#any time someone advocates for charging a child as an adult i want to point out theyre presuming guilt over innocence

[timeisacephalopod]

The perils of loving true crime content but hating when it veers into either Tough On Crime right wing reactionary content or Weird Gratuitous Descriptions of Crimes territory. I find the first far more than the second and it drives me nuts that anyone could think prison will solve violence when prison in itself is a wildly violent place that obviously doesn't work. If it did the US would be Squeaky Clean Crimeless and that ain't true.

Seriously though I love true crime content but these days have such a hard time finding stuff that gives the facts of the story plainly without deciding to advocate for ridiculous prison sentences and a bunch of other copaganda adjacent shit is surprisingly difficult and frankly says a lot about the way we discuss, conceptualize, and react to crime. Especially when a lot of crime is literally just criminalizing addiction, a mental health problem, so fully defending and uncritically advocating for the prison and policing system especially when true crime stories are more often than not stories of police incompetence is just baffling. And no just because true crime tends to mean violent crime that does not mean prison will solve the problem any more than it would solve an addicts addiction and frankly I don't even want an ideological slant I just want the damn facts without right wing shit being evangelized to me. Wonder how many people even notice this shit, because its so ingrained in true crime content that it feels like the only ones who notice are insufferable blue hair pronoun using leftists like myself.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

Ok, so I’ve tried and tried several times to get this posted, we’ll see if this is the time it goes through. Half the reason why this review series has slowed down is not just the multitude of real life stuff I have to deal with, but also Tumblr just refusing to work with me and deleting my posts. I also can’t save my work else where due to Tumblr messing up the formatting. It’s been a frustrating mess and so far no one @staff​ has come up with a tech solution or work around. 

Summary: Rapunzel helps to rebuild Old Corona, (after its near destruction from the Black Rocks) which will become the permanent home of Red and Angry, who have returned to Corona to settle down. However, she begins to notice strange footprints around the area, as well as the livestock becoming more unruly and fearful. The group comes across a monster hunter named Creighton, who explains to the group that the area is being stalked by a werewolf, who possessed one of Corona's citizens. Aiming to save this person rather than kill them, Rapunzel sets out to find who it is. 

When Was This Decided?

No seriously, when was this decided? It’s a pretty big leap go from ‘the rocks makes various towns inhabitable’ to ‘let’s rebuild!’ What’s changed here? Cause the rocks haven’t been removed and Rapunzel failed in her mission to nullify their power. In fact the rocks were not only reawaken in the second season finale but shown to be under the power of someone who’s intentions were made unclear to the heroes.

So I ask again; who thought this was safe thing to do now? What provisions have been made to accommodate the rocks? They blocked the well, remember, and destroyed the fields; how are the people getting food and water? 

And most importantly why wasn’t the audience informed beforehand? When you change up the status quo in a story you need to provide just cause to the viewers. I legit thought I had accidently skipped an episode when I first watched because this plot point was not set up properly.  

Why Were They Ever Left Alone to Begin With?

In a story where neglect is a central theme and motivating factor for all the main characters, it is super tone deaf to have those same characters perpetuating neglect themselves. The decision to live on their own should not be left up to Angry and Red because they are children. Children are not mature enough to provide for themselves neither emotionally nor physically and when placed in situations where they have to do so it psychologically damages them. Which the series already showcased with Varian so why is this suddenly deemed ok? 

This Completely Undermines the Past Two Seasons

The entire conflict of the past two seasons was the rocks forcing people out of their homes. Eugene was made an orphan from them, Varian lost his entire support group because them, they drove out the Saporians from their encampment which prompted them to invade Corona, and Rapunzel and company spent an entire year on the road trying to find a way to stop them from spreading supposedly. 

All of that has now been flushed down the drain with this decision. And its super insulting to watch because it’s the writers telling us that we’ve wasted our time caring about this plot for two years. You don’t resolve major conflicts off screen and without explanation; it’s lazy!  

Also Where Is Varian and Quirin During All This?

This is not only their home and legal charge, but it’s also the ending to their ongoing story, and they’re not even here in a silent cameo. 

Wouldn’t Quirin be overseeing the rebuilding of his town? Wouldn’t Varian be using his skills to find workable engineering solutions for them, fulling his season one goal of saving his home and making his village better with his inventions? Also wouldn’t Edmund want to catch up with his brother and help out now that he’s here? 

In fact not a single person who actually lives in Old Corona is to be found in these opening shots. 

Oh, But We Do Get Earl

Earl might be from Old Corona, or he might not be. We’ve literally never seen him before. The artists had to create a brand new character model for this character, the writers had to write new lines for him, and the casting director had to hire an actor and have him record these lines for only less than a minute of screen time, never to be seen again. Even though they legit had shepherd models already to go from season one that they could have used. It’s a waste of resources and a prime example of the mismanagement going on in this show. 

It’s Too Late In the Series to Waste Time On a New One Off Villain

Speaking of a waste, Creighton might have more story reasons to appear in this episode than Earl does but her inclusion is still a poor decision. The show already has an overabundance of villains, so many in fact that they shipped the bulk of them off in season two, and this is the final season; the season where we should be wrapping up plots and minor characters stories not kicking off new ones.

Taken on her own Creighton isn’t a bad character presa, she works for the episode, but when we could have gotten a resolution to Caine’s, Hector’s, or the Disciples’ story arcs instead it highlights how misused the series assets are. 

All This Lore Will Be Forgotten In Just a Few Episodes Time

We finally get like some magical rules and backstory only for future episodes to ignore it from here on afterwards. Red can turn into a werewolf whenever she pleases, night or day, with little explanation as for why.  

Just Arrest Her Rapunzel

You’re the acting queen. You have the power and the right to arrest or even merely detain someone who is threating your citizens and refuses to leave. In fact it’s kind of your job. You don't even have to throw her in a dungeon if you thought that too cruel. Just lock her up in a nice room somewhere in the castle until you’ve sorted out the mess yourself. 

The series wants to treat Rapunzel as the underdog when she isn’t, and her failure to wield her power effectively doesn’t make her look ‘nice’ it just makes her look stupid and grossly incompetent. This is a conflict that didn’t need to have happened and Rapunzel let it happen.  

Oh, So Now Y'all Riot

You didn’t complain when the king orphaned children with his crack down on crime. You rolled over as he dolled out overly harsh punishments to poor people who committed minor offences. You gleefully went along with the royals as they  scapegoated a child for their mistakes, even as they endangered your homes.  And ya’ll sat on your asses while invaders pulled off a coup and enslaved you. 

But this is what you get mad over? A rumor about a mythical creature existing that your princess has zero control over. Seriously? 

Man, I hate the townspeople in this show. 

Pointless Dream Sequence Is Pointless

This scene tells the audience nothing new and just wastes screen time. 

This Is the Wrong Lesson to Focus On Rapunzel

We do not tell the 12 year old to unload their phycological issues onto their baby sister!

You’re telling me parents were involved in writing this show? What the hell!?

Rapunzel you are the adult here. At 20 now you should be more adept to handle listening to the deep seated emotional traumas of a little girl than a fucking 10 year old! And if you’re not, or don’t want to, then it’s your job to find another adult who will. 

That’s the core problem with this entire episode. It treats Red’s and Angry’s problems as some eternal issue that they need to work out and not as the inherent failure of the adults around them that it is. 

It is neither Red’s nor Angry’s decision on weather or not they get live on their own. Nor is it their responsibility to be each other’s therapist. Yes, a change in living arrangements is always stressful and for children with abandonment issues it can be hard to readjust, but that’s when you need to step it up and deal with the problem; not shove it off onto the kids themselves! 

Monty Is Useless

Is this all Monty is good for? Being a red herring in ridiculously simple mysteries? Is this why we wasted a whole episode introducing him back in season one? Really?

Why Are We Still Treating Old Corona As Being Separate from Corona Itself?

Look, I get that it’s a joke, but it’s a joke that highlights how poorly thought out the worldbuilding is in the series. Is the Coronan government in charge of Old Corona or not? If so then you can just make those lease laws yourself as the acting regent Eugene. If not then Frederic shouldn’t have had any say in the matter of relocating Old Corona’s citizens nor putting a child outside of his jurisdiction under arrest.

But more importantly this is a just a repeat of that vague level of responsibility Rapunzel has for people who live off the island. She can’t order a whole village to be rebuilt while simultaneously claiming that she bares no accountability for Varian and Quirin’s problems in season one. 

Replacing Guns with Crossbows Isn’t the Safe Option That the Censors Think It Is

I find it kind of amusing that censors will ban showing a 17th century blunderbuss but allow it to be replaced by a weapon that is still mass produced today and can be bought in any Walmart across the country. Like I’m a major advocate for gun regulation in real life, but even I have to find this to be a bit silly. Crossbows aren’t some fantasy weapon. People still own and use them. But it would be seriously hard to get ahold of a working antique firearm.  

Seriously This Is How the Girls Have Been Living and the Adults Haven’t Done Anything About It Until Now?

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse by now, but it’s so engrained into the episode I have to keep bringing it up. The show itself is visually telling us that Red and Angry can’t keep living this way, but it never wants to call Rapunzel and the other adults out for not rescuing them from this life sooner. 

So All This Tells Me Is That Rapunzel Could Have Easily Checked Up On Varian In Painter’s Block, But Didn’t.

Remember they’re right next to Old Corona; meaning that Janus Point is also right next to Old Corona. Meaning that Rapunzel could easily have checked up on Varian right after Painter’s Block and choose not to. With each passing episode Rapunzel has less and less excuse for her behavior in season one. 

Yeah Remember that Plot Point That Wound Up Being Entirely Irrelevant to the Story?

In jokes don’t cover your ass when you make poor writing choices. Quite the opposite in fact as all you’ve done is remind the audience of all the various dangling plot threads that you will fail to follow up on. The disciples plot goes no where and serves no purpose, and it should not have been introduced as this big important thing if you weren’t going to do anything with it. 

Nice Idea, Poor Execution

I’ve heard fans of this episode tell me that they enjoy it because of this scene with Red. If you’re a naturally introverted person or neurodivergent and have trouble communicating at times then Red’s speech here can strike a cord. Which is cool; I’ll never deny someone’s feelings and if a piece of media speaks to you on a personal level for whatever reason that is great. What I’m here to discuss though is story structure and whether or not the story’s themes are presented well in context of what it’s set up. 

The conflict here does not work from a pure structural standpoint because it’s a surface level deflection of the real issues. Red’s problem isn’t that she is being ignored, it's that she’s been abandoned. Now communication issues can arise from that abandonment and feeling heard can be step forward in working those issues out, but Red’s central trauma isn’t going to be magically fixed by people ‘listening’ to her, i.e. being granted whatever she wants, but by providing her with a real home and with a real guardian to look after her. 

Because what Red wants on a surface level is harmful to her, and the reasons why she wants what she wants needs to be addressed more so than then sedating her angry outbursts in the moment. This is treating the symptoms not the cause.

So What Is or Isn’t Real About the Curse?

Once again, we finally get some actual lore and rules for magic and the writers are already throwing it away during the same episode they are introduced. I now have as little context for how the wolf curse works within the Tangled world as I did before the episode started. 

This Is Sweet, But Once Again Context Brings It Down.

So just to reiterate, this a surface level resolution to the conflict of the episode that doesn’t actually address anything. It might feel like an appropriate ending but only if you ignore the fact that Red and Angry are orphans who’ve been abandoned but the adults. 

Angry apologizing here to Red does not solve any of their problems, especially since Angry, as a child herself, is not responsible for her sister’s behavior, feelings, nor well being. That falls to the adults and they fail to address Red’s core issues and their own failings to her in their apologies as well. Not to mention that the very next scene undermines any optional progress that could have been made here. 

Listening to Someone Does Not Mean Giving Them Whatever They Want

This does not fix anything. Red and Angry are still left to live on their own without any real supervision. Giving them a big play house is not providing for them, it’s spoiling them. Would you let all the other orphans in the local orphanage roam free without an adult to take care of them? No!? Gee I wonder why? Could it be because letting a 12 and 10 year old raise themselves is a very stupid idea? One that will potentially damage them later in life assuming that they don't get themselves killed in the meantime. 

Moreover this is yet another example of the series overall problem with not understanding that compromise and resolving conflicts does not mean rewarding the characters at the end with everything that they want without having them work for it. That’s not how life works and it’s not how good story telling works. 

This Is Beyond Irresponsible

No! Bad Show! Bad! 

You do not get to pretend that negligence is the same thing as compromise. Yes I know Eugene said to come to him when they have a problem, but as demonstrated by this very episode children do not always know when to ask for help nor can they always find it when needed, that is why parents exist!  

Nor does the show get a free pass for turning it’s main characters into child abusers who neglected three minors multiple times now. Even when they themselves are victims of that same abuse!

How utterly blinkered do you have to be to not see the problem here? 

It’s the Return of the Pointless Parallels

Let me count the ways for how stupid this is. 

Red and Angry’s conflict has no impact on the on going narrative. Even with them now being reoccurring characters they still manage to contribute nothing to the future storylines involving Cass. 

Neither Rapunzel nor Cassandra learn anything from Red and Angry’s spat; Rapunzel because she refuses to acknowledge her own flaws and Cassandra’s not even here for any of it. 

The sister’s dynamic between Raps and Cass is not well established and the writers mange to piss all over it by series end because of gay baiting and poor writing. Therefore relying on lazy parallels to other siblings in the show to bolster this connection falls flat.  

Red and Angry’s argument has nothing in common with Rapunzel and Cass’s current fighting. One is about abandonment issues and the other is about shallow validation. Trying to tie these two themes together actually winds up undermining both conflicts. 

Red and Angry are children. Rapunzel and Cassandra are not. That very much matters. 

Red and Angry didn’t drag innocent people into their petty bitch fight and endanger them because they wanted to feel special. 

This Makes Zero Sense

I don’t know; she looked pretty happy during Crossing the Line. 

She was also able to control the rocks just fine then, so what happened? 

Not to mention soon after this Zhan Tiri is telling her she needs some sort of incantation to control the rocks, despite being able to already control the rocks.... 

It’s almost as if the writers are full of shit and don’t actually know what they’re doing. 

So Are We Remembering the Burnt Hand or Not?

Does the hand matter or not? Is it ever a motivating factor in what Cassandra decides to do? Is her waning control over the rocks connected to her burnt hand; even though having a burnt hand is what allowed her grab the moonstone in the first place? Did the moonstone heal the hand? Does Raps singing the healing incantation later on heal it? Does Cass have a forever burnt hand? 

Who the fuck knows! 

Not the writers that’s for sure, cause it never comes up again. 

Don’t introduce plot points and then not resolve them. That’s writing 101 guys. 

Wait if she needs the incantation to control the rocks and the angry thing is a lie, then how the heck is she controlling them just now? Make up your dang mind show! 

I swear I lose brain cells whenever I have to rewatch the evil Cassandra plot. It is so dumb  you guys.... so, so dumb. 

Conclusion

It’s not the worst thing ever but series has far better episodes on offer than this one. Even in a season as suck ass as season three. 

So there’s praying that this review posts this time and if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me in my projects feel free to leave a tip on my Ko-Fi. Thank you. 

https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines

[letterboxd]

In Focus: Interstellar.

Inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar placing high across three notable Letterboxd metrics, Dominic Corry reflects on how the film successfully hung its messaging around the concept of love—and what pandemic responses worldwide could learn from its wholehearted embrace of empathetic science.

“Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, it’s powerful. It has to mean something.” —Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway)

This story contains spoilers for ‘Interstellar’ (2014).

Although it is insultingly reductionist to both filmmakers, there are many reasons Christopher Nolan is often described as a modern-day Stanley Kubrick. The one most people usually settle on is the notion that both men supposedly make exacting, ambitious films that lack emotion.

It is an incorrect assessment of either director, but it’s beyond amazing that anyone could still accuse Nolan of such a thing after he delivered what is unquestionably his masterwork, the emotional rollercoaster that is 2014’s Interstellar.

In the epic sci-fi adventure drama, Nolan managed to pull off something that many filmmakers have attempted and few have achieved. He told a story of boundless sci-fi scope, and had it be all about love in the end. It sounds cheesy to even write it down, but Nolan did it.

That Interstellar is such an overtly cutting-edge genre film that chooses to center itself so brazenly and unapologetically around love, is frankly awesome.

Love informs Interstellar both metaphorically and literally: the expansive scope of the film effectively represents love’s infinite potential, and love itself ends up being the tangible thread that allows far-flung astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to communicate with his Earth-bound daughter Murph (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) from the tesseract (a three-dimensional rendering of a five-dimensional space) after Cooper enters the black hole towards the end of the film.

Matthew McConaughey as Joseph ‘Coop’ Cooper, Mackenzie Foy as Murph, and Timothée Chalamet as Tom.

In transmitting (via morse code) what the robot TARS has observed from inside the black hole, Cooper provides Murph with the data to solve the gravity problem required to uplift Earth’s population from its depleted home planet. Humanity is saved. Love wins again. Hard sci-fi goes soft. Christopher Nolan’s genius is confirmed, and any notions of emotionlessness are emphatically washed away.

This earnest centering of love in Interstellar is key to the film’s universal appeal, and undoubtedly plays a large role in why it features so prominently in three significant Letterboxd lists determined by pronoun: Interstellar is the only film that appears in all three top tens of “most fans on Letterboxd” when considering members who use the pronoun he/him, she/her and xe/ze. (“Most fans” refers to Letterboxd members who have selected the film as one of the four favorites on their profile.)

To get a bit reductionist myself, sci-fi adventure—in cinema, at least—has traditionally been a masculine-leaning genre, but Interstellar’s placement across these three lists points to it having superseded that traditional leaning, hopefully for the better.

Yet the film reliably still provokes reactions like this delightful tweet:

few movies make me as mad as Interstellar. who the fuck makes 3/4 of an excellent hard sci-fi movie backed up by actual science and then abruptly turns it into soft sci-fi about how the power of love and time traveling bookshelves can save us in the final 1/4? damn you, Nolan

— the thicc husband & father (@lukeisamazing)

February 13, 2021

Although this tweet is somewhat indicative of how many men (and women, for that matter) respond to the film, I think it’s pretty clear the writer actually loves Interstellar wholeheartedly, final quarter and all, but perhaps feels inhibited from expressing that love by the expectations of a gendered society that is becoming increasingly outdated. The “damn you, Nolan” is possibly a concession of sorts—he’s damning how Nolan really made him feel the love at the end. It’s okay, @lukeisamazing, you don’t have to say it out loud.

