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thatsillyfucknvegan · 4 years ago

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MAY 22, 2020

Factory Farming on Hold

by EVE OTTENBERG

Covid-19 has infected meat-packers, almost 12,000 of them. At least 48 have died and many plants have temporarily closed. So it seems like a good time to ask, would it be so terrible if slaughterhouses shut down for good? True, meat-packers would have to find other employment, but the end of factory farming and industrial slaughter of cows, pigs and chickens has many upsides. First, stopping animal torture. Chickens are so crowded together they have to be de-beaked. Cows spend their entire lives cramped in cells, barely able to turn around. The treatment of pigs – highly intelligent mammals and doubtless aware of the brutality they suffer and who causes it – is abominable. So the idling of slaughterhouses by the pandemic could be a lucky development, and not just for animals.

Second are the environmental advantages of de facto vegetarianism. Bovine burps contribute hugely to atmospheric methane, a green-house gas far more potent than carbon-dioxide. With pigs, there is the immense problem of excrement. Lagoons of this waste decorate hog country and in coastal regions, like the Carolinas, pollute waterways and ground water during hurricanes and major storms. Then there’s the awful practice of deforestation, as happens in the Amazon, to create pasture. The atmosphere that humans depend on for life needs more oxygen-producing trees, not more methane-producing cattle.

The public health advantages to reducing humanity’s meat intake are significant. Factory farms customarily dosing animals with antibiotics has created superbugs, immune to human medicine. For the beef, pork and chicken industries, it’s just too profitable to stop this, and so they resist efforts to curb it. Then there are the cardiac advantages of not eating red meat. For years doctors have warned patients to ingest less of this killer. Removing beef cattle from the food chain would not entirely put heart surgeons out of business, but it would considerably slim their practices.

The world has 1.468 billion head of cattle and 677.6 million pigs. Feeding these cows requires billions of acres per year. That’s a lot of land. Brazil has more cattle than any other country, and the pasture they need for grazing comes from chopping down the Amazon rainforest. But with global warming galloping wildly ahead at rates that endanger civilization, this is a disaster for humanity. It will suffocate us. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the Trump administration is reopening beef imports from Brazil. When Trump met in March with Brazilian president Jair “let’s burn down the Amazon” Bolsonaro, resuming the beef trade was agreed to. That includes meat-packer JBS, which “procured cattle from illegally deforested areas,” according to one report in April.

Disastrously, the world outside the U.S. has been adopting our meat-based diet. It spread with a vengeance to China, which now has one of the world’s largest cattle populations, at roughly 96.85 million head, bigger than the U.S. one at 94.4 million. India’s cattle population is also in the many tens of millions, though that country has lots of vegetarians – an example we would do well to follow. To reduce our carbon footprint, we should eat less meat.

Slaughterhouses are Covid-19 hotspots, with workers crammed together and sharing germs. Whether or not infected workers leave the virus on the meat they butcher is not known. The meat industry says no. But the meat industry also pushes to keep its plague-infested plants open. Last month, after a number shut down, with workers falling ill and some dying, Trump declared slaughterhouses essential business. So now workers face a dilemma: stay home, lose their unemployment checks and starve or clock in and very possibly get sick and die. A civilized government would not impose such a choice on its people.

But then, a civilized government would compel its industry to produce sufficient hospital gear during a pandemic. A civilized government would make sure its medical workers had masks and gowns to protect them from a highly contagious, lethal disease. A civilized government would aggregate and publish the mortality statistics of its nursing homes. And a civilized government would support its workforce financially during a medically necessary lockdown. With the meat-packers, the situation is stark. Instead of forcing these workers to accept illness and possibly death, maybe it’s time to retrain them and shut the slaughterhouses down for good. But then again, this is Amurica, where people shoot each other over having to wear face masks. Such people would probably rather die than give up meat. They’d certainly rather other people die. Other people like the luckless meat-packers.

#meat industry #meat farms #covid 19 #coronavirus

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amyisagoof · 4 years ago

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TFF Bonus Content: Original Confession Plan

Because the original plan was to have some students help Ochako with a breathing treatment during the night and it was Deku’s turn, this scene starts with Deku finding Ochako passed out in her own room and choking on flowers. She’s remarkably calm about it, and that’s kinda where this scene starts. Mind, this was still in the planning stage, so it is VERY rough. XD

.../.../.../

We start with sensations that Ochako is feeling. Mainly fuzziness in the head and the feeling of soft velvet around her mouth. The pain is dulled and she can’t really breathe, but she doesn’t have enough air anyways to panic about it. Instead, she notes that something muffled lays just beyond her senses. Something that’s reaching for her.

The velvet is pulled away chunk by chunk, and something is shoved in her mouth in order to dig the flowers out. It moves around a little bit, causing her to gag weakly. Suddenly, she’s turned on her side and her stomach pushes mightily against the blockage. Her splutters and coughing get stronger as air makes its way into her lungs and fills her with new strength. She violently expels all the flowers she can, horrified and a bit detached when she notices that it’s not one type of flower, but two that are now coming out of her mouth.

Soothing circles are being rubbed into her back, helping her be grounded in this very moment. Brown eyes turn to see green ones, piercing and full of concern. Before, she might have looked away. Now, she knows she can’t do that.

“I have to do something about this.”

He nods. She sighs and looks at the stacks of papers.

“I can’t lose my ability to love. My sidekicks…my friends…my parents… I love them all so much. I can’t imagine being a person who doesn’t love and care for all of them. That kind of existence… I can’t imagine it.”

Then to the flower petals around them.

“But…if I let this continue…I’ll just whither and die. And after yesterday… all of you helped me realize… I can’t go down without a fight. Without trying. I owe that much to all of my friends. I owe it to myself.”

Deku’s completely white now, knowing what her decision is. She knows he’s scared for her. Hell, she’s scared for her. Neither of them want her to die.

But…in a few minutes, they’ll know once and for all, won’t they?

Ochako breathes and thanks him for everything that he’s done until this point. She tells him that she’s okay with this decision and that, no matter what happens, she wants him to know that he’s helped her achieve so much more than what she ever thought would be possible. She’s adamant about it and emphasizes what a good friend he is, doing her best to preemptively get rid of any guilt that may come with losing her.

They hug it out for a moment that seems to stretch into eternity. As she finishes steeling herself, Deku draws back and gives her what she’s dubbed a ‘hero’s smile’.

“Need a ride?” he asks. “I hear sometimes it’s better to do these things in person.”

Ochako shakes her head, a smile on her lips in spite of herself. She burps out a few of the new flowers, strange petals falling from her lips and reminding her that her disease is finally adapting to their treatment and that she—unfortunately—is running out of time.

“No, I—”

Flowers force their way into her throat, cutting her off. Deku doesn’t hesitate to grab the bucket and she throws up the flowers. It’s getting harder to breathe.

“Deku, I—”

She coughs, and suddenly it’s making sense. The evolution of the flower isn’t telling her that she’s running out of time.

It’s trying to tell her that she’s already out of time. She should have been dead by now. Probably would have been without Izuku and his mother.

She’s hacking up a mixture of yellow and purple flowers and she knows that she has to at least try to get her message to him. He’s realizing that this isn’t a normal attack either when the sick won’t ease up and away. He looks through the treatment he brought on the side and offers it to her. She wants to take it, but she won’t be able to talk. She shakes her head, the flowers seeming too graceful for how they came into the world.

The words are being halted by the very flowers that were trying to force her to confess in the first place. She can’t talk.

Eventually, she comes up with an idea. She places one of her hands on her heart, then the other on his chest. She had to get him to stop moving, but once she touches him, he stops, trying to understand her. She beats her chest once, then his.

I…love…you.

Beat…pause…beat.

She does it over and over again, her actions getting weaker with every iteration. Eventually, she can’t do it anymore and just hangs on to the front of his shirt, her brain going fuzzy from the lack of oxygen.

She can’t hear what he says, but she knows what he does next. What he did when he first found her. Remove the flowers by taking them out of her mouth. Attempt to induce a gag reaction.

She wishes she could tell him that it’s too late to save her from the flowers blooming in her lungs.

But she wishes she had told him properly that she loved him before. And thanked him for everything.

#TFF #Bonus Content

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xxx-cat-xxx · 5 years ago

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hi! if you’re taking prompts could you maybe write something where peter is dumb and gets drunk and a party & ends up with alcohol poisoning? THANK YOU!!!

Thank you for the prompt! And thanks to @whumphoarder for beta reading.

For this one, let’s imagine that the fanfic community was in charge of the Endgame script and everyone is still alive after the final battle.

TWs for alcohol abuse and anxiety issues.

———-

Too Close to Home

“It’s going well, isn’t it?” Pepper’s hand comes down on Tony’s shoulder.

Tony turns around and smiles at her, his eyes gliding down her breathtaking blue dress before he takes in the scene around them. It’s the inauguration celebration for the reconstructed Avengers compound, and so far, Pepper seems right.

“I know how to throw a party, don’t I?” he replies with a smirk.

“Always so humble,” Pepper says, raising an eyebrow. “I think I’ll go and try to get Morgan settled - it’s way past her bedtime.” She motions at the visibly tired and cranky child currently stealing fries from Rhodey’s plate, smearing mayonnaise onto both his suit pants and her own dinosaur t-shirt.

“Yeah, before she disables his leg braces again…” Tony mutters. “Or should I do it?”

“Nah, it’s okay. You had her in the workshop long enough today.” Pepper blows a kiss on Tony’s cheek, then walks over to save Rhodey from the mayonnaise monster.

Tony surveys the rest of the party-goers. There are Nat and Clint sitting in a hammock, talking quietly, seemingly lost in their own world. Next to the bar, Sam is trying to impress Wanda and Scott with a Falcon story, swinging his arms up and down in an imitation of his wings. Bucky and Steve are sitting further away in a corner, huddled close together as always, the ever-present tension on Bucky’s face a little less visible today. Tony is far from comfortable in his presence, but he hopes that Steve appreciates the fact that he’d invited both of them.

With a breath, Tony lets out the tension he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. The complicated relationships of love, guilt, friendship, and broken promises in this room would have any psychologist happily taking notes. But for now, at least, it seems that everything is working out. Tony gives himself a mental pat on the back.

He steps out onto the terrace for a bit of fresh air. Someone is sitting on the porch swing, lightly drifting it back and forth, and Tony recognises Peter’s curly hair and ill-sized suit jacket, the sleeves of which are not quite long enough to reach his wrists. Tony’s smile morphs into a frown when he notices a near-empty bottle of Bailey’s on the ground next to the swing.

Tony steps closer. The boy is swaying a little where he’s sitting, glancing around himself with a slightly detached glaze to his eyes. Tony doesn’t need his glasses to see that his protegé is clearly drunk off his ass.

“Oh, hi, Mis’er Stark,” Peter says with a grin when Tony’s shadow falls on him, his pronunciation more than a little off.

“So, Peter Parker. Welcome to the latest episode of What Not to Do When You’re Bored on a Friday Night.”

“Huh?” Peter frowns, blinking against the lights shining through the windows behind Tony.

“How did you get this?” Tony points at the bottle with his prosthetic arm, emitting a few sparks from his fingertips for good measure. “For all that I’m paying the bartenders, they should know better than handing out drinks to minors.”

“Showed her my ID - says I’m 23,” Peter explains smugly. “We were talkin’, and she kept refilling my glass, then gave me this…” He gestures at the Bailey’s.

“And why on earth would you try to finish it?”

“Jus’ wanted to have some fun…” The kid is grinning, but there is something painful and twisted in his smile. If anyone in the world can see the difference between drinking for fun and drinking to forget, it’s Tony Stark.

Something in him snaps.

“I expected more from you, Peter. Screw my opinion, what would your aunt say about underage drinking?”

“Well, legally, I am 23…” Peter tries to get to his feet and nearly stumbles over them in the process. Tony catches him by the shoulder and holds him upright.

“That’s not an excuse. There is no excuse, actually.” Tony takes a deep breath, trying to ground himself. “Okay, you gonna come to your room with me, or should I call May?”

“What?” Peter balks. “No, I, I’m havin’ fun….”

“Yeah. Not gonna last long, trust me.” Tony grabs the boy’s wrists and starts pulling him towards the door.

“Mis’er Stark, hey!” Peter protests.

“Don’t hey me,” Tony spits. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, his breaths coming much faster than they should.

Peter is visibly having trouble setting one foot in front of the other one, so Tony slings his flesh arm around the kid and supports him back inside and towards the elevator. They bump into Bruce just when the doors open.

“What are you doing here?” Tony asks. It comes out more forcefully than he intends.

“Not a big fan of parties…” Bruce trails off upon seeing the look on his friend’s face. “What’s going on?” He takes in Peter’s slightly reeling posture with a frown.

“The kid had the brilliant idea of getting wasted at the party,” Tony cuts it short. He maneuvers Peter into the elevator, Bruce getting in behind them.

“How much did you have?” Bruce addresses Peter.

“Huh?” Peter blinks. “Oh, hey Dr B’nner…” He’s slurring more than mere minutes ago.

“Too much, apparently.” Tony positions Peter against the handrail and then grabs onto it himself with slightly trembling hands.

It doesn’t escape Bruce’s notice. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, ‘course.” But Tony can feel his chest going tight with the familiar feeling of there suddenly not being enough oxygen in the air. “Just - get him to his room, will you? Make sure he’s okay. I’ll- I’ll be there in a sec.”

He doesn’t wait for Bruce’s reply, escaping the moment the elevator opens to the upper floor. Without bothering to check whose room it is, Tony opens the first door he can find and pulls it shut behind him. He sinks onto the floor, counting his breaths, trying his best not to freak out completely.

All traces of amusement have vanished from Peter’s face when they finally make it to his bedroom. He looks dizzy and downright sick.

“‘m not feeling so great…” he mumbles when Bruce closes the door behind them.

“I know, Peter…” Bruce sighs. The boy hiccups thickly, letting out a breath that smells distinctly like alcohol. Bruce pushes a sudden onslaught of childhood memories away and concentrates on his doctoral instincts; taking care of the kid is all that matters now. “Bathroom, okay?”

Peter more stumbles into the bathroom than walks. He clumsily kneels down in front of the toilet and tries to rest his head on the seat, missing by a few inches. He would have hit the ground if it hadn’t been for Bruce’s hands holding him upright. “Okay, bend over the bowl,” the doctor directs.

Peter sets his elbows on the seat, supporting his head. “Think ‘m gonna be sick,” he slurs.

“It’s okay. Get it up.”

Peter coughs drily and spits out a string of saliva. He moans when a wet burp escapes him. “‘s awful. ‘m not doin’ this ‘gain.”

“I’m counting on that.” A gag comes from the boy’s mouth, bringing bile that trickles down his chin. Bruce sighs, bracing himself. “Okay, there you go.”

Peter lurches forward and heaves. A gush of liquid splashes into the toilet, the smell of alcohol mixing with the stench of bile.

