takes even longer for him to get it approved, but after many, many, M A N Y trials and tests and jumping through hoops it's official and he's allowed to use it on camera and in public

and it's...... honestly really nice. To finally be "face to face" with his audience so to speak. Even though he doesn't use it much with his podcasts, it's so freeing to finally be able to go into human towns and cities and be able to actually talk with the people. He's been practically starved for interaction so finally being able to go out there and meet the people...... he loves it

maybe this is how he meets Jack and June. Jasper is naturally his "home base" so to speak, and maybe after spending some time around town he ends up meeting and befriending a young Jack

maybe after meeting June, he finally has something of a family again

and BIG OL FUCKING YES FOR THE ANGST AND I THOUGHT OF A WAY TO MAKE IT WORSE

what if Silas was one of his first minders, possibly one of two. I don't have many ideas, but I'm saying they're definitely on the older side of since and completely uninvolved with the MECH stuff

and just. Smokescreen never really liked Leland. Sure he was fine, but there was something about him that just felt..... off. Like the man was taking him apart with his very eyes. Sure human eyes were already weird, they took in light instead of giving off any, but Leland's eyes always felt a bit more calculating and dead and empty then his other minder's

but he brushes off his discomfort. After all, the man hasn't actually done anything and is polite enough when they talk. Besides, what's he even going to say? "Oh your eyes freak me out, can you stop looking at me?" Yeah, no Smokescreen really doesn't want to make himself seen as more of a threat or make things awkward with one of two sentient beings he regularly talks with

and for years, things are fine. The government relaxes, Leland and the other guy do their jobs, when the war's over Smokey even manages to get the higher ups to approve him going on more recreational drives so long as one of his minders was with him. Leland even starts trying to engage with him more and takes him for drives almost every other day!

Smokescreen tries to ignore the way Leland touches the inside of his alt mode, how his eyes light up whenever he changes in front of him, how the words he speak always have some strange undertone he can never pinpoint the meaning of

things are fine. Not good, certainly not great, but fine and Smokescreen is slowly starting to get comfortable

but then things........ change :)

It had started as a normal day. He, Leland and the other minder had just left the base and started their drive. Apparently there was an old mountain pass pretty far out of the way

.........but then Leland puts something on his dashboard

and the next thing Smokescreen knows, he's hit with a shock of electricity and the last thing Smokescreen hears before everything goes dark is a single gunshot

who knows how long it takes them to find Leland and Smokescreen. Days, maybe even weeks, and at the end of it when rescue finally Smokescreen is not left without scars, both physical and psychological. Smokescreen only knows so much about medicine, and most of that is limited to field patches. The humans are limited in their help and the most they can do is provide him with welders. He doesn't even have any painkillers

and psychologically....... ho boy he's going to be a mess. This incident is going to saddle him with some really bad trust issues for a good while, and he's absolutely not going to let anyone into his alt mode for a while, especially with any cargo. In a few years he might let someone in again, but they are going to be in the back seat and far away from the dashboard

also....... Smokescreen's going to be VERY particular about keeping his insides clean from here on out. After all...... he just spent several days at minimum with the blood of someone he trusted inside of him with no way to clean it while being experimented on by another guy he trusted

(maybe Fowler was one of the people on the rescue and can be the one to help Smokescreen clean up. Maybe this even indirectly leads to him being assigned as Smokescreen's new minder)

[goshdangronpa]

Sayaka Maizono!!

Hi, anon! I'm so glad someone asked about her, she's always fun to think about. A character you can really play around with in different contexts and interpretations. It's weird that I haven't written a story about her yet.

Sexuality Headcanon: Sayaka is straight-up gay. I saw that one bit from Danganronpa S, they're no way she could like Makoto as more than a friend!

Gender Headcanon: Cis, but the type who's actually thought a lot about gender rather than passively assuming that vagina = girl. I believe she'd support a transfem idol ... so long as she remains the Ultimate.

A ship I have with said character: I recently wrote about a couple of reasons why I find ikuzono so appealing! It can be a real mutually healing relationship, with two people who've hurt and been hurt finding solace and sympathy and redemption in each other. It can also be a relationship where they bury bodies together. I've also read a truly great (and tragically incomplete) series that anyone who likes Sayaka, Mukuro, and good writing in general should check out: Sing Me a Song of Despair!