Conversely, it can be put like this:

“The emotion of Interstellar is three-fold: Nolan’s script, co-written with his brother as with all his best stuff, masters not only notions of black holes, wormholes, quantum data and telemetry, but it also makes a case for love as the one thing—feeling, fact, movement, message—that can mean more and do more than anyone in our current time, on our existing planet, can comprehend.”

The writer of this stirring summation, our own Ella Kemp, is paraphrasing a critical section of the film, when Nolan goes full literal on the concept of love and has Cooper and Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) debate its very nature, quoted in part at the top of this story. It comes when the pair are trying to decide which potentially humanity-saving planet to use their dwindling fuel reserves to travel to. Brand is advocating for the planet where a man she loves might be waiting for her, instead of the planet that has ostensibly better circumstances for life.

Brand: “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it.”

“Love has meaning, yes,” responds Cooper, heretofore the film’s most outwardly love-centric character, exhibiting a stoic longing for his dead wife, while also abandoning his ten-year-old daughter on Earth for a space adventure (albeit one designed to save humanity) than has now inadvertently taken decades. “Social utility. Social bonding. Child rearing.” Ouch.

McConaughey with Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand.

Brand: “You love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that? Maybe it means something more. Something we don’t yet understand. Some evidence, some artefact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it yet.” Amen.

Cooper remains unconvinced by Brand’s rationale, but this dispassionate display presages him going on to realize the true (literal) power of love (and his poor, science-only decision-making—thanks Matt Damon) when it provides him the aforementioned channel of communication with Murph in the tesseract. Nolan has a female character make the most eloquent vocal argument for love, but it’s the male character who has to learn it through experience.

So while Interstellar does initially conform to some prevailing cultural ideas about love and how it supposedly relates to gender, it ultimately advocates for a greater appreciation of the concept that moves beyond such binary notions. That is reflected in how important the film is to Letterboxd members who self-identify as he/him, she/her and xe/ze. We all love this movie. Emphasis on love.

Brand’s speech—not to mention the film as a whole—also can’t help but inform the current global situation. Interstellar argues for a greater devotion to both science and love, in harmony; such devotion might have mitigated the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic where both concepts were drastically undervalued by many of those in charge of the response.

Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck as the grown-up Cooper siblings.

Despite the reactions cited above, responses to Interstellar aren’t always split down gender lines. We’re all allowed to feel whatever we like about it, and substantial variety comes across in the many, many reviews for the film.

Zaidius says Interstellar is so good that, “after watching [it], you will want to downgrade all of the ratings you have ever given on Letterboxd.”

On the other hand, Singlewhitefemalien takes issue with Dr. Brand’s aforementioned love-based decision-making in her two-star review: “She wants to fuckin’ go to Planet Whatever to chase after a dude she banged ten years ago because women are guided by their emotions and love is all you need.” A perhaps fair assessment of the role Nolan chose his sole female astronaut to play in the film?

Sam offers food for thought when he writes “First, you love Interstellar; then you understand Interstellar.”

Letterboxd stalwart Lucy boils it down effectively in one of her multiple five-star reviews of the film: “I needed a really good cry.” It’s hard to say whether Vince is agreeing or disagreeing with Lucy in his review: “Fuck you Matthew McConaughey for making me cry.” The catharsis this movie provides for dudes becomes clearer the deeper you venture into our Interstellar reviews (and I ventured deep): “How dare this fucking movie make me cry… twice,” writes John. Let it out, John.

Then there’s Rudi’s take: “I sobbed like an animal while watching this but I’m not exactly sure what animal it was like. Like a pig? Like a whale? I don’t know but I do know that I cried a whole fucking lot.”

Emotionless? With all this crying?

Christopher Nolan inspires more debate than any other filmmaker of the modern age (when we’re not getting unnecessarily riled up about something Marty has said, that is) and while Nolan has the passionate devotion of millions of viewers, I’d argue he still doesn’t quite get his due. Especially when it comes to Interstellar.

By so successfully using love as both a metaphorical vessel and a palpable plot point in a sci-fi adventure film, he built on notable antecedents like James Cameron’s The Abyss and Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, two (great) films with similar aspirations that didn’t stick the landing as well as Interstellar does. In Contact, McConaughey engages in a similar debate about love to the one quoted above, but notably takes the opposing side.

Steven Spielberg (who at one point was going to direct an earlier iteration of Interstellar) did a pretty good job of showing love as the most powerful force in the universe with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but there hasn’t been a huge amount of room for such notions in the genre since then.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar’s most obvious forebear, is often accused of being the director’s most brazenly emotionless film. And while that’s perhaps a bit more understandable than some of the brickbats hurled Nolan’s way, there’s more emotion in the character of Hal 9000 than in many major directors’ entire oeuvre. It’s also, in part due to Hal’s place in the examination of queer consciousness in the sci-fi realm, the film currently in the number one spot on the xe/ze list.

Two films that notably exist in Interstellar’s wake are Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which expands upon Interstellar’s creative use of time-bending (and like Contact, features a female protagonist) and James Gray’s Ad Astra, which tackles the perils of traditional masculinity with more directness.

Interstellar doesn’t solve the sci-fi genre’s cumbersome relationship with masculinity and gender, but it makes significant strides in breaking down the existing paradigms, if only from all the GIFs of McConaughey crying it has spawned. Its appeal across the gender spectrum is an interesting and encouraging sign of the universality of its themes. And the power of love.

Fans out of touch with their feelings may complain about the role love plays in the film, but that says more about them than it does the film. Love wins. Also: TARS. How could anyone not love TARS?

TARS and Christopher Nolan.

Related content

Men/Boys Crying: a master list

“I Ugly-Cried Like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar”: Amanda’s list

“I Liked Interstellar”: Sar’s list of what to watch afterwards

Follow Dominic on Letterboxd

[ilikemythinksoverhard]

Let’s talk about antivaxxers.

So I’m not an antivaxxer, but I have zero patience for the “anti-vax mom” trope, for the same reason I have no patience for the “daddy issue” rhetoric. How does a girl get daddy issues, pray tell? Because her dad failed her as a parent. Shouldn’t we then take callous swipes at the daddy failure, not the damaged daughter?

The anti-vax movement was started by a fully licensed and reputable MALE medical professional, then Dr. Andrew Wakefield. While he continues to defend his original research, multiple inquiries indicate fraud and conflict of interest. In short, he lied outright and put children’s health at risk for monetary gain.

Yes, the movement was picked up by celebrities including most notoriously Jenny McCarthy, but antivaxxing is also widely supported by Scientology, a religion headed by male David Miscavige and heralded by a number of male has-been A-listers like Tom Cruise and John Travolta. But we focus on the anti-vaxxer women.

Now let’s take a quick detour to the entire history of western medicine and it’s incredible disservice to and abuse of women. The incredible lack of disparity between funding for erectile dysfunction and literally any health condition specific to women. The skyrocketing maternal mortality rates coupled with high cesarean and unnecessary hysterectomy rates. The gender gap in heart attacks leaving women much more likely to die from them than men. If you really want to gag look up the history of artificial insemination ie: how two doctors and a husband conspired to rape and impregnate an unsuspecting woman in need of medical care. Those are top of my head.

And yet, who navigates health care for children? Why, moms do. Now this is not necessarily a jab at the dads themselves, as there are a number of nuanced factors disfavoring their engagement in childcare. However, the reality is that having women be the primary advocates for children within the medical industry creates a foundation of adversity.

Most women have had challenges with receiving medical care by the time they are an adult. Either being dismissed, ignored, having a provider skip informed consent, etc. As they become adults they hear similar stories from the women around them. They likely become educated to the system-wide issues. Most women I know steel themselves to go to the doctor for anything. They probably have switched providers a number of times.

Now they become mothers. And even though dad is more likely to be listened to, respected, and treated well...probably mom is going to be taking the kids to their doctor appointments, along with all her baggage.

If you have never taken a baby or toddler to get shots, allow me to clue you in. It’s awful. Your baby’s eyes go wide and they let out a long wail that ends in a silent scream. At this point, you will beg your baby, “Come on honey, breathe, breathe,” and as they FINALLY gasp in that next breath the nurse will stab them again. And probably again. Usually for babies it’s three needle shots and one oral. I had a set of twins where we got eight shots in one appointment thanks to flu season. And the child is too young to understand what’s going on and looks to you for help and you just have to stand there and hold them down. It’s truly awful. They will run a fever and not sleep that night. They will be fussy for the next couple days. And in a few short weeks it’ll be time to do it again. And again. And again. Finally after the first birthday it lets up and you can do every six months to a year. My six year old still screams though.

So to recap, doctors have routinely and historically positioned themselves against women. Society, as a cruel irony, puts moms in charge of medical care for children. Medical care for children means shots, which come with “discomfort” and also some risks - after all, while vaccines may not cause autism they do sometimes cause injury and death. Otherwise healthy children have in fact died from vaccines, rare but true. Then a licensed medical doctor tells women the vaccine industry is corrupt and harming their children, that as their children scream during vaccinations their brains are being irreparably damaged. Women find that plausible. And somehow, at the end of this saga, we make fun of the stupid Karens who don’t vaccinate their kids because they’re anti-science.

Here are some ideas to increase vaccination rates: step one, invest in upgrades to the delivery system. We’ve been doing shots for centuries. We have nanorobots and a Mars rover and GPS systems and laparoscopic lasers - fix vaccinations so they don’t have to be painful, for crying out loud. Step two, stop demoralizing and degrading antivaxxers. While anti-vax science has been debunked, recognize the rest of the iceberg that causes distrust of the medical industry. Step three, take governmental enforcement off the table and never bring it up again.

There are antivaxxers who change their stance, but never because someone insulted them, tricked them, or forced them.

[in-tua-deep]

So in the Instant arrival au, what is the Commission trying to do? Is there mission to kill Five before he disrupts the timeline still or take him because of his powers? Does the Handler ever get involved and do the sibs ever see her be a creep to Five?

(Instant arrival au can be found in these two previous posts: one, two)

The Commission is trying to get him in that au, yes!! Basically they realize that Five has shown up and is uniting the family, and they figure it’s just some kid whatever so they send a hitsquad out - which is the diner scene!

But they underestimated this family of child soldiers and Five’s own combat capabilities (it’s very easy to underestimate someone who hasn’t even gone through puberty yet) and the whole incident did the opposite of what was intended: it actually drove them all closer together and also closer to the realization of the full extent of their childhood trauma

(Especially Luther, who still clings to his father’s memory like a child with a comfort blanket, who is only just now realizing how terribly, tragically young they all were and is starting to have doubts about the wisdom of a child superhero team for the very first time. All the siblings are larger than life, barring Vanya who never was on the team to begin with. The Umbrella Academy are a colorful bunch and it’s difficult to remember how young your siblings were when you were also young yourself, not until slapped in the face with it)

So the Commission is going to continue trying to separate Five from the fold, probably a sort of “wanted: dead or alive” type thing since, hey, time traveling kid could be useful for research if nothing else but it’s more urgent to kickstart the apocalypse than anything else

because right now, in this au, Five is the glue keeping the family together since they’re all somewhat concerned about this Literal Child who has been dropped into their lap and they’re all at least attempting to play nice for his sake

and remove him from the equation and it all crumples. They start blaming each other for losing him, they fight, point fingers, say things that can’t be taken back, and hey if that issue is even the culmination of everything and that sets off Vanya and splits her off from the family even further well hey they need that anyway so

The Handler is an advocate for taking Five in alive, because she’s always been a firm believer in squeezing the use out of every little thing and why, Five is just a delightful little puzzle box of a child with those fun powers and combat ability and even though he’s proven himself to be an... interesting opponent to say the least. But he’s still thirteen. A child. Those tend to be a little more emotional, a little more easily manipulated than your average adult

(of course, Five has never been average in any way. He grew up with Reginald’s manipulations, and there’s something about that Handler that pings the same not safe, tread lightly, danger vibes that have hummed in the back of his head his entire life)

(They all learned to survive at the knee of a man who didn’t care whether they lived or died, and they all went about it different ways. Luther and Vanya learned to ignore the danger signs. Klaus learned to dull it. Diego tried to become dangerous himself. Allison learned how to play the game. And Five? Five learned that there was an option between submit and rebel: subvert)

The Handler probably does show up, in a confusing whirl of over-saturated colors and frozen time to smile with all of her teeth and probably frighten Five tbh by backing him into a corner with no one to back him up

she offers, all saccharine sincerity about how if he comes with her, then his siblings will be saved - and oh, didn’t he know that the Commission was trying to stop the upcoming apocalypse? Why, the world was supposed to end in just a handful of days! And if Five helped them, then he could save not just his family but the world

and so that’s how everyone finds out about the apocalypse in this au, because Five doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her but he does believe her when she tells him the world is ending. 

(He’d believe her more if she wasn’t trying so hard to make him believe that she was a sweet innocent woman who cared about his and the world’s wellbeing. She was used to being the one in charge, and while she might be an excellent liar to most people she wasn’t used to children at all and it showed in the way she made her voice just that side of cloyingly sweet and dumbed down her words. He was thirteen not three for goodness sakes)

and Five is a child who has so far delighted in pushing his powers, with none of the fright and wariness that comes from landing head first into an apocalypse, so it’s more out of curiosity than anything else when Five push-push-pushes at the sliver of time he’s caught in, and the Handler probably wasn’t expecting to be hurled into real time in an instant

to the other Hargreeves it looks like she just appeared out of thin air, and that their brother managed to change positions at the drop of a hat (not unusual) without his regular accompanying blue light (much more unusual)

so YEAH why not in this au the other Hargreeves do get to meet the Handler, but only for a few seconds because she has a suitcase in her hand and she knows when to cut her losses and bail

(we shall see if they end up meeting her again down the line)

honestly Luther’s probably 100% convinced that Reginald had something to do with the Commission after all this (after all Reggie frequently informed the kids about the apocalypse and the Handler said about the apocalypse, which ties them together) and considering the gunmen from the original “oh shit five is in the future” knee jerk reaction??

oh yeah Luther is 100% convinced that the Commission actually murdered Reginald and her, the other siblings figure that makes about as much sense as anything else. Diego is just happy that Grace isn’t being accused anymore tbh and Luther is happy that his theory is being validated and like. if the commission has time travel stuff then surely they can figure out how to make something look like a heart attack, right?

(“Oh well she totally wanted me to go to like. Her secret base with her and stuff. If she comes back I can accept her offer?” Five pipes up, blissfully ignorant of the glares Luther is now getting, “Like, they might have a file or something about Dad’s death or the apocalypse or! Or what they do and stuff!”

“Yeah, no, that’s not happening.” Diego shoots this idea down while staring hard enough at Luther that the big guy doesn’t make any comments either. “No one is going with any creepy ladies to their creepy bases alone and especially not Five and that’s final.”)

Five in this au is more primed than adult Five to recognize what an Absolute Creep the Handler is being because canon!Five in no way views himself as a child and considers himself to be on equal terms with the Handler engaged in a cat and mouse game with her as an opponent vs. instant arrival!Five who is an actual child who at the very least Grace has given stranger danger speeches to (because Reggie can’t have his superpowered investments go wandering off or getting kidnapped for goodness sakes)

actually hmm. i wonder if anyone did try and nab a superpowered kid after they went public with the umbrella academy?? I mean Reginald bought a whole bunch of them so, as terrible as it is, presumably there would be some kind of gross awful underground market interested let alone actual governments/scientists/etc.

how many kidnapping attempts did the umbrella academy have to deal with??

i never thought about that before huh

[addictedtostorytelling]

thoughts

a short fic-ish in honor of the twentieth anniversary of er episode 06x14 “all in the family,” which took place (within the universe of the show) on february 14th and 15th, 2000 and forever broke my heart.

canon. a recounting of the episode, mostly about lucy. not shippy, per se, though there is some mention of her relationship with carter, both the good and the bad. the pov is, uh, a take on second person. ~2,100 words.

here be angst and major character death cw.

how do i still have so many feelings about this fictional character going on twenty years and counting? rest in peace, baby girl. 

_________

do you ever think about how when she died, lucy knight was only twenty-five years old, certifiably an adult but unarguably a young one, in many ways still ostensibly a kid, just trying to carve out her place in the world?

if you think about how young she was---about how she still sometimes wore butterfly clips in her hair---then do you also think about how, even though she was young, she already knew that what she wanted to do with the rest of her life was to help people, to heal them? 

does it ever hit you how, just before she died, she had recently started to come into her own at the hospital---that for a year and half, she’d been the odd girl out, always struggling to catch her breath, but now she had finally begun to get the hang of things, to know herself and her job, and to form some connections? do you think about how she was going to graduate in june and become a psychiatrist? do you think about how good she might have been and about how many people she could have healed, had she a full lifetime (eighty years as opposed to just twenty-five) in which to work?