“Okay, Peter, you’ll be alright.” Bruce rubs circles onto the kid’s back, trying his best to be comforting.

Peter empties his stomach into the bowl, moaning in the intervals. When it seems that the current round is over, he leans back against the bathtub, sweaty and pale. Bruce hands him a towel to wipe his mouth.

“You feeling a bit better?” Bruce asks.

Peter shakes his head, then pulls his knees towards his chest and buries his face in them. “I fucked up,” he sniffs.

“We all make mistakes, Peter.”

“No, but, Mis’er Stark, he…” Peter seems to lose track of the thought mid-sentence.

“It’s okay, Peter,” Bruce comforts. “Do you want to go to bed?”

The boy seems past making decisions, so Bruce hoists him to his feet and supports him back to his room.

“Dr Banner?” Peter asks when Bruce deposits him on the bed and starts to remove his shoes. He stares at Bruce with confusion, seeming genuinely surprised to see him there. “Where’s Mister Stark?”

“That’s a good question.” Bruce has a suspicion of what’s going on with Tony, but he is not going to share this with a drunk 16-year old. “How about you lie down and I go look for him?”

“Yeah…’s good.” Peter nods, then crashes onto the pillows. “So soft,” he mumbles.

“Okay, here’s the trash can.” Bruce doubts Peter is still listening, so he puts it right next to the bed. “FRIDAY, what’s his BAC?”

“0.18, Dr Banner.”

“Okay. Alert me of any changes in his condition.”

“Of course.”

With FRIDAY’s help, Bruce finds Tony on the floor of Sam’s bedroom, anxiously fumbling with his StarkPhone, looking nearly as pale as the kid Bruce just put to sleep.

“Can I come in?” Bruce asks softly.

“No.” But Tony doesn’t push him away when he sits next to him and lays a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

“This hit a little close to home, huh?” Bruce ventures.

Tony huffs. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for a bit. Tony’s breaths are still coming too fast.

“You know my father was an alcoholic, right?” Bruce says after a while.

“Yeah. I read your files.�� Tony glances at him sideways. “Sometimes I don’t get how you can stand to hang out with me.”

“Oh, you are completely different from him, trust me.”

Tony huffs out a breath. “You know, the kid, what he told me one time?” Bruce shakes his head. “He said he wanted to be like me. Well, looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. Oh shit, this is so fucked up….” Tony presses his knuckles into his eye sockets. Even his prosthetic hand is trembling.

“Tony, overdoing it one time doesn’t make someone an addict,” Bruce reassures. “Peter is a smart kid, and I’m sure he’s already regretting this evening. We should be glad that it happened here and not at some college party where nobody would’ve taken care of him. He’ll learn from it.”

“And what if he doesn’t?” Tony’s hand is now gesticulating wildly towards Bruce. “He’s got this thing, this hero thing, it fucks him all up. He’s been having nightmares since he came back, says he’s dreaming of Titan. I don’t think he would’ve done anything like what he did tonight before the snap. I - god, Bruce, I don’t want this to destroy him as well.”

“It won’t. He’s strong, Tony, and he’s got you.”

“Oh, that’s just great. Because I’m so well known for my healthy coping strategies. A former alcoholic is surely a great role model for a traumatised kid.”

“You’re more than that, and you know it,” Bruce asserts. “He looks up to you for who you are now, not for who you used to be.”

“I got so mad at him,” Tony admits in a quieter voice. He presses his eyelids together and clenches his fists. “Fuck, I sounded exactly like my father.”

“I doubt that Peter will remember. And if he does, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“I don’t wanna screw this up.” Tony looks at Bruce, all his masks gone for a moment. “Him - and Morgan - I just want to get it right this time.”

“You will, Tony,” Bruce assures quietly. “You’re doing great.”

“Dr Banner, Peter is showing signs of waking up,” FRIDAY’s voice interrupts them.

“Let’s go.” Bruce stands up and extends a hand to Tony, who takes it after a moment of hesitation. “You got this. Put your five years of parenting experience to good use.”

“Okay. Fine.” Tony takes a deep breath. His eyes are suspiciously wet, but his smile is already back at 50%. “But you’re changing the bedsheets if he pukes on them.”

———-

Link to all my fics

@toomuchtoread33 (because I’ve got a taglist now)

#Peter Parker #Tony Stark #Bruce Banner #Pepper Potts #Irondad #Spiderson #Sick Peter #Drunk Peter #Tony Stark has a heart #Parent Tony Stark #Sickfic #Fanfic #Science Bros

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silvereddaye · 5 years ago

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37 for Vader?

Darth Vader’s hands were clasped tightly behind his back. He stood in front of large floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the cityscape of Coruscant. His large chair he usually meditated in was cold and unused. But it was his meditations that provided him his current unease. What he had discovered in the depths of the Force--

There was movement in the feed he projected in small screen in his helmet. He paused. He stilled, though his automated breathing continued. His hands tightened. He clenched his teeth. Had it been nothing? His eyes watched the screen intently. The seconds ticked by. A full minute. Nothing. He started to relax. It was nothing.

Then the feed picked up a sound. He instantly tensed up again. With a flick of the Force he turned off his respirator. Silence. His lungs started to burn and ache. He kept the respirator off. He tried to breathe on his own, but it was hard. He wasn’t getting enough air. He was about to turn the switch, but then he heard it. A whimper.

He flicked the switch on. He didn’t even pause to relish the forced oxygen. He had turned sharply on his heel and marched out of the room. His long steps quickly brought him down the hallway. He paused before he entered his destination. The door slid open and by then the whimper was now crying.

He wasted no time in walking over to the crib. He looked down to see a crying baby. The little hands were curled into fists. The limbs waved about. Vader leaned over and quickly scooped the baby out. He had yet to stop marveling at how small his son was. He could rest the whole baby in the crook of one arm. He walked over to the changing table and gently placed his son down.

He undid the snaps of the onsie and took off the soiled diaper. While he cleaned the little bottom, he still couldn’t help but marvel at this child. This absolute miracle. One he had only known existed for a mere week. It was in his meditations that he had discovered this child had lived. His rage as he tore from Coruscant could not be sated until he had slaughtered and burned all who had held his child and had kept his baby away from him.

Sidious had understood the rage, had forgiven it, but wanted Vader to hand over the child. Vader couldn’t care for a baby. He had far more important things to do. He was needed for the Empire. He was needed to hunt down the remaining Jedi. Vader agreed, but he would not compromise. Not on this. Sidious had reluctantly agreed. For now.

A stream of urine splashed against his mask and along his eye lenses. He looked down. The baby was unphased. He grabbed his foot and stuck his toes in his mouth. Vader slipped the baby out of the rest of his now ruined ruined onesie. He put a fresh diaper and a new onesie on. He then wiped down his mask. Then he picked the baby up and tucked him into the crook of his arm.

“Luke,” he said. “What you have done . . . I have killed men, little one . . .”

The baby look up unphased. In fact he yawned and blinked his eyes a few times. Vader rocked the baby. This was what he was supposed to do, right? What she would have done, right? Luke’s eyes soon fought to stay open. Vader slowly walked back to the crib and lowered the baby into it. His son was asleep the moment his head touched the mattress. Vader watched him for a moment. Saw the chest rising and falling.

He should go. He had reports of the Inquisitors to look over. Files to look over regarding where he thought fugitive Jedi might be hiding. Things he had been ignoring and were starting to pile up. He started to turn, but then he heard a whimper. He looked back his son. Sound asleep. So he took a step over and looked down into the second crib. The second little baby’s brown eyes were open. Her face was all twisted.

Vader didn’t even wait for the crying to start. He scooped his daughter up and brought her to the changing table.

“At least you waited until I was done with your brother,” Vader said softly. He started to change her. “And at least you won’t urinate all over me.”

He finished changing her, and like her brother, he tucked her into his arm and started to rock her. But she squirmed and whimpered. He repositioned her so she was upright against his chest. Her head rested on his shoulder. He gently patted her back. She let out a few burps. She must have been gassy. She burped again. This time she threw up all over his shoulder armor and cape. He would have sighed if he could.

He placed her back on the changing table. Got out a new onesie on her. By then the baby was nodding off. He placed her in her crib. He made his way back to his own personal rooms. It was cold and sterile. More of a mechanic shop mixed with a hospital. He undid his cloak and handed it to one of the droids that attended to him. He took off his armor and handed to another droid.

“Sir,” said the droid. “We have not finished cleaning the other cape and armor yet.”

Vader eyed a set of droids cleaning off more baby puke from the cape he had been wearing earlier today.

“Then get another droid,” Vader growled. “Work faster.”

“Yes, sir,” the droid said.

He walked to his hyperbolic chamber and sat in it. The machine closed and his mask and helmet were removed. He became aware of the smell. The smell of babies. Of milk and powder. Of puke and urine and poop.

“Welcome to fatherhood,” he muttered to himself in a raspy voice. His cracked lips slowly curved into a smile.

#my writing #prompts #luke and vader #writing meme #darth vader #luke skywalker #leia organa #fluff #Anonymous

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emoboijk · 5 years ago

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ksj | my love (makeup)

You can’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone.—angst, idol!au

breakup :: time apart :: makeup

2,483 words

p.cred

It’s almost three months before you see him again. You try not to listen to the news or watch music programs. Your friends and coworkers have stopped bringing him up; at work “BTS” has become a banned topic, only to be discussed in frenzied whispers when you aren’t in the room. And you’re okay. The intense pain has dulled to a sore ache.

Seokjin, however, sees you every day. Well...not you . But, despite telling himself that he would, he never deleted any of your pictures. Sometimes he’ll pull up your contact page, ready to call you. He never does. He’s not really okay. He hurts. He realizes that he’s worse off without you—cranky and unhappy. He doesn’t even like Dad-jokes anymore. He wears the watch everywhere (all the places the stylists will let him, and to most of the places they won’t).

When you do see him again it is pure coincidence. You’re at the mall, of all places. And he spots you first.

He’s in the middle of filming for an episode of Run! BTS when he sees you. He stops everything. He stands stock still in the middle of filming, a camera five feet from him, to stare. Seokjin thinks you might be an apparition, he wonders if his depression is so severe he’s hallucinating now.

“Hyung?” Hoseok wonders, standing next to him and following his gaze as the staff and crew and his members all watch in confusion. There’s a beat of silence where Hoseok searches to see what could have captured his attention before he sees you. “Oh,” he whispers.

Seulgi is the one that points him out to you, although inadvertently. “Woah,” she says, stopping in the walkway to raise a hand towards the extensive film crew set up on the other side of the mall, “Someone must be filming?”

You raise your eyebrows and follow her finger, vaguely intrigued, when you see him. It’s like a bolt of lightning. You had entertained delusions of being over him over the last three months, but it becomes instantly clear that you are not .

Seokjin steps over the line of cameras and ignores the calls of his manager and the director (his members don’t even try to stop him), and crosses the mall toward you. It only takes him four strides to be standing directly in front of you and when he says your name it’s like a summer breeze blowing against your cheeks.

“Hi,” you whisper.

He wants to say I miss you , but he thinks that may not be right. He also wants to say, I made a huge mistake . But then maybe that’s not what he should start with. While he’s trying to decide you speak again.

“Are you filming something?”

Seokjin looks momentarily confused before he looks behind him quickly and remembers, “Oh. Yeah.”

“Has work been good?” you ask. Your heart is beating so fast and your palms are sweating. Your heart aches in his presence.

“Um,” he starts, bringing his hand up to run through his hair nervously. That’s when you see it.

“Is that…” You can’t bring yourself to complete the question. You think it might be devastating if you’re wrong.

Seokjin glances at where your fingers point and holds out his wrist, clad as it always is. “Yes,” he nods, “I wear it everywhere.” There’s a long pause where you look at him confused, slightly hopeful, and he thinks fuck it and says what he’s wanted to for the past three months, “I’ve missed you. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Seokjin…” you whisper.

“No, please,” he says and there’s so much desperation in his eyes that there’s hardly any color anymore, “Just hear me out. Let me take you to dinner.” He steps forward, wanting to touch you, raising his hand to do so before remembering that you’re not his to touch anymore. “I’m so sorry,” he says instead.

There are tears in your eyes because you’re standing on an edge. You want him more than oxygen, more than a breath in your lungs. But the last few months exist between you like a casm, and you’re afraid to fall into it by yourself.

“Dinner,” you nod.

The restaurant Seokjin picks is intimate and romantic. The idea has you all at once jittery and nervous, your hands shaking, a rock sitting in your stomach. When you arrive, he’s already seated. The restaurant is completely deserted, you’re sure that’s his doing. There’s a waiter filling up his water glass with an exasperated look when you approach. When Seokjin sees you, he stands too quickly and knocks over his chair.

“Sorry!” he says, too loud, bending to help the waiter pick it up. You stand at the edge of the table with your eyebrows raised. He’s nervous.

“Thank you,” you whisper when the maiterdee who had shown you to the table pulls out your chair for you. When you’re seated you glance at Seokjin who is watching you with an innocent expression, “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling as if already this is going very well, “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course,” you say, looking away from him to peruse the menu. You can’t focus though. You’re too aware of his presence across the table, of his eyes on you, of how much you want to hold his hand, kiss him, take him home.

“Calm down,” you whisper, looking over your menu to find him still watching you, “Stop looking at me.”

“Sorry,” he says, just as softly. He opens his own menu, his knee bobbing up and down anxiously. You wish he would chill out because your anxiety is already driving you crazy, you don’t need his on top of it.

“Can I get you started with something to drink?”

“Um,” you look at Seokjin, you’re not sure why, “Chardonnay?”

“Yes ma’am,” the waiter says, turning to Jin, “Just the water for you sir?”

“Yes,” Jin says without looking away from you. You rub your lips together nervously and look back down at your menu.

You work through dinner (salmon for him and pasta for you) with nearly four and a half glasses of wine, getting tipsier by the minute, Seokjin’s expression slowly turning from nervous excitement to apprehensive concern. He reaches across the table after your plates have been cleared to grasp your hand, “Are you okay?”

“Don’t touch me,” you whine, pulling your hand away and slumping into your chair. Your head is swimming and all you know is that you want him more than anything else in the world. And you’re mad at him. “You hurt me,” you pouted.

Seokjin sits back in his chair like he’s been slapped, “I know.”

“Why?” you whine, and this time it’s almost a sob.

“I thought I was doing what was best for you,” he whispers.

“What about me ?” you hit your own chest for emphasis, burping immediately after. It would be funny if your words weren’t so serious. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me about what’s best for me ?”

“I—” It’s not often that Seokjin is found at a loss of words, but he’s floundering. It had seemed so definite, so clear, three months ago. He thought he had been hurting you by being with you.

“I’m an adult,” you pout again, “I can make my own decisions.” You’re about to say something else when a waiter comes over with a check.

“Sir?”

