#apr 12 2023

[abybweisse]

Hey Aby,

How are you doing? I hope you are well.

I had a random thought when reading the Easter special chapter (I cannot remember the number). Grey says to Sebastian 'you weren't dead after all' which I find a bit strange considering what we know about Grey. He said a few times he is not scared of anything he can cut with his sword and that he is afraid of ghosts, spirits etc. Considering he was the one that stabbed Sebastian I would have expected him to be a bit more concerned about Sebastian being alive. I feel like they brushed over this a bit too easily. I can understand why it works with the other servants (although I think that was forced as well) but it makes no sense for Grey.

What are your thoughts? Apologies if this was answered already, I had a look but I could not find anything.

Regarding ch66, Frenzy

I also think it's odd that Charles Grey isn't terribly concerned that Sebastian isn't dead. I don't have a licensed copy handy right now, because I boxed them up! (What was I thinking? I should have boxed them last.) But doesn't Sebastian just laugh it off? Or Tanaka laughs? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Since Grey saw him "dead", he either thinks it's odd but possible that Sebastian survived, after all.

Or he has quickly learned there are things he cannot kill with his sword....

I wish this encounter had been explored some more, too.

[maraczeks]

+

[dianereviewsbooks]

Tasty. Healthy. Cheap.

So, you are just beginning adulting. Cooking looks so easy on TikTok. However, you find it confusing and even frustrating to cook yourself (either in your small apartment or dorm room). Enter Tasty. Healthy. Cheap., the cookbook meant for you. While I can totally see the benefit of eating food that is all of those adjectives, I’m not sure that this cookbook delivers on what its title promises.…

[blinkandyoumissit]

12 APR 2023 | DIFFUS • Fall Out Boy - Top 5 Candies

[jimdwightcentral]

[bilolli]

Good intetions for 2024: draw more backgrounds hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[mikeywayarchive]

Instagram story by kristincolby

[Apr 12, 2023]

[sammy-writes-sometimes]

Word Count: 773

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"So… were you born or made?" Skizz asks slowly.

Bdubs can't stop himself from laughing. "That's definitely a question to ask on your second date."

"Third date if you count, ya know." It makes a motion with its hand and finger, the lewd implications bringing Bdubs back to them in a clearing against a rocky slope.

"So was every affirmation you gave a date?" Bdubs asks playfully as they roll on their side, grass curling underneath them.

"You're avoiding the question, Dubs." Skizz giggles.

"Yeah, yeah, but why do you even want to know?"

"Curiosity, and I wanna see if I'm right."

The dryad huffs, moving to trace a hand over the angel's cheek.

"I was born from a leaf, happy?" They take a lighthearted tone, no true heat behind the hostile words.

"So I was right." Skizz smiles. "You seemed like the type, but– sorry, I'm getting too invasive if I ask that."

The angel wraps a wing around them. "I know their original spawns are important for most nature spirits and have to be hidden."

"It's fine…" He murmurs. "It's– well it's complicated. My birth server is closed off now, me n' my brother can return when we want, but it's not like I want to…"

Skizz smiles as it kisses his cheek. Soft and gentle, but endlessly warm.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

He hums, stopping for a moment to listen to the purr under his ear. Well, it's less of a purr and more something bird-like somehow, caught somewhere between a tiger's chuff and a songbird's trill.

"Since you already got to ask me; where did you come from? You're the only angel I've ever met and it's– I'm nosey and curious, I'd love to learn."

There's a brightness behind Skizz's eyes, barely hidden joy as he smiles.

"Do you know anything about how angels work?"

"Other than how you work down there, no."

Skizz laughs, a boisterous sort of thing as its chest shakes and rattles.

"What? It's true!" Bdubs yelps.

"True but–" It barely manages to get out. "It made me think how good you look under me, I got distracted!"

"Just answer the question, stupid."

"Okay, fine, I'm on it. Just don't complain when I keep you here for hours."

Despite the sun and the smaller worry he'd get burned, or the idea they'd be there until mobs start spawning, Bdubs can't find it in himself to be upset with that. The angel's wings, pristine and white, always looked beautiful during the day, but the idea of getting to see it at dusk almost felt dizzying.

"Deal."

Those wings shift, Skizz stretching out his arm and spreading his fingers.

"So gods, right? Those things above us all? They're real, kinda, but they need helpers so they made angels and demons." It then laughs. "Don't believe some stories, by the way. Demons aren't inherently or instinctually evil, they just sound big n' angry from living in the nether."

"How did demons get there?"

"No clue, but there's a bunch of stories and legends about what might've happened." Skizz nudges Bdubs closer to it, chuffing as it kisses him again. "But that's not really what we're here for. Maybe ask Impulse or Tango later, I'm sure they have their own legends.

"But with the gods thing, each has their own meaning and reason. You have gods of life, death, love, war, so on."

"And you?" Bdubs asks almost cautiously.

"It– it's kinda confusing to explain, but they're a god of the hearth."

"God of the what?"