A BROTP I have with said character: Sayaka's goal is to be an inspiration for girls and women. All girls and women. As a transfem Chihiro supporter, I quite enjoy the idea of this embodiment of femininity helping Chihiro reconcile some of her gender hang-ups. Women with strength don't have to be ripped like Sakura, athletic like Aoi, or scary like Genocide Jack. They can be beautiful, sweet, girly, confident, and determined like Sayaka. I think her support would really shake Chihiro's worldview ... though Sayaka might still agree with her that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

A NOTP I have with said character: Sayaka is virtually the only female Danganronpa student I wouldn't ship with Ibuki, mostly because I'm really committed to a rather detailed sayabuki arc that ends in turmoil. Two teen girls hit the big time at the same time, and their managers get the bright idea of pairing their acts in a summer package tour. As they travel across the country and work hard to one-up each other's performances, they show each other the weirder sides of themselves that the public doesn't get to see. They bond over a mutual passion for music ... and, one night, discover a mutual passion for girls. It doesn't take long for them to start exploring their sexuality together, snatching kisses and cuddles in the rare moments when they can evade their bandmates and entourages. Ibuki lets herself fall wildly in love ... but Sayaka's keenly aware that the tour will end. One night, after sneaking onto the roof of a supermarket after hours to have a truly private moment and watch the stars, Sayaka asks, "You know this won't last ... right?" She lays it out: idols aren't allowed to date anybody, much less someone of the same sex, and she won't compromise her career or her dream over a little summer affair. Ibuki’s devastated. It proves to be the last push she needs to drop her own pretenses and be her true, freaky self, ultimately splitting the band and creating the rock iconoclast we know and love. Sayaka would still think about her sometimes, even listen to her new singles when few former fans would, wonder if that girl was right that prioritizing her career over her relationships may bring success but not fulfillment ... She doesn't regret anything.

A random headcanon: Sayaka didn't accept the invitation to Hope's Peak immediately because she feared it would eat up precious time in a career that's already expected to end in her late 20s at most. She eventually accepted for precisely that reason: that Ultimate status will open doors long after the industry stops seeing her as youthful enough to sing on stage.

General Opinion over said character: I'm of two minds, and both are extremely positive. 1) How can anyone possibly dismiss Sayaka as a loathesome snake when the entire goddamn point of that first murder trial is that the killing game, one of the most stressful and extreme situations a human being and especially a literal kid could ever face, could compel even an otherwise kind person to commit murder? You don't have to like her for her attempt at murdering Leon and framing Makoto, but if you don't buy that Sayaka was ever a nice person, I reckon you've missed the point of Danganronpa. 2) Sayaka has a devious and coldly pragmatic side ... and that's fun. I like the idea that she's generally kind and sweet, but a bit of a sneaky bitch when she really wants something or really doesn't care for someone. In a non-despair AU, this would be ripe for drama and especially comedy! Let her be little a snake, as a treat🐍

[mariacallous]

How will AI be used in health care settings?

Artificial intelligence (AI) shows tremendous promise for applications in health care. Tools such as machine learning algorithms, artificial neural networks, and generative AI (e.g., Large Language Models) have the potential to aid with tasks such as diagnosis, treatment planning, and resource management. Advocates have suggested that these tools could benefit large numbers of people by increasing access to health care services (especially for populations that are currently underserved), reducing costs, and improving quality of care.

This enthusiasm has driven the burgeoning development and trial application of AI in health care by some of the largest players in the tech industry. To give just two examples, Google Research has been rapidly testing and improving upon its “Med-PaLM” tool, and NVIDIA recently announced a partnership with Hippocratic AI that aims to deploy virtual health care assistants for a variety of tasks to address a current shortfall in the supply in the workforce.

What are some challenges or potential negative consequences to using AI in health care?

Technology adoption can happen rapidly, exponentially going from prototypes used by a small number of researchers to products affecting the lives of millions or even billions of people. Given the significant impact health care system changes could have on Americans’ health as well as on the U.S. economy, it is essential to preemptively identify potential pitfalls before scaleup takes place and carefully consider policy actions that can address them.

One area of concern arises from the recognition that the ultimate impact of AI on health outcomes will be shaped not only by the sophistication of the technological tools themselves but also by external “human factors.” Broadly speaking, human factors could blunt the positive impacts of AI tools in health care—or even introduce unintended, negative consequences—in two ways:

If developers train AI tools with data that don’t sufficiently mirror diversity in the populations in which they will be deployed. Even tools that are effective in the aggregate could create disparate outcomes. For example, if the datasets used to train AI have gaps, they can cause AI to provide responses that are lower quality for some users and situations. This might lead to the tool systematically providing less accurate recommendations for some groups of users or experiencing “catastrophic failures” more frequently for some groups, such as failure to identify symptoms in time for effective treatment or even recommending courses of treatment that could result in harm.  

If patterns of AI use systematically differ across groups. There may be an initial skepticism among many potential users to trust AI for consequential decisions that affect their health. Attitudes may differ within the population based on attributes such as age and familiarity with technology, which could affect who uses AI tools, understands and interprets the AI’s output, and adheres to treatment recommendations. Further, people’s impressions of AI health care tools will be shaped over time based on their own experiences and what they learn from others.