Without looking at it, Seokjin pulls a black card out of his suit pocket and hands it over, not taking his eyes off of you. He’s afraid you might vomit. Instead, you slam your hands on the table so that the glasses on it shake and stand up suddenly.

“I want to leave.”

Seokjin stands too, hovering around you to make sure you don’t fall. When the waiter hands back the card, Jin pulls a wad of bills from his pocket and hands it over to him as a tip, “Sorry for this,” he bows respectfully.

“Sorry?” you whine as he ushers you out the door, bowing to the employees you pass as you go, “You should be sorry.”

“I am sorry,” he whispers, pausing when you finally get outside to adjust to the briskness of the night air. Your cheeks flush with the sudden temperature change and the alcohol, but it has little sobering effect on you. “Can I take you home?”

You try and take a step without him and your cheeks bulge out with the effort to keep yourself from vomiting. You nod quickly, reaching out for his arm to steady you. He holds one hand on your waist and opens the back door of his town car, sliding in next to you and giving the driver the address.

Once he’s inside, you lean against him heavily, your eyes drooping closed. You fall asleep within seconds, Jin’s hand still around your waist.

You’re still drunk when you wake up and very unsure of how much time has passed. But Jin is shaking you gently and when he opens the door, the cold night air makes you curl into his embrace. “You’re home,” he whispers, pulling you by your waist until your feet hit the pavement.

You slump against him once you're out, and hear him say to the driver, “I’ll just be a minute.”

As you step up to the building, you’re nearly asleep against him once more, mumbling about the injustice of fate and this cruel world. Seokjin looks at the gate as if that is all it will take to open it, and when that doesn’t work, he turns to you, “Where are your keys?” You mumble something incoherent, and he ultimately decides to rummage through your purse, finding them quickly (after shuffling through your wallet, some tampons, a couple of coupons and receipts, and three candy mints) to open the door.

“Okay,” he says, “Here we are.” You both stand in the doorway of your apartment, you leaning so heavily against him that you’re pressed flush against his chest.

“I’m an adult!” you protest randomly, pouting, “I make my own choices!”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, smiling softly at you, “You’re home. Can you make it to bed?”

“I choose you .” You lean heavily against him, aiming for his lips and hitting his neck, passing out almost immediately. Seokjin sighs, and kicks the door closed with his foot, holding you up by your waist as he all but drags you into your bedroom.

You fall on the bed with a thump, still passed out, and Seokjin removes your shoes and puts a blanket over you, brushes the hair from your eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, kissing your forehead and wrinkling his nose at the stench.

He wanders back out of the room and loosens the tie he’s wearing, rearranging the pillows on the couch before lying down. He texts the driver and their manager and Namjoon that he’s staying here tonight. Then he means to go to sleep, but he spends almost two hours listening to your snoring and thinking about his mistakes before finally drifting off.

You don’t wake up until nearly 1 PM the next morning and when you do it hurts. But there’s a good smell coming from your kitchen which makes your stomach rumble and apprehension rise in your mood. You remember going to dinner with Jin, you definitely remember the Chardonnay, and unless something extremely terrible and dangerous has happened...Jin’s cooking breakfast.

You pull on a pair of shorts and trying to make yourself look less hungover and vomity before peeking out of the door. The sight strikes you in the chest like a punch, knocking the wind out of you. He’s just in his undershirt and the slacks he wore the night before, his broad shoulders dominating the kitchen space in a way that seems fantastical. He cracks an egg with one hand over a frying pan, moving around your kitchen like it’s choreographed.

It’s so domestic. It’s so perfect. You pinch your thigh because you think it might be a memory. You squint and blink really hard because maybe it’s just a flashback.

But no, he’s really there, morning stubble and all, cooking you breakfast.

Jin turns around to grab something from the opposite counter and sees you, his eyebrows raising, “Oh, good morning.”

“Hi,” you whisper, hiding your blush as you step out of your doorway and walk over to him, slipping onto one of the barstools on the opposite side.

“Sleep well?” he asks, and you don’t have to look up to know there’s a slight smirk to his expression. You roll your eyes.

“ Yes .”

“Eggs in a bit,” he says, turning away from you again.

You sigh, not really wanting to ruin this but knowing you have to, “Jin.”

Just the way you say his name has his shoulders tensing, his hand clenching on the handle of the frying pan.

“What is this?” you say softly, “And last night? What’s...what is this?”

Jin doesn’t turn around to look at you, just stares at the eggs he’s frying because somehow that’s easier. “Last night was an attempt at an apology before you got extremely intoxicated,” he tries to joke, letting the tension out of his chest and finally turning to look at you. He regrets it. You look so beautiful, even now, with your hair matted and your skin dewy and your eyes shining with emotion. It makes him feel every ounce of pain he’s put you through, put himself through.

“You really hurt me,” you whisper, looking down at your hands.

“I know,” he whispers, turning to flick off the stove and move the eggs aside.

“Do you? We were supposed to be partners, Seokjin, a team . And you did what you thought was best, but just you , you didn’t talk to me about it at all. You have to trust me, that’s what it’s all about.”

“I fucked up,” he says, turning back around to face you, “I was scared of...hurting you, of you resenting me, of the future.” He sighs so heavily that it makes your chest hurt.

“And I get that, I just...ending it didn’t take any of that away. But talking to me would’ve. We have to work through those things together, that’s why we’re an us .”

“Us?” he says, his head snapping up to look at you now, expression startled.

You chew on the inside of your cheek, trying to fight your smile, “Yeah, us . If you pinky swear to stop doing this particular brand of stupid shit, because my heart can’t take it anymore.”

He crosses the kitchen in two seconds and takes your face in his hands, pressing his lips to yours passionately, “Never again. I know what I have. I’m never letting you go, my love .”

“Damn right,” you whisper, wrapping your arms around his neck and pressing him against you.

author’s note—should i do a ‘makeup sex’ chapter? yay or nay?

for more of my works check out my m.list

#rosynamjoon #bts #hyunglinenetwork #bangtanbuds #bts x reader #kim seokjin #seokjin #jin #jin x reader #seokjin x reader

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shantalangel · 3 years ago

Text

Stories written on the wall of one of the rooms in the game Armikrog.

It’s about everything happened before the game, P’s parents life, how they met and how she appeared.

Reading sequence:

The Blank Miner. Part 1

The Blank Miner. Part 2

Tools, Weapons, Food, Plants, Medicine, Magic and Pets

A Meeting in the Woods

Punishment and Crime. Part 1

Punishment and Crime. Part 2

Punishment and Crime. Part 3

Desperation

Punishment and Crime. Part 3

Meva and I spent many weeks trying to come up with an experiment that would give us clear results to our hypothesis.

Many other experiments were conducted, most of them mundane. I will not bore you with the details, but I will bore you with the results. We found that most living bodies could go without a soul for some amount of time. It may only be a few seconds, but none of the bodies could survive without a soul for longer than two minutes under normal room conditions. We tried a soul transfer in the winter on a hibernating hamstel, and its body survived after four minutes without a soul, but most did not survive that long of an ordeal. There were problems with the bodies we were using in that the stopped heart removed the ability to deliver oxygen to the subject’s brain. So some soul transfers were successful, but the brain damage of the body was often so great that the spird was incapable of flight, had no memory, or died some time later. We hated being the cause of these spird’s deaths, so we tried to return their souls to their bodies within two minutes.

The Disintegration of Specimen X

Specimen X was lost when we unhooked the claw from the spird’s body midway through a transfer. The body went transparent, then vanished completely. It was unclear what happened to the spird’s soul, but we could hear it chirping in the air around us even after the body was disposed. This was strange, since the spird’s soul was not attached to a body’s vocal chords, and yet both Meva and I could hear it. Specimen X’s chirping went more and more distant before it went silent, never to be heard again. It was unclear to us if the body was disintegrated by choice of the purple fuzz-ball, or because of the disconnect of the soul transfer machine. This brings us to Specimen Y.

The Disintegration of Specimen Y

During the soul transfer of Specimen Y, I prodded the purple fuzz-ball with a stick, and everything in the room came to a stop. The lamp in the room remained lit, but it went dim. For a moment, I experienced what Specimen Y was feeling, and at the same time I could see his body splitting from his soul. I felt my heart beating in my chest, then saw my body from Specimen Y’s point of view. I felt terrified. My body looked like a giant, poking the purple fuzz-ball with a stick and standing across from my little spird’s body. The room went bright white, and I was slammed back into my Tzurk body. Meva and I were flung across the room, our bodies pressed against the wall by an unseen force. When the room went back to normal, Specimen Y’s body was gone, as was the rock his soul was supposed to be cast into. The stick was still in my hand, but it made chirping sounds. The stick chirped for several days, but faded as the days went on, until the voice died entirely.

The Visit

We were eating breakfast when the cabin was shaken. It stopped. An intermittent hum came from the backyard. We rushed out to find a space ship covered in stars floating just above the ground.

It was half the size of our cabin. We walked around it. I put my hand on the hull. It was cool to the touch, and the ship moved even under the slightest pressure of my hand like a balloon.

"I wonder if it has a door?" I said.

Just then, as if by coincidence, the edge of a door appeared, then it disappeared again. Meva saw it too.

We tried to find the edge of the door with our fingers, but the remained smooth aside from two large gashes to the left of where the door was.

"I wonder if someone is inside."

Again the edge of the door appeared, opening only slightly, but enough to allow sound to escape from the ship’s interior.

"WAAAaaahhH!" a cry came from inside. Not the cry of something big but of something small.

"That sounded like a child!" Meva gasped. "We have to get in!"

As if moved by her demand, the hatch opened wide, a small set of stairs extending to the ground. The cry came louder now that the hatch was open. We couldn't see inside because white lights flooded from inside. Meva was halfway up the stairs before I grabbed her arm.

"Meva! We don't know if it's safe!"

"WaaaaahhhhH!" came the baby cry again.

There was fire in Meva's eyes. "Someone needs us! We'll find out if it's safe later!"

She pulled me up into the bright light. I stumbled on the steps, and then we were inside. Meva tripped over something beyond the door, and she gasped. We stood there for a moment, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light. From inside the craft, it was hard to make out any sounds beyond the hum of engines and the crying.

Finally, through squinted eyes we saw what Meva had tripped on. Two beings lay on the floor together, arm in arm. I would have thought they were asleep, but their faces were gaunt, their skin already stretching around the shape of their skulls, eyeballs dried and sunken. Meva covered her face.

I knew what had killed them. I had seen it before in the mines. When a miner was being punished for something particularly terrible, he would have his rations taken away. These were the effects of starvation.

Again, the crying. This time Meva stepped over the corpses and went in search of the source.

"What if it is a trap? That cry could be a universal distress signal to attract victims! Maybe this is not a ship! Maybe it is a living entity and it hopes to kill and eat us?!"

"You have a great imagination, Tzurk." Meva called over her shoulder.

I followed.

We passed a small room that caught my attention. Wires traced their way around the ceiling, walls, and floor. They came together at a power grid covered in little crystals inserted into gaps. The crystals were a dull greenish color.

In a small chamber, Meva found a baby in a padded pod, chained to a console. The room was filled with the stench of feces. When Meva lifted the child from her bed, it was easy to see that the smell was coming from her overflowing diaper. Even its pod was smeared with it.

"Tzurk, quickly, give me your robe!" Meva said.

Meva removed the dirty wrapping and tossed them back into the pod. Taking my robe, she gently wrapped the child. Though sullied, the child seemed comforted by its new found freedom from the soggy diaper. Her cries sputtered to a stop.

Meva rocked the girl in her arms, singing softly. The baby watched her with wide eyes. The little thing spoke, "P." She burped a green bubble. I popped the bubble, and a small crystal fell from it, landing on the floor. It looked just like the crystals I had seen inserted into the grid, except this one was bright green.

The baby nuzzled her head into Meva's arms, her eyes closing in exhaustion. Meva looked around the room.

"She hasn’t been changed her for days." Meva observed.

It didn't make sense that the two beings on the stairs starved to death while the child seemed to be so well fed. I turned the crystal over in my hand, trying to understand. Then it came to me.

"They starved themselves to feed the child!" I said, "The crystals come from her! They power the ship. She was their only chance for their survival. After they died, the ship ran out of power, and drifted into our backyard."

Meva smiled, “She found us, Tzurk! We could not ... she found us. You did see where the ship landed, right?"

I shook my head.

"... on the female baby garden. She will be OUR child!"

I saw the look of renewed hope in Meva's eyes. Though I doubted any cosmic will was bent on bringing us this female child, I did not want to hurt Meva’s feelings. Whatever the cause of this coincidence, it was a good thing for Meva's heart to have a child in her arms… a child that needed her.

We took P off the ship and brought her into the house. That night, she slept between us, and we could hear her breathing. I put my hand on Meva’s hip, and she put her hand on the baby’s back. Just before we drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep, I heard Meva say, "You're safe now, P. I love you." A giggle. A burp. POP! A crystal clatters on the floor.

The Signal

There were several mornings that Meva dreamt the same thing. She saw P being born in the center of a planet, hundreds of thousands of years ago. The dream was strange enough, but its recurrence was troubling.

Another oddity was P's diet. It was non-existent. Again and again, Meva tried to get P to eat something, but she would just laugh until she burped up a green bubble. In the corner of the cabin lay a burlap sack half full of green crystals.

"She is not eating, Tzurk. And she doesn't even seem hungry!" Meva said.

It was quite the puzzle. We had both seen her waste inside the ship, so she had to eat something, or at least be capable of it. Meva held P close, and the little green baby smiled, wrinkled her nose, then burped until a huge green bubble formed in the air! I popped it, and it revealed a slightly larger green crystal, about the size of an egg. I picked up the crystal and examined it.

It reminded me of something we had once found in the mine. We had found a crystal similar in shape and size, but it was blue. After discovering it, Jockson Reckson was noticeably excited. He ripped it from my hands and examined it in the light of one of our headlamps. He said it was K-tonium. He said something about selling it and buying a new house. He slipped it into his pocket, and we never saw it again.

Could these little green crystals be similar?

That evening, we were sitting on the front porch, enjoying the cool mountain air. Meva was teasing P with a little straw doll she'd made, and P was giggling, as usual. I examined the crystal. Where was a low hum, not from the crystal, but from beyond the trees, from the valley road. What I saw was like a boot to the stomach.

Three military hover pods stopped on the road. Scores of soldiers poured from them and disappearing into the trees between us.

"How did they find us?" Meva cried.

I looked down at the green crystal in my hand. P was emitting a source of power that would show up on the radar of every military vehicle across the country. How could I be so stupid? They were not coming for us. They were coming for her!

We ran back into the cabin. I dug out the sock with The Abominate's finger. Even if I managed to kill some of the soldiers, I would never stop all of them. Escape was our only option.

"Quick, Meva. To the ship!"

We ran out the back door, just as soldiers reached the front of the cabin.

"Open the hatch!" I yelled at the ship, and it obeyed.