---and then does it occur to you that she never got the chance to be any of those things (a med school graduate, a psychiatrist, good at her work) before she was brutally stabbed by someone she’d spent all day advocating for? 

do you ever think about how lucy probably knew, from the moment paul sobriki pulled the knife out of her gut, that even if someone were by some miracle to find her before she bled out on the exam room floor, her injuries were too severe, and she was beyond saving? (that was how the speech they had taught her to say went, wasn’t it? “ms. knight, we’re so sorry. we worked very hard to save your daughter. we exhausted all of our capabilities, but despite our best efforts—”?) 

have you ever considered lucy’s simultaneous desperate hope and abject terror as she saw the light from the hallway pour into the room from where she was lying, helpless, in an ever-widening lake of her own blood? do you think about how she knew all the while that paul sobriki was still lurking and still armed? do you think about her pleading with the universe that maybe whoever had stepped into exam #3 could overpower sobriki and then find her in time to at least give her a fighting chance? do you think about how she probably also despaired that they might not notice the danger in the shadows until it was too late? do you think she was scared to death that her would-be savior might end up just like she had, in a broken heap on the ground? 

do you think about how lucy had to have realized before he even fell to the floor that this new person—this new victim—was carter? do you think about how she probably recognized his shoes as he bent down to pick up yoshi’s valentine off of the tile? or do you believe she could tell it was him right away, maybe by the way that he walked or how he breathed? (because, she supposed she could admit to herself now, the truth so much harder to resist as she pushed up against the brink of her consciousness, that she had always paid too much attention to carter, in one way or another, seeking his approval, his friendship, possibly even more—?) 

do you think about how she probably wanted to cry out in warning but couldn’t because her throat had been slashed? can you imagine what she felt like, watching sobriki charge out from the corner and hearing carter give that strangled yelp—“somebody!”—and then clatter onto the instrument table before falling astride from her under the bed? 

do you think about how, as she struggled to stay awake for just a few seconds longer, lucy probably wanted so badly to tell carter that she was sorry? (for all of it: for not being able to save him; for the fact that they were going to die together on a cold, linoleum floor; for how their last conversation had been a fight; for how now their last conversation would always be a fight; for the fear that she could, at that moment, as he rolled over to face her, see in his eyes, bright though the room were otherwise black?) 

do you think about how the last thing lucy heard before she faded out was him, stuttering out her name like a foxhole prayer through the darkness? 

do you think about how the next time lucy awakened, surfacing from beneath the deep waves of her heavy anesthesia, that momentarily she forgot what had happened to her? do you wonder if it were only as her nerves roused and a lacerating, sawed-down pain tore through her that she began to remember that she’d been stabbed—that she was dying? do you think that, briefly, she considered that she might already be dead—that this pain and this darkness perhaps signified the end?

do you think about how when she first opened her eyes, lucy was alone? do you think about how only after she started to stir—to try to speak (something stopped her throat); to try to move (everything hurt, as if she had been ripped in two)—did someone come over to her, not a stranger, but someone she didn’t know well—something, something—the surgical nurse—kit? do you think about how confused she must have been and about how much she must have wanted her mom then, unashamedly, like a child? 

can you imagine the horror of her conversation with elizabeth? can you imagine how the medical jargon, the thoracotomies and tracheotomies and splenectomies, which just that morning she would have found fascinating, suddenly made her sick to her stomach? do you suppose that she thought to herself this can’t be real, only she knew that it was real—and knew that, despite that litany of procedures that elizabeth had just rattled off to her, there was no stopping what was coming next, no matter how frightened she was? 

doesn’t it track that by that point in her medical training, lucy had probably seen enough lost causes to recognize herself as one? do you think, fleetingly, she remembered back to last spring, to those teenagers who’d gotten in a fiery car wreck on their way to the prom? do you suppose she thought about the burned boy, travis, who, as he had slowly and painfully succumbed to his injuries, had offered his parents an understatement on the phone in order to comfort them? do you think his words echoed in her ears: “i don’t think i’m gonna make it out to the lake this summer”? 

though she had been touched enough by his bravery back then, do you think she better understood, now that she was herself dying, how what he had done for them had also been a kind of mercy? a reprieve? a grace? 

do you think that’s why lucy asked elizabeth to plug her trach? do you think that’s why she whispered only gratitude with what little breath she had left to her? do you think she hoped that maybe in the days and weeks after she was gone that this final benediction (this gift) would allow elizabeth to sleep---would absolve any errant guilt, because of course elizabeth had done everything possible—they’d all done everything possible—and she knew as much, and she was thankful to them now in a way that just hours ago, before this nightmare had unfolded, she wouldn’t have been able to fully comprehend? 

do you think lucy understood that somehow the death they were helping her toward, the kind of death they were trying to offer, with this second’s pause to collect herself before the inevitable end, was also itself a gift (so much better than the cold floor where she would otherwise have perished)?

do you think, just as elizabeth rose to leave, that lucy may have actually felt an instant of peace before a sudden knot formed in her lungs, and breathing (even with the tube) became impossible? do you think that the differential diagnosis—pulmonary embolism—leaped into her mind before she could stop the thought? do you think she knew the statistics? do you think she knew that she was fucked before they even wheeled her to the scan? 

can you imagine what she was thinking as corday and romano allowed themselves to be overly optimistic about her chances with the filter? do you think she was aware enough to know that they were kidding themselves but experienced enough to realize that they had to kid themselves, because they needed the hope in order to do their jobs—because good doctors work on hope---because maybe, were she not about to die, she would have herself been a good doctor someday, too? 

do you think that was when the truth of everything really hit her—the reality, the senselessness, the fear—because even though she had already known that she was dying, now she was to the point where she was right up against the precipice, and though she was surrounded by many people in a crowded room, she suddenly felt more alone than she had ever felt before? 

do you suppose she thought, then, of carter, wondering if he was dying, as well, or already dead, because no one had told her what had happened to him or if he had even made it out of the exam room alive? 

do you suppose at that moment she yearned sharply for her mother and for her childhood bedroom? do you think she struggled and writhed and raged inside of herself, because, goddammit, she was just a kid, and she didn’t want to die, and she wasn’t ready—she wasn’t!—and she was going to do things and say things and be things—keep being someone—and she had plans!---but now everything that was her was going to cease, and she knew as much, and she felt scared, she felt so scared, scared of the blackness creeping up in her brain, of her synapses misfiring, as she could already feel them doing, her past and her present blurring together, until she wanted nothing more than to pull the blanket over her whole self to stay safe from the ravening beyond? 

do you think that in her swirl of memories she found herself in her grandparents’ kitchen, suddenly a toddler again, playing underneath the table, adult legs and adult voices towering above her? do you think all at once she snapped back to being twenty-five again and on a table, crying? do you think that’s why, when elizabeth explained the versed to her, she so adamantly refused—because she knew that the next time she went under, she would never surface again, and she wasn’t ready to say goodbye?

do you think that as she lied there, with romano making that tasteless (but also stubborn and human and hopeful) joke about how they’d put too much time and energy into her training to lose her, she had one final instant of consciousness and clarity? 

do you think that, in that instant, blood wet in her hair and tears salting her cheeks, she saw in her mind’s eye what might have been if she had only had more time---graduation, practicing medicine, finding her place and her purpose, falling in love, being happy, surrounding herself with family and friends and people who knew her---truly knew her? 

do you suppose she was thinking, just before the light in her eyes went out, how, in that moment, she wished she could tell them---corday and romano, kit and the other nurses, everyone in the er, carter if he were still alive---everything there was to know about her, everything that made her a person, just so someone would remember, so she would remain in some form present, if only for a little while longer?

can you hear her listing to herself the only vitals that mattered anymore: her hometown, her middle name, her first kiss, that even in her fourth year of medical school she still phoned her mother at least once a day (no matter how busy her schedule), that she had almost ranked emergency medicine over psychiatry on her match application, how grateful she was for everything, how much in this last second before the crash of the wave she missed and loved everyone and everything, all of it, just being---?

_________

he still thinks of her, of course, every valentine’s day, and whispers her name into the darkness like a foxhole prayer.

she would have been forty-five years old.

there are a lot of things she would have been.

[themagnumnopus-blog]

Every pedophile and every rapist should be brutally and painfully murdered. It's the morally correct thing to do

That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it. You can 100% think and say whatever you want but when it comes to damning people to death, actually enacting a death penalty for a crime. The real question is how many innocent people are you willing to brutally and painfully murder? It's inevitable that no matter what an innocent human being is going to suffer the penalty you propose. So are you comfortable with that outcome? Would you be comfortable if it was you or the people you love that died this way? Be they guilty or innocent.

So let's say you get your way and in your opinion, what 'should' happen comes to law. You have to tightly define what creates the circumstances by which a person is damned to death. Well, you're probably thinking to yourself 'duh that's obvious people raping people and doing bad things to children' but theirs where the first hurdle is you have to strictly outline the exact circumstances by which one has made themselves eligible for this death penalty. There are all kinds of people that get false accusations thrown at them. Look no further than right here on Tumblr to the people making lists of people that they are just accusing of being pedophiles with no proof. (See Aside 1) Personally, I just see those as probably what they are and assume that it is someone trying to indirectly attack someone they don't like. You need proof in absolute terms that the people you are damned to death are guilty, if you take conjecture as fact, accusations as true, there are no limits to its inherent potential for abuse. I'll give you a very good example. I simply say you are a pedo and now I guess you're getting "brutally and painfully murdered." beeeecause "It's the morally correct thing to do". I hope you see the problem there.

I'll try to make it simple, it is a very complex topic so I will do my best to to oversimplify it. All considered I don't think many people understand what makes someone a pedophile or a rapist. Most people think that wanting, thinking about or fantasizing about/to rape and/or molest, children specifically for pedophiles is the grounds by which one is guilty. That is not, however, the case. We do not police people’s thoughts or words but their actions or when possible preempt those actions. You can talk about whatever you want to whoever you want until it becomes a situation where you have undoutable intent to violate the law or have violated the law. Any adult can talk to any child but when you try to set up a meeting to violate the law you can now be arrested when you show up, you have created undoudtable intent by planning the meeting and showing up. Even then there is legal wiggle room by which one can attempt to obfuscate punishment, ‘you can’t predict the future, therefore, how could you know what he/she would have done once in the room’ but it's generally absolutely damning.

There are and should always be lines between fantasy and reality, thought and action. It is by that same coin that the person that sent me this is safe from legal repercussions for advocating for murder. Until they murder someone or are caught under a circumstance that would suggest that their intent was to murder someone they are free from legal repercussions. Law is reactionary and meant to give benefit of the doubt to the accused, that is why it is innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around. That is why rping, making statements, most forms of artistic expression, excluding photographs/video of child pornography and/or actual rape, is not illegal because there is no victim. Laws are to protect people from victimization. Everything from copy write law to industrial practice law to immigration laws to rape laws are made for the protection of people and legally defined entities. Think about any law you can that is not meant to protect a person or people, there aren't any that I know of. Even tax law protects people by defining the values one owes or what the government of your nation owes you. It's to protect you from your government coming in and saying I will now take 90% of your capital because I say but it also protects them from you failing to pay by imposing a penalty on you for not doing so. You will not, however, be faced with legal action for saying "I'm noooot paying taxes" until you have actually failed to pay at which point when the law catches you, you will face legal repercussions.

Words are not rape, thoughts are not rape, pretending to rape is not rape but actual rape is rape or undoubted intent to rape is technically rape as well. The same is true for every crime and should stay true for every crime. When a nation begins to police thoughts of its citizens and does not have to wait for action it opens up every avenue for an abuse of that power. Never try to impose on others things you would not wish visited on you.

It's the same reason I am so opposed in every measure to any change to the presumption of innocence. It opens up the system for abuse in absolute terms. The best example I can give the US, California, 'Yes means yes' laws. Under 'Yes means yes' if you are falsely accused of rape which I'm sorry to say is more likely then actually being raped, in the US at least, be you male or female you must now prove that your partner said 'Yes' and consented to have sex with you. There are two scenarios you can exonerate yourself by proving that at the time of the alleged rape you where not there and therefore could not commit the crime if it is an entirely unfounded accusation or you had what you and your partner considered consensual sex at the time but now have to prove it was consensual. I've talked to a couple legal professionals and in the second scenario, your only defense is to counter-accuse your accuser of rape. If you can't prove that the sex you had was consensually then they probably can't either and if they can they have exonerated you by admitting they wanted to have sex with you and the case is thrown out either way. Any legal system that requires that you have to make counter false accusations to prove your innocence is flawed in absolute terms.

Aside 1. Just as a public service announcement. If you think someone's a pedophile send your proof to the appropriate authorities, do not make a Tumblr post about them, especially without proof. You are insiting harassment and defaming them, defamation of character which is actually a victimization of them by you and there are legal ramifications to such actions. You are knowingly spreading misinformation if you cannot prove the allegations your leveling and even then sending a hate mob is not how you deal with them. Report them to Tumblr staff who are really good at dictating what is allowed on their platform. If they have been reported to the staff and the staff has reviewed your case against them, if they are still on here then I'm sorry but you where wrong, be a grown up and stop sending people to harass them. You were mistaken because Tumblr staff takes this far, far more seriously than anyone else. On top of them like most humans really, really not liking pedophiles it can cost them their jobs, their site, their lively hoods. They have more invested then you ever could in stopping those kind people on here. If your sending hate to people on the word of someone else demand proof of them right now and then hand over a copy to staff and if they can't prove it, stop, ask them to stop because you are wrong in every definable sense of the word.

Storytime.Now, since we're on the subject and it fits really well here. This is very important and a major reason why I as an individual do not believe in advicating for what you see in the ask above. I knew someone who spent 27 years in a US prison. That is a long, long time. They had gone to jail on a first-degree manslaughter charge, they had a rough childhood and teen years. With a lot of run-ins with the law, got in with some bad crowds in their time and at seventeen (17) they crashed their truck which killed his best friend. The truck rolled down a hillside and his friend was decapitated. Wasn't wearing a seat belt, window down, his shoulder caught the window frame and the head was removed when that side of the truck impacted the ground during one of the flips. The driver was driving drunk, third strike and that along with drugs found in the truck made a 50-year sentence. The judge was not feeling lenient. Served 27 and was out on good behavior.

That is all preamble to this. So roughly 20 years into his sentence his block of the prison gets a new arrival, prison guard gets the info, the guy who's budy-budy with him gets that info and it gets spread around. New arrival, 25 years, pedophilia. Child rapist. The first one the cell block had, had since my acquaintance had gotten in. They tortured him in every sense of the word beatings, they tied him to his bed in the night and pissed on him, my friend didn't state it but the guy was probably raped and sexually assaulted himself. Everybody in the prison block had a younger sibling, a kid of their own, or they had nieces and nephews. This man, child raping scum bag that he was, still calming he was innocent through it all. Everybody says that the only person in the prison that didn't, funnily enough, is the person I know. They owned their mistake. But the child raper didn’t and had been given an inhumane death sentence to be carried out at some point in the next 25 years, probably much, much sooner. About the time when the people in the block get bored of the game, they will kill him. Six months into it, no one was board yet. The guards didn't generally intervene either. They have children they loved, family, their own kids, etc. Midway through the month, the guy’s gone. Every body's wondering what happened to him, word gets spread around like it does. He was innocent. Wife accused him to get custody of the kids and the lawyer proved it.

The person I know had to kill people in self-defense. They had to do all kinds of fucked up shit to stay alive in the US prison system. They told me they never regretted any of it, ever. It was a requirement to live. The only thing they ever regretted was that. Everyone in the block down to the hardest of the hard regretted that he said. Doing that to an innocent man that didn't deserve it. A decade after the fact, they had been out three years when they and I were talking and that, the exact thing you suggest is what they regret. That is why I disagree with you in the strongest terms. While they may deserve it it’s a penalty that would be too easy to abuse. I hope you understand.

[phyllis207gaming-blog]

How to give someone credits on imvu test right now

Social Entertainment Network IMVU Launches Mac Client

IMVU lets you to undoubtedly network with production companion, member of staff along with purchasers whom typical IMVU chat places. Getting the VIP in this game present plenty of superior benefits. You can get a each day bonus by utilizing such procedures, and it is way handier than any other method. Attempt to come up with the superior number of credit or commit genuine funds to invest in the membership. Becoming VIP in this game is an excellent choice but why to invest income when IMVU credits hack can deliver most of the positive aspects? Hope, it will help you know the benefit of hack and use it.

IMVU is divided between users aged 13-17 and then the 18+ Adults. The younger audience can't access the 3D chat rooms of the 18+ audience unless they are invited by a different user at present in the space (For example, my 18+ account could invite my 14 year old sister to an adult area. But only since I knew the Exact name of her avatar). Forums and other elements of IMVU are strictly aged blocked.

IMVU is an on the internet social website founded in 2004 in California. IMVU users can make a 3D avatar as their on-line image to their pals. You can customize your own homepages, establish your meeting rooms, and private rooms, developing and attending in communities as nicely. IMVU includes its own currency technique known as IMVU Credits and promo credits. There're a lot of users produced third-celebration internet sites providing more forums and resources to the IMVU.

The bottom line: IMVU may be advertised as just a different enjoyable spot for teens to interact and have enjoyable, but it really is loaded with sexual innuendo that may be inappropriate for many youngsters who are technically old enough to get an account. Always be intimately familiar with your child's on the internet gaming and social networking habits. If you are not comfortable, speak about it. Some kids may well not be mature enough for the variety of content web-sites like IMVU are offering.

Hey high priced customer, welcome to our imvu generator of credit, this generator will afford you a hundred.000 Credits perweek, We also inform you that earlier than you produce your credit, you will have to have to 1st respect these following rules below. I basically tried this link - in the present day and it worked extremely successfully with my account. I obtained free of charge all sources of Online Sources Generator Hack On-line. ONLY A WARNING GUYS, THE HYPERLINKS Given ABOVE Aren't Working!! (i've tested them) Anyway, I already discovered the operating cheat device for this recreation. When I performed this sport, I felt quite a couple of points accumulating it. However, IMVU Credit hack helped me obtain limitless credit inside the game and now I can progress faster with ease. It is uncomplicated and in all probability the greatest alternative to depend on.

In addition, IMVU can in addition gather nonpii like the aggregate information described beneath in the "Aggregate Details" section and such other nonpii as information concerning machines conducting our computer software, in order to further comprehend and boost the user encounter, ads, security, authorities, and network ethics (avoidance of hacks, unauthorized use, and so on).

5 Certain Ways IMVU CREDITS Can Get The Question Into The Ground

IMVU has drastically develop into far more well known more than time. While continues to be not truly a fantastic game, it represents a international larger than life. Because its release in 2004 it has attracted additional and extra players that are hunting for a spot to be appreciated and also to be capable to totally express themselves. It is hugely crucial to be capable to share your tips and visions with other folks. From time to time, this is not doable in true life. Having said that, in IMVU is doable if you are a talented person you can further expand that in the excellent planet of IMVU.

When you have credits you can usually purchase awesome outfits. We advocate getting some hot dresses, exactly where you will need to have to pay ten-20k per dress. It can be completed by various procedures. You have lots of dresses to decide on from. If you do not have that quite a few credits you can normally use IMVU credits hack no human verification and get rid of these is a totally free approach and you can use it suitable now.

Effect ON DERIVATION Expenses: at present the transform only impacts earning from Credit Earnings and does not have any influence on mark-up values or derivation charges when submitting, both of which nonetheless require credits. The IMVU credits hack is entirely Restricted Edition, and there are numerous reasons behind it. It does not require you to download a single app to use the tool. There is just a want for getting a web browser due to the fact it is a web-based tool.

Our group have developed this tool specially on the demand of our followers. Open imvu credit generator tool. And I guess this is going to be the end of this post. You can now check your imvu account you will credited the quantity which you have chosen. We are positive, this will be extremely much easier for our customers. This is the only working imvu hack tool obtainable in the world-wide-web.

Nicely, right now we are having a dilemma with these accounts. instead of new or how to get credits on imvu old accounts why don't you try the imvu credits tool which assists you to get imvu credits without having paying. What is the option? Get IMVU credits from other players! Preserve in mind that you'll only be capable to get average credits (not promo credits) by getting them from players. Promo credits are untradeable, so you have to earn them, fair and square.

