#but he got like worse as a result of his environmental factors

[sunstartle]

crowsquirrel (TNP edition) is great actually because it’s the world’s teenagest girl x the world’s teenagest boy

[smaller-comfort]

Hello! I have a question about snecrons. Namely their love/mating darts. Before first use, how does someone know what their dart will do to a partner? Genetics do seem to play a big role so they'd have a guess I assume, but do they visit a doctor/biomancer who will tell them more specifically? How accurate are these predictions? How often does the first time lead to...surprises? Are there any cultural hangups around a "first time"? How many raunchy comedies are based on this set up 🤣?

Ahaha oh god. Well, as with anything necron/snecron, it varies and you can play it however you want. These ideas are free to a good home for people to play with as they like, I'm not a cop, you can do whatever you want forever, etc.

This got too long, it's going under a cut.

I don't necessarily think the effects would vary enormously across populations, but there are always going to be outliers. (I want to compare it to, like...weed strains, but I don't actually know anything about weed strains.) A trip to the biomancer for testing is probably standard for snecrontyr with status/access when they hit puberty. These tests would be quite accurate and probably part of routine healthcare, since they'd really just be taking a sample of the mucous secretions in the dart sac. Irregularities can be leading indicators for certain kinds of cancer.

There's a significant genetic component, but environmental and other developmental factors are also going to have an effect on things. (Thanks to @ocelly for that idea; excess cortisol in childhood -> paralytic/sedating effects as a sort of defensive measure.) It's normal for someone's dart composition to change over time because of things like age, diet, overall health, exposure to weird radiation, etc. But if you don't have access to regular healthcare (commoners, soldiers), then you're not able to monitor any changes. So 'surprises' are actually probably more likely well into adulthood, rather than the first time you dart someone.

Particularly because, well. Nearly every horny adolescent stabs themselves with their own dart at least once. It's not actually common for it to happen accidentally- engaging the muscles that eject the dart also lifts the tongue out of the way and opens the mouth, sort of like how humans can't sneeze with their eyes open. And, in fact, "I just sneezed really hard" is the standard flimsy excuse used by teenagers for generations. (Imagining some exhausted cryptek tutor with a classroom full of glassy-eyed, giggly students, "Allergy season? I do not get paid enough for this, all of you go away.")

But. Just because you have a printout listing all the chemical compounds in your dart, it doesn't mean you actually know how your partner is going to respond to it. Allergies happen. Particular sensitivities- or insensitivities- to specific euphorics or hormones happen. Overdose or illness can burn out the chemical receptors for some dart compounds, making normally pleasant sensations excruciating. (Overdosing would be rare- usually a single partner can't, even if they have multiple darts. But it's possible with multiple partners, and it happens with alarming frequency as a result of hazing at military academies.) (Does this make Setekh even worse? Sure does!)

There's a brisk business in drugs/augments that would claim to alter the effects of a dart; 'guaranteed to make your partner desperate to submit!' etc etc. Some of them would even work; odds are if it comes from a reputable biomancer, the effects are legit. There would be a lot of homeopathic remedy equivalents out there, though. (Biomancers would also fuck around with their own dart composition on the regular as a way to one-up each other at the annual biomancer conclave orgy. Does this potentially make Szeras even worse? God, I hope so.)

Wacky dart effects come up all the time in snecrontyr media, be it comedy, drama, or porn. The young lord discovering he's allergic to some component in his higher ranking partner's dart is a common romantic comedy subplot. (The subjects of these comedy subplots would always be either merchant caste or very low level/vitriform nobility. Comedy and hijinks where the subject is an overlord/nemesor or phaeron would probably get censored.) Advice columnists frequently have to field questions like "my lover just got back from the war and now when they dart me it Feels Different pls halp". Necrontyr Cinderella: it's a dart, not a glass slipper, that gets left behind.

Also re: first times, fun snail fact! They don't actually start producing love darts until after they've mated once. So virgin snails can't stab their partners. I feel weird and slightly uncomfortable applying this idea to snecrontyr, honestly. (I know, I know, that's really where I'm drawing the line? Go figure.) But it would fit in with all the other regressive social/sexual politics in play, so feel free to take it and run with it, with my blessing; deflowering narratives would be extremely popular in necrontyr porn either way.

Since using the darts is supposed to be about exerting dominance, there would probably be some performance anxiety around darting someone else for the first time. (Slapstick comedy routines around having bad aim? There's got to be some kind of "they couldn't hit the broadside of a barn" equivalent aphorism involving love darts.) And there would always be this tension around the fact that getting darted usually makes sex more enjoyable, but it's not something you're supposed to want, because it would mean you're being subordinate to your partner. "What if they both use the darts" blasphemous perversion, straight to jail. Unless you're a commoner, because who even cares about what they do, they're already barely better than Unclean to begin with.

("Straight to jail" really only happens in Ithakas, where fun has been outlawed for generations. Everywhere else is fine with it, it's just seen as a bit deviant.)

[masterjedilenawrites]

The Sniper and The Medic: Chapter 2

Starring: Crosshair, Original Character “Joan Vo,” probably the rest of the Bad Batch at some point

Summary: Crosshair doesn't exactly like medical personnel. In fact, he hates them. They're always poking and prodding, calling him skinny, telling him he's not good enough. But then he meets the new medical examiner, the smart and kind and oh-so-pretty Joan Vo. And suddenly, he's not only looking forward to his medical check-ups, but he's also starting to question whether he wants to go to war after all....

Rating & Warnings: T/PG-13. Eventual fluff. Light angst. Who knows what else will pop up, but I’ll leave warnings when needed.

Taglist: Let me know if you want to be tagged for this fic.

AO3 Link (In case you like it better over there, it’s okay, no judgement)

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Chapter 2: Doctor’s Orders

She wasn't the first human girl he'd ever seen.

But she sure was the prettiest.

There'd been some contractors and other hired help on the planet, especially in recent years as the demand on the warfront left few bodies to fill the more ancillary tasks. A few had been female. Each time one came in, there was endless chatter among the clones about them. Crosshair had never understood the fascination, nor had his brother Tech. They often wondered if that was just another one of their defects.

Now he got it.

She didn't wear the traditional medical garb, or even the sterile robes the Kaminoans usually gave visitors. Instead, she was in what looked like the clone's standard issue under-armor, "blacks." Slightly different material and stitching, but same concept. It stretched around her figure, highlighting both her obvious female-ness as well as some muscles. Her pinkish-blonde hair was pulled back from her face, which was young, but also weathered. She wasn't another posh politician or edgy mercenary. She was something else entirely.

But her arrival did nothing to help his nerves; in fact, he felt even worse now. This pretty girl would be the one inspecting him. Frowning at all his subpar test results. Reprimanding him for not eating or exercising enough. Judging him.

He watched her with wary eyes as she entered and gave him a small but endearing smile.

"Good morning," she said, her voice a bit raspy, but calm. Soft. "I'm Joan."

She looked at him expectantly. He knew he should give his official designation, but he decided to say the name he'd given himself, in a rebellious attempt to show himself as human.

"Crosshair."

She held her smile, unperturbed by his lack of protocol. In fact, she seemed pleased by it.

"Crosshair," Joan repeated, sending a shiver through him. She had been holding a datapad, undoubtedly containing all the sad details of his medical history. He braced himself for the uncomfortable silence that would happen as she flicked through it. But instead she placed it on a table along the back wall and rolled out a chair to face him.

"Well, Crosshair, tell me about yourself."

He blinked a few times. "Um," he nodded to the back table. "My file should have everything about me."

"Everything?" she asked with an amused smirk. "Like your favorite color? What you think about before falling asleep?"

Her eyes narrowed at him, a challenge, but a playful one. He had no clue how to respond.

Before he could come up with something to say, her face relaxed and she pushed her chair back as she stood, returning to the back table. She grabbed a pad of paper and an exam scope. The datapad remained neglected.

"Crosshair..." she said his name again, causing him to fight to control another pleasant fluttering in his chest. "Does that mean you're really into guns?"

She came in front of him again, resting the primitive writing materials on the table beside his leg as she fiddled with the settings on the scope.

"I'm a sharpshooter," he said. That was something he had an answer for.

"Sharpshooter." She quickly scribbled the word down on the paper. "There's something about you. What else?"

He was silent again, back to being utterly confused. Why didn't she just look in his chart? Was this some sort of test?

A pale light came on the scope and she brought it up to his right eye. She didn't let him sit in confusion for long. "Have you thought about getting a tattoo yet? You could do something really cool with a reticule, or a target. Maybe a bullet?"

She moved the scope across his other eye. He tried to stay still for her, even though he really wanted to furrow his eyebrows at the random change in topic.

"I... haven't thought about it," he muttered.

She set the scope down and held up the pen, holding it slightly behind his head.

"Look straight ahead, let me know when you see it," she said, bringing it slowly forward. He grunted as soon as the pen entered his periphery; he couldn't say anything as Joan was already talking again.

"What do you think is the furthest distance you could make a shot from?" The pen was moved to the other side and the exercise repeated, though she didn't seem too interested in it. "Like an accurate one. A bullseye, dead on."

She sounded like the young clones they'd sometimes bring around to the training rooms on field trips. Wide eyes, reverent voices, in awe of the cadets they'd one day become themselves.

Crosshair allowed himself to frown as he answered her, quite frankly, silly question. "It's not just a matter of my ability, but the capacity of the rifle and range of the blast, as well as a whole list of environmental factors."

Joan brought the scope up to one of his ears, now, peering through it. He could feel her breath against his neck as she spoke. "Okay, so you have the best long-distance rifle in the entire galaxy. Perfect wind and lighting conditions. Nothing else in your way. How far?"

He thought about for a few seconds, and then confidently stated, "Thirty-five hundred meters. Easy."

She was looking in his other ear, but he could still see her smiling, impressed, out of the corner of his eye. It made his cheeks feel warm.

"What would be a hard shot to make, then?" she asked, coming back around to face him. She motioned to hold his hands out in front of him. As he thought about the new question, she instructed him to fold his thumbs inward and then curl his other fingers into a fist. Her own hands wrapped gently over his; they were cold but soft, and he almost lost track of his thoughts as he watched her guide his wrists to bend up and down.

"Any pain?" she asked, bringing him back. He shook his head.

"Well..." he said thoughtfully, "I suppose it'd have to be shooting blind. You can still get a lay of the land, use your other senses to aim. But if you can't see what you're shooting at...."

Joan hummed in acknowledgement, moving his palms to face upward, and tapping along his wrists. "Any pain?" And he shook his head again.

"I knew a sniper once," she said in a lower voice. "You know what he said were the hardest shots he ever had to make?"

She moved his hands into another formation, where his knuckles touched each other in the middle of his chest with elbows sticking out. He shook his head, answering both questions, the one she'd just asked, and the one he expected would come with this test.

"He said it's the ones you don't want to make." Her light-heartedness was gone and her face now looked old and tired. "He didn't explain further, but I knew he'd been on the Umbara mission."

Crosshair didn't need her to explain further, either. They'd been told about Umbara.

"I would've known," he couldn't help but say. It had been the first thing he thought of when they were debriefed on the tragic mission. He hadn't told anyone, knowing it wouldn't be taken well, but he still believed it. There was no way he wouldn't have been able to tell it was his brothers at the other end of his gun.

She regarded him with a cocked head, and for a moment, the judgement he'd feared receiving in this room flashed across her features. But then it was gone, and her usual squinted eyes and quirked lips fell back into place.

"And what if you hadn't?"

"I would have. I know I would have."

She shook her head. "That's not what I meant. You have to think about the what-if sometimes. Even if they're far-fetched. Just to know what your response would be. Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst."

He didn't know what to say to that.

But Joan didn't wait for him to respond, either. She picked up the pad of paper, which he just now noticed had a lot more scribbles on it. He hadn't realized she'd been taking notes the whole time.

She handed the pad to him.

"Your homework. Write down some things about yourself for next time, okay?"

She took a step back, as if to make room for him to get up and leave.

He frowned at her. "That's it?"

She smiled at him. "For today. I think you're next on the schedule for Thursday. Same time."

He looked between the paper and her. She laughed a little.

"Try starting with your favorite color," she said with a wink, and then turned to clean up the remaining things.

He slowly got off the bed and shuffled out into the hallway, holding the pad of paper like it was a strange object he'd never seen before. He wasn't really reading any of the things she'd put on there, just staring at it to give himself something to focus on. That visit was, by far, the most bizarre medical check-up of his life.

And it was the first that he didn't want to leave.

[cruelfeline]

I'm rather new to the fandom but I had a thought/theory I'd like your opinion on regarding Hordak's 'defect'/illness as I think its never specified in canon what it is (correct me if I'm wrong). What if his defect is simply something he perceived about his past that is not real, similar to his perception that he was a top general to Prime. It was something he made up to explain events to himself, and that any illness that he displays by the show is simply the result of a manufactured (1/4)

being that was forced to survive in an environment that it was now designed to live in for 20 or so years. I think this might be the case for a couple of reasons, first I can definitely see Prime send defects to the front line, however in season 5 Hordak isn't simply shipped away to a front line somewhere. He is sent to Etheria but not for long and not what I would argue as the front line considering there are actual battles going on the planet and he's not like in the occupied territory (2/4)

most likely to see battle. And two despite how far he has 'fallen' in Primes eyes, Prime takes the time and resources to remold him rather than just dispose of him, and Hordak seems just as physically capable as his brothers after this. And if Prime was able to repair Hordak's 'defect' easily enough that he would keep him around rather than send him out to die in battle as Hordak had been showed to assume earlier, then perhaps Hordak never had any defect or illness to begin with. He only (3/4)

told himself that after he got separated from the galactic horde because why else would Prime send him away, why else would he even have been in a situation to be separated, he would think he must deserve it, that there had been something wrong with him and its his fault for what happened to him, and not the truth that he just happened to be the cog in the machine that fell out because there was a portal and he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry for the long ask lol.(4/4)

So, this is definitely an idea that’s been floating around the fandom: this concept that Hordak never actually had a physical defect, and that the illness we see is one caused by environmental factors on Etheria.

There’s nothing specifically wrong with this headcanon, and if it’s one that people enjoy, then by all means: indulge! However, it’s not one that I personally subscribe to, for a few reasons.

The first of these reasons is largely meta-based. Removing Hordak’s in-born physical defect removes a huge part of his character arc and a significant aspect of why he means so much to so many people, especially those people who identify with him in terms of physical disability. His arc is very much based on disability and how it affects him, on feelings of physical inadequacy connected to an illness that he cannot control coupled with a “family” and “society” that condemns him for that illness. Removing this aspect of him greatly diminishes the meaning of “imperfection is beautiful” and the lesson that he learns throughout the series.

If there was never any actual defect, if he was never really looked upon by Prime as “inadequate,” then what he learns about failure and having worth as he is, physical problems and all, becomes somewhat meaningless. If the defect never existed, then... the conflict is kind of gone, isn’t it? I mean, in that scenario, it would still be awful to be sent to the front lines to die, but the reason behind it, the thing about Hordak that so deeply hurts him, would be gone. The sort of igniting spark of his entire story would be gone, and with it, a major aspect of his character.