Meva scrambled in with P, but then I remembered something. The soul transfer device was still inside the cabin. I nodded to send Meva into the ship as I ran back to the cabin.

"Close hatch!" I yelled over my shoulder, and the ship obeyed.

Inside the cabin, the front door groaned against its rusty hinges as the soldiers pounded the other side. I saw shadows pass the side windows. They’re going around the back! I fell onto my belly in front of the bed, and pulled the device out. I was nearly back outside when the front door gave, bursting inwards. Darts bit into the doorframe around me, and I slammed the back door closed on them.

Soldiers came around the sides of the cabin.

"Open!" I screamed at the ship as darts pinged off the ship’s doorframe.

I dove inside before the stairs even had time to extend. I shouted for the hatch to close, and not a moment too soon. BOOM! A concussion bomb made the ship reel.

Meva was thrown against the wall, her arms shielding P. I held up the device for her to see, and she nodded. Another concussion hit the ship, throwing me to the floor.

"They're shelling us!" she yelled.

We ran into the control room together, but none of the controls made any sense.

Meva was in despair, "How do we take off?"

Suddenly I remembered the green crystal in my pocket. It was a bright green, like the sun casting through a new spring leaf. Power! The ship needed power. I raced down the hall and into the room with the grid. I tore out a dull green crystal and threw it aside. I inserted the new bright green crystal in its place. A voice from overhead said, "P-tonium accepted. 12 percent charge."

Instantly the ship turned on an unseen pivot and shot upwards, pressing us into the floor. The whole room rumbled and shook as we gained speed.

From where I lay on the floor, I could see Meva, but I could not get up to be with her. She was pinned to the wall, clutching little P in her hands, straining against the pressure. She tried to hide the fear on her face.

All went silent. We had pierced the atmosphere. The resistance was gone, and the vacuum of space enveloped us.

Meva and I scrambled into the control room. The knobs, levers and buttons were a complete cipher.

"Does anything look familiar to you?" said Meva.

"I'm a miner, Meva. Not an astronaut."

"Don't worry, Tzurk." Meva said, "We are a family now. I would rather be here with you and P than back in my father's palace. Though hurling through space, I can say that in this moment, I am complete."

I laughed and my heart great stronger.

I said, "You are Armikrog! That is what I shall call you from now on."

Meva's face contorted, "That's a horrible sounding word! What does it mean?"

"A wrinkled man of the Wanati desert tribe was sold into slavery, and worked with our mining crew. Whenever his hammer fell on walls that were too hard to be chipped, he would shout 'ARMIKROG' at the rock. That's you. The immovable rock!"

Meva shook her head and laughed. "Never call me that ugly name!"

"Okay" I said, then mumbled under my breath, "... Armikrog."

"I heard that!"

#armikrog #armikrog game #armikrog stories #armikrog lore #armikrog story #neverhood #the neverhood #neverhood 2

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casper-has-a-cat · 7 years ago

Text

WARNING: descriptions of vomit below!

read the warning!

okay, you’ve been warned! please enjoy the fic!

Daichi squeezed Suga’s hand and offered a tight smile and hurriedly got up to turn on the lights. “That was… a… good movie?”

Suga shifted uncomfortably. His stomach had been bothering him all night, but now it was getting to the point where he could hardly focus on anything else, let alone some cheesy horror film.

“Suga?”

Suga’s head snapped around to face his friend, realizing that he had yet to respond. “Ah, uh, yeah, sorry,” he blinked. If he was having trouble focusing on Daichi of all things, he was in pretty bad shape. His stomach gurgled as if in agreement and he struggled to breath through a sharp cramp. He should tell Dai-

“Hm, not scary enough for you, huh?” Daichi chuckled uneasily, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. Suga shook his head in a way he shouldn’t have considering he already had a headache.

“No, no, that’s not it. I’m just tired.”

Daichi frowned, catching on quickly. “Really? It’s early! You’re not just trying to humor me for being afraid, are you?”

Suga smiled thinly. The question was an obvious attempt at humor, but it was underscored by real worry. He shrugged. He didn’t see any reason to keep it a secret.

“Nah. Actually, I’ve been feeling a little bit-“

Just then the lights went off. Suga heard a crash followed by a curse, and then a shaky “Suga?”

“Daichi? You okay?” Suga stood and made his way into the kitchen, towards the noise, forgetting about his own pain immediately. “I think the power went out!”

“I’m- yeah, Suga, I’m fine, but where are you? What were you-“

Both boys startled when Suga bumped into Daichi, but Suga quickly grabbed onto Daichi’s shoulder.

“I’m okay,” Daichi said. “I’m not a kid anymore, I’m not afraid of the dark.”

Then tension in Daichi’s muscles said otherwise, and Suga didn’t want to push it, but he couldn’t very well leave it at that either. He searched for his friend’s face in the dark and when he found it placed a sturdy hand on Daichi’s cheek.

“Dai, it’s okay. If you’re scared- I mean, you… Of all people, you have more than enough reason to be scared-“

“I’m not,” Daichi protested, ending the conversation. “Anyway, are you okay?” Suga’s stomach gurgled again and he felt Daichi shift. He also felt sweat running down the side of his friend’s face, and he heard the way Daichi’s breathing sped up, and he knew that even though the trembling of Daichi’s entire body was slight, it was only because the instinct was being suppressed.

He nodded, even though he knew Daichi couldn’t see, even as a bubble of air made its way up his throat. He released it in a silent burp before answering aloud.

“I’m fine. Just tired. Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“How come?” There was a waver in Daichi’s voice, and Suga knew he needed to keep talking.

He opened his mouth to do so, but instead of words, a loud burp left his mouth, startling Daichi and making the situation worse instead of better.

“Sorry! Sorry, that was rude. I must’ve eaten too much popcorn,” Suga excused himself despite having hardly eaten any popcorn.

“Suga, I’m fine, okay? Are you, really?”

It was clear enough that Daichi wasn’t being honest, so Suga didn’t feel too bad as he lied through his teeth.

“I’m fine, too,” he said, pretending to have not heard - or felt - the bubbling noises that continued to come from his stomach. He suppressed another belch and was glad when Daichi didn’t comment on the jolt that ran through him as a result.

“So,” Suga attempted to make conversation. “Kageyama and Hinata have been - ulp - getting along a lot better, huh?”

Daichi grunted. Suga sat on the ground and pulled his friend close to his chest. The fact that Daichi allowed it was a tribute to the intensity of his fear as much as his speechlessness.

“And Yamaguchi’s getting better at - huuurup - playing in - ulp - general?”

Another bubble of air was making its way up Suga’s throat, but he clamped his mouth shut. He figured that the belches that had punctuated his speech already would normally have given him away, but with the way Daichi was trembling, he was hoping they might go unnoticed.

“Suga, you don’t have to force yourself to make conversation for my sake,” Daichi mumbled, voice rough and sounding like tears. A wet burp rolled out of Suga’s mouth and Daichi cleared his throat. “You’re clearly not doing well.”

“Well neither - huulp - are you,” Suga gasped as a cramp wracked his body, but ran a hand through Daichi’s sweaty hair.

Daichi harrumphed, and rubbed his forehead on Suga’s thigh. Suga stroked his back. He stopped suddenly when Daichi’s body jerked with something that sounded like a hiccup, maybe a half-sob.

“Dai-“

“I’m not- I’m not really okay. I’m scared. Of the dark.”

Suga squeezed Daichi’s hand.

“I know,” he whispered. “I-“

Suga cut off suddenly as an intense wave of nausea washed over him. He brought a hand to his mouth and only removed it when the nausea passed.

“I’m not really okay, eith-” Suga was cut off by a loud, very wet burp. He groaned and brought one hand to his mouth and the other to his stomach. Daichi scrambled to a seated position.

“You’re actually gonna be sick.” Daichi stated; it wasn’t a question. Suga made a wordless sound of agreement. Daichi stumbled to unsteady feet.

“I gotta-“ He gasped, struggling for breath. “Gotta find something for you-“ Suga grabbed Daichi’s wrist, and struggled to his feet. He lurched around, dragging Daichi with him.

“Sink,” he managed to spit out. “Dai-“

“Yeah, okay,” Daichi breathed and Suga felt a hand at his back, guiding him in the right direction.

“Here,” Daichi said eventually. “Lean forward, you’re fine.”

It was perfect timing. As soon as he was given permission, Suga was throwing up.

The first heave wasn’t super productive, but it hurt, forcing up a bit of bile and just about all of the oxygen Suga felt he had to survive on. He felt Daichi’s hand at his back then, warm and still shaking a bit, but there anyways and that in itself was comforting. Then, just as Suga started to suck in a huge gasp of air, he ended up sputtering on a forceful wave of vomit. He belched and more sick splashed against the sink before he was able to breathe, and by then he was sobbing so hard that he could hardly breathe anyway.

“Hey,” Daichi murmured, “calm down. You’ll make it worse.”

Suga hiccuped and then shuddered as a thick stream of repulsive liquid shot from his mouth. “But - hic! - I can’t - hic! - breaAAUUURRGGH-“ He was cut off by a rolling burp that turned into an aborted retch at the end.

“Can’t br-“ Suga tried to start again, but all he was really able to choke out was more puke, forced up by the retch which seemed to return with a vengeance. He heard Daichi make a sympathetic noise, but then he was entirely absorbed by the nausea.

He didn’t know how long it was that he was being sick, but it certainly felt like forever. Heaves wracked him so hard that he felt lightheaded at one point and ended up having to lean his elbows against either side of the sink so that he could use his hands to support his head, the consequence of this was that, as the sink was slowly filled with barf, some of the stuff got on Suga’s arms. By the time the lights flicked on, Suga was so out of it that he didn’t even really notice. He was struggling just to keep upright at that point.

Then there were hands on his forehead, simultaneously smoothing his hair back and holding his head up. They wiped tears from his cheeks and, when he had nothing left to expel, wiped the vomit from his face. They removed his soiled long sleeve shirt, but replaced it just as quickly. They were familiar hands, and even though Suga closed his eyes and was unable to see who they belonged to, he knew all the same. He’d forgotten where he was thanks to the fever. In fact he’d even come close to forgetting who he was. Those hands reminded him.

The adrenaline leaving his body, Suga started to sink to his knees, but was caught, helped again by those hands. Without a word they scooped him up and carried him to the couch, where they gently set him down. Finally, Suga cracked his eyes open, trying to prevent them from tearing up and failing instantly when Daichi sat on the side of the couch and started massaging his head.

“I’m sorry,” Suga rasped, throat raw. “Sorry, Daichi, I didn’t mean to-“

“Don’t be,” Daichi cut him off with a gentle tone. His face was filled with warmth and love and Suga’s heart swelled and the tears stopped. His breath hitched, but in a good way, as he realized what he should have said.

“Thank you, Dai. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Daichi huffed a laugh and slowly lay down so that his mouth was so close that his breathing tickled Suga’s ear. “That goes both ways,” he murmured, and Suga could feel that he meant it.

send me an ask!

#tw vomit #my writing #old writing #haikyuu!!#sick suga #sawamura daichi #sugawara koushi

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poorlilbeans · 7 years ago

Text

keep fighting part 9!!!!

fucking finally.

Victor wasn’t sure when he fell asleep. He certainly hadn’t meant to. He’d stayed with Yuuri for an hour or so as he continued burping up mouthfuls of bloody, watery vomit. He’d stayed for another few minutes through a seizure, unsure of whether to be worried or relieved when Yuuri fell dead asleep as soon as it was over. He’d continued changing the ice packs, wiping cool water on his face, comforting him through fevered nightmares. Then, suddenly, it was early afternoon and he awoke to uncomfortable heat and an unpleasant smell.

Oh.

This was going to be difficult to explain without Yuuri freaking out.

What am I doing? Oh, nothing. You just shat yourself in my bed, that’s all. Nothing to worry about, just go back to sleep.

Like that would happen.

Quietly, Victor drew back the comforter to assess the damage. He by no means was expecting to see something pleasant, but what he did see was more than he’d bargained for.

Deep red, diarrhea-scented blood stained Yuuri’s pajama bottoms and was pooling around his hips. A cry of shock escaped Victor’s lips, causing Yuuri to stir.

“Vitya?”

“It’s okay, love, don’t worry. You’re just a little sick right now. I’m going to take you back to the doctor.” He braced himself for Yuuri to argue, to cry, but it didn’t happen. Instead, he whispered,

“My stomach hurts,” and drifted back to sleep.

To the hospital. Now. Fuck the bedsheets. He grabbed his keys and his phone, and scooped Yuuri into his arms, wrapping him in a warm towel in a fluid motion.

There were other people in the elevator giving the pair funny looks, and Victor kicked himself for not just calling an ambulance. As he waited to reach ground level he pressed a kiss into Yuuri’s hair. It was thinning. The drive to the hospital was a blur. Yuuri woke up for long enough to cough until blood was dribbling down his lip and went right back to sleep. They barely had to wait 20 seconds in the emergency room; it was clear that this was, in fact, an emergency. As soon as he was taken back, Victor was shooed away.

“We’ll take good care of him,” they told him. “We’ll call you when you can visit.”

Yuuri woke up to blinding white light and loud beeping. He tried to sit up, to see anything other than whiteness, but his body wouldn’t listen to him. Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was what death was like. Then there was a familiar face above him.

“Glad to see you’re awake. Would you like to sit up more?” Yuuri tried to answer, but his voice was a cracked whisper at best. Still, by some miracle, the nurse seemed to understand, because the bed started moving and Yuuri found himself in a sitting position. Sitting felt better. He carefully wiggled his fingers and toes, tensing and relaxing his muscles. He was alive. He glanced around; he was on oxygen again, and there was an IV in his arm. He had the strangest impulse to rip it out and gripped the sheets to prevent himself from doing so. He looked at the nurse for help. She knew what was going on, right? Yuuri’s memory of that morning was fuzzy at best, and he’d been under the impression that there was no reason to return to the hospital outside of scheduled appointments.

“You’re in intensive care,” she told him gently when she noticed him staring at her.

“Where’s Victor?” he whispered, frustrated that he couldn’t make his voice sound.

“He’s been sent home for a while. We want to be careful about visitors for a little bit.”

“How long is a little bit?” The nurse gave him a sympathetic look, and Yuuri consciously told himself not to get annoyed.

“Your doctor is worried about germs, that’s all.” Panic flared in his chest.

“You said this wasn’t contagious.”

“It’s not. She just thinks maybe if you aren’t exposed to so many germs, your immune might not be so reactive. You’re too unstable right now.” Unstable. Always unstable. That landing was unstable. You’re so emotionally unstable. Leave Yuuri alone, you know he’s unstable. “Yuuri?” Stop crying. Stop crying. “Are you alright?” Yuuri squinted at the nurse, at the concerned eyes situated above her blue and white flu mask.

“You tell me,” he whispered. The nurse sighed.