One particular way is the 30-day every day login rewards for new players. Just after, they have to come across other ways to achieve credits. The login rewards present promo credits, including a bonus item, each fifth day of consecutive logins. If a day is missed, there's no way to get the rewards for that day. Other procedures of earning IMVU credits consist of obtaining a prepaid card and redeeming it in the game. Also, players can accomplish credits by completing presents, watching videos, reviewing player-designed products, or inviting a buddy. However, some provides may well grant thousands of credits, but it requires a while to get, and watching videos is time-consuming.

Credits are the only currency in the game, and are how you obtain new things for your IMVU avatar. Besides this, you pay a 1-time charge in order to spend off your avatar's name (otherwise you will be recognized as Guest__ for your entire time on IMVU, which is unquestionably not optimal). You also have to use credits to adjust your name, or to confirm your age when you're 18_. Also, IMVU has passes that can be purchased, but they are not free of charge. IMVU demands you be at least 13 years of age to play, but the AP pass especially demands that you be 18 and older as well. There are groups, forums, and chat rooms that ONLY Access Pass holders have access to, in addition to AP only products.

IMVU is an innovative chat plan where customers make 3D avatars, play games and meet other players. Component of the game incorporates purchasing products for your avatar, and in order to get these products you will need IMVU credits. These credits act as virtual currency within the game, and there are quite a few techniques to go about earning them. You can either invest in these credits on the net working with a credit card or you can earn them for free in a number of ways.

That's not appropriate. That makes the complete point of getting totally free IMVU credits completely useless. There's totally no catch with us, we offer you a one hundred% functioning and legit IMVU credit hack tool that can be utilized for any account. The IMVU game card was straightforward to order on the web. It came by means of e-mail delivery in record time, and was pretty uncomplicated to apply to the IMVU Redemption Location of the Pre-paid Credits. I Loved it. No IMVU glitches, or operators.

[benrussack-blog]

Kidnapped by Cupid, How Romantic Love Takes Over Our Lives

The last thing you actually heard was a scratchy, excited message in your voicemail about a great first date, followed a few days later by a text in all caps and smothered in exclamation points.  After a week, there were only rumors of a third and forth date. And then, silence.

You called. You texted. You accessed social networks. But to no avail.

Your friend has fallen victim to romantic love, swept up by that proverbial white horse into an even more proverbial sunset. You want answers, no doubt, and demand to know why your friend will not be returned. You would also like to know what it is, exactly, about romantic love that would possesses anyone to abandon their closest companions and focus so blindly, so hopelessly and so completely onto one person.

Well, let’s get into it.

The first thing you need to know is that your friend has constructed the perfect psychological mate. Wrought over a lifetime this flawless manikin shimmers with an ethereal, otherworldly translucence. If your friend is male, this visage is likely female, a woman who fits all of his specifications—weight, shape, height, hair and eye color. Better yet, she knows exactly when to leave the room, bring him a beer or allow him time to cry on her shoulder.  She may even follow the NHL and participate, under no duress, in fantasy football. If your friend is female, her Adonis may resemble the Hollywood flavor of the month, but more importantly he listens, is receptive to her feelings, freely and easily expresses his own and remains continuously, fully and breathtakingly emotionally available.

So how does this apply to your friend’s situation? In a word: projection. Like looking through a lens, the glass manikin stands between us and our enamored, distorting their image. To complicate matters, there are aspects of our effigy of which we may not be aware—nearly invisible fabric festooned from its stiff, outstretched arms and tilted neck. This man may want a woman who moves and speaks like his mother. Here is a woman who unconsciously scores her potential mate by comparing his hands to her father’s.  I do not mean to suggest the presence of a Freudian love affair, rather that since childhood each of us unconsciously compile criteria for what we believe is beautiful, masculine or feminine based on the models which are closest at hand. Conversely, say a woman had a terrible relationship with her father—perhaps she avoids men who even remotely resemble him. Even glasses and a mis-placed mole could be a deal breaker. And just to bewilder and truly upset you, she may actually find abusive men attractive. In fact, both men and women may unconsciously replicate an abusive past in order to re-experience and resolve childhood trauma. This can manifest in a number of ways. For example, a child abused by both parents may, as an adult, feel unsafe or simply unable to carryout intimate relationships. This person may seek out partners who are perhaps married, geographically distant, emotionally unavailable, or “just someone to sleep with”.

On a brighter note, sometimes we project onto our new partner qualities we love most about ourselves. Is this love of your life (the one you met five minutes ago) gorgeous, wise and brilliant? Loving, reliable and receptive? Has anyone ever said anything like that about you? Just as we may find ourselves inexplicably incensed with those who harbor and exhibit our own negative traits, so too do we occasionally become enamored when the opposite occurs. Just as we have a difficult time owning our negative traits, we may have just a hard a time owning the positive.

In summary, our ideal mate is an amalgam of human made of memories, ideals, traumas, hopes and dreams–all manufactured from the material deep within our own individual psyches. Which begs the question: When we are in love, who are we really in love with? When you look into your lover’s eyes, whose eyes are you really looking into? Picture your friend on a date. She is in a café, sitting across from her newly beloved. Two people transfixed, each with a mirror, gazing into their own reflection.

Finally, one day, usually around three months later, your phone rings.

She is contrite, possibly tearful. “We’re taking a break. I’m sorry I’ve been such a terrible friend. I don’t know what I was thinking.” You don’t need to ask what happened. Maybe they had their first fight, or moved into that comfortable, familiar stage of the relationship. Whatever the case, the projection has begun to crack and splinter. Have you been here before? You awake one day to a human being laying beside you wrapped in 90% of the covers, a human you must listen to and compromise with (how to share a blanket for instance), who may also be experiencing their own sense of loss and deep disappoint as you fail to live up to an impossible standard. For a projection’s ephemeral nature is the source of its great paradox—for once you have found the one, you have found no one.

In his book “We, Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love” Robert Johnson, the great Jungian philosopher and psychotherapist, likened the sparkling quality of romance to a religious experience. In addition, he discusses how many religions converge on the point that the deepest experience of God, the universe, the great mystery, or whatever label you wish to lay upon it, exists ultimately within ourselves. Johnson feels that romantic love operates as a modern gateway to this deeper experience, or a road sign indicating the direction towards our true Self. He maintains that part of the reason we become so swept up in projection is that we are missing this aspect in our lives and are left craving an intense experience of the numinous and of the Self.

So is the secret…church? Hell no. What Johnson is advocating for is a deeper, more fearless excavation of who we are as humans. So long as we are unable to access the greatness and mystery that is ourselves, we will continue to project all this material onto our partner. Just think of what romantic love requires your significant other to hold—a life time of your own material, your hopes, dreams, unmet expectations as well as unearthed and unresolved traumas.  If we do not learn to lighten the load we place upon our significant other we will be continually disappointed with our intimate relationships.

So what do we do once the projection has lifted and our experience of the numinous has evaporated?  Relationships have the potential to move into a deeper form of love—real caring, quiet. Johnson states

Love is the power within us that affirms and values another human being as he or she is….Therefore, when I say that “I love,” it is not I who love, but, in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being— a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independent of my intentions or my efforts.  (We, Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love 2013)

I will not attempt to improve on that statement. Though I will add that there is no need to reignite the “spark” in the relationship, when what we truly want are embers, buried deep within the ash and charcoal. Why not a red hot, steady heat? For what better thing is there in life but the simple joy of waking up next to someone you love and who loves you back?

Nine months later, you listen patiently as your friend complains and hems and haws, those three months of deafening silence replaced now by appeals for advice, hand-holding and “just someone to talk to” over a beer, coffee, lunch, or anything else that will take up an afternoon away from their a-little-less-than-before-significant-other. You hang up the phone. You scheduled a coffee date, but you know that your friend doesn’t need your help now any more than she did in the beginning. She needs to dedicate the time, do the work and face some serious self-excavation.

Still, projection has served a purpose for your friend. Have you ever “gone too fast” and ruined something that seemed to have great potential? It is as though the projection needs time to build up—like a kind of ethereal charge. And as the two of you dance your dance, leave secret notes, take just enough time to return each other’s phone calls and allow the mystery to propagate, the more your own desires, dreams and imaginings can wash over your new partner and thicken the excitement. Projection is the psychic glue that keeps two people together long enough to decide whether or not there is something real to salvage once the winds of reality have set in and the fairy dust has cleared. So if I had to bring religion or spirituality into this, I would say that during the first glowing phase of a relationship, it is God or the great mystery that takes care of us. After that, we are on our own.

Source:

https://benjaminrussack.com/kidnapped-by-cupid-how-romantic-love-takes-over-our-lives/

[discoursedumpster]

tw: child sexual abuse, rape, emotional abuse, suicide-baiting, transmisogyny 

I never do call-outs ‘cause they take forever, but this has to stop. 

@sleepdontvisit claims they’re on a campaign to root out “inclusionist pedophiles and pedophile apologists.” 

Instead, they almost exclusively target bi trans sexual abuse survivors, frequently flat-out lying about what those survivors have said. 

(In their whole call-out list, there’s only two people who aren’t trans. And the cis people only get called out for supporting “pedophile apologists,” they aren’t calling the cis people pedophiles.)

They consistently link to receipts that don’t support their statements, knowing that people won’t click through and read all that. 

Many of their call-outs have hundreds of notes, and have goaded exclusionists and even some inclusionists into sending anon hate, suicide-baiting, and death threats to inclusionists who are bi trans sexual abuse survivors. 

It’s not a coincidence that bi and trans people (especially trans women) are the ones that are most frequently stereotyped as sexual predators, in both the gay and straight communities. 

(DID U KNOW: Part of the reason that the acronym wasn’t “LGB” till the early 90s was that radical lesbians said bi men shouldn’t be allowed at Pride because they were rapists.) 

It might be relevant that sleepdontvisit seems to be very biphobic, saying things like, “Why are literally all of the big bisexual bloggers literally the most cringeworthy people I have ever encountered?”

there are two lesbians on their list, out of all the bi people. 

they’re both trans women. 

And now they’ve begun going around harassing trans inclusionist survivors who haven’t heard of their campaign, by implying that they’re “pedophile apologists” too if they haven’t called out these people yet. Or if they say that it’s not okay to call CSA survivors “pedophile apologists.” 

They guilt-trip and threaten anyone who won’t help them in their smear campaign, even discoursers who are calling out individual people already. They are goading exclusionists to harass these people. One of their victims has already deleted, that I know of. 

When one survivor called them out for things like posting content about pedophilia in the ace positivity tag, their response was to go through that person’s blog and list everyone they’d reblogged from who themselves had ever reblogged from one of the people on the list. Which may have been well-intended but comes off as intensely harassing. 

And then they falsely claimed that "ace/aro minors… are being told by adults that it’s ‘normal’ for children to be sexual, so it’s important for them to identify as asexual.”

(That person even said “If you’d like, I can give you a list of exclusionists that none of you are no-platforming (and one of which went hand-in-hand with discourseprincesa and doing just as much harm but is still being defended)” and instead of taking the information, they ignored it, and instead tagged another post to boast that inclusionists ignore callouts but exclusionists call out all their TERFs. I know for sure that one isn’t true, @allosexisterfs​ is mine and it contains a list of about 250 exclusionist TERFs, that sleepdontvisit hasn’t said a word about that I know of. BUT ANYWAY) 

If you care about survivors, please spread the word to no-platform sleepdontvisit, and to stop spreading their lies. 

This is loooooooooong because they have been targeting so many people. 

I will try to make it easy to read. 

I’m going to list each person separately, link to the receipt(s), and show why the person isn’t a “pedophile apologist”. In no particular order: 

memestealingasexual:

They are targeting biromantic, bi/demisexual, agender memestealingasexual/@thegenderlessbisexual​/@justqueerthoughts​/ @thekidsalreadyknow​ for supposedly associating with pedophile apologists. 

(This is one of only a couple people on the list where I don’t know if they’re a survivor. It’s none of anyone’s business obviously, it’s just that everyone else involved blogs very openly about being a survivor. And that’s important because they’re trying to sell the entire thing as being pro-survivor, when it actually involves attacking survivors.)

Their only receipt for this is that memestealingasexual talked to someone on Twitter who had also, in a separate conversation, told sleepdontvisit that some survivors look at loli stuff because they identify with it, instead of looking at it in a sexual way. 

Then they call this “a nice web of every big inclusive blog supporting and promoting pedophiles who consume child porn lmao!” 

robotbisexual (formerly theangrybi):

They are targeting bi trans and intersex CSA survivor @robotbisexual as a pedophile apologist. Their only receipt for it: an old call-out post where robotbisexual/theangrybi said “@leavesurvivorsalone is so fucking violent that without a single fucking example other than the fact that I think they’re violent, they come to me (a CSA survivor) and scream that I’m a pedophilia advocate… Also as a warning: they are apparently mobbing and viciously abusing and wishing harm on anyone who reblogs this post. Especially if you’re a CSA survivor. Please be careful.“ 

If you’re re-reading that, trying to figure out how robotbisexual became a “pedophile apologist” for saying that this person had "started a campaign to call everyone who disagrees with you (including multiple CSA survivors) ‘pedophilia supporters’”?/???????????????… don’t worry, so am I. 

wetwareproblem:

They are targeting bi trans woman CSA survivor @wetwareproblem because she responded to the claim of “pedophile apologist” by musing, “Hey, remember that time you faced off against half a dozen guys larger than you, while they were surrounding you and threatening to beat the shit out of you, because you were protesting in an attempt to have child rapists and pornographers charged and convicted? Good times.” 

They called this a “frankly irrelevant sob story” and said, “We get it, you’re the greatest martyr to ever martyr because you posted an unverifiable story on the internet where you’re completely anonymous.” 

Then they called her a pedophile apologist just for (allegedly) saying that pedophilia, which is in the DSM, was a mental illness. And followed it up with a list of demands, implying that if she doesn’t meet their demands to help them in their campaign, they will continue to target her for harassment too. 

rainfelt: 

She’s cis, but she’s still a bi non-CSA abuse survivor. They explicitly target @rainfelt​ solely because she defended one other person on this list. Their only receipt on her is her saying, “[People who believe sleepdontvisit] are losing a fantastic resource, and they’re losing it because they made the mistake of trusting [sleepdontvisit]. Which, one can’t help feeling, was exactly the plan.” 

socialjusticeichigo:

A multiromantic, ace, genderfluid blogger. The only receipt on them: they reblogged a post rebutting one of sleepdontvisit’s callouts. 

The rebuttal said things like “As a sexual abuse survivor who has worked in the mental health field, I have a really big problem with people pointing at sexual abuse survivors who explicitly state (as in the luchagcaileag link above!) that they have zero attraction to children and feel physically nauseous at the idea of exposing children to anything sexual, and that they have kinks that are obvious responses to their sexual abuse that they are using to try to heal from their sexual abuse, and saying ‘THIS PERSON WANTS TO RAPE KIDS AND ANYONE DEFENDING THEM IS JUST AS BAD.’”

They even pointed out that “everyone you are calling a pedophile apologist, or a pedophile, is a fucking sexual abuse survivor who is fighting pedophilia and child sexual abuse.”

This is not an example of @socialjusticeichigo being a “pedophile apologist.” 

But it does have an example of sleepdontvisit lying about what people are saying, in the rebuttal. (the lie: ”they’re literally saying ‘enjoy[ing] art of adults fucking children is just content people ASSOCIATE with pedophiles, they’re not actually pedophiles!! :)’”)

evilguacamole: 

Same exact thing actually, for @evilguacamole, except this blogger appears to be a cis bi guy. The sole receipt: that he reblogged that same rebuttal. 

This is starting to look like a personal vendetta. 

periegesisvoid/golbatgender:

Bi/trans/aro survivor and one of the people being targeted the most often by exclusionists.

This one is especially messed up. The first receipt is @periegesisvoid​ noting that they’re being harassed by @bipeoplearentyourpawns​, who then reblogs it to make fun of them. (And to implicitly acknowledge the other thing in the post, which is that bipeoplearentyourpawns suicide-baited @luchagcaileag​.)  

But of course that’s not what the receipt is for; I haven’t seen any exclusionists call out bipeoplearentyourpawns for consistent harassment and suicide-baiting. No, it’s somehow trying to claim that the problem here is… that this somehow implies that periegesisvoid is a pedophile apologist?? 

The second receipt is periegesisvoid suggesting to luchagcaileag that she should turn off anon, because of that same suicide-baiting. 

(The suicide-baiting isn’t just bipeoplearentyourpawns. It also comes from sleepdontvisit’s call-out efforts.) 

The third receipt is from periegesisvoid’s discourse sideblog, @golbatgender​. It’s a reblog of a list of variations on radfem rhetoric, such as SWERFs vs TWERFs, and the different positions each group holds. 

It points out that radfems like to say that all sex work is rape, that porn is rape, that prostitutes should be shot, that all kink is rape and abuse and pedophilia, that doms should be shot, and that all “Bad Ships” (ships that portray abuse) are rape and abuse and incest and pedophilia, and that “Bad Shippers” should kill themselves. 

This is still not pedophilia apologism. Saying that people make huge negative generalizations about sex work, porn, and “Bad Ships” is not saying that pedophilia, or even sexual abuse, are okay. 

vergess/intersex-ionality:

Another of their trans bi and intersex sexual abuse survivor targets, @vergess/@intersex-ionality, has already left tumblr after months of continuous targeted emotional abuse, from exclusionists trying to claim they were a “pedophile apologist.” Including suicide-baiting and death threats. 

sleepdontvisit clearly hasn’t noticed they’re gone, and continues to direct harassment their way. The receipts they link to explicitly call vergess a “pedophile apologist” for saying that it’s important to include not just pedophilia (technically just attraction to children), but ephebophilia (attraction to teens) in the definition of a "minor attracted person”. 

And for saying things like “if you can’t stop looking at [fictional and/or consensual sexual content], you are trapped in a cycle of self harm, and need to get outside help from parents, partners or doctors.”

They also specifically target them for statements like “Not all kink is sexual. Claiming that is a form of hypersexualization. Stop doing it.” How that is “pedophile apologism” is beyond me.

The same receipts also try to call them a “pedophile apologist” for saying that it’s possible to be a non-offending pedophile and to deserve to live, and for talking about how their abusers were not pedophiles, but were abusers who were looking for easy prey in the form of children. 

I understand why a lot of people don’t think anyone with pedophilic disorder deserves to live. 