"Hearth." It says as it laughs. "She's– they're kind of a protective god and a storyteller."

He brushes his hand over Skizz's cheek again, stubble scratchy under his palm. "Sometimes I forget you're something holy and important."

"I'm really not, just another guard and sorta follower of a god no one really talks about."

Bdubs moves to lay on Skizz, one hand resting on his cheek while the other lays on the angel's chest.

"I know you're already going to, but I'd love to hear more." Bdubs says softly. "About your life, this god you follow."

"I don't really follow her, angel's don't always have to." It laughs, then its feathers puff out. "Oh, do you want to hear about when I first met Dipple?"

He doesn't stop his partner, there's really no way he can as the day passes. A dulled chuff-trill under his cheek, laughter and smiles, the sunset dancing across hair and skin and reverberating off of snowy white feathers.

Neither of them really notice, trapped in story after story after story.

---------

Our ko-fi

[extinctgoodness]

Life now: Ayoko na, pero sige lang.

[hotshoeagain]

Oh, tumblr

just as I was about to reblog this and add @amethystineprose

I noticed whom I was reblogging this from 🥰

Amethyst stalactite 28 cm. Complete all around. Artigas, Uruguay. Inquire for details

[abybweisse]

Feral smartass Is really fitting for ut,lol

Also i cant stop imagining claudia and vincent as feral disasters,poor tanaka I geuss

Referring to this post.

Worse for Tanaka when you figure that Francis/Frances is likely either another Feral Disaster or an Angelic Smartass. The Angelic part would be her own, but the Smartass would be taking after her father, which also helps for the pattern of inheritance in the Kuroverse. Now I'm wondering if there's a Friday the 13th not too long (or too soon) after Vincent's birth that would place her as a Feral Smartass, like daddy. 🤔

Anyway, we don't know Tanaka's western zodiac sign... and Yana-san hinted in a tweet years ago that Tanaka's got quite the dark steak himself. I think it's a safe bet he was well-chosen for his role....

[fatliberation]

they have a point though. you wouldn't need everyone to accommodate you if you just lost weight, but you're too lazy to stick to a healthy diet and exercise. it's that simple. I'd like to see you back up your claims, but you have no proof. you have got to stop lying to yourselves and face the facts

Must I go through this again? Fine. FINE. You guys are working my nerves today. You want to talk about facing the facts? Let's face the fucking facts.

In 2022, the US market cap of the weight loss industry was $75 billion [1, 3]. In 2021, the global market cap of the weight loss industry was estimated at $224.27 billion [2]. 

In 2020, the market shrunk by about 25%, but rebounded and then some since then [1, 3] By 2030, the global weight loss industry is expected to be valued at $405.4 billion [2]. If diets really worked, this industry would fall overnight. 

1. LaRosa, J. March 10, 2022. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Shrinks by 25% in 2020 with Pandemic, but Rebounds in 2021." Market Research Blog. 2. Staff. February 09, 2023. "[Latest] Global Weight Loss and Weight Management Market Size/Share Worth." Facts and Factors Research. 3. LaRosa, J. March 27, 2023. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Partially Recovers from the Pandemic." Market Research Blog.

Over 50 years of research conclusively demonstrates that virtually everyone who intentionally loses weight by manipulating their eating and exercise habits will regain the weight they lost within 3-5 years. And 75% will actually regain more weight than they lost [4].

4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A.M., Samuels, B., Chatman, J. (2007). "Medicare’s Search For Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not The Answer." The American Psychologist, 62, 220-233. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2007.

The annual odds of a fat person attaining a so-called “normal” weight and maintaining that for 5 years is approximately 1 in 1000 [5].

5. Fildes, A., Charlton, J., Rudisill, C., Littlejohns, P., Prevost, A.T., & Gulliford, M.C. (2015). “Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records.” American Journal of Public Health, July 16, 2015: e1–e6.

Doctors became so desperate that they resorted to amputating parts of the digestive tract (bariatric surgery) in the hopes that it might finally result in long-term weight-loss. Except that doesn’t work either. [6] And it turns out it causes death [7],  addiction [8], malnutrition [9], and suicide [7].

6. Magro, Daniéla Oliviera, et al. “Long-Term Weight Regain after Gastric Bypass: A 5-Year Prospective Study - Obesity Surgery.” SpringerLink, 8 Apr. 2008. 7. Omalu, Bennet I, et al. “Death Rates and Causes of Death After Bariatric Surgery for Pennsylvania Residents, 1995 to 2004.” Jama Network, 1 Oct. 2007.  8. King, Wendy C., et al. “Prevalence of Alcohol Use Disorders Before and After Bariatric Surgery.” Jama Network, 20 June 2012.  9. Gletsu-Miller, Nana, and Breanne N. Wright. “Mineral Malnutrition Following Bariatric Surgery.” Advances In Nutrition: An International Review Journal, Sept. 2013.

Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function [10].

10. Tomiyama, A Janet, et al. “Long‐term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6 July 2017.

Prescribed weight loss is the leading predictor of eating disorders [11].