“We’re taking you in for an X-ray in a few minutes to get a better read on things. We can’t perform an endoscopy like last time because you’re bleeding rather a lot. What I can say with confidence, though, is that we’re doing everything we can to ensure that you will be alright.” Yuuri wanted to respond, but he didn’t have anything else to say. All he could remember was that he was lonely and scared. He must have fallen asleep. When he woke up he was in a different room. This time, everything was grey instead of white, and someone was holding a clear tube in front of his face.

“He’s going to put it in your nose,” the English-speaking nurse said from somewhere behind him.

That was a disgusting feeling. He felt every millimetre of the thing sliding through his nose until it poked the back of his throat and the person holding it said something.

“Swallow,” the nurse translated. He did, which also felt awful, and they proceeded to feed contrast through the tube and it was gross and cold. Then he zoned out, allowing himself to be only vaguely aware of the beeping of machinery and the chatter of doctors and lab technicians. At some point, who-knows-how-long later, someone stuck another piece of machinery in his asshole and pumped air through it, and he decided then and there that he officially knew what the worst feeling in the world was. He squeezed his eyes shut miserably as a technician pulled the tube out of his nose, and zoned out again until he woke up in the white room. This time the nurse was accompanied by someone who, frustratingly, wasn’t Victor.

“Yuuri, do you remember Doctor Anna?” the nurse asked. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. Of course he’d remember his doctor.

“Добрый вечер,” he said carefully, using his practiced Russian to emphasize how he didn’t need to be coddled like a child. Anna smiled, but it looked more sympathetic than appreciative. It annoyed him.

“How are you feeling?” Doctor Anna asked, and Yuuri wondered for a fleeting moment how long he’d been here.

“Is it bad manners if I say lousy?” The doctor and nurse both chuckled, which Yuuri thought was odd, because he wasn’t joking. “I want to go home.”

“I know, but we have to get you a little more under control first,” the nurse told him.

“Because I’m unstable.”

Everything was, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, gross and awful. Yuuri noticed after a while that he wasn’t wearing bottoms, and was laying atop an absorbent pad of sorts. At one point a nurse came in to change the pad to a fresh one, and he was startled to realize that the one he’d been laying on had a large patch of blood on it. Ew. He found himself sleeping so much that he couldn’t tell how much time had passed- meanwhile, during the time that he did spend awake he was so drowsy he couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Everything was horrible and he was pretty sure he was dying… and then Victor came. The sun seemed to shine again, and he felt once more like he had hope. Victor could cure all ills. He could fix this. He had to fix this.

“Hey, beautiful.” His voice was calm and smooth. Yuuri wondered if that was what God sounded like. If God had a Russian accent, that is. Hell, maybe he did. You never know. Yuuri resolved to tell Victor just how wonderful he was, how he felt like he’d been cured just from hearing his soothing voice. And yet, he found himself saying,

“Why are you wearing my mask?” Yuuri was instantly frustrated that he couldn’t make his mouth say the things his brain was thinking, but then Victor chuckled and everything was okay again.

“It’s my mask. The nurses gave it to me so you don’t get my germs.”

“Oh.” Yuuri had more things to say, but before he could open his mouth the room was going dark again and he dissolved into sleep.

Victor didn’t like Anna’s face. She wasn’t ugly or anything, and she was a perfectly nice person, but he found he’d come to associate her face with bad news. Lately the bad news came more and more frequently, which was pretty rude of it, and it was quickly starting to outweigh the bits of good news.

“His digestive system is almost entirely blocked from the swelling,” Doctor Anna said. Victor just stared at her. His mind raced, oddly enough, to Yurio. He’d brought him to the hospital, thinking they could have a visit with Yuuri, only to discover he was having a particularly bad day; Victor decided it was best not to bring Yurio to a person who was almost constantly convulsing and coughing up blood. At the moment, as Victor chatted with Anna, Yuri had gone out for coffee. Victor seriously considered calling him back to the hospital- a dangerous feeling of panic was blooming in his chest and he desperately wanted another person to hold onto… even it was a grouchy, emotionally repressed teenager.

“So,” Anna continued, “if the swelling doesn’t go down significantly, and soon, we think it would be best to remove the large intestine.” Victor felt like he was trying to swallow a boulder.

“You can’t… it’s not an appendix! It does things!”

“It’s a safe and relatively common procedure for diseases like this. But yes, things would be different. He wouldn’t be able to skate, at least not at his current level. There would be a bag attached to the small intestine.”

“A bag.”

“Yes. Regardless, we won’t go through with it immediately. We’ve increased his doses on the drugs again, and we’re starting him on another stronger anti-inflammatory. Hopefully that will help. Surgery is a last resort. Besides, he can’t have surgery yet anyway- with the state his nervous system is in, being put under a general anesthetic could put him in a coma.”

“So then don’t take his intestine! It sounds like it’s too dangerous anyway.”

“Without surgery it’s likely he’ll die of malnourishment or bleed out through the ulcers. Trust me when I say I haven’t resorted to this because I want to.” Victor stared at her.

“So are you saying the meds didn’t work? Is he dying because your drugs didn’t work?”

“They helped to an extent. I do believe that without them he’d already be dead.” Well, that hit like a slap in the face. No, actually. It hit more like a wrecking ball to the face. He must’ve visibly reacted because Anna sighed sadly. “I’m sorry, I know this is hard. But I’m not going to sugar coat his situation. Your boyfriend is dying, and I’m just doing everything I can to save his life.” Then, at the exact moment Victor felt his heart drop down into his ass, Yuri came back. “Should I give you two some time alone?” Anna asked gently. Too gently. “I think the two of you should go home and get some rest. I highly doubt Yuuri will be well enough to see visitors today.” Victor felt himself nod, and the next thing he knew he was alone in a corridor with a very uncomfortable Yurio.

“What did she say?” Yuri whispered. He couldn’t exactly say he wanted to know, but it seemed somehow right to ask. Then Victor turned to him, and he looked… devastated. As Yuri’s mind raced to think of something comforting to say (what would Yuuri say in this situation?), Victor’s eyes welled up and he just broke. His knees buckled and he knelt down on the floor, face buried in his hands as he cried. Ugly cried. Loud, heaving sobs echoed off the walls and prompted sympathetic looks from everyone walking by. Yuri found himself giving them all the stink eye, remembering how much Yuuri hated getting those looks from people. It didn’t do anything, but again, it felt right somehow. Then he knelt down in an intensely uncomfortable attempt to comfort his… friend? Teammate? In his awkwardness, Yuri’s mind wandered to observe that he’d never considered once what Victor was to him. He’d just always been around, like… like family, he supposed. Huh. Regardless, Yuri now found himself caught between the rock of being companion to a wailing 28-year old and the hard place of trying to figure out how to make him stop. Reluctantly, Yuri gripped Victor under the arms, guiding him towards a nearby bench. He sat next to him, desperately trying to think of something to say. Should he tell him it would be alright? That didn’t seem right, because Yuri had no idea if it was going to be alright. What if Katsudon was dead? Oh god, what if he was dead? Panicked tears unexpectedly started flowing down Yuri’s face, and he hastily wiped them away, hoping Victor hadn’t noticed. Finally he turned, determined to say something helpful, only to find Victor on his phone. It was a relief, really. He had no idea what he’d been planning on saying.

Yuuri felt sick. Like, really really sick. Last time he’d been fully awake it had been dark, and the sun was just starting to rise. There was a doctor he didn’t know using some loud instrument to cut the plaster cast off of his leg. The nurse was guiding him through some ankle exercises when the seizures started up again. Now, the sun appeared to be setting, and he was sore all over. More than usual, it seemed, which was pretty impressive.

“Are you with us, Yuuri?” With a lot of effort, Yuuri shifted his gaze over to Doctor Anna, who was looking at him quizzically, albeit kindly. “Hi!” she chirped, seeing him see her.

“Want Vitya,” he whispered back. Damn it. In his head, his response had been eloquently phrased, and had included a polite greeting. Thankfully, Anna didn’t seem insulted.

“I’ll get a secretary to call him and let him know you’re awake. He was here with a younger man earlier, but we sent him home because you were too sick to have any visitors.”

“Am I dying?” Anna looked startled, which Yuuri supposed was fair, but he was sick and tired of everyone tiptoeing around him and pretending like everything was fine. He wanted a straight answer. With much hesitation, Anna spoke.

“Well, you certainly aren’t recovering as quickly as we’d like. You do still have a chance, and you need to hold onto that, but at the moment your body isn’t responding well to treatment. At this point, taking care of you is a lot of guesswork.” Yuuri nodded numbly. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, or whether or not this response surprised him. The only thing that registered, and rather abruptly, was that he was horribly, painfully lonely.

“Call Victor,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice.

It occurred to Victor that he had no idea what time it was, let alone what time it was in Japan. He decided he didn’t care as he rang Hiroko. Yuuri was more important. Yuuri was always more important. When Hiroko picked up with a tender “hello, Vicchan!” he found himself instantly comforted. He’d noticed that very early into his and Yuuri’s relationship, in fact before they were even really official, Hiroko had started using the Mom Voice on him. It made him feel calm, like no matter what, she would always know what to do.

“You need to be here,” he told her shakily. Immediately, Hiroko’s cheerful tone disappeared.

“What’s going on?”

“He’s just really sick. The doctors wouldn’t let me see him today because the seizures w-wouldn’t stop and now she says he’s starving and bleeding to death at the same time and I… I’m really scared. I can’t do this alone and neither can he. You need to come. I’ll pay for your flight if you want.”

“We can afford it. I’ll book a flight as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, I…” Victor found himself interrupted by his phone ringing against his ear. “The doctor is calling me. I’ll call you back.” Hearing Hiroko hum in agreement, he hung up and picked up the doctor’s call.

“Yuuri’s awake, Victor. He’s asking for you.”

“I’ll be right up!”

“What do you mean you’ll be right up? I told you to go home!”

“Yeah, I didn’t listen. See you soon!”

#fuckin finally #sick!yuuri #yoi #tw vomit #blood #whump #yuuri katsuki #victor nikiforov #victuuri #Yuri on ice #this is taking fucking forever i'm so sorry #sickfic

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animalsustainability · 8 years ago

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You claimed that glassfed beef produces more gas than grain. Can you explain why? And does that mean that letting cattle graze on a natural grassland or pampas unsuitable for crops is bad?

What a good question! Again, you could write a whole paper on this, or a thesis, but let me try to hit the major points. I’m going to have to break up the answer into two bits here:

1) Grass-fed animals, on an individual animal level, produce more methane per day than grain-fed ones. But why is that?

Let’s start with a view of what’s going on inside the animal:

Herbivores like cattle and sheep have a very complex ecosystem of microbes in their gut, particularly in the part of the stomach called the rumen.

The rumen is like a giant fermentation vat - it’s anaerobic (no oxygen), warm, and has a pH ranging from neutral-ish to slightly acidic.

Feed goes in, gets regurgitated and chewed to break it down into smaller pieces, and then the rumen microbes break it down.

While some nutrients exit the rumen into the acid part of the stomach without microbes getting a hold of them, the majority of nutrients in feed go to keep the microbes healthy and happy.

The byproducts of the microbes’ actions on these feeds help feed the animal

The basic equation is this:

Feed + microbes -> VFAs + CO2 + methane +microbial protein

VFAs, volatile fatty acids, are short-chain fatty acids that get absorbed by the gut and used for energy - in fact, these account for >70% of a cow or sheep’s energy!

Rumen microbes use nitrogen in feed to grow and make more microbes, and when they get washed out of the rumen into the acid stomach, become a major source of protein to the animal, especially on low-protein diets.

Waste products like carbon dioxide and methane get burped out and become greenhouse gases.

Methane is what the rumen does with excess hydrogen.

There’s been research that shows that the level of hydrogen in the rumen affects the rate of certain chemical reactions, especially ones needed for microbial function, and too much hydrogen can make it harder for some microbes to function.

So methane production by specific methanogenic microbes reduces hydrogen in the rumen, allowing microbes to go on their merry way.

What you feed cows alters how much hydrogen microbes produce as a byproduct of fermenting feed.

The major VFAs, acetate, propionate, and butyrate, are always going to be produced, but the ratios differ depending on diet.

When acetate or butyrate is produced, so is hydrogen, and hydrogen levels rise in the rumen.

When propionate is produced, the reaction uses up hydrogen, and hydrogen in the rumen decreases.

Pasture-based diets contain lots of cellulose, which produces mostly acetate when fermented.

This is good, because cellulose is one of the things that humans definitely can’t digest, so cows are turning human inedible food into tasty meat and milk

But it also means that there’s more hydrogen in the rumen because of the higher acetate levels.

Mostly-grain diets, which have more starch, favor propionate, so less hydrogen and therefore less methane gets produced by the animal itself

There are other more complex effects involving different microbial groups, plant compounds, and pH effects, but let’s stick with this for now.

There’s also the factor that methane production is driven by how much feed enters the rumen, which is driven by how much feed the animal needs to meet its energy requirements. Forages usually have lower energy per pound of feed and are less digestible, so an animal needs to eat more. This, combined with acetate being the major VFA, means that on a per day basis, a grass-fed animal will in general produce more methane than a grain-fed one.

However, the nice thing about grass-fed beef is that the inputs to the system are lower. On native pasture, the only inputs are often rain and manure. On managed pasture, there may be irrigation, seeding, fertilizer, etc.

For grain-based diets, you have to add on the energy (and greenhouse gases) from producing the feed, processing the feed, and transporting the feed, versus the greenhouse gases from managing pasture. But grain-fed cattle eat a lot of byproducts from other industries that would otherwise go to waste (beet pulp, distiller’s grains, barley hulls) so you need to consider that. Emissions from feed can make up a good chunk of the overall emissions associated with animal production, so the answer gets even more complex fast.

This specific kind of analysis, of assigning greenhouse gas emissions and summing them up for a product, is part of a technique called Life Cycle Assesment - that is, looking at the life cycle of a product to determine the inputs and outputs and the emissions associated with them. I’m doing one right now on sheep production in California and it’s utterly fascinating, but it shows that in these situations, there often isn’t an easy answer, and it depends a lot on where you set the boundaries and what you define as an impact. The debate is ongoing, and there really isn’t one clear-cut answer right now.

So, moving on to part 2 of your question:

Is it bad to let cattle graze land unsuitable for crops because the animals themselves produce more methane than the same cow on a grain-based diet? DEFINITELY NOT.

Cattle grazing on rangelands is definitely sustainable if managed right.

I discussed this on my previous post here http://animalsustainability.tumblr.com/post/159885334236/hey-there-ive-been-really-enjoying-reading-your but grasslands need large herbivores to survive, and given how much land is grassland, not producing livestock on grasslands wastes a lot of land that could feed people. Removing herbivores also changes ecosystem balance for many other species that rely on herbivores to clear out excess brush, provide manure, or alter habitats.

If we don’t graze these native rangelands with something, then we risk habitat degradation and impacts on the other species that live there. Large herbivores are an important part of the grasslands’ circle of life, and help promote ecosystem health if managed sustainably. Grass-fed systems are also important for using land responsibly to feed everyone.