What is unacceptable is that people who don’t believe non-offending pedophiles deserve to live are instead attacking survivors who say they do, and trying to get those survivors to kill themselves. 

If you do this, you can’t claim you are supporting survivors. Telling people to kill themselves, and even just sending anon hate, is emotional abuse. It is not okay to abuse survivors and pretend you’re defending them. 

courteousmingler:

According to their receipts, trans lesbian survivor @courteousmingler is a pedophile apologist for saying “as a victim of CSA myself, it makes me deeply uncomfortable that you see a cartoon depiction of a young girl and choose to immediately interpret it sexually. those images are of young girls singing, dancing, and having fun with one another in large poofy dresses- you projecting sexual themes onto those images is your decision, and it’s a disgusting one.” 

They also try to get her for, in their words, just “interacting” with someone who they happen to know has a shota/loli porn sideblog. The interaction is that person complimenting @courteousmingler on a long post, and her saying thank you. 

I guess if she didn’t want to be called a “pedophile apologist,” when someone complimented her she should have stopped and done some serious digging to see if she should even acknowledge them. Trans survivors, take note! 

(Interestingly, they also attack her for allegedly “target[ing] survivors to discredit them”. Which seems like total projection because that’s exactly what their entire campaign is.)

feminismandmedia:

Almost all of their mods are out sexual abuse survivors and about half of them are trans. sleepdontvisit is targeting all of them as a group, but especially singling out Bethany, (@bigballofwibblywobbly), one of the other two cis bi survivor on this list. Because when they told her she was still reblogging from “a lot of blogs associated with pedophiles,” and gave her receipts, she didn’t stop. As you can see from this post their receipts don’t demonstrate that people are associated with pedophiles???????

justonepurpose:

Their only receipt for this aspec trans blogger is that an anon said @justonepurpose “told Mod Des to just ignore being called a pedo apologist bc ‘im called that for being an inclusionist’”. No link to that, and no evidence for them actually being a pedophile apologist.

rey-is-ace-rey-is-aro: 

A, I think, quoiromantic or biromantic trans ace survivor. The only thing related to pedophilia in their receipt is that they reblogged something where @antiantis-saltmine said that “Drawing or writing anything involving minors and relatives, no matter how sexual, is completely legal as long as the characters are fictional.“ 

That sounds really bad, right? Unless you keep reading and see that they’re specifically talking about people attacking minors/survivors. And that that’s the entire point of @antiantis-saltmine: that CSA survivors get harassed and called pedophiles for reading about their own experiences. 

And, if you look at what else @rey-is-ace-rey-is-aro​ has to say about it, you might see their post about "antis” sending “actual live child-porn of real people to artists/CSA Survivors.” 

That’s what they’re responding to.  

luchagcaileag:

This is the one person that they manage to call out as actually reblogging child porn.

Their call-outs of @luchagcaileag​ are still problematic: they assume that several tags that don’t have child porn in them do, without checking. They list the statistics for sexual assault in the LGBT community and blame trans abuse survivors for those sexual assault rates, and then call them “freaks”.

But the main problem is that even if you don’t understand that a trans lesbian CSA survivor can reblog child porn to vent and have “No interest to speak of in actual children, though, which is something I’m glad for”… even if you think that she’s just a pedophile in denial…

the result of sleepdontvisit’s callouts is NOT that people are reporting or blocking this person, it’s that they’re sending messages like “trans girl who likes lolicon = naw your just a greasy man pretended to be a woman so people will excuse your pedophilia,” “I hope someone rapes you to death,” and “🔪Slit ya wrists ho🔪”.

This is the kind of thing the survivors on this list are getting from people buying into sleepdontvisit’s campaign. En masse.

tirediscourse:

@tirediscourse is a cis bi grey-ace non-csa abuse survivor. The only receipt for her shows that she’s on the “pedophile apologist” list because… she believes it’s possible for non-offending pedophiles to exist, and she doesn’t want to follow someone who doesn’t believe that and who says that it’s not okay for survivors to read fic about their experiences.

antiantis-saltmine:

This entire blog is run by 5 sexual abuse survivors, three of whom are out as both trans and bi/pan I believe. The receipt on them has them supporting a sexual abuse survivor, who doesn’t experience sexual attraction to anyone, who reads stories about rape and child sexual abuse because it resonates with their experiences, and is upset that they get pressured to repeatedly come out as a survivor if they don’t want to be harassed about it. 

It also seems as usual to be targeting them for saying that non-offending pedophiles can exist, and that pedophilia is a mental illness. And for saying that if a character is a pedophile in canon it’s okay to say that character is a pedophile, which is hardly a ringing endorsement. 

Again, do not attack sexual abuse survivors who think pedophilia is a mental illness. Attacking survivors for thinking pedophilia is a mental illness only hurts SURVIVORS. 

tenitchyfingers: 

A possibly-cis aroace trauma survivor. The receipt says they “think pedo jokes are funny.” It links to a single “pedobear joke” post, where in the notes @tenitchyfingers says, “Pedobear was not a joke at the expense of CSA victims, it was at the expense of pedophiles and the concept of pedophilia itself.” 

Then it says they support “shipping minors with adults,” but the only receipt it gives for that is a reblog of a survivor shipping a character who’s minor in canon solely as an adult. 

vaspider:

Another bi trans abuse survivor. This one was mentioned in a separate post, and didn’t make it to the new call-out list. Maybe because their only receipt was that @vaspider​ liked a post where @autismserenity​ said “It’s okay to unfollow me”.

This is purely an attempt to create an atmosphere of fear among inclusionists, and especially among survivors: “watch out whose posts you like, or you’ll end up on my list getting suicide-baited!”

repstar3:

A self-identified pedophile who is not involved in ace discourse and has been consistently attacked by both sides.

autismserenity:

The reason that repstar3 is on the list. This bi trans abuse survivor first made the list of “pedophile apologists” for pointing out the months-long trend of exclusionists calling trans CSA survivor inclusionists “pedophile apologists,” which sleepdontvisit has now intentionally brought to a boiling point.

Next it was for explaining the difference between how an abuse survivor engages with child porn, and how a pedophile does.

Then they really screwed up: repstar3 told them that child porn had been how he’d kept himself from abusing anyone in person before he got into treatment, and they believed him. It emerged that of course, he was sending nudes to minors who asked for them, as young as 14. On the other hand, autismserenity wrote several thorough posts about why this was not okay, deleted repstar3′s posts, and apologized to a survivor who felt they were being spoken over.

Most recently, it was for reblogging a post that debunked a callout post for @roachpatrol (who as far as I know isn’t involved in the discourse). I’m not sure how this is supposed to be pedophilia apologism, since the callout was debunked.

in conclusion: 

sleepdontvisit’s call-out campaign is incredibly harmful to CSA survivors, and is blatantly targeting the bi and trans communities, people who are already smeared as predators. 

It’s blatantly trying to play on people’s underlying belief that these groups are predatory. It’s deliberately encouraging people to harass and abuse survivors, in the hopes of silencing bi and trans discoursers and discrediting inclusionists. And it’s full of lies. 

[sound--life]

I have had this written out for a couple weeks now, but in honor of all of Time’s Persons of the Year, today seems like a good day to post it. Below the cut is the story of my interactions with a certain anime English voice actor, and why he and I really DO NOT get along. 

I’m lucky. Unlike most women I know, I have never been sexually assaulted. I can’t recall a specific time when I was catcalled or harassed. I’ve been called nasty names online, which is sadly all too common, but none of it was sexually charged. My own experience isn’t even violent, but it contains elements of manipulation that I, thankfully, was never caught by.

The first weekend in June of 2011, my best friend Sam and I drove to Sandusky, Ohio for Colossalcon. Colossal is an anime convention, and us being huge nerds and having become friends because of anime, and we jumped at the offer to room with some of her casual friends at a hotel down the road. I was particularly excited because a popular English voice actor, let’s call him Dan, was going to be there. He and I had first met at Anime Central in Chicago in 2010, and funnily enough, we were on the same flight to Japan just a week after ACen. I had noticed him as our flight was boarding, and while I was too anxious to say hi, I had been enough of a creep to sneak a picture and text all my friends. By the next day, he’d gotten wind of it via Facebook, and he told me to say hi the next time something funny like that happened.

Flash forward to Colossal 2011. After waiting in the autograph line for Dan for a bit, I finally got up to him. He flashed his usual smile and said hello. After I handed over my item to be signed, I said, “Hey, do you remember about a year ago when some random girl saw you at the airport in San Francisco? And you shared a flight but she didn’t say hi? And she took a picture of you? Yeah, that was me.”

His eyes lit up. “Yeah, I remember. That was you?” He laughed. “Well, hi there.” Then his smile changed a little. “Do you play soccer?”

“Uh, no?” I said, confused. “I mean, I played volleyball in high school, but not anymore. I ran the Illinois Marathon back in April, though?”

“Oh, so you’re a runner then.” He laughed again. “Well you have great legs, my runner.”

I blinked, a little taken aback. “Oh, thanks, haha.” I said, laughing a little. I asked for a picture, and while my friend juggled with the camera and Dan had his arm around my shoulders, I felt almost nervous. Picture taken, I thanked him, and he said, “See you later, runner.”

At this point, Dan had been working to start a fanclub for his work. I’m not entirely sure of how it happened, but somehow Sam and I had ended up roped into it, being one of the 5-6 people who were working to “recruit” people and spread the word about the group. I was a busy college student at the time, though, so while I was interested enough, my actual participation was somewhat lacking. It’s the thought that counts, I guess.

Dan had a panel later that evening, and Sam and I went. After it was done, a small crowd of fans gathered near him to ask for photos and autographs. Sam and I waited near the edge, patient, as we wanted to get a picture with both of us with him. When we walked up to him, he smiled and said, “Hey, there’s my runner!” As we took the picture, Sam said, “You know, Alison and I here are two of the people working with ——- on your fanclub stuff.”

Dan’s interest was piqued. “Really? Hey, hang back a bit when this is done. I wanna chat with you guys.”

At this point, every anime fan alive would be having their “SENPAI NOTICED ME” moment, and we were no different. Giddy, we waited at the edge of the room for him to wrap up, and then he came over to us. He asked if we wanted to go sit in the lobby, and we said sure. He ended up sitting in one chair, and Sam in another. I sat close to them on the floor.

At first we just chatted about his fangroup. He seemed very excited about it, and he told us some of the things he wanted to do with it. We added our own thoughts, and it was great. Then he asked about how we’d   enjoyed the convention so far.

“It’s great!” I said. “It’s even better because it’s actually my birthday on Monday, so it’s kind of like a birthday weekend adventure.”

“Your birthday? How old?” Dan asked. I told him I was going to be 20. He smiled and said, “Wait here, I’ll be right back.” In a couple minutes, he was back with a small glass from the bar. Pink, fruity-looking, with a little ice. “For the birthday girl,” he said, smiling as he handed it to me.“

"What’s in it?” I asked. I knew it was alcohol, obviously, but I was feeling wary about this. Sam didn’t have a drink, and I knew she was carefully watching this whole thing, but it wasn’t lost on me that a man 8 years older than me had just given me alcohol that I had not seen prepared. I may have been a fangirl, but I wasn’t stupid. This was odd.

Dan just waved his hand and smiled, “Oh, ya know. It’s good, I bet. Nothing crazy.” I was not one to turn down free alcohol, and my defenses were already on alert, so I sipped the drink slowly as we continued to chat. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but I do know that Dan mentioned that when he was in college; he had a girlfriend who lived a few hours away, but he would drive there every weekend so they could “read books” together, as he put it, complete with a wink.

After about an hour, we mentioned we had to be getting going, as I had to drive us and part of our group back to our hotel. “Oh, you’re not staying here?” Dan asked, confused.

“No, by the time any of us planned to go, all of the rooms here were long sold out,” Sam said. “We’re staying in a creepy room in which EVERYTHING is covered in teddy bears.” (You guys should see the pictures.)

“Well, if you guys want, I have plenty of room in my room if you guys wanted to stay here instead,” Dan said. And that, dear children, is the exact moment that I really and truly understood everything that had happened up to that point. Yes, a 27-year-old convention guest, a man with rising fame and influence, had made comments about my legs being nice, bought me alcohol knowing I was only 19, and invited me and my friend to sleep in his hotel room, all in the span of about five hours. Senpai was officially a fucking creep.

“Oh, no, thanks,” I said. “Our group has to go in two cars, and I’m the driver of one, so it’s fine. We’re fine, really.”

“Okay, then. Safe drive. But remember, my room is always an option,” Dan told us as he waved goodbye.

Listen, I’m aware that I was an adult, fully capable of giving consent. And Dan was an adult, fully allowed to pursue someone of legal age. I get that. But that’s where it stops. I was a convention attendee, and he was an industry guest. There’s a power imbalance there, magnified by the huge age gap. He bought me alcohol, which anyone knows is the foolproof way to make someone more relaxed and easily persuaded (except me, whose social anxiety comes in handy when it comes to not trusting anyone’s intentions). Worst of all, he invited two young women, two attendees, to sleep in his hotel room. Besides being fucking gross and manipulative, what kind of breach of guest protocol was that? And he knew that I was essentially a volunteer for his fan group – that’s not an appropriate way to act towards someone who is basically a co-worker. From that night on, I knew that I had to keep Dan at a distance. I could manage to be cordial, but there was never going to be a chance for anything other than that.

Dan and I managed to stay relatively friendly over the next couple years, but I always had that day lingering in the back of my mind with every interaction we had, online or in person. We’ve only ever seen each other once since that night – Colossalcon 2012, a year later. He was friendly to us and would acknowledge that he knew us more than an average con attendee, but kept his distance for (what I suspected and pretty much had confirmed later) other reasons, which weren’t malicious. Over the years, though, I witnessed a gradual shift in how he presented himself online. He seemed eager to play the devil’s advocate on sensitive issues, and some of his posts made it clear that his problematic behavior was unlikely to be a one-time lapse in judgement.

We had a somewhat public falling-out in late October 2016. He had shared a comic that basically questioned why a woman was allowed to dress sexy and seen as empowered, but when men drew or designed sexy women for pop culture, they were seen as pigs. In a few comments we made to each other, I expressed my disagreement with that sentiment, and he essentially said that I and other women were being overdramatic. In his last comment, he said that he had more experience in the world than me, and he called me a child. Furious, I addressed each of his outrageous points one by one, particularly his idea that I was somehow a child. I ended my comment with a brief but very clear message: that he was not as innocent as he liked to think, seeing as he knowingly bought me alcohol when I was 19 and invited me to sleep in his hotel room.

I was content to let it rest, but he decided to keep going. Not on Facebook, which made sense –why let the public in on his dirty laundry? Nor did he e-mail, which he easily could have, since he definitely had my information. No, he decided to send me DIRECT MESSAGES ON INSTAGRAM. Which means he had to look me up on there, since I know he hadn’t followed me before. He called me cynical, rude, and “dark.” He said that our interaction back at Colossalcon was strictly friendly and a group setting (I disagree with his idea of “group,” especially when he invited both female parties of said group to his room, but whatever). He also said that he wasn’t in a great place because he was going through things in his personal life. He ended with, “I’m sorry I offended you,” which would have held some weight if he hadn’t spent the rest of the message 1. insulting me and 2. making excuses for his actions, which he admitted did take place.

Obviously, his name isn’t Dan. And a good deal of you probably could figure out who this person is, either by already hearing snippets from me or just knowing general details about Dan’s work. I’m positive most of you know who he actually is. I could use his real name, obviously, and I originally wrote this with his actual name instead of a placeholder. Believe it or not, I’m not looking for a fight. Were his intentions truly just friendly? Perhaps, but that’s not at all how they came across, and he should have known better than to do any of the things he did. I interacted with another voice actor that weekend in casual company, and he was just as friendly without being at all imposing – he was gracious and listened to us and respected us. He’s got a reputation for being a bit overly-touchy, but I never felt creeped out or like I was a target, especially when compared to the encounter with Dan.

Because that’s how Dan had made me feel. Like a target. Like I was some silly teenage girl, starstruck enough and desperate enough for attention that I would give senpai anything he wanted just to feel like I was part of the cool kids. It didn’t make me feel violated – it made me pissed off. I was angry that he had written me off, that he had tested me out to see how easily-manipulated I was, and that there was nothing stopping him from doing this to someone else. Maybe he would find that girl who was desperate enough for validation that she would do anything for him. Maybe he has since then.

It’s only been with the emergence of the #MeToo movement that I’ve been able to properly sort out my feelings about this and word it how I want. I don’t want him to lose bookings or stop being invited to conventions. It’s enough for me that he knows that I’m out there, aware and unafraid. He already knows my feelings on the matter – I made them abundantly clear in that Facebook comment. I just want him to understand that he doesn’t get to do whatever the hell he wants because he’s got this tiny scrap of fame. I want him to understand that people will always remember how you make them feel, and I will never forget that night when I experienced what it truly means to be a woman in this world.  

[ardenlininger25-blog]

400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention

You support a religious doctrine that bans a life saving medical procedure causes death of children and adults. I think you and your Jehovah are more wicked than I am. I think you are mentally deranged because everyone who disagrees with blood transfusion must be a Jehovah's witness. so I ask you?

What Church do you attend? or are you irresponsible?

Are you a Vampire?

Do you attack a religious doctrine that places premium on life by advocating premium medical procedure of choice and that has saved children and adults?

Why do you promote terrorism in Angola against ordinary members who are not of the governing body?

Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by cantok: 11:47pm On Sep 02 If supporting terrorism and violence means criticing peoples beliefs on their God killing billions because they aint jehovah witnesses or banning blood transfusion then so be it I love being a terrorist and violent person

You peacemaker and non violent person that imagines his God killing billions cause they don't belong to watchtower organization and supporting a law that banned blood transfusion in 1945 causing death of children and adults well you are just the kindest person on earth and I think the holy ghost controlling you and your bae is must be one of its kind

Yawn.Yawn. I predicted he guilty heart is obsessed with having the last response to my transmission, but I did not mention anybody's name. Let's wait for more. GOD IS GREAT!

Please don't touch that dial. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by cantok: 11:55pm On Sep 02LukeLook:

You must be an agent of the devil yourself. A virus. I was once an active JW. My daughter died at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Dala. I was then in Kaduna and did not know a doctor with a silly and sick mentality like yours was busy managing my child with blood components! He was a bigot like you. Always arguing with an intention to deceive the weak - JUST LIKE YOU. The chief Medical Director of a private hospital who was in the area called me to break the horrible news. I did not want blood tranfusion for my daughter and I made ample provision for that. She was 11 years and had survived the worst periods, overcome the acute symptoms under Late Doctor Duroshola Mototolani of Motolani Medical Center, Agege while she was in Lagos.