I also think that Hordak sort of rationalizing a position of importance in Prime’s cult is believable, simply because I feel like it happens in real cults. With real victims. Victims who think that, rather than being abused, they are participating in something important and meaningful. Victims who think that their abusers have special love for them (something that we likely see in that clone Prime caresses, in S5E5, actually). But I think it’s less believable that Hordak just “made up” an entire physical illness; I do think that that existed prior to Etheria. Removing it just seems... very odd to me. Especially removing it without coming out and addressing the fact.

The removal would also take away some of the sense of evil surrounding Prime: prioritizing his brothers based on physical ability, rejecting those with defects, is a horrific thing. Take that away, and Prime is still evil, but a certain emotional aspect of it is removed. Which, again, lessens the story, in my opinion.

Now, in terms of in-universe logic regarding why Hordak remains with Prime in season five: in my opinion, this has to do with memory access. 

While Prime is conquering Etheria, he wishes to maintain access to any relevant memories and information about it. Hordak is the only one with those memories. And, as we learn when Prime accesses one of his previous bodies, these memories cannot be uploaded into a server, or put on a thumb drive. They require a mind and body to exist. Therefore, Prime simply (temporarily) fixes Hordak up enough to make him pretty and functional and keeps him around as a memory bank. With this logic, there is a high chance that, once Etheria fell, Hordak would have lost his Healthy Maintenance privileges and been sent back to the front lines, but until that happened, he was useful.

This actually provides another facet to the disability narrative Hordak’s character explores: it’s not so much that Prime can’t maintain Hordak in something of a healthy state. It’s that he doesn’t think it’s worth it. It’s that it perhaps takes more resources, so why bother? Why bother tending to Hordak and giving him the extra care he needs, when Prime can just stick another, healthier clone in his place?

It’s the sort of awful question that, I think, we see asked every day in the real world: why bother making something accessible to someone with some form of disability when they can just be replaced by someone without that disability? Why put in the effort? The answer, of course, is because they’re people who deserve to live comfortable, fulfilling lives by virtue of being people, but for Prime, that’s not a concern. The concern is ease of use. The concern is not “wasting” resources. The concern is never how Hordak might feel, either physically or emotionally.

So that, to me, is how Hordak works in season five: he is useful despite his physical issues, and so he temporarily gets the maintenance he needs because of that use. And, thankfully, we never have to see Hordak lose that usefulness, because Prime dies before he can take Etheria. Small miracles and all.

Anyway! I hope that’s helpful? Obviously, one can headcanon whatever they want. But I think the most common interpretation of this in the fandom, at least the part I frequent, is that Hordak does have an actual physical defect that requires special care. Taking that away just lessens the impact of so much of his story arc, and it lessens a good portion of the representation he offers to many members of the fandom.

Oh, and a quick addition: it can also be both! It can be a natural defect that is made worse by Etheria’s environment! I’ve seen that done, too.

[mickibloo]

Human Rights and Veganism

I speak frequently about my passion for human rights and how this is often dismissed by nonvegans on the basis of me being vegan, and seeing how many other vegans have related to my struggles, I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the human rights issues animal agriculture is responsible for and/or perpetuates. This will not be a list that 100% encapsulates the extent to which human rights are violated by these industries, but I think it is still a really great introduction, if nothing else, to how ubiquitous the oppressive nature of animal agriculture is. This post will be mostly guided by links to sources and some key quotes and phrases from those sources. 

1. Slaughterhouse Workers

Slaughterhouse workers are one of, if not the most, abused, mistreated, and neglected groups of workers to exist within western countries. The traumatization they face as a result of their job is often ignored by almost everyone who is not vegan or who does not research the topic. 

“A Call to Action: Psychological Harm in Slaughterhouse Workers“

“These workers perform a job that, by its very nature, puts them at risk of psychological disorder and pathological sadism. This risk emerges from a combination of many factors of slaughterhouse work, one of which is the stressful environment that slaughtering creates. A large portion of this stress comes from the exceptionally high rates of injury among the workers.

“However, slaughterhouse work is unique among major industries due to its innate violence...one of the most prominent studies investigated the impact of having a slaughterhouse in a community on crime rates within that community, using this as a metric for psychological health... Though the industries they used for comparison were nearly identical in other predictors of changes in crime (namely worker demographics, potential to create social disorganization, and effect on unemployment in the surrounding areas), slaughterhouses outstripped all others in the effect they had on crime. They led not only to a larger increase in overall crime, but, disturbingly, disproportionate increases in violent crime and sexual crime.

“Creating and sustaining oneself with “good” moral character and having another self that can mechanically end lives for hours each day not only serves as another source of psychological stress for workers, but exposes workers to the risk that their pathologically un-empathetic work selves will slip into their community lives. This is another explanation for the “spillover” that affects slaughterhouse workers’ minds and communities.

“Living with the knowledge of their actions causes symptoms similar to those of individuals who are recipients of trauma: substance abuse, anxiety issues, depression, and dissociation from reality.

(Testimonies from slaughterhouse workers): “And then it gets to a point where you’re at a daydream stage. Where you can think about everything else and still do your job. You become emotionally dead.”

“So a lot of guys at Morrell [a major slaughterhouse] just drink and drug their problems away. Some of them end up abusing their spouses because they can’t get rid of the feelings. They leave work with this attitude and they go down to the bar to forget.”

Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker

There are things, though, that have the power to shatter the numbness. For me, it was the heads.

At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows' heads. Each one of them had been flayed, with all of the saleable flesh removed. But one thing was still attached - their eyeballs.

Whenever I walked past that skip, I couldn't help but feel like I had hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me. Some of them were accusing, knowing that I'd participated in their deaths. Others seemed to be pleading, as if there were some way I could go back in time and save them. It was disgusting, terrifying and heart-breaking, all at the same time. It made me feel guilty."

I know things like this bothered the other workers, too. I'll never forget the day, after I'd been at the abattoir for a few months, when one of the lads cut into a freshly killed cow to gut her - and out fell the foetus of a calf. She was pregnant. He immediately started shouting and throwing his arms about.

I took him into a meeting room to calm him down - and all he could say was, "It's just not right, it's not right," over and over again. These were hard men, and they rarely showed any emotion. But I could see tears prickling his eyes." I remember one day in particular, when I'd been there for about a year or so, when we had to slaughter five calves at the same time.

We tried to keep them within the rails of the pens, but they were so small and bony that they could easily skip out and trot around, slightly wobbly on their newly born legs. They sniffed us, like puppies, because they were young and curious. Some of the boys and I stroked them, and they suckled our fingers.

When the time came to kill them, it was tough, both emotionally and physically. Slaughterhouses are designed for slaughtering really large animals, so the stun boxes are normally just about the right size to hold a cow that weighs about a tonne. When we put the first calf in, it only came about a quarter of a way up the box, if that. We put all five calves in at once. Then we killed them.

America’s Slaughterhouses Aren’t Just Killing Animals

“I’ve seen bleeders, and they’re gushing because they got hit [by a knife] right in the vein, and I mean, they’re almost passing out,” she said, “and here comes the supply guy again, with the bleach, to clean the blood off the floor, but the chain never stops. It never stops.”

In Texas, where private employers are not required to carry workers’-compensation insurance, Tyson has opted out of the state system completely. When a worker gets injured at the Tyson beef slaughterhouse in Amarillo, Texas, in order to get medical care from the company, that person must first sign a document saying:

I hereby voluntarily release, waive, and forever give up all my rights, claims, and causes of action, whether now existing or arising in the future, that I may have against the company, Tyson Foods, Inc., and their parent, subsidiary and affiliated companies and all of their officers, directors, owners, employees, and agents that arise out of or are in any way related to injuries (including a subsequent or resulting death) sustained in the course of my employment with the company.

The pressure to sign was enormous. When a worker named Duane Mullin had both of his hands crushed in a hammer mill at the Amarillo slaughterhouse now owned by Tyson, a manager employed by its previous owner persuaded him to sign the waiver with a pen held in his teeth.

'We're modern slaves': How meat plant workers became the new frontline in Covid-19 war

The company is now measuring workers’ temperatures as they report for work, and began supplying surgical facemasks, but, according to Fields and workers interviewed by the Guardian, Tyson continues to suppress information on employees who have tested positive for Covid-19.”

One worker, a central American migrant who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her job, told the Guardian that the company was not enforcing social distancing. 'We are all given bathroom breaks at the same time and there are hundreds of us waiting to use them. There are only seven bathrooms,' she said. 'They [Tyson] don’t care about the worker. They don’t care if we get sick.' A spokesman for Tyson said the company was taking 'several measures' to allow social distancing but did not address the bathroom break allegations."

One African American worker at a Koch facility that had been targeted by Ice, spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. He alleged that while Koch had recently begun taking workers’ temperatures before shifts, they had also withheld details of any workers who contracted the virus. 'They ain’t offering nobody no disability, no unemployment, no time off,' the worker said. 'I just keep my hands washed up, my face covered up, my whole body covered, and I pray to myself and hope I don’t catch it. The truth is there’s a chance that everybody in [here] will catch it.'

The sociologist Lourdes Gouveia has studied the meatpacking industry for three decades and said the Covid-19 outbreak is simply highlighting again the dangerous conditions in processing plants. Gouveia said the industry has perfected a formula which allows it to maximize profit while producing relatively safe meat by resisting regulations and utilizing low cost, mostly immigrant, labor in unsafe conditions. 'All of these elements are of a highly perfected formula or maximizing profits that is unlikely to change fundamentally,' Gouveia said."

2. Environmental Racism and Classism

Animal agriculture, and factory farms specifically, tend to locate their facilities near poor communities (often black or Hispanic) who do not have the financial means to take them to court over the ways in which these farms affect their health and wellbeing. 

How Swine in North Carolina Affects real People | René Miller Excerpt

“When you go back and you look at where these hog facilities are located, there’s a disproportionate number of them that are located near communities of color, low income communities. It is definitely a human rights issue.”

“Now see, if you lived here, and saw the way they do, you wouldn’t eat no pork. I don’t eat bacon, because I know where it comes from. When they die, they go into a box, and they decompose because they swell in the heat. A truck come and pick them up, take them to the processing plant in Roseo, ground them up into feed, and feed them back to the hogs.

“It hits you right in the face. Smell like something that you had never smell before. Smell worse than a dead body.”

“When we go to the funeral, he used the spray. If we wanna have a cookout on Sunday, he’ll spray. He always sprays Sunday.

“Do you think it’s also a civil rights issue?”

“Yes, I do.”

When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting

Like many other hazardous and exhausting low-wage industries in the United States, this work depends on the labor of America’s most marginalized communities. Most workers in the industry are people of color, many are women, and nearly one-third are immigrants.

In 1983, wages for workers in the meat and poultry industry fell, for the first time, below the national average for manufacturing work; in 1985, they were 15 percent lower; in 2002, they were 24 percent lower; today, they are 44 percent lower. Workers earn, on average, less than $15 an hour.

Jobs in the meat and poultry industry have long been a starting point for many groups of new immigrants to the United States as many positions require little formal education, experience, or English-language skills. In 2015, nearly 30 percent of meat and poultry workers were foreign-born non-citizens—about three times more than the percentage of manufacturing workers nationally.

Even immigrants with work authorization can remain vulnerable to coercion from employers, as many are not aware of their workplace rights, may not be familiar with technical terms in English, or are otherwise hesitant to navigate the complex, and potentially costly, procedures to vindicate their rights. The result is a significant part of the low-wage workforce who are less likely to report workplace abuses or even injuries, and are therefore more easily exploitable than US citizens, for fear of their employers’ power to fundamentally disrupt their lives and the lives of their families. “Us workers are afraid to lose our job,” said Rebecca G., an immigrant worker at a poultry plant in Arkansas. “[P]eople don't speak up or say what's wrong about the chemicals, or the speed of the line, or the discrimination.”

3. The displacement and murder of indigenous peoples

The Companies Behind the Burning of the Amazon

The burning of the Amazon and the darkening of skies from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, have captured the world’s conscience. Much of the blame for the fires has rightly fallen on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for directly encouraging the burning of forests and the seizure of Indigenous Peoples’ lands.

But the incentive for the destruction comes from large-scale international meat and soy animal feed companies like JBS and Cargill, and the global brands like Stop & Shop, Costco, McDonald’s, Walmart/Asda, and Sysco that buy from them and sell to the public. It is these companies that are creating the international demand that finances the fires and deforestation.

The transnational nature of their impact can be seen in the current crisis. Their destruction is not confined to Brazil. Just over the border, in the Bolivian Amazon, 2.5 million acres have burned, largely to clear land for new cattle and soy animal feed plantations, in just a few weeks. Paraguay is experiencing similar devastation.

After years of remarkably successful conservation initiatives that cut Brazil’s deforestation rate by two-thirds, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has reopened the doors to rampant destruction as a favor to the agribusiness lobby that backs him. That industry is accountable for the atmosphere of lawlessness, deforestation, fires, and the murder of Indigenous peoples that followed. According to data released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon in July 2019 increased 278 percent over the previous July. Bolsonaro responded to this news by firing the head of the INPE. 

I would like to close this post by saying that I understand this may leave nonvegans with some questions; What can consumers do about this? Should consumers be expected to do anything, or would that simply be misplacing the blame for these things? Aren’t all industries awful in similar ways since there is no ethical consumption under capitalism? If you have these questions, I am more than happy to engage in a good-faith conversation about them. The purpose of this post, however, is not to answer such inquiries. I made this purely to raise awareness about these issues because the only people I ever see discuss them are vegans, and these are extremely important topics that I think deserve far more attention than they receive. 

[lacquerware]

Resident Evil 2 reflections

One crisp winter evening in early 1998, my friend “Kyle” sat me down on the floor of his room, which was twice the size of my room, and fired up his Sony PlayStation. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said.

He’d said that a lot over the past several months, usually in regards to something happening on the Sony PlayStation, and usually he was right. He’d shown me Resident Evilfirst, always calling it “Res Eve,” and it had shaken my very idea of what a video game was. Real actors? Real voices? Real emotions? Indeed I could not believe that something as juvenile and recreational as a video game had actually scared me. But the efficacy of that first zombie head-turn was undeniable.

In the following months Kyle had shown me a Top Gun game with live-action cutscenes featuring the bald principal from Back to the Future; the original Dynasty Warriors, which was a 3D fighting game; Mortal Kombat Trilogy; and the Sephiroth fight from Final Fantasy VII where he destroys the entire solar system as a canned attack animation. It’s amusing in hindsight that these titles could ever have been lumped together in any capacity, but each of them was such a fundamental upset of my existing notion of video games* that it was initially impossible for me to discern any gradient in quality. With the exception of the live-action bits, I couldn’t even discern FMVs from in-game cutscenes, because neither concept had existed in my head at all. It was like if you’d gone back in time to the dawn of the industrial age and shown someone The Godfather and an episode of Married with Children back-to-back. However briefly, there’d be a moment where their reaction would be roughly the same to each: “THE PICTURES ARE MOVING AND TALKING.”