Methane is just one part of the big picture. We need to look at ecosystem health, and the methane and other GHGs needed to produce what we’d feed these cattle if we didn’t feed them pasture.

So to answer your question, Both grain-fed and pasture-based systems have their place in modern agriculture, and neither is strictly better than the other. And the fact is: all systems have the potential to be sustainable!

Thanks for staying with me this long. Here, have some cute Herefords as a treat (one of my favorite beef breeds). They have such sweet faces. Image credit: Irish Hereford Breed Society

#Anonymous #methane #livestock #sustainability #grass-fed beef #the grass-fed and the grain-fed both are good #oh the grass-fed and the grain-fed both are good #both eat stuff that we can't eat #and then we eat their tasty meat #so there's no reason why they both can't be good

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kusunogatari-a · 7 years ago

Text

[ Close ] [ @masterofwar ] [ Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Izuna, Suigin Ryū ] [ Death mention ] [ Verse: At the Beginning ]

Months of worry and waiting come to a tipping point late one morning.

There are few capable medics among the Uchiha – yet another sliver of the reason they're here in the first place. Instead, Ryū is accompanied by civilians from the village when her water breaks. Midwives...but not medics.

For his own sanity, Madara keeps his distance. Something about the impending consequences push him away. He's not afraid. He's never afraid. But this is beyond his doing, and he's glad when the women at her side none-too-gently advise him to leave, lest his palpable, agitated aura disrupt the proceedings.

So, instead, he leaves the manor behind. Izuna, jogging to meet him, is barely able to catch a punch. “What -?”

“Spar. Now.”

Surprise tempers into understanding, and the younger acquiesces. The crowds gathered in curiosity of the protector of the valley's cries then turn to the brothers.

No weapons, no jutsu – just plain old fisticuffs, the dull thumps of traded blows not nearly loud enough to stopper the cacophony coming from the second story behind them. And each second that passes seems to fan the flames of Madara's desperate strikes. More than once, Izuna is clipped without apology.

And those seconds soon blur to minutes...to hours. Already a beast of stamina, there's no sign of the clan head slowing.

Not until things go quiet.

He staggers to a stop, out of breath but far from exhausted, turning to the manor with an expression unguarded.

Something's not right.

Ignoring the whispers and his brother's calls, Madara abandons the spar to go inside, no time taken to remove his shoes or follow any other decorum.

Her room – their room – is above him. And still, an eerie silence seems to blanket them, everything muted as though holding its breath. Stairs fall to his feet, and he passes gaunt-faced midwives. His stomach drops, and the door nearly shatters at his touch.

A tinge of relief finds him as he sees her upright, bent forward over a bundle cradled in one arm. The other presses a hand among the crook of her chest, and he recognizes the soft glow of her chakra.

All relief is lost to a haunting knowing.

Ryū doesn't look up as he approaches. In fact, she seems completely oblivious to his presence, form rocking ever so slightly as she works.

The babe doesn't cry. Doesn't stir.

Her breath shakes, weary with fatigue, but as Madara kneels at her bedside, he can see the eyes of her sage state, deep shadows beneath them. Something jolts in his chest – another knowing at the scarcity of her levels.

“...Ryū...”

“I just...need a little more time.”

“Ryū.”

“I-I can do this.”

“...I will not lose you both.”

No reply – still rocking, still working.

“Ryū, I -”

Her head shakes. “...no. No, I won't -” Stopping mid-sentence, she brings up her knees, furthering her natural cradle. “...I can't...”

“How bad is it?”

She hesitates. “...not...not bad. I just need a little more time...!”

A deep sigh escapes him, and Madara bows his head. “...give me your other hand.”

“...what?”

“Give it to me. We'll do this together.”

Finally, she moves her gaze to look at him. Desperation, bordering on delusion, is tinged with hesitation and utter exhaustion. Muscles are so drawn with tension, she shakes. “But...?”

“Your levels are low. Too low. I want you to draw from mine. Can you do both?”

“I...y-yes.” Rearranging the swaddling, she spares her hold to instead take his own. Smooth fingers meet his callouses, and his grip is warm, firm, certain.

“Keep going.”

Ryū manages a shaking nod of her head, energy passing through the bridge of their hands. No moment is spared, chakra shimmering over the infant's form. Minutes pass in total silence, uncounted, before she stills.

“...I have to find them.”

Having seen the technique before, Madara releases her hand, instead gripping her shoulder as her own shaking limbs move through the sigils and the bloodshed. Then, like a string-cut puppet, she goes limp.

Madara shifts his grip, arm around her shoulders as the other reaches across her shins, holding the three of them in place, utterly encompassed in his grasp. Every second that passes sees her chakra dwindle further, draining rapidly in the vacuum of the void she's searching.

But just before he goes to interrupt it ahead of her slipping, Ryū stirs. Too weakened to tremble, she opens her palms to reveal the second soul the Uchiha has ever seen.

With agonizing slowness, she moves it to the babe's chest, watching it sink back into place. But her chakra does little more than spark, too spent to alight.

But Madara's palm quickly lays atop her own, and the dual energies bleed through skin to the heart beneath and give it a jolt.

A grunt. A gurgle. Coughing, and then...a cry.

With a wilt, Ryū goes utterly limp, expression quickly crashing into uncensored tears of relief and the release of withheld tension. Shaking, gasping and sobbing, she lets Madara draw them both to his chest, invading the futon to grip them tightly as she falls apart.

Though not aloud, he offers a wordless wish of thanks to whatever or whoever happens to be listening.

The sounds soon draw the midwives, too intimidated to breach the doorway. But Izuna brushes past them, taking several steps into the room and looking awed.

Brow to Ryū's temple, Madara manages to look up, giving no words. But the look in his eyes is more than enough for his brother to comprehend.

Relief tempers Izuna's expression, settling to his knees against the floor with a single, breathless laugh.

Reverting his position, the clan head refuses to move, drowning in the sounds of the cries – a reminder they live, immediate relief – of both his wife and his child. His child. A new life, equal parts their own.

The realization seems to fill his chest to bursting. All at once, he understands the oft-told tale of what it means to finally feel the pride of parenthood – the sudden maelstrom of the need to protect. To face the very world itself if necessary.

Ryū is quick to go quiet – not for lack of feeling, but of energy. Still worried, Madara looms over her, watching as one of the midwives dares to approach.

“We...we need to clean and dress them, Uchiha-sama. And Ryū-sama needs her rest.”

“I will not be moved.”

“N-no! You...you can stay. But we need to attend the babe while she recovers.”

“It's fine, dearest...” Barely a whisper, Ryū finally speaks, head tilting to try and catch his eye. “Let them do their work.”

Still struggling with himself and the newborn ferocity he feels, Madara lets the woman take the child and flee the room. Without a word, he lifts and repositions himself at Ryū's back. Drawing her to his chest and practically enveloping her, they mesh in a tangle of limbs, struggling to feel every part of her he can to affirm she still lives.

“...I don't think I've ever felt you this agitated...” she murmurs, utterly lax against him.

“...tell me you're going to be all right.”

“I just need rest...” A pause. “...I'm not going to die, Madara.” She gives him a clear-cut answer, knowing it's what he needs. “I'm just...exhausted.”

“I thought I was going to lose you both. You shouldn't have pushed yourself so hard after so much strain. You could have...!”

A single puff of laughter manages to crawl up her throat. “You know...I'm far too stubborn for that...”

“I'm not jesting, Ryū. I was -” The word catches in his throat. “...I was afraid.”

Silence as she takes in his tone. “...we're all right. You saw to that.”

“And if I'd not?”

“...don't bury yourself in what-ifs. Stay here, in this moment, with me.”

He gives no reply, buried in the crook of her neck.

It's not long before the midwife returns, hesitantly handing back the infant. “Right as rain now, thanks to you both. And still crying, bless their soul. Likely eager to be fed.”

“I'm sure,” Ryū laughs lightly.

“I'll, ah...I'll go,” Izuna offers. “And...let everyone know it's done.”

A hint of amusement manages to flicker across Madara's face. “...that would be good.”

Finally, the room empties save for the three of them, the door tugged back into place...just barely.

“Are you sure you're able to...?”

“I'll be fine,” Ryū cuts in, looking amused. Already she cradles them to her chest, cries silenced with their mouth finally full.

Peering around her, Madara watches, eyes already crimson to hold the view. A hand gingerly lays atop her own, holding them in place.

“...do you want to know what happened...?”

A tick of silence. “Yes.”

“...the umbilical cord had found their throat. I had to...repair what the lack of oxygen had taken.”

“Will they be -?”

“They're fine. Of that I'm certain. It hadn't been too long, just...long enough to...” Ryū's voices trails to silence.

“...I see.”

“Once they've finished...they'll need to be burped. Then they'll likely sleep...would you handle that for me...?”

He hesitates.

“...you'll do fine.”

“...they're...so small.”

“As you too were, once. I'll show you how...I just don't have the energy...” Her lips lift knowingly. “You won't harm them.”

Giving a small grunt of understanding, Madara remains in silence until she shifts, following her guidance.

“Just like that. If there's any air in their stomach, they'll -”

A soft sound escapes them, and Madara freezes.

“...they'll...do that,” Ryū laughs. “Just hold them awhile. I'll...try not to sleep too long.”

Staring at the bundle in his arms, Madara looks to her, seeing the uncensored contentment as she watches them. Despite her exhaustion, her emotions remain as clear as ever. “...if they cry...?”

“The others will know what to do. You'll be fine.”

Left with little choice, the Uchiha keeps his hold as Ryū seems to simply pass out. For a time, he sits and monitors her levels, not wanting her to fall any further. But the anxiety slowly passes as she stays steady, and his attentions turn fully to his arms.

Still once more, he can see their chest rise and fall, lips parted with breath. Minutes pass uncounted as he simply watches them, wondering if the rhythm will ever stop again.

Before he can stop them, low, soft words escape him. “...you gave me quite the fright, you know. Not an easy thing to do...” A pause. “...it would appear you already promise to be a handful, hm...? I suppose an Uchiha is never meant to be anything but bold...”

It feels odd, like he's just speaking to himself. They neither hear him nor comprehend. But he feels almost compelled to speak.

“...you owe your mother an apology. Though I'm sure this won't be the last time you run her ragged.” Another pause. “...and here I thought that was my role. You'll be filling in for the both of us, I'm sure.”

Sick of standing, Madara carefully slips to Ryū's side, nowhere near able to wake her in her exhaustion. One arm cradling the child, the other pulls her beside him. It's odd how...content he feels. It seems such a simple thing, and yet...now that the risks have passed, a strange stillness seems to settle over him.

Lowering to Ryū's level, he manages to tuck the babe between them, drawing them both in a sturdy hold. Something about it still feels...dreamlike. Not yet fully sunk in. But for now, he settles with the closeness in the quiet.

I keep getting random ideas for this verse. I needed a dose of honey nut feelios. Make it stooop xD This, uh...wasn’t going to end so pretty at first. But before I got the chance to sit and write, Madara just kinda...shoved in there like “This is not going down that way if I have anything to say about it” and of course I wasn’t going to stop him - so yeah, you can thank him for this not being...quite so angsty. You don’t tell Uchiha Madara no, after all x3 Pretty sure this is my new OTP. I still adore ItaRyū of COURSE, but just...guhhh these two are killing me. In ALL the verses. Gave no specifics about the wee one because...reasons lol - still no idea how or even if that would all go down. But this scene wouldn’t leave me alone, so...I compromised and left it vague! ...anyway, that’s all I got for now. Mads might be a bit ooc, but that’s just...how it ended up. As someone who’s never “munned” Madara, I can’t be sure if I ever write him correctly. He just kinda does what he does - someone who knows better should tell me better if not xD Especially since this is such a, like...sensitive subject. I think maybe at least at first he’d just kinda cave to all the feelings. But not for long x3

#masterofwar #uchiha madara #uchiha izuna #suigin ryū #death mention #at the beginning [ canon verse ]

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janethlandis · 5 years ago

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My son Dan was born on September 10, 1997. I was working as a nurse at the time and decided I wanted to have a water birth at home. I remember being in the warm, soothing water after Dan was born and looking down in wonder at this pink, blonde, baby boy, whose eyes were grey-blue except for one small brown triangle in his right eye. We always joked it was the one thing he got from me.

Dan was an easy baby, who plumped up quickly from nursing. I started to wean him when I was pregnant with my daughter. It was during this time that Dan began to get sick. He had his first bout with pneumonia before the age of 2.

When he was 2 ½ years old, after many tests, Dan was diagnosed with Ataxia-Telangiectasia, a rare, genetic neurodegenerative disease with no known cure. Literally translated, Ataxia means wobbly walking and telangiectasia is a word that describes the spider veins that make the eyes look bloodshot. The shorthand for the condition is A-T.

As Dan grew he went from walking on his own, to needing to hold your hand, to needing a walker, then a wheelchair, then a power chair. When the kids were young we would sometimes eat dinner out on our porch and if the kids burped loudly they had to run to the end of the yard and back as “punishment.” Dan took pride in doing his best to run just like his brother and sister. He always wanted to be treated the same as they were. It was hard for me to do that at times, being a worrier by nature, and I would often jump to help Dan at the smallest signs of distress. He once said to me, with his wry wit, that I had EMHD, and when I asked, “What is that Dan?” His reply was, “Excessive Mom Hovering Disorder.”

Our Dan loved all things Marvel, but especially the X-men. Wolverine was his favorite superhero because of his tragic backstory and his sarcasm. Dan used to wear a bracelet with the Wolverine quote, “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.” Wolverine embodied for Dan that even when the odds were against you, you could still find some ironic humor. When we were given a trip to Comic-Con, Dan went as Wolverine, and he looked just like him. One of the things we loved to do together was to go to movies; Marvel, DC, and Dragonball-Z were favorites, and even as the pieces of equipment required to get him there grew, we made it to the theater and would sit together in the handicapped section. We often took selfies with our 3D glasses on to send to our family. We loved watching the challenges the heroes faced, and the courage they found, often through incredible hardships, to overcome them. They were some of the happiest times we had together.

Dan was often sick because kids with A-T typically have an immune deficiency, and his mouth, nose and lungs had no protection from viruses and bacteria. When he was 10, he had to have a feeding tube placed in his stomach because he couldn’t eat enough to sustain his growing body. As he entered his late teens, his hospitalizations became more frequent. After a trip to Disney World, where I was running a marathon to raise money for A-T research, he got a pneumonia/flu double hit that kept him in the hospital for most of that winter. His lungs were now damaged to the point that he required oxygen all the time. I remember him asking me “why can’t they use a 3D printer to make me a new set of lungs?” His questions were so often poignant and the answers so often illusory.