People like you are mentally deranged and will always find ways to promote sorrow pain and tears. The doctor was busy transfusing blood into my daughter without my consent because he wanted to prove a stupid point just like you. The you are caught in the act of violence, know that it is Jesus Christ who has come for judgement.

His likes will not go unpunished! in his own doctrine he fails to see that more and more bloodless cures prove more successful than blood-based cures and that people do not die because of bloodless medicine, but because some doctors are refusing to treat patients without blood. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 8:58am On Sep 03LukeLook: I think you are mentally deranged because everyone who disagrees with blood transfusion must be a Jehovah's witness. so I ask you?

What Church do you attend? or are you irresponsible?

Are you a Vampire?

Do you attack a religious doctrine that places premium on life by advocating premium medical procedure of choice and that has saved children and adults?

Why do you promote terrorism in Angola against ordinary members who are not of the governing body?

I think you are more mentally deranged. You are a Jehovah witness

I don't go to church

i am not a vampire

Well when you want to bully someone who doesn't agree with your doctrine on blood transfusion ban you ask if the person is a vampire? 3. Let me school you on bloodless surgery a. Don't think the name bloodless means they don't use blood. They use blood but in this case it is the patients own blood. Bloodless surgery aka autologous blood transfusion used in surgery also they use blood components donated by blood of other people. B. Used during surgery. Surgeries that are planned which means they are not emergencies. C. The patients pcv should not be less than 18%. Is @ Hb concentration of 6g/dl D. Not only surgical cases you need blood transfusion E. Research on bloodless surgery has not being done extensively on pregnant women or children? F. Do you know the face your leaders brought out on awake magazine as expert on bloodless surgery has been stripped off his professorship title because 89 out of 102 of his research work had data which was falsified? G. Blood transfusion is of two types allogenic and autologous blood transfusion. So you want to tell me that Paul said that you should abstain from allogenic blood transfusion alone? Or that you should accept blood components (fractions) gotten from blood donated by worldly people? H. Bloodless surgery can't be used in emergency situations e.g acute severe hemorrhage with hemoglobin concentration less than 6g/dl especially in children and pregnant women Bloodless medicine on the other hand you have to give hematocrit boosting drugs and does not work in life threatening situations. I. Do you know that if bloodless medicine or surgery fails allogenic blood transfusion is the next option? And do you know that if blood transfusion fails blood less surgery or medicine is not an option? J. Do you know doctors make treatment plans that is of benefit to their patients? I don't think a doctor will want to kill anybody by giving allogenic blood transfusion when it is needed especially when death is imminent and the only option for survival in allogenic blood transfusion

4. If promoting terrorism in Angola is telling Nigerian witnesses that their wish for a new system makes them the same with Angolans who attacked those jws then I guess it is OK You shouldnt think that your Jehovah will kill over 8.5billion people because they don't belong to your organization. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 9:06am On Sep 03cantok:

His likes will not go unpunished! in his own doctrine he fails to see that more and more bloodless cures prove more successful than blood-based cures and that people do not die because of bloodless medicine, but because some doctors are refusing to treat patients without blood.

Do you know it is only watchtower organization that promotes bloodless cure ie autologous blood transfusion, use of drugs, use of blood components gotten from blood of worldly people to treat even emergency cases with hemoglobin less than 6g/dl with acute severe hemorrhage? Bloodless medicine or surgery does not mean Blood is not used. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 9:15am On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

You have now changed it to is Armageddon biblical? You have read your bible and seen there is no where they said Christians should have faith or believe in Armageddon.

This is becoming very Interesting.

The issue here is not Armageddon being biblical.

it was because of your lack of comprehension that made me change the question or mode of questioning , . and am glad you admit Armageddon is Biblical . lets move ahead

Do you also accept Armageddon is part of those things that must surely take place as prophesied in Rev 1:1,2 ? Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 9:19am On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.

When parable becomes prophecy. Governing body members also told you that Jesus will use them to give spiritual food as they are now the faithful and discrete slave right?

Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 9:28am On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

I said no. Bible was clear on things we should have faith or believe in. Armageddon was never one of those things.

Did Bible tell you to believe that when u die you will go to heaven ?

so far u have admit Armageddon is biblical, we are progressing , now answer this

Is Armageddon a Biblical PROPHECY ( Rev 1:3) ? Did Bible tell Christian's to take Prophecies serious or not ? Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by LukeLook: 9:44am On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

Let me school you on bloodless surgery

Bloodless surgery can't be used in emergency situations e.g acute severe hemorrhage with hemoglobin concentration less than 6g/dl especially in children and pregnant women

Do you know doctors make treatment plans that is of benefit to their patients?

If promoting terrorism in Angola is telling Nigerian witnesses that their wish for a new system makes them the same with Angolans who attacked those jws then I guess it is OK

Why are you not a member of any Church but is desperately needing comfort, fellowship and in need to associate with Church goers? Is it not a convenient ploy to be irresponsible and to have plausible deniability? Why do you desperately need to constantly be in association with church goers who are critical thinkers?

Why are you in veiled support of attack on a religious doctrine that places premium on life by advocating premium medical procedure of choice and that has saved children and adults?

Why do you promote terrorism in Angola against ordinary members who are not of the governing body or church leader of the JW?

NOTE2 You do not have the platform, the clinical qualifications, the presentations skills and the legal authority in this country,West Africa, the USA and in the UK to school me, inform me or educate me on any aspect of clinical pathology! Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by LukeLook: 9:52am On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

its your own duty to locate the Slave . Mr Noisemaker The issue here is to let you know God is using a Faithful and discreet Slave right now . and if you are not getting spiritual food from that slave , You are on your own . - Mat 24:44,45 I think "the Jesus Christ of Jalingo" can never locate anything from a qualified clinical psychologist to a Jesuit evangelizer. He has to locate himself first... Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 12:17pm On Sep 03LukeLook:

You must be an agent of the devil yourself. A virus. I was once an active JW. My daughter died at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Dala. I was then in Kaduna and did not know a doctor with a silly and sick mentality like yours was busy managing my child with blood components! He was a bigot like you. Always arguing with an intention to deceive the weak - JUST

Sorry for your loss.

Let's analyse your story. Who was with your daughter when she was in the hospital? Who gave assent and consent for blood transfusion? Who paid for the blood? Your story is a misrepresentation of the actual story. Or are you telling me that no one was with your child during her stay in the hospital? Then that is child neglect and abuse. In a teaching hospital nobody will give a child blood transfusion without assent

The chief Medical Director of a private hospital who was in the area called me to break the horrible news. Was he the person managing the case? Why would a Cmd call a patients father on phone to break the news of the death of his child in a government hospital. You are telling me two things 1. No relation or caregiver was at your childs bedside. No health worker in a government hospital will give a child any form of treatment in a pediatric ward if the child's legal guardian isn't there except in cases where the child has no known legal guardian or caregiver. Shows neglect in your case. The child's mother was supposed to be by her side or someone old enough to give consent 2. The Cmd was your friend otherwise if he wasn't the person in charge of the case it is unethical to call to break the news. It is obvious the Cmd is your family friend.

I did not want blood tranfusion for my daughter and I made ample provision for that.

Her caregiver probably gave consent and your child assented

She was 11 years and had survived the worst periods, overcome the acute symptoms under Late Doctor Duroshola Mototolani of Motolani Medical Center, Agege while she was in Lagos.

You just agreed that this was not a first time episode. Your child had been receiving treatment. Do you know that in medicine each episode of a particular illness is treated as though it is a new one. A form of treatment used in one episode of a particular disease may not be the same form of treatment used in another episode of that particular disease. I think the disease progressed to the extent where your bloodless medicine could no longer help. Do you know bloodless surgery and medicine is still under research in developed countries? Do you know bloodless surgery and medicine is not indicated in every illness requiring blood or blood products in developed countries? Do you know that in developed countries if doctors see your child to be in dire need of blood transfusion the go ahead to perform the procedure? Do you know that the law will grant doctors the right to do blood transfusion if need be?

I cooled off activities with the congregation because I wanted to deal with that bigoted, religiously biased and wicked doctor in the most virulent way.

To you the doctor is wicked because you have been trained to think that a doctor who offers blood transfusion is a wicked person Well it is expected if watchtower trained to believe that people who don't want to join watchtower organization and accept their teachings are wicked people. The doctor may not even be affiliated with any religion.

People like you are mentally deranged and will always find ways to promote sorrow pain and tears

If advocating for a medical procedure to be done when it is the only option available after exhausting other options in the case where there is imminent death is mental derangement to you so be it. How is some body promoting sorrow pain and tears by giving somebody in dire need of blood transfusion a blood transfusion. If advocating giving a trial at life is promoting sorrow pain and tears so be it. You just

The doctor was busy transfusing blood into my daughter without my consent because he wanted to prove a stupid point just like you. Somebody maybe your wife gave consent and your child assented when you left the hospital because they wanted it. You probably delayed a life saving medical procedure for your child and by the time the other person consented when you were not there is was probably too late to salvage.

The you are caught in the act of violence, know that it is Jesus Christ who has come for judgement.

What act of violence? When, where and on who do I perform this act of violence? Blood transfusion will be used till they get a synthetic analogue for hemoglobin in large quantities.

Worldly people will keep donating blood to help people including Jehovah witnesses who are in dire need of blood products like albumin, clotting factors and immunoglobulins. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 1:15pm On Sep 03LukeLook:

NOTE1 It is apparent that you may be really on the psychotic side. Since when has attacking Jws been a consequence of bloodless surgery that can't be used in emergency situations? Already, you have a tactic of stigmatizing e.g."are you not also one of his disciples?" whereas in your own case it is "everyone who disagrees with blood transfusion must be a Jehovah's witness". The rest statements you have made is thrashy, half ignorant, half deranged, can only come come from biases such as found on anything-goes-social media, certain Australian HMs, medico-orthodoxy who say blood has 90% chance of saving life!

So the

NOTE2 You do not have the platform, the clinical qualifications, the presentations skills and the legal authority in this country,West Africa, the USA and in the UK to school me, inform me or educate me on any aspect of clinical pathology!

I think you are the bigger psychopath here. For you to attack an arguer instead of an argument. I think your religion has made you deranged I think you must be a psychopath to support death of an individual instead of accepting blood transfusion.

Since when has attacking Jws been a consequence of bloodless surgery that can't be used in emergency situations?

Since when has criticism become attacking? Stop the persecution complex Already, you have a tactic of stigmatizing e.g."are you not also one of his disciples? I think its you and your Jehovah witness doctrines that stigmatizes humans. Using a derogatory word such as worldly and wicked to signify non jws is the worst form of stigmatization.

" whereas in your own case it is "everyone who disagrees with blood transfusion must be a Jehovah's witness". People have the right to disagree with any medical procedure. A religion should never make its members refuse a proven life saving procedure. You must be a fool to say that people should die or let their children die instead of accepting a medical procedure because of an assumption made by its illiterate medical leaders.

The rest statements you have made is thrashy, half ignorant, half deranged, can only come come from biases such as found on anything-goes-social media, certain Australian HMs, medico-orthodoxy who say blood has 90% chance of saving life!

So it is watchtower magazine that is the right source of a medical procedure? Bloodless surgery and medicine involves use of blood and blood components whether you like it or not.

So the questions remains:

1. Why are you not a member of any Church but is desperately needing comfort, fellowship and in need to associate with Church goers? Is it not a convenient ploy to be irresponsible and to have plausible deniability? Why do you desperately need to constantly be in association with church goers who are critical thinkers?

Painful rants of a believing Jehovah witness who wants to blame non jws for his woes You are just pained that somebody has told you things you don't know about your beliefs.

No wonder you killed your child by witholding proper medical care from your child for a long time and want to blame the doctor for her death. This is child neglect and abuse. How will a father with old an important medical treatment from his child for years because of his religious beliefs? Is that one a father? Why withhold medical procedure? Because you want a spot in paradise where you will be petting pandas in summer

3. Why are you in veiled support of attack on a religious doctrine that places premium on life by advocating premium medical procedure of choice and that has saved children and adults?

What choice of premium medical procedure has saved children and adults? Bloodless surgery and medicine I have told you is not used in acute severe hemorrhage with hemoglobin concentration less than 6g/dl. Research has not being done on children and pregnant women. It still uses blood and blood components. Do you know why research can't be done on childre? Because the blood less surgery and medicine researchers know that if they try using it on a child who requires blood transfusion and withold blood transfusion, they will go to jail and they will never practice as doctors or researchers in their life.

The reason they have not come up with research on pregnant women is because pregnancy isnt a disease when a woman has severe postpartum hemorrhage and there is cardiovascular compromise you give blood transfusion

And what doctrines about premium of life? Life is not supposed to be taken away by man made doctrines. You say your doctrine places a premium on life by refusing that same life a live saving medical procedure and the life dies. Which life have you put a premium on? To you people blood is more sacred than life itself. So your claim on their premium medical procedure saving children and adults are questionable.

4. Why do you promote terrorism in Angola against ordinary members who are not of the governing body or church leader of the JW?

Promoting terrorism in Angola against ordinary members interesting. Why do the members promote mass genocide by their god of all non jws for new system to come for jws?

[b]NOT You do not have the platform, the clinical qualifications, the presentations skills and the legal authority in this country,West Africa, the USA and in the UK to school me, inform me or educate me on any aspect of clinical pathology!

So you are hurt because someone has said what you guys tell the don't tell the public about blood less surgery and medicine. And see who has qualification skills does not even know what bloodless surgery and medicine entails. What is clinical pathology? That's if you even know. I can school you in medical ethics.

Your guy Joachim boldt that was featured in awake magazine some years back as the lead researcher for bloodless surgery had his professorship title stripped because of unethical procedure And the colloid he was promoting has been labelled by FDA as causing increased bleeding and renal failure in some subjects. Jws be using themselves as Guinea pigs since 1945. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 1:26pm On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

its your own duty to locate the Slave . Mr Noisemaker

The issue here is to let you know God is using a Faithful and discreet Slave right now . and if you are not getting spiritual food from that slave , You are on your own . - Mat 24:44,45

So your leaders told you that bible said you should locate the slave and they are the slave? Interesting.

Since the bible did not say we should locate the slave in matt 24 let's assume like you assume that bible said you should locate the slave. Is it slave that will always adjust its beliefs What I believe to be true today will be seen as falsehood in 10years time? Is it the slave that will predict a wrong date as end of world? Is it a slave that will say it is 1914 Jesus Christ chose them to lead his people? Is it a slave that says the door to heaven closed in 1935 yet in 1995 they opened the door for themselves and the overlapping generation? Abeg I'll pass at the invitation to locate that slave Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 3:04pm On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

Where did bible say it is our duty to locate any slave? Hmmm interesting

The point has been made , God has an organization to dispense spiritual food to his people . Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 3:09pm On Sep 03LukeLook: I think "the Jesus Christ of Jalingo" can never locate anything from a qualified clinical psychologist to a Jesuit evangelizer. He has to locate himself first...

@ Hairyrapunzel , Is Armageddon a Biblical PROPHECY ( Rev 1:3 ) ? Does the bible ask Christians to take Prophecies serious or not ? Reply Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by orisa37: 3:57pm On Sep 03May God forgive them all. IJN AMEN!!! Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 4:22pm On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

Lol , I can't laugh abeg

@ Hairyrapunzel , Is Armageddon a Biblical PROPHECY ( Rev 1:3 ) ?

Does the bible ask Christians to take Prophecies serious or not ? Reply

Bible asks Christians to beware of false prophets Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 4:36pm On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

How do you get the Spiritual food if you don't Know the Faithful slave that Christ is using ?

The point has been made , God has an organization to dispense spiritual food to his people .

When you have heard this over and over again from birth this is the only means the governing body has taught you will get salvation you tend to obey it. Mind you if you think otherwise you will be punished. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 5:22pm On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

Your governing body taught you that to get spiritual food you must look for the faithful slave god is using. Mind you no bible passage has Jesus asking his disciples to locate the faithful slave so that they will receive spiritual food.

Your governing body also told you that they alone are the faithful slave class and that god directed them to dispense spiritual food.

These same men in new york told you that they alone are the ones Christ is using in present day earth and you must know them to serve god. These same men told you salvation is by joining their organization

Bear in mind that in the bible no passage mentioned organization No passage in the bible did Jesus tell his disciples that they will get salvation by locating any slave and worshipping God through them.

When you have heard this over and over again from birth this is the only means the governing body has taught you will get salvation you tend to obey it. Mind you if you think otherwise you will be punished.

Let me break it down . Is the mode of Distribution for Spiritual food put in place by Christ as mentioned in Matt 24:44,45 ORGANIZED ? Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by CAPTIVATOR: 5:25pm On Sep 03Hairyrapunzel:

Is God killing all non jws for not belonging to watchtower organization in Armageddon a BIBLICAL PROPHECY?

The bible says we should not listen to false prophets like the leaders of your organization. In fact the bible says Christians should beware of false prophets who dish out false prophecies

Example saying Jesus Christ appeared invisibly in 1914 Saying door to heaven closed in 1935 Preaching heaven is full already Teaching overlapping generation in 1995 so your slave can get the key to the already closed door in heaven and enter Prophecy about world ending in 1884, 1914, 1925 and 1975

True prophets don't dish out false prophecies more than once.

Bible asks Christians to beware of false prophets

Answer the above and expose your petty knowledge of the bible to the world . Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Barristter07: 5:38pm On Sep 03Captivator

CAPTIVATOR:

Hehehehehe you got me laughing hard @ Petty knowledge . 1 Like Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by achorladey: 7:12pm On Sep 03Barristter07:

Captivator

Hehehehehe you got me laughing hard @ Petty knowledge . Dont worry, he will provide answers very soon. He will prove stubborn at first, but he will answer eventually. Na him way. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 8:32pm On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

The issue here is Armageddon , Is it a Biblical PROPHECY ? and Should Christians take Prophecies serious ? ( Rev 1:3 )

Answer the above and expose your petty knowledge of the bible to the world .

You asked if I believe in Armageddon? I know bible never said Christians should believe in Armageddon. So you changed it to is Armageddon biblical? Interesting

When did your bible tell you that during Armageddon your jehovah will slaughter billions of non jws because they didn't join watchtower?