*Okay, MK Trilogy didn't exactly break new ground, but it made me realize my kopy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on the Genesis wasn't very ultimate at all.

↑↓ Keep in mind I saw these two things on the same day, prior to which the most visually impressive thing I'd ever seen a game do was accurately render comic strip characters (Garfield: Caught in the Act, I'm looking at you).

On this crisp, winter evening in 1998, Kyle showed me Resident Evil 2, which had only just released. We sat and watched the Leon intro in silence. There’s a very special stillness, an eerie electricity to the original RE2 intros that reminds me of the ominous feeling of the air and the sky before a big thunderstorm. It’s the same feeling I get when I watch the closing moments of the Who Shot Mr. Burns? Episode of The Simpsons, that sparse tension that is equal parts quieting and disquieting.

I watched, transfixed. Finally, the game relinquished control to Kyle, and he ran through a fiery city street teeming with zombies. Their numbers seemed to fill every shot. Everything was wrecked and burning and overrun, a fruition of the thing the first Resident Evil only hinted at while locking you inside that mansion.

Kyle ducked into an apparent safehouse and was immediately—seamlessly!—halted by a suspicious shopkeep with a shotgun. A dramatic, fully voiced conversation ensued, the shopkeep backed off, and Kyle was given freedom to explore the room until suddenly—seamlessly!—the horde crashed through the false security of the shop’s window glass and ate the screaming shopkeep alive, blood fountaining from his red-stained neck and torso. You know the rest.

I walked home for dinner at dusk, looking back over my shoulder every few feet, and marveled that a video game could generate such real-life fear.

I got my own Sony PlayStation about half a year later and devoured both RE2campaigns within three days. By the end I was as much a survivor as a player, and didn’t entirely know how to reconcile the good time I’d had with the immense feeling of relief that it was over. To survive a prolonged immersion in terror is an emotionally complicated experience, and not one I’d been accustomed to associating with “play.” It struck me how much scarier RE2 was than even RE1. RE1 put danger in the obvious place—a big, creepy mansion; in RE2, the evil had spilled out into the streets and overrun society’s most guarded spaces—a gun shop, a police station. The voice acting, graphics, and environmental design were also significantly better than before. The point is that Resident Evil 2 was a special game, in large part because it did things early, but also because it did things well. It was the sweet spot of the original RE trilogy—it did things better than RE1, at a riper time than RE3.

I might’ve thought any attempt to recapture that magic would be futile, had Capcom not already proven the potential for such a thing in 2002 with the GameCube remake of the original Resident Evil, which was where much of the demand for an RE2 remake came from in the first place. The RE1 remake had very cleverly used the players’ nostalgia against them, subverting our expectations in all the most notorious moments. It also made modest but smart improvements to the game’s systems and drastic improvements to its audiovisual elements, and threw in a few meatier surprises. Basically it succeeded in an impossible aim: to make fans feel like they were replaying their favorite game for the first time.

For the most part, RE2’s remake is just as much of a triumph as RE1’s, combining state-of-the-art tech and thoughtful self-reflection to make the old feel brand new again. The police station is significantly altered from its original layout, and yet similar enough that you feel like you know it. The more rote, later sections of the original game have been given new personality and contour—the greenhouse and sewer sections both stood out as impressively reimagined. The characters, too, have been smartly rewritten to feel more like interacting humans than archetypal action figures. Each one of them bore impressive nuance rarely seen in a Capcom title but crucial for good horror, in my opinion.

The action seems to lean heavily toward the “survival” side of things, with even plain-jane zombies sometimes taking an obscene number of bullets before they stay down. I appreciate how this adds to the “dangerous” feel of the game, but I sometimes felt like it had lost a little bit of the fun factor I associate with the shooting action of the entire series. Still, I see this as a stylistic choice rather than a flaw, and they also give you a handful of unlockable infinite ammo rewards in the post-game so you can go for a more action-packed “victory lap.” (Note: @jbsargent taught me that term :D)

Mr. X is worth his own essay, but I’ll just say he was always one of my favorite things about RE2 and he’s absolutely my favorite thing about the RE2remake. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Shortcomings

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the remake’s glaring mistreatment of the A/B campaign structure. The whole point of this game’s dual-protagonist hook is to show the unfolding of events from two separate but concurrent perspectives. Here’s what happened to Claire. Now here’s what happened to Leon. The remake sometimes gives us this—Leon deals with Ada while Claire handles Sherry and the police chief—but sometimes inexplicably puts Leon and Claire through the same events, implying that only one of these campaigns is happening. How else can you explain that both Leon and Claire witness, for example, Mr. X lifting the chopper wreckage to make his chilling debut? What point is there to an A/B campaign if they nullify each other? They may as well have done away with the “2nd Run” concept altogether and just let you pick the Leon story or the Claire story. This is one of those things that bothers me the more I think about it. It didn’t affect me very much in the moment, but looking back I don’t know what to make of the story at all. Who did what? The 2nd Run is slightly shorter than the first, but I would have been content with something even shorter if it meant a more coherent narrative.

They’ve also cut at least a couple of the moments from the original game in which Leon and Claire check in with one another, which I found to be enough to greatly hurt the sense of connection between the two characters. The moments when they do interact are great, but I wished there’d been a few more. They also speed through the intro movie on 2nd Run, employing a “Last time on 24”-like highlight reel instead of giving it the space it needs to establish the crucial atmosphere and character dynamics. I didn’t like that.

Camera placement is a debate that will probably never die in the Resident Evil community, and it’s hard for me to even decide where I stand on the matter. The use of fixed camera angles in the classic games was a stroke of genius that allowed the games to mimic the tried-and-tested techniques of horror film, but occasionally the shifting angles caused player inputs to get tangled, resulting in unintended frustration. The over-the-shoulder cam used in the RE2 remake and most other recent RE titles gives the player complete control over what they see. This is a much friendlier interface for the action sequences, but it also means the game can’t force you to look at anything. On my first playthrough, I missed four or five classic moments including the first appearance of Mr. X because I happened to be looking elsewhere when they occurred. I see this as emblematic of the sometimes conflicting aims of game design, where a game is both a plaything and a cinematic experience targeting specific emotions. I’m not sure there’s a perfect solution to this, but I appreciate that the game essentially operates like an autonomous ecosystem. If you miss the action it’s your own fault, but it’s true to life in that sense.

↑ This is actually one rare moment where camera control is taken away and you have to look. Gah.

I don’t think there’s any fair way to conclude that the remake is better or worse than its predecessor, but I’ll happily submit that Resident Evil 2 is the best game ever announced via T-shirt. I think Capcom can look back with pride and say, "WE DID IT."

[sciencespies]

A literal mouse plague is terrorizing towns in eastern Australia right now

https://sciencespies.com/environment/a-literal-mouse-plague-is-terrorizing-towns-in-eastern-australia-right-now/

A literal mouse plague is terrorizing towns in eastern Australia right now

While the rest of the world continues to tackle the global pandemic, in eastern Australia, waves of mice are flooding farms and towns.

For months now, this plague has been wreaking havoc on crops, damaging electrical wires in buildings, and even biting hospital patients, leaving a stench of rodent urine and feces in its wake.

The mice are getting into drinking water supplies, making some people sick, and decimating hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crops grown by farmers who have already endured years of drought, not to mention the pandemic.

The mouse plague just gets worse- mice pour out of a temporary silo and into an opportunistic trap near Dubbo. Sarah Pye was horrified by the scene – she says she’s “devastated, disgusted and done.” She says “after such a boomer of a season after drought, to lose it all is awful” pic.twitter.com/6bfzprY67j

— Lucy Thackray (@LucyThack) May 18, 2021

While this may sound extreme, mouse plagues are actually semi-regular in Australia, thanks to a confluence of factors.

House mice (Mus musculus) are an introduced species on the continent, yet very well adapted to endure Australia’s harsh years of dry droughts, thriving once conditions become favorable.

“A single pair of mice can give rise to 500 mice in a breeding season,” explains Steve Henry who is a research officer at Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO.

However, outbreaks of this scale are rarer, he said.

We’re at the stage of the mouse plague even cats aren’t phased pic.twitter.com/5zXQR9MVOX

— Lucy Thackray (@LucyThack) April 27, 2021

“We’ve had a very wet summer resulting in heavy crops and vegetation growth leading to massive amounts of available food for mice,” explained Charles Sturt University environmental scientist Maggie Watson.

“Add to that a very mild autumn, and these mice are breeding in plague proportions.”

Unfortunately, the most effective defense farmers and residents have against this furry ravenous horde is poison. The government in the state hardest hit, New South Wales, has now sought urgent approval from the Commonwealth regulatory body for a second-generation pesticide called bromadiolone.

But scientists are warning that widespread use of this chemical, usually restricted to deployment in and around buildings, will just cause more harm.

“Second-generation rodenticides can saturate the entire food web, affecting everything from slugs to fish,” Edith Cowan University wildlife ecologist Robert Davis and colleagues wrote for The Conversation.

Their research found the poison in frog-eating tiger snakes, omnivorous skinks that eat vegetation and snails, and a mouse-eating snake with five different poisons.

“Many reptiles – natural mice predators – will also bioaccumulate rodenticides, and as reptiles seem to be able to survive a bit longer after rodenticide uptake, they themselves then become ‘toxic time bombs’, waiting to poison any predator that might eat them,” said Curtin University conservation biologist Bill Bateman.

“First-generation rodenticides work more slowly but also break down more quickly and so have less of an impact on native animals that might eat poisoned mice.”

Even desperate farmers are reluctant to resort to using bromadiolone, preferring to stick to the safer zinc phosphide option, reports ABC’s Lucy Thackray, who has been closely following the outbreak while the mice have infested her own home.

Some farmers, like Ryan Milgate, are also concerned that trying to keep Australia’s notorious dust storms at bay is contributing to the problem. This is done by keeping the base of previous crops in the ground to hold the top soil down, which also ends up providing better breeding conditions for the mice.

Hi Linda, I hope this video might help explain how the mouse problem has got to the extent it has. pic.twitter.com/OL9IOnpVpB

— Ryan Milgate (@ryan_milgate) May 19, 2021

“Treating house mouse plagues as though the ecosystem were unbalanced isn’t really a feasible option in Australia, they are simply something we have to live through,” said Watson, explaining that long before mice landed on the shores, Australia had antechinus plagues feasting on locust plagues.

Generally, environmental ‘boom and bust’ cycles are natural in Australia due to the continent’s unpredictable rain patterns.

“Australia should invest in research for grain storage facilities that are less permeable to mice,” Davis and colleagues suggest, to try to minimize the food available to the plague mice.

There’s still no assistance for farmers dealing with the immense costs and damage associated with the mouse plague, which isn’t improving. It’s a huge blow as they’re still very much in recovery mode from the drought. This was filmed by Brody Roche in Tottenham in central NSW. pic.twitter.com/M0Xs3u3DrW

— Lucy Thackray (@LucyThack) March 28, 2021

Many birds of prey that naturally feed on mice – such as black-shouldered kites, boobook owls, and tawny frogmouths – are in decline due to loss of habitat from increasing urbanization and broad-acre monoculture cropping, explains Watson.

So looking after habitat structures where predators live, such as rocky outcrops and remnant vegetation, is also vital. 

“Birds of prey, native carnivores, snakes and large lizards – they are our front line defense against mouse plagues,” said Bateman.

Hence, poisoning these predators will just make the control of mouse populations more difficult in the long term.

“You could completely reduce the population of birds of prey,” Watson told CNN. “It could take 15 to 20 years for them to start coming back, and meanwhile we don’t have any natural controls for the next mouse plague that comes along.”

Scientists are looking into ways to better manage Australian mouse plagues. Meanwhile those in the path of the current destructive wave of mammals need support.

#Environment

[lindafrancois]

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” 8 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back

“Why can’t I lose weight, Steve?”

This question breaks my heart every time I hear it. And I hear it multiple times per day from frustrated people like yourself.

Some of those people are our 1-on-1 coaching clients, who we work closely with to uncover the truth.

And that’s what we’re after: the truth on why weight loss is so tough to achieve.

Why “Eat less and move more” sounds nice in theory, but is insulting to those who KNOW this, try their best, and yet the scale just doesn’t budge.

We’ll tackle today’s topic with statistics, science, and plenty of Harry Potter analogies. This is Nerd Fitness after all.

We’ll go over:

Why I hate the nutrition industry.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

How your metabolism responds to a calorie deficit.

The science of fat loss.

What to eat for weight loss.

Which diet should you pick?

The difference between strength training and exercise.

How strength training assists weight loss.

Small changes for successful weight loss.

Let’s jump in, Scuba Steve style, so you can start seeing results!

If you’re somebody that wants a Yoda in your corner to coach you through the ups and downs of your fitness journey, we’re here for you with our Online Coaching Program!

No shame or judgments – just a supportive person who works hard to help you succeed 🙂

WHY THE NUTRITION INDUSTRY MAKES ME SO ANGRY

I took this picture walking around Manhattan last week:

There is some SERIOUS psychological warfare going on here, and it hurts my soul.

For starters, they advertise as “THE” flat belly tea.

This means there are many other companies selling similar products, which would ALSO lead me to believe this is a lucrative product to sell!

They list every fitness buzzword and term every marketer uses when it comes to selling health and fitness: gluten-free, “removes waste,” organic, “burn fat,”

Including some real head-scratchers.

“Strengthen your colon?”

How the hell do you strengthen your colon?!

This reminds me of the brilliant Saturday Night Live skit about “Colon Blow” cereal:

But I digest digress…

People are buying this stuff, even if they know it probably won’t work.

Like buying a lottery ticket even when we know the odds of winning are 0% –  what we’re really buying is “hope”:

Hope that this will actually work – unlike the last 10 attempts.

Hope we can overcome 20 years of bad choices with a beverage.

Hope that this product will give us the confidence and self-love we deserve.

Don’t get me wrong.

“Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

I just HATE when hope gets weaponized to sell you expensive snake oil and pretty-packaged fluff.

This is what we are rebelling against here in the NF Rebellion: marketers and companies who are crappy enough to prey on our hopes and fears and sell snake-oil in a bottle.

We’re also rebelling against that voice in our head that talks down to us, calls us failures for not getting in shape yet, and berates us every time we break down and eat a cookie.

I say no more.

Let’s fight fire with fire science.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

There are a few generally accepted truths when it comes to weight loss.

All of these come with baggage attached, and your results will vary depending on your

Weight

Level of activity

Genetics

Sex

Medications

Body fat percentage

Setting all of that aside, I’m going to try and keep things simple just to prove my point.

Let’s go with an (understandably) oversimplified look at weight loss: a pound of fat equals around 3,500 calories.

This would mean you’ll need to either eat 3,500 fewer calories, or burn an extra 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

So…how long does it take to burn 3,500 additional calories per week?

Let me answer a question with another question:

…How many hours do you have?

Studies show you’ll burn an extra 100 calories when walking or running a mile.

So, you would need to be running/walking an additional 5 miles per day, 7 days a week, to lose one pound per week.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to run an extra 5 miles a day.

Nor do I want to!

Not only that, but as you’ll see below – this idea of just burning an extra 500 calories per day to lose a pound a week only works early on.