In recent research, we used simulation modeling to study a large range of different of hypothetical populations of users and AI health care tool specifications. We found that social conditions such as initial attitudes toward AI tools within a population and how people change their attitudes over time can potentially:

Lead to a modestly accurate AI tool having a negative impact on population health. This can occur because people’s experiences with an AI tool may be filtered through their expectations and then shared with others. For example, if an AI tool’s capabilities are objectively positive—in expectation, the AI won’t give recommendations that are harmful or completely ineffective—but sufficiently lower than expectations, users who are disappointed will lose trust in the tool. This could make them less likely to seek future treatment or adhere to recommendations if they do and lead them to pass along negative perceptions of the tool to friends, family, and others with whom they interact.

Create health disparities even after the introduction of a high-performing and unbiased AI tool (i.e., that performs equally well for all users). Specifically, when there are initial differences between groups within the population in their trust of AI-based health care—for example because of one group’s systematically negative previous experiences with health care or due to the AI tool being poorly communicated to one group—differential use patterns alone can translate into meaningful differences in health patterns across groups. These use patterns can also exacerbate differential effects on health across groups when AI training deficiencies cause a tool to provide better quality recommendations for some users than others.

Barriers to positive health impacts associated with systematic and shifting use patterns are largely beyond individual developers’ direct control but can be overcome with strategically designed policies and practices.

What could a regulatory framework for AI in health care look like?

Disregarding how human factors intersect with AI-powered health care tools can create outcomes that are costly in terms of life, health, and resources. There is also the potential that without careful oversight and forethought, AI tools can maintain or exacerbate existing health disparities or even introduce new ones. Guarding against negative consequences will require specific policies and ongoing, coordinated action that goes beyond the usual scope of individual product development. Based on our research, we suggest that any regulatory framework for AI in health care should accomplish three aims:

Ensure that AI tools are rigorously tested before they are made fully available to the public and are subject to regular scrutiny afterward. Those developing AI tools for use in health care should carefully consider whether the training data are matched to the tasks that the tools will perform and representative of the full population of eventual users. Characteristics of users to consider include (but are certainly not limited to) age, gender, culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, and language fluency. Policies should encourage and support developers in investing time and resources into pre- and post-launch assessments, including:

pilot tests to assess performance across a wide variety of groups that might experience disparate impact before large-scale application

monitoring whether and to what extent disparate use patterns and outcomes are observed after release

identifying appropriate corrective action if issues are found.

Require that users be clearly informed about what tools can do and what they cannot. Neither health care workers nor patients are likely to have extensive training or sophisticated understanding of the technical underpinnings of AI tools. It will be essential that plain-language use instructions, cautionary warnings, or other features designed to inform appropriate application boundaries are built into tools. Without these features, users’ expectations of AI capabilities might be inaccurate, with negative effects on health outcomes. For example, a recent report outlines how overreliance on AI tools by inexperienced mushroom foragers has led to cases of poisoning; it is easy to imagine how this might be a harbinger of patients misdiagnosing themselves with health care tools that are made publicly available and missing critical treatment or advocating for treatment that is contraindicated. Similarly, tools used by health care professionals should be supported by rigorous use protocols. Although advanced tools will likely provide accurate guidance an overwhelming majority of the time, they can also experience catastrophic failures (such as those referred to as “hallucinations” in the AI field), so it is critical for trained human users to be in the loop when making key decisions.

Proactively protect against medical misinformation. False or misleading claims about health and health care—whether the result of ignorance or malicious intent—have proliferated in digital spaces and become harder for the average person to distinguish from reliable information. This type of misinformation about health care AI tools presents a serious threat, potentially leading to mistrust or misapplication of these tools. To discourage misinformation, guardrails should be put in place to ensure consistent transparency about what data are used and how that continuous verification of training data accuracy takes place.

How can regulation of AI in health care keep pace with rapidly changing conditions?

In addition to developers of tools themselves, there are important opportunities for unaffiliated researchers to study the impact of AI health care tools as they are introduced and recommend adjustments to any regulatory framework. Two examples of what this work might contribute are:

Social scientists can learn more about how people think about and engage with AI tools, as well as how perceptions and behaviors change over time. Rigorous data collection and qualitative and quantitative analyses can shed light on these questions, improving understanding of how individuals, communities, and society adapt to shifts in the health care landscape.

Systems scientists can consider the co-evolution of AI tools and human behavior over time. Building on or tangential to recent research, systems science can be used to explore the complex interactions that determine how multiple health care AI tools deployed across diverse settings might affect long-term health trends. Using longitudinal data collected as AI tools come into widespread use, prospective simulation models can provide timely guidance on how policies might need to be course corrected.