Dan received all his care at A.I. Dupont/Nemours Hospital for Children. Almost everyone there knew Dan and he was loved by everyone who met him. But Dan hated being in the hospital. Each time we had to go back it tested his resilience and his spirit. He missed being at home in his “Dan-cave” where he had a flat screen TV and a Playstation for his games. He loved God of War, Dragonball Z and Lego Marvel Superheroes. Even more, he loved his brother and sisters, his step-Dad, and our three dogs. Home was always his favorite place to be.

On his 20th birthday Dan’s doctor told him that his best chance of getting home would be to have a tracheotomy, a surgery to make an opening in the windpipe that is necessary for breathing support. It was either that or going home with hospice. When the doctor left the room and it was just Dan and me, he looked at me and said, “Mom, I’m not ready to die.”

As it turned out, Dan decided he would get the tracheotomy. True to his nature, on the day of the surgery as we stood nervously around him, he smiled at us and as they wheeled him away he turned his head and called out “Yabba, dabba, do!”

After the surgery, we spent many more weeks in and out of the hospital. In January of 2018 we were told that Dan’s only remaining option was to go home was with hospice. On one of our frequent drives to the hospital Dan had said, “Mom, I don’t think they can fix me,” and sadly, it seemed he was right. Dan’s homesickness was making his life increasingly difficult and pushing his resilience to its limits. At the time, two things that were keeping him going, getting home and the upcoming release of the movie Black Panther. Everyone we knew, including everyone at the hospital, tried to get a copy of it but were unable to do so. Instead, on his final day as a patient there, his nurses, doctors, and therapists lined up along the hallway linking their hands above his head to make an archway of arms that led to an auditorium. The hospital had arranged a special showing of Thor Ragnarok just for Dan, our family and the staff who knew him best. They wanted to send him off with a celebration.

We had hoped that when we got home we would have a few months together. As it turned out, we had two weeks. When we finally did get him home, the nurses and I buzzed around his room setting up the equipment and fussing over him. In the midst of this, Dan called from his hospital bed to his older brother Al. When Al came to his bed, Dan said, “Come closer.” When Al took Dan’s hand, Dan repeated, “No. Closer.” Al leaned further in, with a concerned expression on his face and in his eyes, and he asked, “What it is buddy?” Dan looked at his brother with the impish twinkle in his eyes we loved so well, and whispered, loudly, “Get these crazy bitches out of here!”

After Dan died, his nurses allowed me to help with his his bath. I had given him his first bath as a baby and I wanted to be a part of giving him his last. We were home, just as we had been for his birth, just as Dan had wanted it. Bathing him, touching my dear child, now so still, I removed all of the devices that had been placed in his precious body; the tracheostomy tube, the stomach tube, so representative of the struggles he had been through. It felt sacred; a consecration of a life of love, courage and perseverance.

We dressed him in his favorite Dragonball Z t-shirt and a pair of shorts he often wore. I lovingly washed and brushed his hair. His room was quiet and still without the sound of the ventilator, the feeding pump, and the suction machine. All that was left was waiting for the funeral home to come for his body. Dan and I were alone, as we had been so often during the course of his life. The television was on and by some strange coincidence, X-men Origins: The Wolverine, came on. As the images began to play across the screen, I sat down by his side, took his hand in mine, and together we watched it, one last time.

A Story Slam Draft My son Dan was born on September 10, 1997. I was working as a nurse at the time and decided I wanted to have a water birth at home.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Lab-grown meat. Cultured meat. Cell-based meat. Clean meat. It’s all the same thing: meat grown from just a few cells from an actual animal. And although it’s years away from your supermarket, its potential to radically change animal agriculture as we know it is stirring up tensions.

At the urging of traditional meat producers, Missouri on Thursday passed a law prohibiting anything not “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry“ from being marketed as “meat” in the state. Advocates of lab-based meat immediately sued, alleging freedom of speech infringement.

While the Missouri law would cover both imitation meats — like the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger, which get their protein from plants — and lab-grown meat, they are not the same. Lab-grown meat is animal tissue, grown in a tank by putting a few cells in a growth medium and letting them reproduce. No plants.

The lab-grown startups and their supporters believe that their products can one day make cows, pigs, chickens — and even fish — obsolete. Memphis Meats, JUST, Finless Foods, SuperMeat (in Israel), and Mosa Meat (in the Netherlands) are a few of the companies working on it. Nonprofits like the Good Food Institute and New Harvest are working to help fund them.

And they have a compelling argument. If you could grow enough meat in a lab to satisfy at least some of the world’s meat demand, and if you could solve all the problems of animal welfare and environmental impact while you’re at it, why on earth wouldn’t you?

But don’t fire up the grill just yet. Between what we have now and a lab-grown chicken in every pot, there is quite a ways to go.

There’s no consensus on what to call the stuff, and it’s high time we figured it out, since some of the companies involved claim that they’re close to bringing a hamburger- or sausage-like product to market, although it may be in a very limited way. The company JUST, for example, plans to release lab-grown chicken by the end of the year, in restaurants outside the US.

For this piece, I’m going with “lab-grown meat” because it seems to be a reasonable description of the process.

Lab-grown meat starts with cells — you can use stem cells, muscle cells, fat cells, myo- or fibroblasts — that you submerge in a growth medium. The medium is “a soup of nutrients that mimics what happens in the animal’s body,” explains Vitor Santo, senior scientist with JUST (formerly Hampton Creek, the company that brought you plant-based Just Mayo).

Depending on the type of cells and the medium ingredients, you can grow different kinds of tissue. Muscle cells grow more muscle cells, fat cells grow more fat cells; both are in meat as we know it. Stem cells can be coaxed into growing different kinds of tissue.

There’s one more element beyond cells and soup: scaffolding. The cells need something to grow on. If the scaffolding is going to be part of the eventual product (as it would if you’re growing a whole muscle meat like a steak or chicken breast), then it obviously has to be edible. If the meat gets removed from the scaffold, as it would if the product was more like ground meat, then it just has to be safe.

That’s the simplified version of a process that, in practice, is complex and tightly controlled. It all takes place in what’s called a bioreactor — a tank where you can control the temperature, pH, oxygen levels, and a host of other factors. Right now, Santo’s working with 2-liter tanks, and one of the big questions of clean meat is how scalable the process is.

According to Ben Wurgaft, a historian working on a book about lab-grown meat, there are some significant challenges involved. First is sourcing the proteins, vitamins, sugars, and hormones that go into that medium without using serum from the blood of those actual animals, which would at least partially defeat the purpose of lab-grown meat and would certainly be cost-prohibitive. Second is creating bioreactors that are “vascularized,” or have the infrastructure to deliver serum to cells at the center of a piece of meat, as blood vessels do to animal cells. Without that, you can’t grow the thick tissue necessary for steak or chicken breast (although you can still grow the equivalent of ground meats).

“If those don’t turn out to be easier nuts to crack than they seem to be so far, we will not see cultured meat emerging at the time scale of companies and venture capitalists,” Wurgaft says — which is to say, soon.

There’s one advantage to a longer timeline: It gives our regulatory agencies, industry groups, and various other stakeholders time to sort out the politics.

The US Department of Agriculture has oversight on the kind of meat that involves farms and slaughterhouses. There are factions within the meat industry that want lab-grown meat to come under the jurisdiction of the agency, where they have long-standing relationships and some influence. The other choice is the FDA, and commissioner Scott Gottlieb staked a claim to the territory at a public hearing held in July, arguing that their “past experience with novel food technologies” and “extensive background in cell-cultured technologies” makes the FDA well-suited to the job. “It’s not our first rodeo,” added Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

One possible outcome, which lab-grown meat company Memphis Meats and the North American Meat Association, a traditional meat industry group, pushed in a recent letter, is that the two agencies will split responsibility. As a USDA spokesperson told me, “As these new products begin to emerge in the marketplace, we look forward to working with the FDA and the public to tackle these issues.”

As for just what the agency — whichever one it is — will be regulating, “The questions are not different from other types of food,” says Greg Jaffe, biotechnology director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. You have to make sure there are no allergens in the scaffolding, and that hormone levels are comparable to those of traditional meat. (The various aspects of safety regulation were discussed at length by FDA officials and a variety of other stakeholders, including Jaffe, at the July hearing, and the transcript provides a comprehensive look at the regulatory challenges.)

Settling this in advance is a good thing, says Jaffe. The fact that a viable product is years away gives everyone involved the chance to get ahead of it. And the industry is asking for regulation, knowing that oversight will be critical to consumer acceptance.

There’s one big regulatory issue that has nothing to do with safety: what we’re supposed to call it. Bruce Friedrich, founder and executive director of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit supporting plant-based and lab-grown meat, likes “clean meat.” Memphis Meats, another one of the startups, goes with “lab-grown.” Josh Tetrick, CEO of JUST, likes plain old “meat.”

Tetrick is an outlier, as most people want a way to distinguish lab-grown meat from field-grown meat. And while some meat industry groups (like the US Cattlemen’s Association) oppose the use of the word “meat,” others (like the North American Meat Institute) have argued specifically that lab-grown meat meets the USDA’s definition of meat — part of their bid for at least partial USDA oversight. The variety of interest groups involved in the decision, and the fate of state efforts like the Missouri law, all muddy the waters.

We don’t yet know if consumers would buy a cheeseburger made in a vat. Shutterstock

Lab-grown meat makers claim their products will taste exactly like the real thing because it is the real thing. That leaves consumers to make their decision on factors other than taste, and lab-grown meat definitely has advantages.

Some are obvious, like the animal welfare issue. Take the animal out of the equation, and the welfare problems go with it. No more slaughterhouses, no more caging, crating, and crowding animals, no more (rare) cases of outright abuse.

Then there’s the issue of food-borne illnesses. Since the meat is grown in a closed vessel in a sterile environment — as opposed to, say, a barn — the hope is that there would be much less chance for pathogens to sneak in. That’s relevant for antibiotics, too. Although the drugs can theoretically be used in the lab-grown process, a sterile environment shouldn’t require them, and so the issue of antibiotic-resistant bacteria goes away.

Then there’s environmental impact. Taking the animals out of the industry drastically reduces land and water use, and it can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Animal agriculture is responsible for about 15 percent of greenhouse gases, mostly from enteric methane burped up by ruminants like cattle and goats. No cows, no methane, and no need to cut down tropical forests for new ranches.

Will all those advantages pan out? The climate impact is particularly uncertain, since all the analyses have had to speculate about inputs and energy required in lab-grown meat.

Also, where will the growth medium come from? How much electricity will a full-scale factory need? None of the analyses (that I’ve seen) take into account the impact of having to find substitutes for animal byproducts. What will cats eat? What will shoes be made from?

We also don’t know if consumers will find all of this compelling. Asking whether we’ll see mainstream acceptance of a product that is completely unfamiliar, unavailable in the near term, and very hard to explain is a big ask.

According to Colleen McClelland, director of client solutions at the consumer research company Datassential, only 10 percent of consumers are familiar with lab-grown meat, and they are disproportionately tech enthusiasts and young people. Among them, personal health and larger concerns about sustainability are about equally important, so the environmental footprint may indeed resonate.

How it will go down with everyone else is an open question. “We have no way of knowing how consumers will react to the prospect of lab-grown meat,” says Wurgaft.

The biggest determinant of success may have to do with a much more prosaic factor: money.

Lab-grown meat is poised to disrupt a massive industry, and in some cases, the industry is even investing in the disruption. Tyson Foods and Cargill, two of the biggest meat processors in the country, have both put money into lab-grown meat startups. As Tyson CEO Tom Hayes said in a recent Bloomberg interview, “If we can grow the meat without the animal, why wouldn’t we?”

Meat the old-fashioned way is filled with distasteful necessities that consumers don’t want to know about. There’s a reason that sausage-making is the idiom for unsavory processes. Concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are a culmination of farmers’ history-long quest to grow animals more efficiently. But the bad PR that comes from both the farms and the slaughterhouses is something the industry would be happy to dispense with, if there were an alternative.

It could be a while, though, before most of us can taste the alternative for ourselves. Wurgaft believes that the most reasonable claims suggest a product “that could be presented at restaurants as a stunt” is “relatively close,” and the industry could use those kinds of releases to string us along “maybe for another decade.” That would buy time for them to develop more viable products that could be scaled up.

JUST’s lab-grown chicken will be a small, restaurant-based rollout. Similarly, Memphis Meats is working on lab-grown beef, poultry, and fish and expects to have a product on the market “in the near future,” sold at a “premium price” in “select locations.” Memphis Meats’ last public production cost estimate, from last year, was $2,400 per pound, and the company aims to get that below the production cost of conventional meat. So there’s clearly work to be done.

But people and money are on the job. And with a growing population with a growing appetite for meat, there’s a lot riding on it. Lab-grown meat won’t be what’s for dinner in the next few years, but humans are planning to eat meat for the foreseeable future. And in the long run, at least some of it is likely to come from a lab.

Tamar Haspel is a freelance food and science journalist. She writes the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post column Unearthed, and farms oysters off Cape Cod.

Original Source -> Lab-grown meat and the fight over what it can be called, explained

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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lindafrancois · 6 years ago

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How Does Hyperacidity Or Acid Reflux Lead To Weight Gain?

Acid reflux prevents right digestion

Table of contents

What is hyperacidity?

Symptoms

General causes of hyperacidity

Acidity and weight gain

Usefulness of Fat

Blood pH and body weight

Imbalance of pH and weight gain

How to restore pH balance?

What is hyperacidity?

Your digestive system is the core of your physiology and so is the abdomen the core of your physical self. The food you take is broken down into small particles and the nutrients are absorbed to provide energy. The undigested residue is discarded as waste.

The food you take is processed in your stomach and intestine. To do so, certain juices and acids are produced in the system.

If the acids in your stomach are in excess of requirement, you start suffering from hyperacidity or acid reflux. This is also known as heartburn informally, though it has nothing to do with your heart.

Symptoms:

The symptoms of hyperacidity are many; some of the few common ones include:

Sour taste in your mouth

Burping

Discomfort in the upper abdomen

Burning sensation in Chest, Stomach or in your Throat.

Heaviness after having meals.

Indigestion and nausea.

The rigidity of the stomach.

Obesity or abnormal weight gain.

Arthritis and muscle pain.

Dehydration.

Mood swings with irritable and nervous behavior.

Impaired metabolism and low absorption of nutrients.

Life of low energy.

General causes of hyperacidity

Many things can cause hyperacidity. Knowing them would help you to check them. The common causes are:

Consumption of fatty and spicy food.

Not maintaining regular food routines.

Missing regular meals and eating junk food to make up.

Drinking too much alcohol.

Smoking cigarettes.

Excessive drinking of tea and coffee

Stress and anxiety

Drinking carbonated drinks.

The absence of physical activity.

Acidity and weight gain:

Can acid reflux cause weight gain? Hyperacidity is the root cause of throwing your normal body processes off balance. Acidity severely impacts your ability to get rid of toxins from your body. As a result, your health is put at risk by causing an imbalance in your pH level.