You can't change the direction of the argument. You want to hide under cover that Armageddon is biblical mind you that you asked if I believe in Armageddon? Abeg this prophecy what passage in the bible did God say that he will kill billions because they refused to join watchtower organization? Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 8:47pm On Sep 03CAPTIVATOR:

Abeg, Sorry that my question is too hard for you to comprehend .

Let me break it down . Is the mode of Distribution for Spiritual food put in place by Christ as mentioned in Matt 24:44,45 ORGANIZED ?

Its obvious the faithful slave is your mediator in fact they have taken the place of Jesus Christ. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by cantok: 7:27am On Sep 04Information from the Jesus Christ of Jalingo says that:

" I think you are the bigger psychopath here. For you to attack an arguer instead of an argument. I think your religion has made you deranged. I think you must be a psychopath to support death of an individual instead of accepting blood transfusion"

Thank God you are just thinking your evil warped thoughts

Why are you not a member of any Church but is desperately needing comfort, fellowship and in need to associate with Church goers? Is it not a convenient ploy to be irresponsible and to have plausible deniability? Why do you desperately need to constantly be in association with church goers who are critical thinkers?

Why are you in veiled support of attack on a religious doctrine that places premium on life by advocating premium medical procedure of choice and that has saved children and adults?

Why do you promote terrorism in Angola against ordinary members who are not of the governing body or church leader of the JW?

Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by LukeLook: 7:49am On Sep 04Hairyrapunzel: Sorry for your loss. Sorry for yourself and for your newly concocted details of the incidence in Dala. Justifying terror and violence against a church group due to their beliefs by one who himself/herself does not attend a church is abysmal and despicable and shall meet with the punishment deserved. Your mental torture is preventable... Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by cantok: 7:54am On Sep 04LukeLook: Sorry for yourself and for your newly concocted details of the incidence in Dala. Justifying terror and violence against a church group due to their beliefs by one who himself/herself does not attend a church is abysmal and despicable and shall meet with the punishment deserved. Your mental torture is preventable...

Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 7:58am On Sep 04LukeLook: Sorry for yourself and for your newly concocted details of the incidence in Dala. Justifying terror and violence against a church group due to their beliefs by one who himself/herself does not attend a church is abysmal and despicable and shall meet with the punishment deserved. Your mental torture is preventable...

You are the mentally deranged person here. Use your child as a Guinea pig in a research programme where it is unacceptable to use children. Because it is Nigeria

Newly concocted ideas. You can't even answer the question about who gave consent and assent. Liar liar Psychopath father. After neglecting and abusing your child for years you want to blame a doctor for death when your wife consented and your child gave assent to it Liar liar. Mentally unfit father. Your religion only attracts mentally unstable people why?

Justifying your jehovah killing billions because they chose not to join your organization is worse. Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Hairyrapunzel: 8:02am On Sep 04LukeLook: Sorry for yourself and for your newly concocted details of the incidence in Dala. Justifying terror and violence against a church group due to their beliefs by one who himself/herself does not attend a church is abysmal and despicable and shall meet with the punishment deserved. Your mental torture is preventable...

Empty threats. You and your Jehovah are jokers. Punishment where? Is it the ones in your head that your leaders depicted in their magazines? Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by cantok: 8:29am On Sep 04Hairyrapunzel:

Empty threats. You and your Jehovah are jokers. Punishment where? Is it the ones in your head that your leaders depicted in their magazines?

Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Barristter07: 2:00pm On Sep 04Hairyrapunzel

The issue here is saying your jehovah will kill all non jws in Armageddon. This isn't biblical

Bible tells Christian to take prophecies that say all non jws will die in Armageddon? Interesting

You asked if I believe in Armageddon?

I know bible never said Christians should believe in Armageddon.

I demand for the proofs for questions coded A1 and A2 1 Like Re: 400 Jehovah's Witnesses In Angola Pass Out Due To Toxic Gas At A Convention by Barristter07: 2:43pm On Sep 04Hairyrapunzel

You people even have to formulate questions to prove your point.

When did Jesus Christ say mode of distribution of the spiritual food put in place by him organized? Hmmm.

What passage did you see organized spiritual food given by faithful slave biko?

The extent you will go to prove that your faithful slave is the only distributor of spiritual food because your faithful slave in your organization told you they have been given authority to distribute spiritual food?

organized spiritual food that is gotten from 7men in new York who always adjust the organized spiritual food.

You still cannot locate the verse that says Christians should look for the faithful slave and worship god through it that it is only through them they will get saved?

Its obvious the faithful slave is your mediator in fact they have taken the place of Jesus Christ.

Petty knowledge indeed 1 Like (0) (1) (2) ... (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (Reply) Rev Father Flogging His Church Members With His Holy Cane(video) / 100% Proof That The Bible Lies!!!! Must Read!!! / Sermon That Touches The Heart: The Day My Boyfriend And I Went To Church (Go Up) Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (0) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2017 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise.

[whimsically-ominously-auspice]

In 1993 we killed over 3,000 kidnappers in Houston and Galveston area, 33,425 in Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona and NYC.

I said i was 13. I was only 9. I killed 312. Witnessed 378 including my own. So my partner did 66 and a half as one was revived by me. It was an Abu that came from Iraq to see us and didn't know how to find us other than get killed.

He said the kidnappers world wide were being more aggressive and violent.

So they wanted to see why the flow from our area was slowing. Only 3-4 thousand kidnapped victims for human trafficking had slipped through our fingers in the Houston area which made me feel like a failure. Until I learned usually they got 4 Billion per year and the thousands they got were only adults.

My group focused on young girls and children and anyone else but we targeted the kidnappers that went for kids and women to prevent rapes and child birth in the human trafficking setting. We would save a man any day and did. But saving kids and stopping the factories from filling was our main.

Arizona didn't get a soul that year. But we did let some slip...

And they found from word of mouth i was in Texas. Then in Texas they filtered me down to the southern coast then finally caught me in Pasadena Mall.

And they were surprised as they had looked all over Galveston and closer to the coast.

But I always lived 35 minutes or more from my Uncle Dad's work After NYC. It was safer for me. Cause they would look at the base area for me first. And I had a lot of death threats from political people in the NYC area.

So they refused to kill under Al Qaeda because it was a peaceful regime and only killed under civilian code as i did.

They wanted to protect Al Qaeda from being known since they filtered out money from the factories by working in the offices then used thr money to relocate worldwide, like at our Chinese restaurants and to pay legal fees when cops did arrest them and charge them instead of kidnapping and small monthly stipends for more than half of our rescued victims.

So i told them how i did my kills because they were very shocked to understand what was going on because I was always non violent and gentle. Wise beyond my years but soft

So i told them i prayed and i questioned to God. "Is it okay i kill?" "Is it safe to now?" "Is the girls gonna be alright?" Is i said it a lot

So he said to me "the word i hear you most say is "Is" so we will go under that for our group name in order to kill in case we are asked for our manifest Destiny in order to keep Al Qaeda under wraps.

So they ended up with IsIs. Which is pronounced IzIZ.

But in the 2000s they wanted to stop buman trafficking by requesting peace, so that is how Al Qaeda got leaked.

With IsIs so strong they could, outlet Al Qaeda into the media and have ISIS as a back up in case something went wrong

Which it did.

Which just showed us how much more powerful evil is than the wish of world peace.

So now we are in WWIII.

The difference is from the past 30 years to now is now everyone knows and instead of certain countries here snd there and certain groups trying to fight back and not succeeding..

We have gathered so much information that now we can destroy every bunker by filling them with sand and removing the good factory and sleeping quarter items to be used in a good way.

We can ask work together to stop these greedy creeps and keep fighting

Knowledge is power. So i feed you that knowledge and you gain a powerful perspective.

Then we use our physical body to rescue the victims imprisoned.

And we stay aware and we work and fight and keep doing all we can When we can.

Some people are requesting to remain at work and that's fine as long as they are paid and have phones that work proper to reach anyone at any time. Know how to open the doors. And know they can leave any time. And are paid and checked on and more.

And we will improve their living conditions as time allows. And they have protection of people that advocate for going outside.

And so we encourage the animals inside, normal pets. Cats and dogs to help nurture the workers. And they can take one home when they leave. The one that is most attached. Some may have More than one So they are at an exception. If someone has 3 cats and a dog that sleeps with only them at bedtime well. If it would harm the animal for them to be left behind then they must go.

So things are rapidly changing.

But I myself have done into this since 1986 when i was 2 years old.

Saint Luches 1985 when he was 3. And he's been in the underground until 2009 and some into 2010. But i had him released in 2009 for permanent. Because he runs stores and keeps people protected and employed. Like a neighborhood watch program. He's done on his own at a young age.

As i said before, he was the one that left his footprints in the snow that i could struggle and jump into behind him.

He went one way and i went another and we always met in the middle.

But like i found and followed him, i found and followed more. I sought the good leaders. To make them stronger. Make them help more. Make them help me. Help Saint Luches. Because we needed help. Allot of it.

And I helped them.

I started killing in Texas because we went to the mall. My friend. Her mom. Her mom was buying stuff in like Macy's and we went out to like the pretzel store.

One guy told,my friend my aunt was in trouble and another guy told me hers was.

She went and so i followed and we were in the parking lot and in their car and I said "hey where are we going?" Because we were leaving the mom and i knew that was bad.

"Like we told you. Both your aunts are in trouble"

"But where are my aunt's?"

"Pasadena jail"

No my fucking aunt wasn't. My aunts didn't live nearby. Hers did. Mine didn't.

So i was all "i need a weapon" in my mind. Neither driver wore a seat belt.

I saw the passenger buckle So i pulled it down to me on the driver side. I pointed to mine in my hand then the one hanging. Made a loop and pointed to the driver while they were both talking.

"And we run after it stops"

"Huh who are you talking to?"

"LOOK OUT!!!!!" He slammed the brakes and i choked him to death and Lori took off running.

The passenger grabbed my arm so I just kept choking his friend.

We wrecked into the mall.

I took off.

So her mom was curious... And we got addicted. And so we kept doing the same thing every weekend in 1992. We would beg anyone to take us to the mall because her mon couldn't handle it and got depressed. And we would walk if we couldn't get a ride. And we would get kidnapped all the time.

And then it got really big. And it took over the Southwest USA.

Then the middle East of the other side of the world

I'm proud of that. I truly am.

[mama-forum-ch-blog]

chinese dating

New Post has been published on http://mama-forum.ch/question/chinese-dating/

chinese dating

Can a strictly child be disowned

Can a mum or dad disown an adopted child?

if it turns out “Disown” Means the parent wants to discontinue his or her obligation to a minor child, Then it is frequently possible. The parent wanting to voluntarily give up parental rights can file a Termnation of Parental Rights petition in the probate court in the county and state their current address. there aren’t laws which force anyone upon their demise to leave assets or property to children or other persons. The exception being property that routinely reverts to a surviving spouse under state marital law. If you are asking this question I hope it’s and rightly. I found myself in the concern because I no longer had any say over what and how my child’s mother (tend to be ex) Was promoting him. Everytime I took one advancement teaching him the ways of the world his mother would bail him out making him take two steps back. At 16 he is almost an adult with his own views and I cannot change those at this point studying again can be not that I’m done trying. But he lives with his mom and he is getting into challenge with the law pretty regularly stealing etc. I’m afraid if gosh forbid he hurt someone or something I would still lead to that even though I have no say in his upbringing or day to day life at this point. I pay my child support and will continue to do so until he is 18 but I don’t believe I should be legally responsible for any chaos that may insue where he lives with his mother. She will probably? So can I disown him legally, A few of you must be in this [url=http://antiscam.chnlovereview.com/how-to-impress-your-chinese-girl-on-your-first-date/]sexy chinese girl[/url] concern, ( Full pick up )

Was Jackie robinson an only child?

in just 1919, Jackie robinson, The youngest of five children, was given birth in Cairo, Georgia during a Spanish flu and smallpox epidemic. in just 1920, His family who were sharecroppers moved to Pasadena, georgia after his father abandoned them. Jackie’s older brother was an efficient athlete. For the source and more in depth information concerning your request, go through the related links section indicated below. ( Full reason )

Your dad recently got a new girlfriend He has now disowned you and uses the money that should be your back child support to feed her and pay her bills what should you do?

Assuming any of this is true, As kids are often told this by their mothers, some money is still owed and must be paid. See link below for similar focus on Yahoo Answers. really should dad has disowned you, then you are better off without him. let him keep his stinking money. When my hubby adopted my daughter, The judge made it a simple fact that she was now his child in every way, Til death head for bankruptcy. part. the following came from an attorney in Ohio regarding a noncustodial father who wanted to disown his 14 daughter who was being somewhat of a handful; You account, at the very least, For your natural children until they reach age of majority (18). the theory is that, He could on your own terminate his parental rights, But I doubt any court would accept such a surrender of rights because the objective of termination is to protect children from unfit parents, Not or viceversa. Once they reach adulthood easier going with legally able to disinherit your adopted adult child the same way you would a biological adult child. ( Full product )

Was Jesus the particular sole child of Mary?

NO Jesus was not the only child of Mary. Mary and Joseph had other boys. Matthew 13:55 states that he had other bros named Joseph, Simon, as Judas. more, Than who his biological brothers were has to be that those who do the will of God, the father, Are Jesus’ kin (Matthew 12:50). Roman Catholic solve: yes,that’s right, Jesus was the only child of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This has been held as accepted fact since she had been alive. Many protestants today base their feelings that Jesus had siblings on the option that the Bible, following a Greek New Testament uses the words “siblings, The Greek word is Adelphos which indicates 1) Male children of the same parents OR 2) Male descendants of the same parents Acts 7:23, 26; Hebrews 7:5, or a 3) People of the same nationality, works 3:17, 22; Romans 9:3, or just 4) Any fellow, A next-doors, luke 10:29; Matthew 5:22, 7:3, or perhaps a 6) Persons united by a common interest, Matthew 5:47, or even a 7) Persons united by called soft skills calling, revelation 22:9, nor 8) human beings, Matthew 25:40; Hebrews 2:17, or use the disciples, and consequently, By inference, All followers, Matthew 28:10, kim 20:17; Or believers click sex many references. In the King James style, Jacob is referred to as brother of his Uncle Laban (generation. 29:15; 29:10), it’s the same for Lot and Abraham (style 14:14; 11:26 27). additionally there are several Biblical references to Mary’s perpetual virginity. needs to be that “Firstborn” Is found in that sense only, Not characterised other children. lastly, throughout the cross, Jesus entrusts His endowed Mother to the apostle John, Which wouldn’t be the case if there were other children. a good sidelight: steve Calvin, And Martin Luther both vehemently advocated the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. anyway, The Church has definitively ruled to this: if the Blessed Virgin Mary was exactly that, And ended her life as a virgin totally specialized in God. ( Full reply to )

What should you do when I am an Asian man and are only sexually drawn to black women and I am dating a black woman but if my parents knew they would disown me?

If you are living in an Asian country then you definately know your own culture well and that sons in Asian families are highly regarded; Should be well educated and successful if possible and marry for their own race. at the same time, Asians do not think kindly of black people it is necessary nice they are. You said you are just dating black ladies and not once mentioned love. not a single thing wrong with anyone dating a black woman especially if they are no longer a minor and not under the control of their parents. anyhow, you’ve got to be more honest with yourself and ask yourself why you feel the need to always date black women and why you don’t date Asian women or even Caucasian women. Are you riding on the myth that black women are more sexual than other races or there are some other reason. You have two choices for everybody who is Westernized; Be sure you love a black woman before hurting your parents and if you are in love then take the risk and tell them you love her and hopefully they will agree to meet with her and if they do not then you have got to walk away from your parents and hope they come around in the future or, 2 make positive changes to habits and start dating Asian women. lovely far more acceptable now regarding mixed marriages. There is nothing your parents can do now that you are a man, But disown you really. ( Full help answer )

Is it common for a narcissist to disown children?

really, I would say it is prevalent for a child to work hard to try to please the narcissistic parent, shedding their own dreams, Development and dignity in the deal. If a child insists on being an impartial person who will not pander to the childish needs of the narcissist, Then the narcissist will fight to win them back or disown them. so, The narcissist will always be looking for an opportunity for the child to come crawling back and give the parent the idolization the parent “should get, in fact, there must be many other situations, elements, or outcomes. You have to objectively view the factors in your state before coming to any real conclusions. all the best,good luck! ( Full response to that question )

What may happen legally to a parent or parents who disown or threaten to disown their child greatly assist sexual orientation?

Disowning is not lawful gift term. Once the child is adult it’s up to either part whether to have contact or not occurring all legal. When the child is a minor however it would be child abandonment to kick them out which is illegal and the oldsters can be charged for it. The CPS will put the child in foster care until he is 18yo and the parents will be charged and pay child support. ( Full reason ).

[bountyofbeads]

A $6 Million Drug Claim https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/health/drug-prices-rare-diseases.html

As someone who suffers from an immune deficiency lung disease, I tottaly understand their concerns about the cost of immune therapy drug costs. I have a treatment once a month and the cost for the drug is upwards of $15,000.00 a month for the drug alone. Medicare doesn't cover the cost but thankfully I have a state health plan. Something MUST be done to reign in the cost of pharmaceuticals.

The $6 Million Drug Claim

New treatments for rare diseases are changing the lives of patients, but the price can reach millions of dollars for a single person.

By Katie Thomas and Reed ABELSON |

Published Aug. 25, 2019, Updated Aug. 26, 2019, 10:42 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted August 26, 2019 1:34 PM ET |

PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Dawn Patterson keeps a multimillion-dollar drug in the fridge, next to a bottle of root beer and a jar of salsa.

The drug, Strensiq, treats a rare bone disease that afflicted her with excruciating pain and left her struggling to work or care for her family.

A year after she began taking the drug, Ms. Patterson, 49, credits it with nearly vanquishing her pain, enabling her to return to work part time for a hospital.

But her family and her husband’s union, which covers the drug’s cost, have been shocked by the mounting bills for the treatments for her and two of her children, who have the same genetic disease. In 2018, the union faced a potential $6 million annual bill for the Patterson household, casting doubt over the future of the labor group’s generous drug coverage and the family’s health.

“My jaw really did drop,” Ms. Patterson said. “I was like, what? This is crazy.”

While it’s hardly a household name, Strensiq is one of the costliest drugs in the world. It is part of an unsettling trend in which ultraexpensive drugs are becoming more common, spurring a national debate over whether any drug should cost millions of dollars, and whether Americans will be priced out of lifesaving treatments as drug companies maximize their profits.