[backtoherloneheart]

Gerrit Q&A on Instagram from today (13.11.24), English questions:

Current favorite lipstick color? Dark purple.

If you had the chance to play in any band for one show who would you choose? I'm quite happy and content with the band I'm in.

Any new album from 2024 you like and would recommend? Really, really love the new album "Life In The Wires" by Frost* (music for (keyboard) nerds). Absolute masterpiece, as expected! Lotta notes, too.

Hi! Is it possible to get some Lotl piano notes? Not in the foreseeable future. It's a rights management thing, I believe. Use your ear and venture into the trial and error game. It's a good ear training!

Any new piercings or tattoos planned? Still wanting to finish my left arm. But either there's shows coming up (don't like going on tour with a new/healing tattoo), or I don't have the money to spare. A whole sleeve can be ridiculously expensive, albeit rightly so.

Do you prefer shooting music videos with a story and acting involved, or with just playing? Just playing. I'm a musician, not an actor. Video shoots with acting parts are highly uncomfortable for me, usually, because I have hardly any awareness about my movements and/or facial expressions. #körperklaus

How are you? Coping, I guess.

Hardest LOTL for You to Play? (Tempo/Too many instruments for You to play it live/something else?) La Bomba is virtually impossible to nail without any bum notes, and I rarely ever succeed. But luckily, that song is SO weird and tongue-in- cheek, that a couple of mistakes here and there are, I assume, pardonable.

What was the last live concert that you visited? CIGSAFTERSEX

What was the best part about touring in America?Too many things. The positive culture shock, our friends in julienkofficial and beastoblanco, our new, marvellous teammates brian_dickie and matthewxwindsor666, seeing hanszimmerlive... The whole package, really.

Comfort food? Pasta with pesto. Could (and most of the time do) eat it for days on end. Which is also quite cheap. It's called financial responsibility.

Which musical instrument do you hate the most Bag pipes. It sounds like it's apologising for the way it sounds.

Have you ever thought about releasing solo music? x Highly unlikely. I'm not much of a writer/composer. I've come to terms with the fact that I shine more at being a reproductive musician.

What's your all time favorite chord? How about time signature? ACAB! All Chords Are Beautiful

Do you miss Nora on stage? Less than I thought, tbh. In general, I'm quite happy to be able to focus more on keys and percussions on stage, thanks to having the ridiculously talented @the benjineer on guitar and additional keys now!

Favorite position I very much enjoy sleeping horizontally.

What advice would you give to someone starting to learn an instrument? Also fantastic picture! You won't make any progress if - the vibe with your teacher doesn't match. - you don't enjoy what you're playing/practising.- you feel forced to play/practise. Music is supposed to be fun, not a sport or an obligation.

Eat or sleep Yes please.

What was the last poetry book U read? I don't think I've ever read a poetry book in my life.

Do you have a favorite musical? If so what? I genuinely dislike musicals.

Where are you going? With my life? Absolutely no idea!

What's your fascination with unicorns? (Meant in a positive way of course) There is no real fascination, tbh. I'm just a big fan of bad taste. Years ago, I said "I like unicorns!" for shits and giggles, and the aforementioned bad taste. And all of a sudden people started giving me all sorts of unicorn related things. Be careful what you wish for, I guess...

Your favorite keyboard name? I don't know. Timothy sounds nice. Or Jeffrey.

What happened to NORA? She's safely stored away.

Pils or weissbier? Pils. Or Helles.

Will you share more videos of you playing the keyboard? Not on a regular basis. Simply because I couldn't be bothered to set up a camera, find the right angle and lighting, get it played right (big victim of red light syndrome here!), do the post-processing... It's just so tedious and I'm far too lazy for that. All past attempts to do something like this regularly have failed, so I just stopped trying.

A book you would recommend / are currently reading? Not a big fan of books/reading.

Evolution or religion? Evolution. Science ftw. Boo religion.

Hey! How are you doing with all the bag pipes on Lords of Fyre? :) There's bagpipes in Lords Of Fyre?

Pi or Klaas? @kahlschlag Just kidding. I love all of them for various reasons.

Is there a particular music note that you dislike or like above the others (to hear)? Interesting concept, but no.

If you could be an animal, which one would it be? And why? A house cat. No job, no rent. Just meow meow.

Photo of what you have in front of you [a black pic] Fear, mostly.

What do you like more - being on stage or at home? These are, in equal measure, my two favourite places to be. Everything else is highly optional.

Is your stage character the same as in real life? Wouldn't be much of a dedicated stage character if both were the same, right? All I can say is, what you see up there is 100% authentically me. I guess I'm just less flamboyant off stage (I like to be rather plain in day to day life), but I'm the same silly twat in both situations.