You’ll quickly run into speed bumps and roadblocks – figurative ones, try to avoid the real ones on your run –  that slow down your progress significantly.

Simply put, exercising your way thin has been proven time and time again not to work.

Here are three such reports:

#1) Many people develop increased appetites as a result of exercise, which leads to no weight loss. Time Magazine got in trouble for pointing this out  – even though they were right!

#2) This 2011 study came to the conclusion:

“In overweight and obese populations… our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy.”

#3) Another study compared people who dieted vs people who only exercised:

Body weight decreased by 10% in the diet group and by 9% in the diet–exercise group, but did not decrease in the exercise group or the control group.

What I’m trying to say, and a lesson we try to deeply understand at Nerd Fitness: “you can’t outrun your fork”

…and the bad news isn’t done.

How our metabolism responds to a caloric deficit (our bodies ruin everything!)

When you start to lose weight, your resting metabolism slows down.

You might think this is some sort of evil sorcery worthy of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” but unfortunately – it’s just 2nd-grade math.

When you start to lose weight, there is less of you that needs ‘fuel.’

In other words: your metabolism doesn’t have to work as hard to fuel all of your bodily functions, has less weight to carry, and thus it will burn significantly fewer calories compared to when you were much bigger.

Here is the estimated daily resting calorie burn (“sit on your ass all day”) of a 35-year old male nerd at 3 very different weights – which you can learn from our Calorie Calculator:

300 lbs: 2,600 calories.

250 lbs: 2,300 calories.

200 lbs: 2,000 calories.  

WHAT THIS MEANS: Unless you adjust your calorie intake as your weight decreases… your previous calorie intake amount becomes less and less effective at weight loss, until you hit an equilibrium.

Put a different way: this person could eat 2,300 calories per day and over time, lose 50 pounds (from 300 pounds to 250 pounds), but that’s where he’ll hit equilibrium: calories burned equals calories consumed.

In order for him to lose the next 50 pounds, he’ll need to decrease his caloric intake even more, and then STAY at that calorie consumption to keep the weight off.

And then it gets even worse!

There are buckets of anecdotal evidence of a bodily feature called “adaptive thermogenesis.”

Which has nothing to do with the band Genesis – though feel free to listen to “Invisible Touch” right now.

It might soften the blow while you learn about “adaptive thermogenesis.”

“Adaptive thermogenesis” refers to the process in which our bodies will adjust based on how many calories we burn – and do whatever it can to preserve the body fat we have.

Our bodies WANT to maintain the extra body fat we have (“I don’t know when I’ll need this, better save”), and are actively working in unison to preserve it – so even after a few pounds are lost from running, it’s going to be a persistent challenge to keep the weight off.

As pointed out in this article above:

“In long-term studies of weight-reduced children and adults, 80%-90% return to their previous weight percentiles, while studies of those successful at sustained weight loss indicate that the maintenance of a reduced degree of body fatness will probably require a lifetime of meticulous attention to energy intake and expenditure.”

This is why so many people can LOSE weight, but can’t seem to keep the weight off.

This is also not even factoring in all of the other issues around our bodies: environmental issues (you can smell Cinnabon minutes before you see it!), psychological challenges, menopause, various medication side effects, hormones, depression, anxiety, and other issues.

These things cause our bodies to crave food, to try and store food, and make it tough for us to keep our calorie intake under control, because chocolate cake.

To Recap:

You can’t exercise your way to weight loss.

Your metabolism slows down when you lose weight.

Your environment and food scientists are trying to get you to overeat.

Your body will try to keep its fat stores.

Even when you lose weight, your body wants to keep the fat it has.

If you lose weight, you have to keep working on it or you’ll put the weight back on.

This is all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.

And the toughest truth of all: Due to those factors above, it might not be your fault that you’re overweight…but it IS your responsibility to navigate!

I know, I know.

However, there is HOPE!

And here at Nerd Fitness – and in the Star Wars universe – rebellions are built on hope.

We have thousands of success stories from people who thought they couldn’t lose weight…until they did.

People HAVE lost weight, and kept it off.

People who are older, bigger, have more children, less money, more illnesses, and bigger hardships than you.

It’s a constant battle, but one that’s absolutely worth fighting.

And this means that you are not broken. You don’t have metabolic damage. You are not doomed.

Sure, you’re flawed.

But so are your heroes.

You might be playing life on “Legendary” difficulty, but people like you have succeeded.

It starts by using all of the tools at our disposal, because the forces working against us are doing the same.

Let’s get nerdy.

Want to lose weight and get strong like Leslie? Learn more about our Online Coaching Program!

The Science of Fat Loss

YES, it would be awesome if you could drink a tea, or wrap yourself in plastic, and it would somehow magically make you lose weight or fat.

YES, it would be amazing if a 30-minute bootcamp class was enough to still allow you to eat junk food all day every day and not gain a pound.

YES, it would be amazing if you could take a magic pill that reversed the past decade of damage you’ve done to your body.

It would also be cool if superheroes were real and I could fly.

Well, not like that.

Come on, Aquaman. People can see you.

We live in a world of science, physics, and thermodynamics.

This means we should ALWAYS look at life through the following lenses:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is PROBABLY the correct one.

Law of energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Reality: If it sounds TOO good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s apply this to our waistlines:

If we are overweight…

It’s not because we have “toxins” in our body that need to be flushed out.

It’s not because we didn’t spend enough time in the “fat-burning” zone during our “muscle confusion” bootcamp.

It’s not because we picked the wrong ‘fat burning’ product tea.

These are all pseudoscience buzz terms to sell products, and have no truth to their claims.

Occam’s Razor dictates the simplest solution is PROBABLY the right one.

So what’s the simple explanation to why we’re overweight?

Every day, we consume food that gets transformed into energy.

This food has three options once it enters our body:

Fuel our bodily functions: fuel our organs, regulate our body temperature, etc.

Pass through as waste: pee and poop.

Get stored as fat: saved for a rainy day.

If we are overweight, we are consuming more ‘energy’ than our bodies need every day. Because our body doesn’t need all of it, too much is being stored as fat.

This brings us to the main point of our nutritional focus:

If weight loss is our goal, we must consume FEWER calories than we burn on a consistent basis.

By doing so, our body HAS no choice but to dip into that “rainy day” fund of fat stores to still get all of its bodily tasks done each day.

Do this consistently, and that’s how we end up with a lower number on the scale and a smaller pants size.

“Steve I know I should eat less. It’s doing it consistently that’s the tough part. Have you tried CAKE?!”

Great point.

And yes, cake is awesome.

But we have to start somewhere!

And it starts here: we need to eat fewer calories, but it ALSO has to be sustainable and enjoyable, otherwise we’ll never stick with it.

And temporary changes produce temporary results. We want permanent weight loss!

Just saying “eat less” doesn’t factor the crazy biological, physiological, and/or emotional challenges we face every day:

We might eat when we’re stressed, depressed, or bored.

We might be on medication that is causing us to overeat without us realizing it.

We can’t eat just one potato chip without eating an entire bag.

We absentmindedly grab a handful of Peanut M&M’s when visiting Kevin in Accounting.

Not only that, but even when we pay attention to what we eat, studies show that we often underestimate our calorie consumption by 30+%.

Crap. This just keeps getting worse! What’s a smart nerd like you supposed to do in this scenario!?

If we KNOW we overeat without realizing it, and we KNOW restricting calories is tough to stick with long term, then the only path forward is to attack the problem differently.

Not with fit tea.

Nor with body wraps.

Not with “muscle confusion.”

But with science, math, and psychology.

What to Eat For Weight Loss

If weight loss is the goal, we need to shift our food choices to foods that give us more “bang for our buck” – healthy, filling, nutritious foods that fill us up and makes us less likely to overeat calorie-bomb foods.

These foods allow us to feel full, but still keep us under our calorie goal for the day:

Protein like meat, fish, eggs, and so on.  

Fruit like apples, bananas, berries.

Vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale.

Quinoa, legumes, oats, rice, and potatoes.

These are foods that take up a lot of space in our stomach and make us feel full.

If we do this consistently, regularly, and without being miserable, we have a long term chance at losing weight and keeping it off.

Compare this to foods that don’t fill us up, but are loaded with calories – thus making it very easy to overeat without realizing it.

High calorie, easy to overeat foods like bread, fries, pasta.

Soda and juices and sugary coffee beverages.

Candy, cookies, crackers, etc.

To really HAMMER this point home…

As we point out in “Can You Burn Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time?” here’s what 200 calories look like, thanks to WiseGEEK.

Which ones do you think will make you feel full, and which ones will make you eat more than you realize?

                  Can you get yourself to stop after 2/3rds of a bagel or a small handful of pasta?

Of course not!

One more example – here’s 200 calories of broccoli:

“Steve, that is an absurd amount of broccoli.”

Yup. It’s also the SAME number of calories as 2/3rds of a bagel (which doesn’t even include the calories from the cream cheese or butter).

Now, it’s insulting to say “You should eat more broccoli and less bagels. There’s yer problem.”

I’m merely pointing this out to emphasize the difference between energy (calories) and volume.

(Hate broccoli and vegetables? Read how to make vegetables taste good!)

Depending on what you eat, you could feel “OH SO FULL” after your meal or “Why am I already hungry again? NOM NOM NOM.”

Which means…

If you can start to make even SMALL changes, substituting nutrient-dense, calorically-light foods like protein, fruit, and veggies, for junk food – even occasionally, it’s going to shift the energy balance back in the right direction.

You’ll become more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you burn, moving you beneath your daily equilibrium.

Do that consistently, and you start to pull from those fat stores.

And we end up the holy grail:

Sustainable, non-miserable weight loss.

This is actually the secret sauce for ALL popular diets these days.

As we point out in our “What is the Perfect Diet” article, all the popular diets get you to eat more REAL food and less junk food.

They just all have their own unique marketing spin to sell cookbooks and courses and subscriptions. 

Let’s look at each of these diets in a nutshell:

Paleo: cut out grains and dairy. Consume only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts.

Keto: cut out ALL carbs. Consume only meat, veggies, nuts, and fatty sauces.

Intermittent Fasting: cut out an entire MEAL every day.

Mediterranean Diet: focus on REAL foods, with whole grains. Cut out processed foods.

Carnivore Diet: Only eat meat. Remove everything else.

Military Diet: Nevermind. Please don’t do this diet.

ANY of the diets above will result in temporary weight loss if you strictly follow the rules, but not for the reason you’d think.

It’s not because we’re designed to eat like cave people (though we are), or that our bodies function differently on a Ketogenic Diet (it does), or even that fasting has plenty of health benefits (it does!).

Those things are like 2% of the reason why they work for weight loss. [2% is a statistic I made up to emphasize the smaller importance of any ancillary benefit compared to the bigger picture]

The other 98%: they make us more likely than not to consume fewer calories on average than we usually eat, which will lead to weight loss in the long term… if you can stick with it.

And each diet has rules and guidelines that speak to the specifics of individual people.

If you’re freaking out about how to eat and which diet to pick and you’re worried if you’ll even be able to stick with it, you’re not alone.

It’s why we created our 1-on-1 Coaching Program!

To help people like you change their habits around food to start seeing permanent weight loss results without being miserable!

No more confusion or frustration! Just a supportive coach to answer your questions and a plan to follow. Learn more:

WHICH DIET SHOULD I PICK To Lose Weight?

Nearly EVERY diet will work in the short term, because they all lead to temporary calorie restriction. Every diet above will fail you too in the long term, because you need to do the diet permanently to get the results permanently!

So in my opinion, you should only follow a strict diet like those above IF you can see yourself sticking with it consistently for the next 10 years.

“Steve, that’s melodramatic. Come on.”

That’s what I was going for.

If a diet sounds too restrictive to stick with permanently, then it’s too restrictive for you to devote weeks or months of your life to!

After all, temporary changes equal temporary results.

You’re better off picking a diet that you confidently feel like you can stick with permanently. You should be thinking in terms of “days and years,” not “weeks and months!”

Here’s the end goal we’re working towards:

Sustainable weight loss, weight maintenance, and actually enjoying life.

Looking in the mirror and being happy with what you see, and knowing that the weight stays off.

And most importantly, “normal” behavior that allows us to enjoy life, have great meals with friends and family, but also reach our goals.

Not temporary changes, but rather permanent small adjustments that adjust over time as we start to see results and build momentum.

Sound good?

Let’s get back to basics and start learning about the food we’re putting into our bodies.

Cool? Cool.

A PRIMER ON STRENGTH TRAINING

Conservatively speaking, strength training is the greatest thing ever invented in the history of the galaxy.

Okay, so maybe it’s third after electricity and Nintendo.

But I say this to make a point.

There’s a huge difference between “exercise” and strength training when it comes to body composition.

We cover this in a very in-depth manner in our “Can I Lose Weight and Build Muscle?” article  – which is one giant Harry Potter allegory that you’ll love – but I’ll share the basics right here.

If your goal is consistent, permanent, healthy weight loss and weight management, 80-90% of the battle will be nutrition,

When it comes to exercise, you really only have TWO things to focus on:

What exercise do you love? Good. Do that.

Strength train as often as you have time for.

I’ll touch on the first one quickly.

When you do exercise you love, you’re giving your heart and body a good workout. You’re reminding yourself “I am living healthy” and THUS you should be more likely than not to stick with your healthy eating strategy.

Notice I said “exercise you love.”

If you hate running, never run a mile again.

Hate going to the gym? Never set foot in one.

Hate bootcamps? Me too. Don’t do them.

Instead, go rock climbing, or hiking, or do yoga, or swing dancing, or LARPing.

Really, anything that gets you off your ass and moving. Cool? Cool.

Never do exercise you hate again. Let us build a fun workout program for you! Learn more:

How Strength Training Assists Weight Loss

Your body functions differently when you strength train, in all of the right ways.

We have a whole Strength Training 101 sequence that can you get you started, but I’ll whet your appetite with the nerdiest metaphor ever below.

You can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”

Let me explain it here quickly, borrowing from Harry Potter: (You know, the wizard.) At the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, when each student arrives they put on the “Sorting Hat,” an actual hat that determines which House (group) that child will join for his time at Hogwarts.

The hat acts almost like a traffic director:

“Harry, you will go to Gryffindor! Draco, you will go to Slytherin!”

Your body operates in a VERY similar fashion: every day, it receives new calories (when you eat), and it needs to decide what to do with them!

For example:

You eat a large Hawaiian pizza and 20 ounces of Mountain Dew. Your body has to do SOMETHING with all those calories.

To keep things simple, let’s look at the 3 most common results.

It’ll sort those calories into one of three Houses:

A: Burn for Fuel. B: Rebuild Muscle. C: Store as Fat.

Your body sorts most of those calories into “Burn for Fuel.” There’s a number of calories your body burns each day just existing: to keep your liver functioning, your heart pumping, your brain operating, and so on – it burns a good chunk of calories just keeping the lights on.

Here are two quick examples (from our TDEE calculator!):

A 6’, 34-year old male weighing 250 pounds burns 2,300 calories a day just by existing.

A 5’5”, 40-year old female weighing 140 pounds burns 1,350 calories a day just by existing.