Extraordinary scientific advances — as well as tax breaks and other government incentives for developing drugs for rare diseases — have spawned treatments, and even cures, for illnesses that were once a death sentence. And now that cheaper generic drugs account for about 90 percent of all prescriptions filled in the United States, pharmaceutical companies are turning to rare-disease treatments and gene therapies as their next profit engine, with major companies like Pfizer and Novartis investing in drugs for tiny pools of patients.

These drugs face no real competition, including from generic companies, leaving the door wide open for manufacturers to set nearly any price they want. How high is too high a cost, some argue, if a drug can save 200 or 300 babies a year from a debilitating, degenerative illness or death?

Rare diseases, however, aren’t all that rare. There are an estimated 7,000 of them, and about 30 million Americans have one — roughly the same number of people in the United States with diabetes. And although there are no treatments for most rare diseases, new therapies are coming on the market nearly every month, with some reaching beyond $2 million a year for a single treatment. Of 59 new drugs approved in 2018, more than half, or 34, were for rare diseases. Those treatments are typically the most expensive, helping to drive an increase in overall spending on prescriptions nationwide.

As more and more families are beseeching drug companies and insurers to pay for this novel class of treatments, both big and small employers are getting hit with higher drug bills. It may be for a worker’s child with hemophilia whose treatments can cost over $1 million or for an employee receiving immunotherapy for lung cancer. But not every union or corporate employer has an adequate cushion to absorb these prescription bills.

“In the past, we’d think of rare and orphan diseases and an employer would say, oh, I just had bad luck — I had one of these patients,” said Dr. Steve Miller, the chief clinical officer of Cigna, which owns Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager that negotiates with drug companies on behalf of employers to cover prescriptions for 75 million Americans. “Going forward, if we’re successful and have therapies for these things, everyone’s going to have them.”

The Patterson family’s experience also exposes a stunning lack of transparency in drug pricing; many rare-disease drugs are priced based on a patient’s weight, meaning a prescription for an adult costs many times more than one for a child or infant. Pharmaceutical companies often obscure the real cost with initial estimates — provided to the media or Wall Street analysts — that are far less than the eventual real-world cost of the medicines.

In the Pattersons’ case, Strensiq was expected to cost about $285,000 in 2015 according to its manufacturer, Alexion Pharmaceuticals. But here’s the catch: That price was based on the assumption that most patients would be children or infants and would weigh an average of about 50 pounds. In addition, Alexion would not discuss how much it would cost adults. In 2018, Ms. Patterson’s drug bill approached $2 million.

The breathtaking price threw the labor union — the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, which covers her health care through her husband, Bill — into a crisis.

Four months after she began taking Strensiq, the union’s health plan put payment for the drug on hold to evaluate whether she really needed it.

“This is the only choice of medication that we have,” Ms. Patterson recalled telling the union. “There are no other options here, and we need this medicine.”

Still, the toll on the union’s health plan is astonishing: At one point in 2018, for every hour that one of the union’s 16,000 members worked, 35 cents of his or her pay went to Alexion to cover the Pattersons’ prescriptions.

“It’s an alarm that goes off when you see this,” said Lori Jasperson, who oversees the health care plan for the union’s workers and their families. Boilermakers keep the country’s industrial plants running, maintaining and building equipment in everything from oil refineries to shipbuilding factories.

Because Strensiq needs to be taken indefinitely by patients who need it, Ms. Jasperson estimated that the Pattersons’ total drug coverage could cost the union $60 million.

Alexion, which focuses on treatments for rare diseases and is based in Boston, declined several requests for an interview. Ultimately, under pressure from the boilermakers’ union and Express Scripts and questioned by The New York Times, the company told Express Scripts that it would cap the annual cost at $1.5 million for each adult in commercial plans covered by the pharmacy benefits manager, including the union’s. Alexion said that it is negotiating similar price caps with others, but that those talks were confidential.

In a statement, Alexion defended its prices, saying that developing medicines for rare diseases is complex, costly and carries a significant risk of failure. “Society can’t lose focus on very small populations of several hundred people,” it said.

Presidential candidates and members of Congress have railed against drug companies in recent years, but have largely overlooked the spate of million-dollar treatments for uncommon illnesses or cancers.

Employers and unions say the impact is already being felt. Some small businesses, hit with just a single claim for a family like the Pattersons, have considered ending their employee health coverage. Others have drastically cut back coverage for drugs, and some employers are considering excluding coverage for expensive and novel treatments like gene therapy.

The number of these claims is climbing. Sun Life, which provides specialized insurance to employers to cover their most expensive medical bills, saw claims over $1 million increase by a third over three years, reaching 203 claims in 2018.

Companies cannot predict these costs. “You are one hire, one diagnosis away from this happening to you,” said Rich Fuerstenberg who advises employers for the consulting firm Mercer. “It’s literally like being struck by lightning.”

‘A Slow-Moving Train Collision’

Drug companies once shunned investment in rare diseases because, with such a small market, there was little incentive. But that began to change after the passage of the Orphan Drug Act, a 1983 law that provides government subsidies for clinical trials as well as tax incentives and additional monopoly protection to companies that develop products for rare diseases.

Scientific advancements have further propelled the field as researchers have begun to crack the code on many deadly genetic diseases. It’s a heady time for people with serious diseases, but one that also breeds anxiety as they worry about paying.

Maria Kefalas, a patient advocate whose daughter, Calliope, has a rare form of leukodystrophy, described the situation as a “slow-moving train collision.”

At least two companies are developing gene therapies for leukodystrophy, a deadly group of genetic disorders that cause damage to the brain and central nervous system, robbing children of the ability to crawl, walk, swallow and speak. Treatments, Ms. Kefalas worries, will cost millions of dollars. “And I’m sitting here, as a mom, looking at working with families and saying, ‘I don’t know who is going to pay for this.’”

Some attribute the trend of drug companies charging very high prices to the Affordable Care Act, the federal law that banned lifetime caps and annual limits on patients’ coverage. It includes a mandate that employers keep paying for drugs, no matter the cost.

“There was no market for this,” Mr. Fuerstenberg said. “Now there is.”

Because these drugs are one of a kind, companies like Alexion hold all the leverage. They offer minimal discounts and control the price.

Dr. Jonathan Gavras, the chief medical officer of the pharmacy benefit manager Prime Therapeutics, recalled a small, self-insured employer that was forced to cover a worker who needed Strensiq a few years ago. Paying for the employee’s drug, he said, “essentially almost put the group under.”

The Pattersons’ bills forced the boilermaker union’s leaders to consider raising its workers’ premium contributions for the first time in eight years.

Ms. Jasperson sought help from officials — reaching out to her congressman, the Labor Department and even President Trump, who has made consumer drug prices a major talking point.

“The consequence of Alexion charging this rapacious amount for our boilermaker families to have access to this medication forces our plan to either not cover this medication at all, or consider putting limits on all specialty medications going forward,” Ms. Jasperson wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump.

Hidden Costs, Unexpected Increases

Dosages based on weight are not unique to Alexion. For example, Exondys 51, a treatment for a rare form of muscular dystrophy sold by Sarepta Therapeutics, was supposed to run about $300,000 a year when it was approved in 2016, according to the company’s statements to analysts at the time. But the annual cost is closer to $1 million, according to an analysis by Express Scripts.

Lumizyme, for people with Pompe disease, an inherited enzyme disorder that can prove fatal in infants, costs nearly double the $300,000 its manufacturer, Genzyme — later acquired by Sanofi — said it would likely cost when it was approved in 2010. Drugs for hemophilia and other rare diseases are similarly pricey.

Sarepta, Sanofi and other manufacturers of rare-disease drugs say they provide assistance to patients who are uninsured or can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs of their products. The companies say they have to recoup their investment in drugs that treat a small pool of patients — rare diseases are defined as affecting fewer than 200,000 people nationwide. The Pattersons’ disease, hypophosphatasia, is believed to affect just 1,300 people in the United States.

But even a treatment for hundreds of people can become a billion-dollar product. Alexion acquired Strensiq in 2012, when it bought Enobia Pharma for about $1.1 billion. Strensiq has since generated about $1.3 billion in revenue for Alexion — including $271 million in the first half of 2019 alone.

Strensiq is not even Alexion’s top-selling drug. Another drug, Soliris, for rare immune and blood disorders, brought in more than $3.5 billion last year and regularly ranks among the world’s most expensive drugs.

Alexion said it invested in Strensiq by completing clinical trials and ensuring an adequate supply. “There continues to be significant ongoing investment required to bring Strensiq to patients, including in diagnostic and educational efforts and manufacturing,” the company said in its statement.

The value of Strensiq to patients can vary. It can seem like a miracle for babies with severe forms of hypophosphatasia, whose bones are so soft that sometimes they are barely visible on X-rays. Strensiq replaces a deficient enzyme, alkaline phosphatase, and allows the bones to mineralize. Before Strensiq, many infants born with the disease died within months. Now, they can live near-normal lives.

In adults like Ms. Patterson, who have less severe forms of the disease and whose costs are highest, Strensiq can significantly improve their quality of life.

Struggling to Find Payment Options

Many of the Congressional proposals aimed at lowering drug prices would do nothing for ultraexpensive drugs like Strensiq. In an effort to soften public outrage over high prices, some drug makers have started to offer other options.

When Novartis announced that Zolgensma, its gene therapy treatment that can halt the progression of spinal muscular atrophy in babies, would cost $2.1 million, the company offered a pay-over-time plan. It said insurers and employers would be permitted to pay in installments over three to five years, and that some of the money could be refunded if the treatment failed to work.

But some note that the drug makers retain autonomy over the price. “A lot of these products haven’t hit the market yet, and there’s still a hope we can do something about the price rather than try to figure out a 20-year mortgage payment for them,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

The new payment options also don’t address drugs like Strensiq, which patients will need for the rest of their lives.

Ms. Patterson learned that she had the condition when she was undergoing unrelated tests a few years ago, and then her children were tested. She doesn’t know if other relatives have the disease, but recalled that one of her great-grandmothers was bedridden through much of her childhood.

She worries about the impact of her family’s medical situation on the boilermakers’ union. Bill Patterson, 47, has been a member for more than 20 years.

He “would gladly pay for any other person’s family, their wife, their children, because that’s what boilermakers do,” she said. But “that’s a lot of money.”

“And why?” she said. “Why does it have to be that much? I don’t understand that.”

One Sunday, Ms. Patterson puttered around her kitchen, stirring ground beef for tacos and checking on a queso dip in the slow cooker. Before she began taking Strensiq, Ms. Patterson had all but stopped cooking for her family.

Her daughter, Melissa Mason, said she began experiencing pain and fatigue about three years ago, when she turned 20. “I was helping my grandmother with some yard work for a few days and I could barely help her,” she said. “It seemed like she could do more than I could.”

Ms. Patterson’s son, Will, is 18 and has virtually no symptoms. He played first base for his high school baseball team and plans to play baseball at Adrian College in Michigan next year.

At the end of last year, he decided to stop taking Strensiq, reducing the cost of the family’s treatments for each boilermaker to 26 cents an hour.

Ms. Mason, who is working part time as a restaurant dishwasher, wonders how she will stay on the medicine three years from now when she turns 26 and will no longer be covered under her parents’ insurance.

“When it hits that point, I don’t know if I’ll be able to take it anymore,” she said. “I don’t know if that will be possible.”

WATCH “THE WEEKLY,” THE TIMES’S NEW TV SHOW, ON FX AND HULU

Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas investigate the market for ultra-costly drugs that few patients, not to mention their health plans, can afford.

Life-Changing Drugs Almost Nobody Can Afford

Watch on Sunday at 10 p.m. on FX and on Monday on Hulu. Full episodes available on

Episode 11: ‘The Six Million Dollar Claim’

Updated Aug. 26, 2019, 12:01 p.m. ET | 'The Weekly' New York Times | Posted August 26, 2019 1:31 PM ET|

Producer/Director Suzanne Hillinger

Patients suffering from rare diseases who had little hope for a treatment now have access to life-changing medicines, thanks to pharmaceutical companies’ investment in so-called orphan drugs, which treat diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people. But the increasing number of people who would benefit from these treatments may not be able to afford the stunningly high prices, which can reach far beyond $1 million a year.

Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas, who cover the health care and drug industries, examine one ultra-costly drug that threw a union health plan into a crisis as it struggled to pay for an Ohio family’s prescriptions. Reporting for “The Weekly,” Reed and Katie found that pharmaceutical companies hold most of the power to set their own prices, and desperate patients and their health plans have few options and little recourse.

As treatments for rare diseases become more available, costs are skyrocketing and the health care industry is racing to find ways to provide promising new drugs to many more people.

[tripstations]

This Greyhound bus problem is an expensive travel lesson

At first, Beverly Parker’s Greyhound bus problem looked like a slam dunk case. Valuables had gone missing from her checked luggage during a recent trip from Birmingham, Ala., to Albion, Mich. And Greyhound wasn’t exactly breaking a land speed record to help her.

But then I read the details of her request, and a simple case suddenly became complicated. It wasn’t the $150,000 claim amount that fazed me. My computer adds a few extra characters if I don’t release the zero key fast enough. I was certain that was a typo.

It was everything else.

Parker’s case is a reminder to read your travel company’s luggage liability rules before you entrust them with your valuables. It also underscores the importance of keeping your compensation request in line with a carrier’s legal obligation. Otherwise, you could learn a very expensive lesson.

This Greyhound bus problem made me ask a series of questions about consumer education in America. The answers to these questions would help Parker and many people like her advocate for themselves.

It was an uneventful bus ride to Michigan, until …

By all accounts, Parker’s 20-hour bus ride from Alabama to Michigan was routine. Her motorcoach made scheduled stops in Nashville, Cincinnati, and Detroit before reaching her destination.

But as she explains in a letter to Greyhound’s CEO, there was nothing routine about it:

I am a loyal passenger on Greyhound Lines as I ride the bus at least 4 times round trip each year. The purpose of this letter is to see if I can receive a solution letter for a financial settlement which I have been trying to receive for a while now with no success for my lost or stolen items.

My luggage has a yellow special handling tag that indicates that Greyhound is responsible for my luggage and the contents.

I was referred to you by your coworkers that I feel have been stonewalling and providing incorrect information up to this point. The most recent interaction was 4/26/19 around 6:34 pm in which Ms. Brown called me and stated she worked in the corporate office. We had a conversation and she stated she would contact back Monday and have not heard anything from her up to this day.

This has been a long and unsuccessful journey that I feel could have been resolved if there was better communication between your company and me. I have included a package of the documents that will show how long this process has been to get the letter. Since I had to mail the packages I am including my expense for those in my complaint (see the items).

I just want the issue to be taken care of as I suffer from chronic depression and other health concern that I believe this is not helping with my wellbeing.

By now, we can see a few red flags on the horizon.

First, there’s the $150,000 claim, for which you could buy a pretty decent used motorcoach. Then, it’s the letter along with a statement about chronic depression that seems to have nothing to do with the missing luggage.

Yet I still wanted to help with this Greyhound bus problem.

So how did this Greyhound bus problem happen?

I dug deeper into the claim. What happened to Parker? Then I found her actual claim:

The $150,000 claim was largely for “invasion of privacy” and “emotional distress.” The reason? She says someone stole $5,650 worth of jewelry from her checked luggage, even though the bag had a yellow tag on it, which she says entitled it to special handling.

Greyhound’s luggage liability

A quick look at Greyhound’s luggage liability shows its liability is limited.

If any of your checked baggage goes missing or is damaged while being stored in the baggage compartment under the bus, you can apply for compensation. You’ll need the baggage tag that was given to you when you checked your bag to process the claim.

We offer a maximum value of $250 per adult ticket and $125 per child ticket. If you have anything in your checked baggage that’s worth more than this amount, we can’t pay any more, unless you bought insurance.

Parker didn’t have insurance. And what about the pain and suffering the loss of her valuables caused? Unfortunately, Greyhound’s conditions of carriage make no mention of compensation for mental distress.

How to avoid a Greyhound bus problem like this

We publish the names, numbers and emails of key Greyhound executives on this site. But simply sending an email to an executive wouldn’t have done Parker much good. She might have also benefited from some of the proven problem-solving strategies on this site — and adjusting her claim to a more realistic level.

Under Greyhound’s conditions of carriage, Parker couldn’t file a claim for more than $250. She might have been able to ask for more in small claims court. Alabama small claims court actions are limited to claims of $6,000 or less.

But the best way to avoid a Greyhound bus problem like this is to never, ever pack jewelry in your checked bag.

It’s unclear why she packed two diamond bracelets, a birthstone ring and a gold band in her checked luggage. But if she’d simply carried the jewelry with her or worn it, then she would have avoided this trouble.

Threatening legal action can doom a claim

If your claim is outside the scope of the carrier’s liability rules, there’s one more thing you can do to kill it: threaten to sue. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Parker did. She found an attorney in Albion and sent a strongly worded letter to Greyhound in which she added perjury to her laundry list of charges.

Whether the claim has merit or not, sending a legal letter usually takes the case out of the hands of the customer service department and puts it straight into the legal department’s domain. The only way out of that department is usually through a court.

And for my advocacy team, it’s also the end of the road. We can’t advocate cases once a consumer has engaged legal counsel, for a variety of reasons. But mostly, this is not a legal advocacy organization. We use other — and at times, more effective — methods to encourage a fair resolution to a consumer problem. Sadly, Parker’s case was a non-starter.

So what’s your consumer IQ?

I’ve been thinking about Parker’s case a lot since it crossed my desk last week. I don’t know her personally, but she comes off as a well-meaning passenger who just wanted Greyhound to do the right thing. I’ve corresponded with thousands of people just like her. Most are good, reasonable people who just don’t understand how to effectively resolve a consumer problem. Maybe they exaggerate their claims (one zero can make a big difference) or they use the wrong approach (like making an empty threat of litigation). But ultimately, I think companies can quickly remedy these inflated consumer claims because they can easily — and legally — swat them down.

And that’s made my inner conspiracy theorist wonder whether companies are actively trying to create an entire generation of customers who can’t help themselves. At the risk of repeating myself, I believe these are otherwise smart, honest people who just don’t know anything about consumer rights.

That’s led to a series of even bigger questions. Can you measure consumer IQ? What is your consumer IQ? What should it be? How early should we start developing consumer IQ in schools, in order to counteract the obvious efforts by corporate America to turn all of us into obedient automatons?

I would have loved to help Parker. And I suspect that if we answer these questions, we might be able to help her and many, many people like her.

The post This Greyhound bus problem is an expensive travel lesson appeared first on Tripstations.

from Tripstations http://bit.ly/2KtJEyv via IFTTT