11. Patton, GC, et al. “Onset of Adolescent Eating Disorders: Population Based Cohort Study over 3 Years.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 20 Mar. 1999.

The idea that “obesity” is unhealthy and can cause or exacerbate illnesses is a biased misrepresentation of the scientific literature that is informed more by bigotry than credible science [12]. 

12. Medvedyuk, Stella, et al. “Ideology, Obesity and the Social Determinants of Health: A Critical Analysis of the Obesity and Health Relationship” Taylor & Francis Online, 7 June 2017.

“Obesity” has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition [13, 14] and its appearance may be a protective response to the onset of numerous chronic conditions generated from currently unknown causes [15, 16, 17, 18].

13. Kahn, BB, and JS Flier. “Obesity and Insulin Resistance.” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Aug. 2000. 14. Cofield, Stacey S, et al. “Use of Causal Language in Observational Studies of Obesity and Nutrition.” Obesity Facts, 3 Dec. 2010.  15. Lavie, Carl J, et al. “Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: Risk Factor, Paradox, and Impact of Weight Loss.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 26 May 2009.  16. Uretsky, Seth, et al. “Obesity Paradox in Patients with Hypertension and Coronary Artery Disease.” The American Journal of Medicine, Oct. 2007.  17. Mullen, John T, et al. “The Obesity Paradox: Body Mass Index and Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Nonbariatric General Surgery.” Annals of Surgery, July 2005. 18. Tseng, Chin-Hsiao. “Obesity Paradox: Differential Effects on Cancer and Noncancer Mortality in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.” Atherosclerosis, Jan. 2013.

Fatness was associated with only 1/3 the associated deaths that previous research estimated and being “overweight” conferred no increased risk at all, and may even be a protective factor against all-causes mortality relative to lower weight categories [19].

19. Flegal, Katherine M. “The Obesity Wars and the Education of a Researcher: A Personal Account.” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 15 June 2021.

Studies have observed that about 30% of so-called “normal weight” people are “unhealthy” whereas about 50% of so-called “overweight” people are “healthy”. Thus, using the BMI as an indicator of health results in the misclassification of some 75 million people in the United States alone [20]. 

20. Rey-López, JP, et al. “The Prevalence of Metabolically Healthy Obesity: A Systematic Review and Critical Evaluation of the Definitions Used.” Obesity Reviews : An Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 15 Oct. 2014.

While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35% for adults and 18% for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs [21].

21. Butler, Kiera. “Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam.” Mother Jones, 25 Aug. 2014. 

Body size is largely determined by genetics [22].

22. Wardle, J. Carnell, C. Haworth, R. Plomin. “Evidence for a strong genetic influence on childhood adiposity despite the force of the obesogenic environment” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 87, No. 2, Pages 398-404, February 2008.

Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index [23].  

23. Matheson, Eric M, et al. “Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals.” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 25 Feb. 2012.

Weight stigma itself is deadly. Research shows that weight-based discrimination increases risk of death by 60% [24].

24. Sutin, Angela R., et al. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality .” Association for Psychological Science, 25 Sept. 2015.

Fat stigma in the medical establishment [25] and society at large arguably [26] kills more fat people than fat does [27, 28, 29].

25. Puhl, Rebecca, and Kelly D. Bronwell. “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity.” Obesity Research, 6 Sept. 2012. 26. Engber, Daniel. “Glutton Intolerance: What If a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” Slate, 5 Oct. 2009.  27. Teachman, B. A., Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., Rawlins, M., & Jeyaram, S. (2003). Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: The impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychology, 22(1), 68–78. 28. Chastain, Ragen. “So My Doctor Tried to Kill Me.” Dances With Fat, 15 Dec. 2009. 29. Sutin, Angelina R, Yannick Stephan, and Antonio Terraciano. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality.” Psychological Science, 26 Nov. 2015.

There's my "proof." Where is yours?

[hotshoeagain]

Look! Don't scroll past. This is an amazing little story! All the elements of perfect storytelling ...

And folks just put things like this up on the internet for free.

We are blessed.

Blessed.

@totallysilvergirl

not a fanfic, yet a fic you might enjoy ;)

Many young wizards have taken to transmuting swans into humans and marrying them. One day, you are lucky enough to find a swan in the wild, and without hesitating, you turn it into a beautiful lady. Unfortunately, that ‘swan’, was a goose. You have just given a goose a human form.

[msbarrows]

Apr 12 - noticed I’d missed a couple surfaces in the bathroom yesterday, so hauled out the glass cleaner to clean the mirror and the exterior of the shower doors. Apart from that haven’t done anything.

My new mouse arrived, yay! No more random double clicks. Old mouse has been put aside as a backup mouse in case this one dies unexpectedly.

Supper was pulled pork on toasted hot dog buns, with steamed vegetables dressed with mayonnaise that’d had some curry powder mixed into it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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KGBO https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suncorp_Bank_ATM.jpg

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[mikeywayarchive]

Instagram story by mikeyway

[Apr 13, 2023]