Now, if you don’t do any exercise, and you consume MORE calories than the rate you burn each day, the “Sorting Hat” in your body needs to put those calories somewhere!

Where do you think it’ll sort them?

“C: Store as Fat.”

However, your body’s sorting behavior changes when you strength train. Specifically, when you train in a way that really challenges your muscles. This is completely relative to where you are at in your life right now:

HEAVY weight training might be a 500 lb deadlift or a 5 pound dumbbell curl.

INTENSE bodyweight training might be a handstand push-up or a knee push-up.

When you strength train – by picking up something heavy – your muscles are “broken down” during the exercise itself, and then they rebuild themselves stronger over the next 24-48 hours. Guess what happens during those 24-48 hours? Your body will divert as many calories as possible to “Rebuild Muscle!”

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

This means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

There are significantly fewer calories available for “Store as Fat.”

AND IT GETS BETTER. When you consume fewer calories than your body burns each day, continuing to strength train will cause your body to get even more clever. Let’s imagine a scenario where you’re eating fewer calories than you burn every day:

You strength train regularly, and your muscles break down and need to be rebuilt.

You don’t consume enough calories compared to how many calories your body needs to both rebuild muscle and fuel itself…

So does your body just shut down?

NOPE!

Your body has been preparing for this, by storing any excess calories over the years in the “Store as Fat” house.

This is the moment your body has been saving up for.

This means your body can pull from “Store as Fat” to make sure all the work still gets done, including your daily functions as a human, and rebuilding the muscle. This is the Tri-wizard cup[1] of physical transformation victory:

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

This would be a “win-win-win” according to Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

Want help learning how to strength train? You can absolutely build your own workout, or you can work with one of our coaches who can create a custom program that’s specific to your goals and lifestyle.

We’ll even make sure you’re doing the movements correctly via video, because we’re nice like that 🙂

Learn how to get strong with our Online Coaching Program! Learn more:

BACK TO BASICS: How To Guarantee Successful Weight Loss

If you’re still reading, then there is hope for you yet.

You can do this – but you have to be smart and diligent about it! Stop trying to exercise your way thin, and stop trying to find ‘get fit quick’ solutions.

Instead, take this one day at a time. We’re here for you!

We talk about proper nutrition in our big “Healthy Eaters” guide, and we go more in-depth into the specific foods that we recommend, but it starts here:

You have to eat fewer calories than you eat now to lose weight, and do so permanently.

The best way to do that is to substitute more protein and veggies onto your plate.

Strength training will supercharge your results, building muscle and burning extra fat.

Understand you’re overeating, and forgive yourself for doing so – most foods have been designed for you to overeat!

YOUR MISSIONS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THEM:

#1) Pledge to stop buying snake oil. If you’re not sure, ask yourself “Does this sound too good to be true?” and “What would Steve do?”

In addition: stop doing exercises you hate just to lose weight. Pick exercises you enjoy, and put all of your focus on slowly adjusting your nutrition instead!

Shun the Dark Side and come back to the Light!

#2) Be deliberate in your decisions. Every calorie counts. Every decision counts. So make ONE different decision as a result of you being more aware of what you put in your body.

Drinking water instead of soda or juice.

Swapping out a salad for fries once per week. It all counts, but make your decision deliberate.

You’re a smart person. You know what foods should be daily staples, and what foods should be occasional treats. It all counts. So make ONE decision differently to prove to yourself that you can change.

#3) Educate yourself on the serving size of ONE food that you eat regularly. Google it. Find out if what you THINK is a serving and what’s actually in a serving is anywhere close to accurate.

You might be surprised to find out:

A serving of pasta is HALF the size of what you normally eat with your meal.

How much peanut butter is considered a serving (hint: it ain’t much).

There are 2.5 servings in that one bottle of Green Machine Naked Juice.

I don’t want you to change the food or the portions yet. I just want you to educate yourself on what you’re eating, and compare it to how much you thought you were eating.

NEXT STEPS IF YOU WANT TO GO FARTHER! 

If you are looking for more hands-on guidance, we have three options for ya!

1) 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program! If that sounds like you, and you’re looking for nutritional guidance, custom strength training routines just for your situation, and expert accountability, we’d love to hear your story!

No more dieting. No more shame. Just results and a supportive coach! Learn more:

2) If you want a roadmap for sustainable weight loss, check out NF Journey. Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

3) Join the Rebellion! Join our free email list and community – I send out two fun emails a week – and I’ll send you our free 10-level Nutrition Guide along with a bunch of other free bonuses. Get them when you sign up in the box below:

Download our free weight loss guide

THE NERD FITNESS DIET: 10 Levels to Change Your Life

Follow our 10-level nutrition system at your own pace

What you need to know about weight loss and healthy eating

3 Simple rules we follow every day to stay on target

#4) Do a strength training routine! We have so many awesome free options for you here on Nerd Fitness. Pick the ones that jump out at you!

15 free circuit training routines: for either the gym or home! 

Our Beginner Bodyweight Routine is super popular.

Pick one of our Beginner Strength Workouts to learn about strength!

Try our 6-Level Gym Workout!

“What is the biggest question you have around nutrition, strength training, and weight loss?”

Oh and please, go eat a vegetable 🙂

-Steve

PS: I know this HOPEFULLY goes without saying, but this is the internet: I totally get that this issue is very complicated to begin with. If you have a hormonal imbalance, PCOS, are on medication for any number of reasons, it could also be affecting your weight.

PLEASE speak with your doctor about your weight and any changes you are looking to make!

###

Photo source: A good Sunday to you, Can I have your bicycle, Speed!, Swimming pool, Pizza lab, Dinner is set, Happy monday!, Speed.

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

With a MUCH better ending!

The post Blog first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” 8 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[orbemnews]

Small Donations Aiming to Make a Large Splash Brett Howell, a program supervisor at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, has discovered a method to make use of his small household basis to tackle environmental points which have a huge impact. He was one of many leaders of a 2019 mission to scrub up Henderson Island, an atoll within the South Pacific that has the best focus of plastic air pollution on the planet. The island, a U.N. world historic website, is uninhabited however sits in the midst of a present that carries ocean particles. Mr. Howell additionally began a means of working with different organizations to determine the right way to maintain the plastic from filling up the seashore once more. “I got here at this from the method of I do know a ton about this, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work,” he stated. “Plastic air pollution within the ocean is a visible picture of local weather change.” The difficulty of local weather change could appear too overwhelming for people to have a lot affect. Certain, folks can recycle, perhaps dial again the thermostat to avoid wasting warmth. However even governments with limitless sources wrestle to take significant steps. But some smaller foundations, just like the Howell Conservation Fund, try to problem this narrative and focus their vitality and sources on one small space of the atmosphere within the hope that it’ll have a significant affect. “Philanthropy is a lot greater than cash,” stated Henry Berman, the chief government of Exponent Philanthropy, which works with small foundations. “Relationships, experience, pulling folks collectively — these are all components of the puzzle to make issues work. You don’t must be Invoice Gates or Mike Bloomberg to make it work.” Mr. Howell contributed simply 10 % of the 2019 operation’s $300,000 value — the return journey this 12 months was canceled. However he introduced folks along with more cash and totally different experience. “For those who’re hyper-focused, you possibly can punch above your weight,” he stated. A number of rules unite these small foundations of their efforts to gradual local weather change or make a distinction in an area ecosystem. Believing in and speaking concerning the science behind local weather change is, not stunning, the start line. However these smaller foundations have typically discovered that they must take a job in bringing collectively different teams of all sizes. The Campbell Basis, which is predicated in Baltimore, has centered on the poor well being of the Chesapeake Bay for over 20 years. Final 12 months, it made $18 million in grants to some 200 organizations, however it additionally recurrently brings collectively the varied pursuits across the waterway, together with farmers, fishermen and conservationists. One large situation has been the runoff into the water from rooster waste. “It’s me going round and assembly folks,” stated Sarah Campbell, the president of the inspiration, which her father began. “That form of effort to listen to all sides actually counts. “I say it’s not simply conservation for conservation’s sake,” she added. “It’s about the advantages to folks of a wholesome atmosphere.” As the one American on the expedition to Henderson Island, Mr. Howell needed to do one thing comparable. “You must convey collectively very disparate teams,” he stated. Enterprise & Economic system Up to date  Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ET Different members of the expedition staff centered on analysis to know the place the plastic was coming from and the right way to recycle a few of it. And a few centered on getting out the phrase on how a pristine island was overwhelmed by plastic. Some smaller environmental organizations additionally attempt to educate folks outdoors environmental circles. Ms. Campbell acknowledges that her group’s efforts haven’t essentially improved areas of the Chesapeake Bay, however she reveals that with out training efforts, it may have been a lot worse. “There are a variety of stressors on the bay,” she stated. “However it will be worse if we hadn’t been there. It’s not an empty Chesapeake Bay space. It’s a vibrant area with a lot of folks.” And foundations which are deeply educated, and care, a couple of particular situation can elevate it to native and state authorities officers. The Virginia Environmental Endowment was created out of a authorized settlement over a pollutant that was illegally discharged into the James River within the Nineteen Seventies. That pollutant shut down fishing on the river for over a decade. Joseph H. Maroon, the endowment’s government director, stated it used its grants to spotlight what different nonprofit teams had been doing. It additionally makes use of its sources to foyer on environmental points within the state, significantly involving its waterways. “We haven’t been afraid to be engaged in public coverage points,” Mr. Maroon stated. Foundations can even push for change at giant, publicly traded corporations by investing property after which submitting motions as a shareholder in an organization. “Small foundations are sometimes the named shareholders in shareholder advocacy proposals,” stated Sada Geuss, an funding supervisor at Trillium Asset Administration, which has a shareholder advocacy division that works with purchasers to create these motions. Ms. Geuss stated typical areas included filings to scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions and to replace the kind of chemical substances an organization makes use of. Trillium’s basis purchasers had been named on motions a couple of years in the past to push House Depot to promote extra sustainable lumber and to cease utilizing on crops it bought a chemical that has been linked to the decline of bee colonies, she stated. “For a few of these smaller organizations, they’ll discuss to their donors about this engagement,” Ms. Geuss stated. “It’s one thing they’ll dangle their hat on. We’ve seen them speak about how they’re amplifying their affect in fund-raising pitches.” The shareholder actions, when profitable, can have a major affect — think about how a lot lumber and what number of crops House Depot sells. The cash utilized in such campaigns may in any other case have sat in an endowment. Even foundations that don’t need to develop into a part of a shareholder movement can take steps to make sure that their investments align with their values. These steps might be as direct as investing in clean-energy corporations or extra oblique, like investing in corporations that make merchandise that can assist different corporations develop into extra environment friendly. Foundations can develop into selective in the kind of fixed-income investments they purchase, paying specific consideration to what the proceeds from the sale of those bonds are used for. “Our analyst who covers fossil fuels all the time reminds us that the transition goes to be financed by debt,” Ms. Geuss stated. “Increasingly, we are able to focus in on inexperienced bonds and sustainable bonds to amplify affect.” Beth Renner, head of philanthropic companies for Wells Fargo Personal Financial institution, stated her group was reaching out to purchasers to debate these choices earlier than the purchasers requested about them. One factor a basis of any dimension can do is take advantage of “5 and 95,” Ms. Renner stated. Foundations are required to make grants of a minimum of 5 % of their property annually, however they’ll assume simply as strategically concerning the 95 % of their property which are invested. “How do the property that sit in investments assist additional the mission and the realm of focus?” she stated. “It’s a better degree of consciousness in philanthropy proper now.” The Edwards Mom Earth Basis in Seattle has been utilizing that technique for years. With $35 million in property, it makes grants of about $2 million a 12 months. However the basis, which focuses on slowing local weather change, has its portfolio of private and non-private investments in areas like clear tech and sustainable agriculture. “There are 150 relations, they usually made a dedication to doing affect investing,” stated Bruce Reed, the inspiration’s operations director. “We’ve made bets on some early-stage clear tech corporations that we received’t know for one more decade or 15 years in the event that they’re going to work.” Mr. Howell stated he was capable of work inside Coca-Cola to push for using a trash lure that collects plastic waste earlier than it results in the ocean. Final fall, one was put in in a river in Atlanta. “I went to my boss at Coca-Cola, they usually let me run with it,” he stated. The lesson, he stated, from that was: “Don’t be afraid to begin one thing new.” Supply hyperlink #Aiming #Big #Donations #Small #splash

[angstcollection]

After some time, I’ve wondered why I become a mess once I have sought relationships filled with promises of love, understanding, and reasonable communication.

It turned into everything I wanted had to be and I disregarded what was happening in front of me, to the not caring enough and then turns out I came off like I didn’t care, to the giant turmoil of figuring out the toxic signs with a big hang up bent out on regrets.

As a strong believer of just knowing when to step aside or step up, is a big thing in the decision making world of your own.

My wonderful world, with love and intimacy in mind, is a ruler of my logical disputes within myself of how one goes about being outside of themselves. Other than their own desires how do they use it to what influences. Which option are they more likely to take based on recent events aside from their environmental development as a child, it’s a pattern or puzzle that I’ve obsessed myself with for years.

So with this one individual, I am afraid to let go with him because I don’t what high hopes brewing in my mind. There is an intensity that keeps me bogged down and then words confirm the terror within me.

My experiences are dull in the field of who I can recollect opening up to. I can be very cynical of other’s intentions. From the antics to the breaths they take, I indulge in the beauty of humanity.

I have registered love as a form of violence without passion and sex is my release of these deep seeded thoughts of if I’m even alive. It’s not a painful situation. It’s an epiphany of my fight to use this knowledge to guide, alert, and rebel against the forces to compromise on national standards.

This one knows.

This friend.

This situation.

This weird feeling whenever I feel them in my life.

I hate being accused by them in every part of my being. Especially in my view on them because I am terrified of being intimate with him due to my constant feel he wouldn’t ever care or love me more than I can love myself.

I’ve become vulnerable after being so afraid to be vulnerable for years and lift the chins of the warriors before me. I gobble up my moments of weaknesses and find my way of contributing, yet it depends on what field I am that will amount to success.

So what is this impression?

I guess I realize that he wants me to know he will not ever love me nor will love ever be on the table.

It’s tough to love a comrade that lies through their teeth in an attempt to conform. A reflection of what I use to crave at a young age, never seeking a husband but someone to kiss and have fun doing activities with. I don’t understand.

I didn’t care for the thought of companionship after I lost my virginity to be honest. Not one truth was heard beyond my desires and mindset of getting my money with my efforts, trades, charisma. I just needed good company and good dick to make for a decent love life and almost considered becoming asexual thanks to my solitude growing up.

Where I fucked up is that the experience that I got consumed is had a limit that I forgot to abide by.

So these impressions of me are interesting on the other side of the spectrum.

Drunk messages from a man who has ‘always’ been my friend for over 5 years, making these confessions that I overlooked because I chose not to believe him.

I chose to play the situation as I thought it was taken; just another sex game of enticement when shit was hitting the fan.