Additionally, your excess body weight hampers reduction of acidity by impairing digestion. It is to be understood that the acidity of your body and the quantum of fat in your body is closely interconnected. Fat in the body is the first defense protecting the pH of the blood in your body.

When your body fails to remove sufficient toxins from your body through sweat, urine and bowel movement, more fat cells are produced to store them. This is the most common basis for gaining weight. In a round-about way, acid reflux does cause weight gain.

Usefulness of Fat:

You tend to believe that fat is harmful to the body. On the contrary, some amount of fat in your body is essential to maintain the normal functions of your system.

It helps in sustaining your organs like the nervous system, bone marrow and muscles. It also provides energy to the body.

Blood pH and body weight

Studies have shown that the ideal pH of your body should be between 7.3 and 7.4 which essentially mean that your blood is alkaline. If your pH is anywhere below seven, your blood becomes acidic.

There is a low supply of oxygen to the cells creating an environment in which you are prone to suffer from diseases. The chart below is indicative of the pH measurement and what it means to the sustenance of life.

7 to 7.5: Healthy

6.8: Metabolic acidosis

6.4: Improper digestion and difficult to lose weight.

6.0: Oxygen deficiency in cells

5.5: Extreme acidosis and degenerative diseases

5.0: Extreme oxygen suffocation and a threat to life.

It is thus evident that maintaining the correct pH balance is crucial to a life of good health.

Imbalance of pH and weight gain:

By now, it is amply clear the acidity and weight gain are closely related and without finding a solution to the problem of hyperacidity, it is difficult to lose weight. Obesity also aggravates the symptoms of hyperacidity.

The answer therefore to the question: can acid reflux cause weight gain is yes, it can. It is thus important to lose weight. Some experts lately have emphasized the need to restore pH balance in the blood in order to maintain a body weight that allows you to lead a healthy life.

How to restore pH balance?

The first step toward achieving this goal of reducing the acidity of your body and restoring pH balance is a suitable change in your diet and lifestyle.

It is extremely important to keep in mind that dietary changes are not arbitrary and contain a blend of both alkalizing and acidic foods. Eating healthy natural food and incorporating oxygenating exercises into your daily routine is a great way to begin the procedure.

The trick is to shun all the foods that you relished so far and gorged on and start taking those you particularly detested. You may adopt the following measures:

Eat fruits and vegetables, especially leafy greens and legumes, as they are alkaline foods.

Eat Soybeans, tofu, nuts and seeds which are all alkaline promoting foods.

Citrus foods should be eaten in moderation.

Dairy, eggs, meat, most grains are acid promoters and can be eaten in moderation.

Eat lentils and beans.

Eat a lot of green salads but not with vinegar dressing.

Processed, packaged, convenience and canned foods should not be eaten.

Drink a lot of water as it will help rid your body of toxins through urine and sweat.

Do not indulge in drinking tea and coffee.

Avoid alcohol.

Stop smoking.

Avoid stress factors and meditation is a good mean to counter the causes.

Avoid sedentary lifestyle and indulge in physical activities daily. Exercises, cycling, swimming, jogging etc. are all good for your health to burn the excess calories and fat.

Conclusion:

Weight gain and hyperacidity are self-promoting and mutually sustaining. However, by restoring the pH balance you are creating an environment that will enable you to combat obesity and lose weight to your desired level.

With a judicious intake of beneficial foods, appropriate changes in the lifestyle and maintenance of alkaline pH, the necessity of the body to produce protective fat cells will be absent.

This will help maintain a optimal body weight and in the process, eliminate the health hazards that is inherent to these conditions. The benefits of reducing acidity and maintaining pH balance are extensive. It makes you live a life full of energy with good health and contentment.

Get FREE Weightloss Consultation Today!

The post How Does Hyperacidity Or Acid Reflux Lead To Weight Gain? appeared first on Truweight Blog.

How Does Hyperacidity Or Acid Reflux Lead To Weight Gain? published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

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poorlilbeans · 7 years ago

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keep fighting (part 4) (i hope you’re not already bored of this)

hospitals and a lil bit of vom. won’t be too graphic cause i’m a squeamish bean. there will be whump, there will be fluff. it’ll be lit. also imma shift between POVs in this one, and i’ll separate them with a ~

“Thank you for coming, Yuri,” Victor whispered. Yuri shifted in the passenger seat, no longer used to Victor using his real name. He must’ve been really upset. And with good reason, Yuri thought. Victor didn’t say anything else as they parked at the hospital. He seemed dazed as he checked in at the front desk, like he truly couldn’t believe what was happening. Yuri was getting itchy, annoyed that he couldn’t make any snide comments. He knew he had an attitude on him, but he wasn’t an asshole. He knew there was a time and place for his... Yuri-ness, and this wasn’t it. Victor already looked like he was holding back tears, which was weird in itself. While he’d heard rumours, he’d never seen Victor cry before yesterday. It startled him that he even knew how. He watched with muted fascination as Victor silently took a slip of paper with Yuuri’s room number from the receptionist and made for the elevators, trusting that Yuri would follow.

There he was. Yuuri was propped up on so many pillows that he was in a sitting position, but he appeared to be unconscious. He was hooked up to so many machines. He looked so sick. Victor drew in a deep breath, determined not to cry. He made his way toward the man in the bed, wanting to touch him, but unsure if he should.

“He’s just napping right now,” a voice said behind him. Victor turned and watched the nurse switch the bag of fluids on the IV stand. “We haven’t really been able to communicate with him,” he admitted. “There’s a nurse who speaks English arriving in a few minutes, though.” Victor nodded, sitting on the little chair by the bed and taking Yuuri’s hand. Yuuri didn’t stir.

“What’s wrong with him?” Yuri asked, sitting awkwardly on the arm of the chair. The nurse hesitated, causing a wave of worry to wash over Victor.

“We’re working on that. He has inflammation in his lungs, for sure. We also performed a colonoscopy and an oral endoscopy this morning, and there’s inflammation from his mouth all the way down to his intestines. We’re still waiting for his blood work to come back from the lab. The red patches on his cheeks would suggest lupus, but that doesn’t explain... everything else.” Victor didn’t know what to say. How had it gotten this bad? How had he let it get this bad?

“I’ll get you another chair,” the nurse said, “and then we can talk more.” He disappeared for a moment, and returned with a folding chair for Yuri. “We can treat it,” he continued, once Yuri was settled. “Like I said, we aren’t finished with the tests, but we can start treating the inflammation today. That will at the very least help with the nausea and the breathing troubles. The plan is to start pushing anti-inflammatory drugs through the IV today; the only issue with that is he’ll have to be drinking fluids, since we can’t use it to hydrate him while it’s pumping medication. We’ll try a Gravol and see if that helps any.” The nurse glanced at Yuuri, and Victor got the feeling he’d already been puked on at least once.

“What about the seizures?” Victor asked, instinctively running his thumb along Yuuri’s knuckles.

“They’re unpleasant, but so far, as long as he’s here, they aren’t putting him in any danger. We’ll have a better idea of what to do about them once his blood work and MRI results are in.” Victor nodded, staring dazedly at his fiance. “Do you want some time with him?” the nurse asked. He nodded again, not quite able to form words. “I’ll leave you to it. There will be another nurse here soon.” With that, he left, leaving the three skaters alone. Time passed. Victor didn’t take his eyes off Yuuri. Yuri was uncharacteristically quiet. Eventually, the thing that broke the silence was a weak cough.

“Vitya?”

“Yuuri?”

“Rocky,” Yuri mumbled under his breath.

“Hi, Yuri.”

“Hi, other Yuuri,” he answered.

“I love you,” Victor said, louder than he meant to. Yuuri smiled behind the oxygen mask.

“I love you too. I missed you.”

“I have something for you,” Yuri cut in. “It’s not from me. Don’t look at me like that. It’s been sitting in my room for days. Mila wanted me to give it to you after the competition but I didn’t see you.” He held up a little gift bag with a note sticking out the top. Yuuri accepted it and squinted at the note for a while.

“Can’t see,” he said, gesturing loosely to his eyes.

“Oh! Right! I brought your glasses,” Victor remembered, producing them from his pocket and handing them to Yuuri. He put them on and took another look at the note, giving up after less than a second.

“It’s in Russian.” He handed the note off to Victor to translate.

“Sharpies always come out looking bumpy.”

“What the fuck?” Yuri added helpfully. Yuuri peered in the bag and giggled.

“It’s full of paint. For my cast, I think.” The next few minutes were cheerful. Victor painted skates, flowers and smiley faces on the cast. Yuri grabbed a brush and painted a dick. Victor painted over it. They were quiet and peaceful, and just about ignoring the current circumstances. That is, until the new nurse arrived.

“Yuuri Kat... Ka... Yuuri?” The three of them looked up as this new nurse placed a tray on the little tabletop attached to the bed. “It’s nice to meet you. We’re going to try some lunch now, if that’s alright,” she said in English. Yuuri glanced at the tray wearily and the nurse took his arm. “I’m just going to take your blood pressure first, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. Victor could hear hints of anxiety colouring his voice, and kissed his hair before returning to his seat.

“Not too bad,” she said, addressing the blood pressure monitor. “Let’s switch out that mask for a nasal tube so you can eat.” She reached up to remove the mask, but Yuuri got there first, pulling it off and flinching away. She then grabbed an oxygen tube, hooked it up to the machine, and moved toward Yuuri, only to have him take it from her and put it on himself. The nurse took the odd behaviour in stride, though, and simply pushed the tabletop so it was over Yuuri’s lap. It held a large cup of water, a bowl of yellowish vegetable broth, a can of ginger ale, and a tablet of Gravol. Yuuri immediately took the Gravol and swallowed it, making it very clear that he was capable of and planning on eating on his own. The nurse nodded at that, and made for the hallway.

“Press the help button if you need anything, alright?”

“Thank you,” Victor called after her. He turned to Yuuri, who had picked up the spoon, but was just staring daggers into the broth. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, considering the situation.”

“Why won’t you let the nurse touch you?”

“It’s not that. Not touching. It’s just... I’m getting all itchy about people doing things for me.”

“You’re in the hospital. You’re not pulling the I don’t want to be a burden thing, are you? You’re allowed to have help when you’re this sick.” Yuuri tapped the spoon anxiously on the tray.

“It’s too much. I don’t like it.” Victor kissed his knuckles reassuringly.

“Alright then, Mr. Independent. How about you eat that broth all by yourself then?” Under Victor’s encouraging stare, Yuuri swallowed a spoonful. “Good?” He shrugged.

“Fine. Just tastes like weak, salty miso soup.” He took some careful sips of water, and forced down about three quarters of the little bowl. He also took a single sip of the ginger ale, but immediately shook his head an put it down.

“You okay?” Victor asked again. Yuuri nodded, one hand absently drifting to his stomach.

“Good thing you have some time off,” Yuri said, trying to distract from how uncomfortable Yuuri looked. It was true; with the way the assignments had worked out this year, while Victor and Yuri’s next competition was five weeks away, Yuuri had just over two months. It was the longest possible amount of time between assigned competitions. Yuuri nodded distractedly. His breathing had gotten a bit louder, a bit more laboured. His breaths rattled, and he produced a tiny, high pitched squeak when he inhaled. This lasted a few moments before he broke into a harsh coughing fit. He hacked and wheezed desperately, trying hard to gasp for oxygen. Victor instinctively thumbed the help button, but the nurse had already heard the ruckus and appeared by the bedside.

“It’s alright, Yuuri, stay calm for me. Think about breathing in, not breathing out.” She held the oxygen mask to his face, but he swatted it away and pointed frantically off to the side. No one had any idea what he wanted until the coughs began to pair with violent gags. Right. He’d been pointing at the pink emesis bin on the bedside table. The nurse calmly placed it under his chin, thankfully, before anything actually came up.

Yuuri had neither enough breath nor enough energy to actually heave, so the vomit came up in tiny burps, a little bit at a time. Not knowing what to do, Victor rubbed Yuuri’s back, making sure not to get in the nurse’s way. He remembered Yuri sitting there, and turned around, not taking his hand off of Yuuri. Yuri had his elbows on his knees and was leaning forward with his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.

“You can step out if you have to, Yura,” Victor said in Russian. Yuri nodded left hurriedly, and Victor turned his attention back to Yuuri. He was throwing up blood again, and Victor was terrified. It also appeared that the vomit wasn’t the only source of the blood; he seemed to be coughing it up too, now. Yuuri gagged hard and clawed at the oxygen tube on his face before another wave of vomit poured from his mouth and nose, clogging the tube. The nurse pulled it off of him. Victor kissed his head as he continued to cough and wheeze. His face had gone purple. He was still gagging and burping as well, but he appeared to have run out of vomit, so the nurse put the oxygen mask over his mouth again.

“Hold this here, please.” Victor used his free hand to do as she said and watched as she produced an inhaler and one of those air chambers that attached to it. “Yuuri, can you hear me?” Still plagued by his inability to breathe, Yuuri nodded. “I’m going to give you Ventolin, alright? I’m going to put this in your mouth, and I want you to try to breathe in, and hold it as long as you can.” Yuuri nodded again. The nurse puffed the medicine into the chamber, and Victor moved the mask out of the way as she placed the end in his mouth. Yuuri wheezed loudly as he tried his best to inhale, and squeezed his eyes shut with the effort of holding his breath. He barely lasted three seconds before busting into more coughs, and Victor moved the mask back over his mouth.

“Good job, Yuuri,” the nurse encouraged. “We’re going to do that one more time, okay?” They repeated the process, and Yuuri lasted a little bit longer before the coughs consumed him again. This time, when Victor put the mask over Yuuri’s mouth, the nurse strapped it in place. After a few moments, the coughing slowed, and he had time to take longer breaths in between. Eventually, the wheezing evolved into exhausted panting, and Victor felt him relax beneath his touch.

“I’m going to grab your next IV bag. Try to keep drinking the water. Just remember to put the mask back on between sips.” With that, the nurse headed off, and Yuri came back moments after.

“Are you alive?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri answered, doing his best to keep his tone lighthearted. Overwhelmed with relief at hearing him speak again, Victor crawled into the bed beside him and wrapped him in a gentle hug. Yuuri hummed happily and snuggled into him.

“I want to stay with you tonight,” Victor mumbled, carefully keeping his emotions in check.

“Me too,” Yuuri said. It sounded like he was trying just as hard to hold back the tears. Yuri stuck his hand out.

“Give me keys and bus money. I’ll go get your stuff.” Victor gratefully handed Yuri his wallet and keys, calling out thanks as Yuri shuffled off.

“Good kid,” Yuuri observed. Victor hummed in agreement and kissed Yuuri’s neck, cuddling him close. He was content to stay like this forever- or at least until Yuuri was better.

#sick!yuuri #sickfic #yoi #yuri on ice #yuuri katsuki #victor nikiforov #yuri plisetsky #victuuri #tw hospitals #turns out i only switched pov once #hmm

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