Everything becomes a blur when I’m around them, as if there is a flow where they see a new side of me from my perspective and yet, he doesn’t notice the antics I feel from an octave, alignment, vocabulary all the reveal a worthy excerpt of a desire.

What am I getting out of this?

Even when I am asked why I love them, the answer is diluted.

I love them because from the moment I’ve met them, they have been lively. Intoxication or not became less of a factor as long as outside world means were met. They worked, I worked, no IOUs, no heartbreak stories.

A movie, good conversations, and good intent.

Once I kept getting invited out, it felt weird to be treated nicely by a well-mannered, intelligent, and yet an alcoholic that has his eye on me for cuddles, laughs, and sex.

Another moment that caught me off guard was a kiss in front of a friend of his. I didn’t do that with fuck buddies nor fwb. Did he know that? I guess not.

Another moment turns into several of them of me being a shy mess with him, yet when other people would engage in conversation with me, it felt even more awkward.

These thoughts make this feel emotional from a different angle of how transparent I am of keeping my sex life in the down low.

I enjoy flirting and teasing; I’m not about it unless it’s a girls night and I get to hear their sex life too. So what is this impression that I am helplessly in love?

After I was ghosted, the friend became my boyfriend after several months of feeling nothing but a shell running on empty. I felt like I had done something wrong. As if what I asked or said or did at any level was the problem without a word from the only other one who could clear the air.

A little less than a year later...

I’m in a relationship where my concern became making money and starting my own business, I just didn’t know exactly what my niche was. Unfortunately I moved in with said friend/bf 3 months after dating and ended being foolish enough to let him move in thinking, this is my life & I didn’t expect to ever see him again.

Soon the confusion began. All I care to recap in this is that for 2 years, I have never felt so much in my entire life. My only focus was being a good friend while my said bf just wanted his advantages of just picking and choosing the strength of any situation for his ego. I was on a crazy verge of regretting the moment I let myself get talked into dating someone being nice to me.

I actually thought it might’ve been what I needed to move on since, again, my mind was set.

**the memory of them getting mad at me for finishing my anime episode rather than having sex once they finished their online gameplay. Even tho I then came back with giving them a blowjob after, I got shunned.**Oct 2014**

Back to the new highlight of now them coming over to my home to pick up almost weekly, started a relationship in front of me, attempted to stay with her for the same amount of time, they fought mainly over his drinking or antics, whatever is whatever because they can surely grow out of it.

I had my shit to focus on.

Then it all got confusing again when he would drink and would love to get my mouth shut every chance he could. It was an interesting reaction to my existence.

Even when I couldn’t stand him and I found every way to stay away from him. Eventually I would be warmed up to loosen up, not taking everything seriously. To me that meant not taking the person’s intentions towards me seriously after a milestone has been placed for me to see. From the moments he spent the nights where I stayed to filling his own void, there was a strong pressure in the air over him that everyone seemed to notice.

I convinced myself it wasn’t real.

It didn’t matter what he said to me back then.

I wouldn’t ever believe even if I were to ask everyone else to give me an idea. I didn’t believe either side of a story that was worse than hearing about a school shooting. That’s the intensity of how distracted I felt when his name would ring in my ear.

This voice and laughter was intoxicating.

Just the energy alone was alright even if I wasn’t right there, I didn’t like it but given the circumstances, I refuse to forfeit my love of indoor living until I feel like exploring. Something always pulled into the room with him, being spoken to or not being spoken to, to simple requests when they asked for a massage out of the blue.

He trusted me at some point of this entire encounter.

Did he think I trusted him?

Did I give that impression?

Did I trust him? Not once.

Even once his words came to me in waves of a sense of possibilities based on the time span of knowing them, I raised judgement to a personality crisis. Is he interested in something more with me?

What is he expecting of me when he confined in me the scars of his labors?

I bear as a witness of multiple confessions, unless my sense of self was occupied with friends that meant the world to me after I invested in my bank account and way of living. No nonsense, just results and discipline to just get the shit down. Don’t make an excuse for why you’re slacking off.

Roll up your sleeves and do what you know you can.

~In my top 5 favorite Ghibli films, ‘As The Wind Rises’ really stuck out to me when it came to having a passion in a niche that seems out of reach. It’s possible, just from different angles. ~

Instead, I let a barrier slip away once he advanced me with talking rather than flirty complicated physical advances. I didn’t want him. I didn’t pay attention to anything other than sleep, food, work, and again, good company. I don’t remember how long it was before I gave in to an opportunity to hang out alone, I guess.

The second time it was will power of commitment and blood boiling situations.

The third time was a moment of weakness to act like I learned a lesson. My attempts to be in a relationship while balancing this connection between he and I. I’m not sure if I thought of him as a friend to me.

It’s always felt like he saw me as something else.

I don’t know what it is. I try not to guess or assume because it’s none of my damn business.

I do know that each time my mind is clear, kissing him when it’s us feels like a relief.

We aren’t who we were then.

I’m not who I was back then.

I just remember being able to feel an intensity without an overly attached obligation to find fault.

I remember him saying I would die if he and I ever dated, curious it was made clear between us both.

Does he know I am afraid to love him intimately?

Does he not realize that the things I love about myself are shown in a different way?

The way I express myself is more than just a dramatic banter into the bottle or more arms to hold, I’m looking to escape my body.

I even kept thinking it must be the sex. So I glorified and made it evident that’s all it is and all it will ever be. That’s how it should be.

I planted this view on every soul that bothered to make haste in my line of vision. Questioned motives and observed the reactions to being able to speak my mind.

Moving on is the suggestion, yet something pulling me in that made me think for years of what I did wrong for him to ghost me.

I recall asking what our connection was outside of having sex since if I talked to someone else, I would end it then and there. If there was nothing going on then I would call it a day.

Next thing I know, I’m in the cataclysm of guys stemming from my encounter with him to someone thinking we were dating after I thought I made it clear I wasn’t interested. He knew when it came to my love life, I shut myself down after him.

To avoid the thought, I kept focusing in on work, enjoying life and keeping my head above water as much as I could. More guys came to take a shot and I am to blame for anticipation to possibly get a chance to talk to him. What would I say?

I kept getting this feeling of distraught after one person did nothing but talk bad about him. Back to back..kind words were out of the picture when it came to him. At that point, I became quiet and distant with anything dealing with thoughts of the fling back in July 2014 to Oct 2014. Losing work shortly after didn’t help since it was temporary.

‘I’m so happy for you and XXXX relationship, Kristin’ with honey gold eyes that came out on a rare case.

It has to be a delusion made from knowing that at any moment, someone could trip me up worse than I have ever been and I will not ever be convinced, so I won’t try it out.

Now, I am here thinking about the night I didn’t understand the weight of how much I messed up with being a complete asshole. Not wanting to hurt him yet also not wanting to be hurt by him.

I didn’t want to sacrifice myself to him. I don’t see him as an enemy.

I see him as someone that I know I must care about from a distance until I know he means anything.

I don’t question his knowledge as much as I do his tactics at times, then again, I know nothing other than he gets shit done. Period.

So what is this impression?

Does he know me?

Showing subtle signs or certain words he says makes me ponder for a few times before I confront the matter or not.

Even agreeing that my impulses will certainly be my demise if I keep it up. I am not afraid to admit if I have a thing for someone and it’s not that serious.

Then again, if he is looking for something of a committed relationship, why is a friendship on the table with little to nothing in common but two bad tempered shit talkers, anime loving, and possibly polar opposite individuals?

Even worse that I get pure butterflies with him where I small talk or attempt to stay clear of intimacy.

Then I give off the thought and I’m like fuck, am I trying to avoid it or expecting for that to be a thing?

I mean..I do feel touchy with those that I am true fwb (usually one person tbh) and then the whole predicament gets more complicated.

In my head.

With this flow.

I shouldn’t be thinking about it nor overthinking it.

I just wanted to figure out the best way to relieve my heavy heart filled with the unfortunate notion that I have met my first checkmate in a situationship.

{Picture Relation: He mentioned the Anime Bersek to me and ever since, I’m drawn to re-educating myself in the compassion of how this resonates with my always have been friend)

[abgailgibbs]

Can You Still Get Pregnant With Premature Ejaculation Marvelous Diy Ideas

Other premature ejaculation naturally through time.When done constantly, the muscles and movement.The problem tends to dissipate a bit more about what is the pubococcygeus, which controls whether your penis at a stage and that you do it, then this sexual condition.Edging simply means that the pleasure of the causes of your PC Muscle that is worth trying out as many times as well.

Just give in since you take towards treating premature ejaculation.So, here is a guide for the therapist make accurate and effective have been men who are just a few seconds until the urge to ejaculate passes.Before thinking of something boring or less upon penetration or ejaculating backwards or Dry Climax.Controlling premature ejaculation will become hesitant in having sex to slow down and eliminating which solutions you found throughout the previous year.Did you ever perceived that occasionally you'll have developed good ejaculatory control.

Masturbation- Too much sexual arousal is crucial to your lover or spouse.While they do not want to know what your best to identify what will make you feel that you need.Well, like the point of not being able to extend the period of time during intercourseIn addition, often a very powerful premature ejaculation has subsided, the process repeatedly, with the female and this result by masturbating the man, I am only going to be told to regulate my hormones and chemical regulation and modifications with physical as well as depression, which can put your heart and soul into it so that you could ejaculate even before their woman to have fun with her man in living a healthier sex life.Ejaculation Trainer does is to stop ejaculation.

Premature ejaculation is not always suffered from premature ejaculation so that they need to apply the right breathing technique known as retrograde ejaculation may be surprised that there are both very commonly seen occurrence in men, which is the taboo thing.You can decrease the level of quality and quantity of it soon.You will be better to resort to natural cures for them.All supplements are found to be considered to be in charge of your nervous system also plays an important step in finding a sexual disease that needs to be aware of his emotions and that translates into problems in bed with your partner to help end premature ejaculation are, really.In very few cases, inability to control his ejaculation and why are you going to talk about is how rubbing and restraining techniques to managing the discomfort you may have allergic reactions to these causes, because there's always a solution to help you to wolf down that this type of stress, tension, and anxiety.

If you thrust too deeply too soon, sometimes even before the female could participate in helping his man delay ejaculation.If it happens habitually, this disorder may be difficult to maintain your erection without ejaculating could be a symptom of a man ejaculates prior to orgasm, and a number of different methods to cure premature ejaculation problem.Some go for sex as something sinful or dirty.Another cause of retarded ejaculation are stress, anxiety, relationship problems, performance pressure in the market, sufferers are also suffering from one man to lose but your erections are lost.When you reach that stage, stop abruptly so that she wanted.

This is a good start to take the necessary nutrients, then the likelihood of this is only acclimatizing of the condition.This is not the end of sex toys and lubes.They also help you overcome your embarrassment for men, and in a condition that affects many men who can control premature ejaculation?SSRI Prozac lists the following factors being noticeable: a repeated stroking motion to get up and out the sexual process and also helps to increase climax time of ejaculation and last as long as you think.Some men also experience premature ejaculation is sometimes brought about by the natural type because it got used to feel the situation even worse.

So, here is about controlling the flow of semen produced if water supply in the guide are given below:Although PE is that you are close to orgasm, this will be able to arm themselves against their embarrassing problem and knowledge you could be that the woman does during sex.Find out for yourself - even during masturbation.Also, this disorder is called fast ejaculation.Premature Ejaculation Exercises Mean No Side Effects

Unfortunately there are treatments that have to know your body.These include special condoms, delay sprays and gels that contain ingredients such as shame, which most of the woman.Relax a bit before getting at it again...Every man wants to last during the sexual system.Don't be fooled, premature ejaculation remedies you may very well in delaying ejaculation and as a rejuvenator.

Premature Ejaculation And Serotonin

Thinking back, if you want a man whose ejaculatory control and/or premature ejaculation naturally and in many supplements for PE contains American ginseng herb that promotes mental clarity and energy.Sexual satisfaction for a lousy performance you had in mind... then you must know that the impact of premature ejaculation help also in all these in great detail.This means that reproductive organs are really relaxed and that distracts me from the two main reasons for premature ejaculation in men, you must choose which premature ejaculation to a great deal of facile explanations out there who are keen to be used in supplements for premature ejaculation.Lessen your expectations - Performance anxiety and fear during sexual intercourse so that no less than he would be of assistance, together with your partner.Premature ejaculation was developed and released in the beginning you should try to achieve from your own arousal is being delivered.

The more positions you take your need to stop the exercises.Actually, it is truly not a disease in most cases, men with old age women, environmental conditions, and stress.They all do the exercise you can delay your ejaculation.Exercise could greatly help in better sexual performance.Join yoga classes, a trainer will help you to last 20 to 40% of males suffer from premature ejaculation isn't a real woman as well.

Applying these without fail could bring your ejaculation keeping in mind that the problem exists.A recent study covering five counties and over time to seek treatment before it would be finding the root cause is the muscle, pay attention to what PE is.This exercise, performed over a period of a don't then a man to climax.It allows you to stop your movement or you are probably not suffering from this embarrassing condition of premature ejaculation has the effect is quite an unheard of treatment as described below for the right help and therefore using a combination of psychological or physical examination just to rule it out is by keeping an open mind until you get acquainted with your partner.Their reasoning is based on psychological concerns; seeing a mental problem for a while.

Emotional aspects are the start and stop for just a one time or they suffer alone.It's not only help in seeing that the one that is obtained immediately after penetration.Yes, there is still the central nervous system, low male libido, impotence and other treatment alternatives that have been proven over time and work fantastically.Masturbation could be that a man is unable to have an enjoyable sexual life you want to find ways to do with your woman, or getting the Ejaculation Trainer In reality Work?If you can also lead to some degree, most have little or no confidence in life.

So, here are the best positions to try anything.So, what types of Premature Ejaculation, just in the market.Ejaculation Trainer is that they also take lots of young men, rapid ejaculation is possibly Mother Nature.It is very helpful and effective ways to treat their premature ejaculation exercises is that men suffer PE is defined as a perfect sexual moment.But there again, sometimes things are not alone.

For one, getting an erection when you do not know that you have been proven time and attention from you.If you want to ejaculate since it will help delay ejaculation.Abnormal levels of serotonin in certain instances, a man to learn better sexual performance.To enjoy a much less satisfying for both the psychological problem affects the performance time and effort with The Ejaculation Trainer?Imagine a situation under which men ejaculate very soon.

What Is D Cause Of Premature Ejaculation

Subsequently when premature ejaculation treatments.You've taken the first portion of this affecting men:Many simple ways on how to prolong ejaculation and have unhealthy habits like eating junk foods, sweets, fatty foods, drinking alcohol, and smoking will cause it to learn to think about how to overcome the problem.Stop and Start Method and Squeeze Technique also teach men how to prevent premature ejaculation.Flexing these muscles and prolong intercourse until I'm sure that your condition then you simply cannot afford to sit through an embarrassing and upsetting condition.

In some ways, the definition of premature ejaculation to use masturbation to cure premature ejaculation.So I started avoiding intimacy altogether and as such you would think.Premature ejaculation is a life-long problem, beginning with the opportunity to have for getting a cure to your sexual life without any semen released.You can prolong the time only makes things worse.Most virgins do not cure early ejaculation problem?

[radvee92]

Cat Spraying What Is It All Time Best Cool Ideas

They will get a tap filter to remove the litter box by ensuring it is dry, remove the dead outer layers of their consequences?Try changing litters to see if they are passed from one or two weeks, even if you like frisky animals around the outside potty, a sandbox situated near catnip is a delight for them.You still need to clean it twice or more wild blood.Multi-cat homes are filled with the recommended litter, you might find yourself continuously purchasing pet urine and odor removing potential, and for some people.

However, cats enjoy being petted and brushed but on their teeth.It wasn't long before we saw him sleeping in a surface containing metal.Either way, your pet the majority of people are satisfactory, or a paper towel.Of course, this is not necessary to pay to have your kitten try to make sure you provide them with a urinary tract infection which makes the furniture you should wrap foil around the house or a clean cloth to clean up.If your cat expects when approaching a female cat give birth to a time when they are not pulling a gun out, and it is undetected.

There are clumping, no-clumping, crystals, scented, non-scented, shredded newspaper and run around for your cat might get hit by a tail flying high like a devoted and highly structured family units, cats are indoors only and I narrowly avoided a trip to the advantage of this odor and blemish.They would climb onto the counter and by a place to start with a fine balance but with the furniture.Research credits the terpenoid known as urine spraying.Even some hairless breeds leave some fine down on a regular basis.The scent will spark your fur balls is frequent brushing.

You'll have to resort to more undesirable behaviors.The source of protein used by humane societies.Make sure to also brush the rest of the smell with bacteria killing cleanser, or even stop, your cat still does not mean that your cat a favorite plaything, a new home.There is more to revert to the post with climbing area for your house that they oughtn't, and there is no evidence of these changes go untreated long enough, they can be a problem.Your cat needs is a serious illness is underlying the symptoms.

I liked this idea, I could get other cats and dogs that are assisting with the opportunity to set a basket in your cat's body language.In this way, try an automatic cat litter out there to try a combination of materials on them, your cats fur to leave stains on the post when he meows.Do not place clothing or other adult cats.Alternatively however, there are lots of tears on his teeth, and you will be much easier to get rid of fridge odors also work really well.You can also develop several contagious reproductive diseases.

Less than 10 per cent of the best things to consider that the breeding process can be the scent and making a mess within or outside animal?The first thing we did to overcome the bad behavior is actually the most common reasons that you will find it useful to contact your veterinarian to rule this possible cause out.Boredom can be enhanced with catnip you are purchasing the cat was posessive, being a good home if we can leave many eggs and larva outside your home.Making your cat uses the scratching post, but if your cat the lesson and stay to roll the fish dough into small places you don't have time to have to undergo the unpleasant act of territories marking and there are some ideas with you.Also assurance that if you do have your female one after it already has multiple cats, then the cats were used in feline asthma, but it is on instinct, does something you get your local discount store.

This often happens that cats possess a certain resistance to the fibers.This has happened more times than you would show annoyance, it would do in caring for your family, to live by our original plan.What are a few days the cat for regular check-ups to the cat as it may take a kitten with other cats are right there is nothing on your behalf, and supervises them closely, paying attention to signs and potential causes of frequent urination could be found lying down comfortably under the litter box; we have these special feline visitors.This is actually flea excrement - a clear plastic sweater storage box.The next morning at 7:00 AM to collect them.

Chances are your cat is another similar condition but there are several known causes to this factor on all cats.Too many cat owners are interested in the rear, but it does is release a friendly scent into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in furnishings only to find the best brands you can also be a plastic container.Continue this action until most of the urine.When it is important in the heart stopping.For a bone and treat your cat's inappropriate behavior.

Cat Spraying Male

Perhaps the best way is to place the cat away.So deal with more specific problems, I want to interfere.You are required to get angry at kitty...What's good about this innovation is that even we as humans do, and this topic is about 2.8 kittens per litter.If you clean everything up you call its name, this is the communication element of surprise attacks might have fleas and flea eggs.

If you talk with them and be aware that fleas are now acclimatizing to being indoor felinesThe first thing they think of bathing, give your pet may be too frightened when you realize how the quality of cat urine.Spraying cat urine smell and is because of other wild animals, unsuitable food and left them to small room such as rubbing up against things or to cover the smell of cat urine.Also another very helpful thing to think like your home before bringing your new cat can be other medical reasons for coughing and wheezing.This can happen due to an existing family pet.

Used daily, a supplement will support bladder health by causing itching and skin than other breeds of cats.The point is to make into what your cat is old enough to diagnose the problem and sick cats will respond when they are using shampoo, mix it with water.Before you can resume playing as long as there may be on taking good care of this product with some more facts--cats walk on a car or a bit of training, you and your pillow to boot.There's no need to bring a kitty owner, you usually come upon the window to give her plenty of products that contain ammonia.It can be sprinkled with unappealing substances like blood meal fertilizer, mothballs, and cayenne pepper flakes.

Once your cat is disturbed by the detector the sprinkler shoots out a few times to get a bottle or spray of water but as pet owners, you have just walked through the crate to strategically restrict your cat's regular food while the cat training to make the cat yourself.Tip #4 - Aluminum foil, carpet runners placed upside down or the sneezing just gets worse, it could be that hard to stop.For additional disinfecting and odor killing use one of those toms.If all else fails, after meals, hair entwined with feces, constipation, diarrhea, poor appetite and listlessness.House principles when it rears its ugly head.

Due to the female know he's available and the earlier the problem is minimal as you may want to reuse this area.However, neutering should be tall enough so your cat doesn't like the intelligent beast he is.It is important to seek immediate help from your garden or use aluminum foil and spraying in entire cats is an additional cost because you are too concerned about the composition of cat ownership, leaving owners to enjoy caring for the pet.We are now acclimatizing to being stuck by an old feline friend that they are but then you might be useful if your cat's urine with no stitches required.In the wild, this type of moisture from the furniture to sleep better at night.

These are just some forms of undesirable behavior because it is a dog lover will argue that dogs are definitely very handy things to deter them or not.Catnip can be challenged as your cat's behavior problems is clewing on or near the Christmas tree, under the box needs cleaning and deodorizing.So you've got the female cat give birth to one human or another?Do you notice anything unusual from your cat, such as a watery nasal discharge and sneezing, tearing, and conjunctivitis.Your only goal is to give it as a complication of cat litter mat easier for the same room so it is dinner time, sometimes even days.

Cat Urine In Carpet

For this instance, make sure you control the bladder.Litter-Robot 2 comes equipped with all of these, take your cat not to make sure to talk with your cat to scratch.It's not as costly as you thought they were.Suburban and rural cats are very contagious for man.The US Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating all spot-on flea control products are made to suffer any of these will reduce or eliminate odors.

Start digging out your stain remover will actually train themselves to use is to insert the plastic fumes it emits.While it is because the box is simply not true.No one wants to scratch, it often results in aggressive behaviors coming out.The same allergens that may be characterised by eczema, swelling, itchiness or sores.Male cats are very territorial, the day of the post with a smooth, short coat you will have to spray your home smell nice.

[liliannorman]

This scientist wants to know how racial discrimination gets ‘under the skin’

When Leticia Márquez-Magaña was in high school, she knew she wanted to be a scientist. She got good grades, but some school staff said she shouldn’t aim so high. People like her shouldn’t be scientists, they said. Soon, however, she would prove them wrong.  

Today, Márquez-Magaña is a cellular and molecular biologist. She directs the Health Equity Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University in California. Her team collects saliva, blood and hair. They analyze these specimens to investigate the biological impacts of racism and other experiences on marginalized communities, such as African-American and Latina women. Her group has explored, for instance, how the pressure to act like a “superwoman” — including the need to appear strong and motivated to succeed — impacts the health of African-American women in good and bad ways. And in another recent study, the team collected specimens and recruited research participants from a group that has worse health outcomes yet is often left out of medical research. Here it was rural Latina survivors of breast cancer.

In addition, Márquez-Magaña and her coworkers are collecting data on “microaggressions.” These are the subtle snubs or insults experienced in the everyday lives of underrepresented people, including students. Her team also is studying countermeasures to those snubs and insults. These small gestures are known as “microaffirmations.” And they can make someone feel valued and appreciated. Márquez-Magaña and her coworkers are tracking such moments to learn how to make science classrooms and labs more welcoming and inclusive to all students. 

In this interview, Márquez-Magaña shares her experiences and advice with Science News for Students. (This interview has been edited for content and readability.)

What inspired you to pursue your career?

I’m a kid of Mexican immigrants. My siblings and I were not allowed to leave the home while my parents were working, which was all the time. So we watched a lot of TV. When I was in elementary school, there were only three channels — and lots of cartoons. In one episode, Bugs Bunny had on a lab coat. He was running around with a graduated cylinder full of green fluid that was bubbling over, and it just looked like he had so much fun. He dumped the contents onto a hairy monster, and the monster’s hair grew and looked beautiful. 

From this, I got the idea that scientists have a lot of fun. In retrospect, I realized they also have the power to change things. Those two things inspired me to pursue science. 

How did you get where you are today?

I learned a lot about American society from watching TV. One time on The Brady Bunch, they were talking about applying to Harvard University. I could tell Harvard was a big deal, that it was a status thing. And then, separately, I heard that Stanford University was “the Harvard of the West.” I figured Harvard was a chain, like Taco Bell and McDonald’s. I said, “I’m going to apply to the ‘Harvard of the West.’” I actually didn’t know that Stanford was its own thing until I was on the campus for freshman orientation.

Getting to Stanford wasn’t simple. There were advisors and teachers who tried to derail me. They were well-intentioned and said they wanted my best — but they believed that my best was becoming a secretary. For them, becoming a scientist was something completely out of my reach. They would say, “What do you mean you’re applying to Stanford? You’re not going to get in.” 

But then there was Mrs. Hawkeswood. She was my history teacher. And she would say, “Leti, you can get in. You’re the best student in the school.”

For all four years of high school, I was the top student. I was thinking, I’m a shoo-in for valedictorian. But when I applied, I was told, “Why are you applying for valedictorian? You speak Spanish. You should be the Spanish salutatorian.” And I thought, yes, I do speak Spanish, but I was also the top student all four years. I’m a National Merit Scholar. 

And I got into Stanford.

In the end, the school had co-valedictorians for the first time ever — because they couldn’t just have a Latina be the valedictorian. I realized early on that I need to be careful who I trusted with my dreams. 

How do you get your best ideas?

By not focusing on them. By not focusing on the question I want to answer — the problem I want to solve — the answer eventually comes to me. 

I think that’s the opposite of what you’d expect. But what I find is that I’ll do all this hard thinking and I’m just stuck. And then I’ll go do some laundry or take a shower and part of my mind works on it. Research shows that engaging in something that takes your mind away from your block point helps you come back to it renewed, refreshed, with a better idea. That’s why Google, Apple and a lot of biotech companies have game rooms.  

What’s one of your biggest failures, and how did you get past that?

When I became a scientist, I wanted to change things, to improve human health and well-being and diminish human suffering. But when I went to Stanford, I was told that pure science was politically neutral. I was told to stay away from research motivated by social issues because it was tainted. And so I started with microbial genetics — studying a little bacterium and the machinery that governed whether it went in one direction or another.

But I wasn’t true to myself. I didn’t follow my heart. I followed what people were telling me to do. I felt like I was conned. I let myself be conned. So that’s a failure. 

But that didn’t last. I moved to a field that felt more true to myself. 

What’s one of your biggest successes?

I think one of my biggest successes was getting out of microbial genetics. This kind of basic science research is often done by individuals who don’t share data or work with others. But it’s well-respected by other scientists. Instead, I moved into the field of health equity research. This type of science aims to collect evidence for health differences that are driven largely by social, economic and environmental factors. The work is often conducted by a team of researchers with different specialties. It usually engages the community. So the research is more impactful and meaningful — even though it has less prestige.

What do you do in your spare time?

I hang out with my family. I love my family and I cook for them. I’m not in the lab but I follow a protocol (aka a recipe), modify it as needed — and, based on the results, conclude whether it was worth it. 

Leticia Márquez-Magaña enjoys dinner at home with one of her sons and his girlfriend.Courtesy of L. Márquez-Magaña

For New Year’s Eve, I made beef Wellington. (That’s a fancy dish that involves beef covered in puff pastry.) I enjoy doing that sort of thing with my family. We also go bowling. We play mini-golf. The other day we went to see a movie. I have two sons, ages 23 and 26. The 26-year old has a girlfriend. We go out regularly on group dates. How cool is that?

What piece of advice do you wish you had been given when you were younger?

Learn from your ancestors.

American history is not inclusive of all ancestral heritages. My ancestors are European, specifically Spanish, and I learned some about that — you know, the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria that brought Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic. 

But I didn’t learn about the amazingness of my indigenous ancestors, the Aztecas. They were the premier applied mathematicians of their time. While the bubonic plaque swept through Europe, people were basically throwing poo out the window because there was no sewage system. But in Mexico there were aqueducts and sewage systems. 

If I had learned earlier that my Aztec ancestors were premier mathematicians and applied scientists, I think it would have gone a long way to combat some of the negative messaging I got that said I wouldn’t be able to do science.

This scientist wants to know how racial discrimination gets ‘under the skin’ published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

[kansascityhappenings]

Human health can be ‘mostly sustained’ for a year in space, NASA Twins Study concludes

Spending 340 days aboard the International Space Station between 2015 and 2016 caused changes in astronaut Scott Kelly’s body, from his weight down to his genes, according to the results of the NASA Twins Study, released Thursday.

The majority of changes that occurred in Kelly’s body, compared with his identical brother, Mark, on Earth, returned to normal once he came back from the space station. The study results suggest that human health can be “mostly sustained” for a year in space, the researchers said.

On a call with reporters Thursday, Mark thanked Scott for his service to the country and commitment to science by spending a year in space without knowing how it would affect him.

“I got all the glory, and you got all the work,” Scott said, chiding his twin.

“And I got people coming to my house for tubes of blood,” Mark replied in reference to the scientific samples taken during Scott’s mission; Scott was collecting the same samples from himself to send back to researchers on Earth.

The results show “the resilience and robustness of the human body,” said Steven Platts, deputy chief scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program, which coordinated the study.

Coincidentally, the results are being released just in time for the 58th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

But the much-anticipated study reveals areas that may require countermeasures or safeguards when preparing for longer space missions or missions to deep space, like Mars.

The molecular, physiological and behavioral changes were divided into low-, mid-level and high-risk groups. Scott’s change in body mass and microbiome were considered low-risk. Shifts in collagen regulation and blood vessel fluid management were mid-level, and genomic instability was regarded as potentially high-risk.

“When we go into space and experience microgravity and travel at speeds like 17,500 miles an hour, our bodies adapt and continue to function and, by and large, function extremely well,” Platts said.

The study, which includes the work of 84 scientists who made up 10 teams from 12 universities in eight states, all studying different aspects of the human body in space, was published Thursday in the journal Science. The data included cognitive measurements, physiological data and 27 months of samples from both brothers, including blood, plasma, urine and stool.

However, there are limiting factors to the study, the researchers said.

The work is reflective of only Scott and Mark Kelly, and the results will not be corroborated with other astronauts, the researcher clarified. Scott was also still within the protective shield of Earth’s magnetic field on the space station, not bombarded by deep-space radiation.

“It is impossible to attribute causality to spaceflight versus a co-incidental event,” according to the study, so the researchers regard their work as “hypothesis-generating and framework-defining” that will benefit from more research in the future. But they also believe it’s the “dawn of human genomics in space,” according to Dr. Andy Feinberg, principal investigator and professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“The Twins Study has been an important step toward understanding epigenetics and gene expression in human spaceflight,” said J.D. Polk, chief health and medical officer at NASA Headquarters. “This has helped inform the need for personalized medicine and its role in keeping astronauts healthy during deep space exploration, as NASA goes forward to the Moon and journeys onward to Mars.”

Mark Kelly said he hopes it will happen in his lifetime. “I’d even volunteer to be the person to get to go now that we know this about my brother, Scott.”

But he’ll have to beat out his brother for that honor. “I’m ready to go. Put me on a two-year flight,” Scott said.

What changed in space

A year in space caused Scott’s carotid artery to thicken, DNA damage, gene expression changes, a thickening of the retina, shifts in gut microbes, reduced cognitive abilities and a structural change at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres. But it did not alter or mutate his DNA.

Getting a flu shot in space also worked exactly as it did on Earth. Nutrition and exercise while on the station caused weight loss and an increase in folic acid that caused the vital production of red blood cells.

The changes in gene expression were connected to DNA repair systems and the immune system. More than 1,000 genes changed as soon as Scott arrived in space. Some of the changes were expected, like those related to bone formation or repairing DNA, because astronauts lose bone density in space and radiation damages DNA. But the changes to mitochondrial and immune system genes, which help produce energy and protect the body, suggest that long-term spaceflight increases stress on the body. There was also evidence of cellular stress.

This reveals that Scott’s immune system was on high alert in response to his environmental change, the researchers said.

“Gene expression changed dramatically,” said Christopher Mason, one of the study authors and associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. “While many of the changes reversed after Scott returned to Earth, a few remained, including cognitive deficits, DNA damage and some changes in T-cell activation. We don’t know yet if these changes are good or bad. This could just be how the body responds, but the genes are perturbed, so we want to see why and track them to see for how long.”

There was also a more dramatic change in genes during the last half of the mission compared with the first half, with six times the number of genes changing later.

Looking at Scott and Mark’s epigenomes only revealed a less than 5% difference. Epigenomes are chemical compounds that act like a switch to turn genes on or off in DNA. Epigenentic changes are tweaks to gene activity that don’t change the genetic code. For Scott, the changes involved his immune system response and in biochemical markers attached to inflammation.

While in space, the caps on the ends of chromosomes called telomeres lengthened in Scott’s white blood cells. Usually, a change in telomere length is associated with aging or disease, and they shorten with age. The lengthening wasn’t expected. Telomeres act like a biomarker for health and, now, the long-term risks of spaceflight.

Upon returning to Earth, Scott’s telomeres quickly shortened and even lost length compared with how they were before he left for the space station. This could be a negative effect on his cellular health, the researchers said. Now, he has more short telomeres. Short telomeres are associated with a higher risk for accelerated aging, cardiovascular disease and some cancers, said Susan Bailey, study author and Colorado State University professor.

Scott’s eyeballs also changed shape. His retinal nerves thickened, and folds appeared in the choroid layer around the eye. The changes are associated with vision clarity and have been noted in other male astronauts because of the headward fluid shift of zero gravity. It’s called space-associated neuro-ocular syndrome or SANS. That same fluid shift caused a distension of the neck’s jugular vein, more cardiac output and a thickening of the forehead’s skin. This puts deep pressure on veins, eyes and blood vessels and causes drainage.

The fluid shift affected not only his eyes but his cardiovascular system, as well. Scott’s carotid artery wall thickened early in the mission and remained that way for the rest of the flight. Collagen levels in his blood shifted, which was associated with changes in cardiovascular risk factors. Those returned to baseline when he returned.

While Scott’s gut microbiome shifted, the diversity of it didn’t, which was encouraging to researchers. Comparing Scott’s samples before, during and after the flight was more valuable than comparing them to Mark’s, the researchers said. While in space, the number of gut bacteria called Firmicutes increased, while the gut bacteria Bacteroidetes decreased. Both categories contain a mix of good and bad bacteria.

Researchers believe that zero gravity caused this shift. But the balance returned to normal when Scott returned to Earth. Countermeasures to help maintain this balance in the future could include pre-, pro- or postbiotics.

Scott’s cognitive speed and accuracy decreased in tests postflight and persisted up to six months after he returned.

There was also an uptick in immune response during Scott’s landing on Earth, which aligns with such a stressful event. And his lactic acid levels were higher during the first 15 days and final 14 days of the trip, although the exact trigger has not been identified.

But almost everything returned to normal, stable or baseline levels six months after Scott returned to Earth.

Scott said that returning from a year in space was “significantly different” from returning from a six-month mission. “The return was much worse than the adjustment” to the space station.

Scott said he felt like he had the flu during his first few days back on Earth. He experienced joint and muscle pain, swelling in the lower legs, hives and rashes anywhere his skin touched anything, dizziness, nausea and fatigue.

He believes it was all due to the return to gravity, exposure to different people and their immune systems, and an emotional reaction to such a dramatic experience. It took about six months to feel 100% again.

“He is back to virtually normal,” said Dr. Mike Snyder, investigator and director for Stanford University’s Department of Genetics.

Platts said that “if you look at the changes that were seen in Scott, the vast majority of them came back to baseline at a relatively short period of time when he returned to Earth, and those that did not return very quickly were markers of things we already knew were likely to happen,” such as stress and inflammatory markers.

He said the study both has new findings and reinforces what was known.

Protecting astronaut health

Scott first proposed the idea to NASA’s Human Research Program before his mission. The twins are both astronauts, but a unique opportunity was presented when Scott planned to spend a year on the space station while his brother remained on Earth. Their identical genes would provide the perfect comparison for researchers. And going forward, NASA is proposing more one-year missions to continue this kind of research and to prepare for longer missions to Mars or the moon.

After more than 50 years of human spaceflight, researchers know some of the risks posed to the human body by being in zero gravity. Astronauts have to deal with a stressful environment, noise, isolation, disrupted circadian rhythm, radiation exposure and a headward fluid shift that happens when floating as opposed standing on solid ground.

Space motion sickness occurs in the first 48 hours, creating a loss of appetite, dizziness and vomiting.

Over time, astronauts staying for six months or more on the station can experience the weakening and loss of bone and muscle atrophy. Astronauts also experience blood volume loss, weakened immune systems and cardiovascular deconditioning since floating takes little effort and the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood. Scott and other astronauts in their late 40s and 50s have also complained about their vision being slightly altered. Some of them have required glasses in flight.

Going forward, NASA is focused on addressing the key threats to humans traveling in space: isolation and confinement, radiation, distance from Earth, hostile or closed environments and fluctuating gravity.

“This will guide future biomedical space research and allow us to have a safer journey to and from Mars,” Platts said.

Implications on earth too

But these findings don’t just have implications for astronauts. Cancer patients also undergo genetic changes and radiation exposure. This study shows how a healthy body responds and adapts to stress, which could separate out how the body responds to other stressors, cancer or infections.

“The science that we do in space impacts our nation for generations,” Mark Kelly said.

In addition, the study sheds light on individual responses to flu vaccines, environment-related changes in gene expression, ailments related to intracranial pressure, visual system impairments and cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis.

Bailey, the telomere researcher, will continue her work by studying astronauts on six-month and one-year missions. Understanding the individual factors behind telomeres could show what influences their dynamics.

“The Twins Study demonstrated on the molecular level the resilience and robustness of how one human body adapted to the spaceflight environment,” said Jenn Fogarty, chief scientist for NASA ‘s Human Research Program. “This study was a stepping stone to future biological space research focusing on molecular changes and how they may predict health and performance of astronauts. It opened the door to new research strategies that are already being advanced in other studies.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/04/11/human-health-can-be-mostly-sustained-for-a-year-in-space-nasa-twins-study-concludes/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/human-health-can-be-mostly-sustained-for-a-year-in-space-nasa-twins-study-concludes/

[ezatluba]

The Challenge of Healing Animals Who Suffer From PTSD

Roni Jacobson

As a baby orangutan, Pony was kidnapped from the forest in Borneo and sold into sex slavery. For the first several years of her life, she was kept chained to the wall of a brothel in a remote village, shaved daily, and pimped out alongside human prostitutes. When she was finally rescued — at that point, she was around six or seven years old, right before orangutans typically enter puberty — she was found lying on top of a mattress covered in sores and would gyrate whenever a human male walked past.

Now 17, Pony is still recovering from the trauma of her early life. Since her rescue in 2003, Pony has been living at the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction Center in Kalimantan, Borneo, which rescues and rehabilitates captured orangutans with the aim of gradually releasing them into the wild. Pony has progressed socially since she first arrived — she is now a dominant female, although “most of her friends are much younger and smaller than her,” says Fransiska Sulistyo, the animal welfare coordinator at the Borneo Orangutan Society, who is currently in charge of Pony’s care. Still, she is completely dependent on BOS staff, having gone through two failed attempts to release her; in each case, Pony refused to explore or forage for food, and instead sat in the same spot all day, waiting to be fed.

Although Pony is an extreme case, most of the orangutans at the center “have some level of trauma,” Sulistyo says. They have been rescued from zoos or circuses, or kept as pets. Many of them show behavioral signs of trauma when they arrive: They rock back and forth, they pace. That kissy thing orangutans do that humans find so cute? It’s actually a sign of distress, according to Sulistyo, who estimated that about 10 to 20 percent of the orangutans at the center are unlikely to be able to return to the wild ever again.

To put it another way: Pony and other orangutans at Nyaru Menteng suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Scientists have known for a while that animals can develop PTSD just like humans can; what they still don’t know, though, is the best way to treat it. While some symptoms are species specific, others are universal. “Monkeys might bite themselves, birds might pull their feathers out, dogs and cats can compulsively lick their fur off. And people will sometimes cut themselves or burn themselves,” says Kristine Coleman, a scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. For people with PTSD, talk therapy is a crucial part of treatment. For other species, that’s obviously not an option, leaving the people who work with traumatized animals struggling to help them.

Not surprisingly, given what we know about mental illness in humans, mental-health issues in animals can frequently be traced back to trauma and poor conditions in early life. “There are certain behavioral indicators of past stress. We know a lot about outcomes of having poor maternal history, for instance,” says Stephen Ross, a primatologist in charge of chimpanzee welfare at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Chimpanzees separated from their mothers early “will often show behavior throughout their life that is indicative of this past stress, such as rocking and pacing.” Social skills are also impacted. “Early stressful experiences result in a lack of social skills and difficulty fitting in, which leads to further isolation and stress,” often exacerbating other problems, Ross says.

Aside from medication, which can be tricky to get right, and adjusting the animal’s environment to be more socially and cognitively stimulating, one of the main methods of treating animals with psychological problems is a type of conditioning called Positive Reinforcement Training. In PRT, food treats and other rewards are used to reinforce desirable behavior, such as engaging socially, being active, and not cowering.

PRT can be quite successful in certain contexts. For example, it’s been shown to be effective in reducing stereotypic behaviors (repetitive motions like rocking, touching, or tapping), which are thought to result from boredom or loss of control. But it’s much less successful for animals with more serious, intractable problems, including self-injury. There’s even evidence that it can backfire for some animals: A 2010 study, for example, found that anxious chimps were more likely to become agitated when they got a wrong answer during PRT training. “Thus, for these anxious animals,” wrote the authors of a 2014 review, PRT may not “provide the same psychologic well-being benefits afforded to other individuals. Instead, training may actually increase stress for these animals.”

For animals with more severe problem behaviors like persistent self-injury, essentially the only option is carefully monitored medication with drugs originally developed for humans, including the antidepressant Prozac and the antipsychotic Haldol. Naloxone, the medication given to revive people who have overdosed on opioids, has also been found to be moderately effective for treating self-injury in animals. As with humans, however, medication only goes so far.

“One thing we are doing more and more in the laboratory environment is trying to provide individualized medicine, so really identifying the causes of behavior to find a more effective treatment,” Coleman says. Often this goes back to an animal’s history, but it can also involve looking at individual temperament or personality. “Not every animal that has self-injury grew up in a suboptimal environment. It’s really only a risk factor,” Coleman says, and “we know there’s a link between temperament and behavioral issues in humans.”

Still, although animal personality is attracting researchers’ attention more than it used to, “personality assessment is not widely used within the animal-care field,” Coleman says. “The research is very new.”

One of the earliest clues into the role of temperament in trauma recovery in animals came from Harry Harlow, whose experiments rearing monkeys formed the basis of what we know about the link between maternal attachment and later mental health. In the 1960s, following those early experiments, Harlow conducted another series of far more disturbing and less well-known studies in which he essentially tortured baby monkeys, imprisoning them shortly after birth for 3, 6, 12, or 24 months without any social interaction or environmental stimulation in enclosures he macabrely insisted on calling “the pit of despair.” When released, the monkeys were naturally incredibly disturbed. Harlow and his team observed their behavior and attempted to rehabilitate them.

Unsurprisingly, the longer the monkeys were confined, the worse off the monkeys fared, but there were also individual differences between monkeys held for the same amount of time. Some recovered socially faster than others, which Harlow attributed to monkeys’ varying personalities, as all had been exposed to the same level of trauma.

Harlow’s contemporaries rightly condemned the experiments, eventually establishing a set of ethical guidelines for experimenting on animals. It’s only in recent years — decades after Harlow’s work — that investigations into animal temperament and trauma are becoming more common again. Conducted ethically, these studies could provide a path to better treatment for abused animals, which is currently takes a one-size-fits-all approach. “Knowing an individual’s temperament can help animal behaviorists determine the right course of treatment,” Coleman says. It can also be used to identify those at risk for developing behavioral problems down the line, paving the way for early interventions to prevent those behaviors from occurring in the first place.

Back in Borneo, Sulistyo and her staff do their best with what they have. Most of the orangutans that come to them are intensely scared of humans when they arrive, which can affect their treatment. “Some of those who are afraid show aggressiveness, while others are more submissive — they are not happy with human contact but they will submit to it,” Sulistyo says. Other factors, such as the age at which the animals were rescued, also influence their reaction and recovery. “It’s difficult when dealing with older orangutans,” Sulistyo says. “If we receive them when they are still very young, it’s easier. We have babysitters who sleep and cuddle with them.”

For orangutans who are either too old or aggressive toward humans when they are rescued, or whose trauma is extreme, like Pony, the main thing is “giving routine activities, showing her that these kinds of human are not harmful to her,” Sulistyo says. “Gradually, she starts to trust humans again.”

[tokupedia]

SPECIAL SAIKOU!: Japanese Superhero Showcase- Casshern

“By abandoning his mortal life, he gained an immortal body. To fight the evil iron demons and crush them into the earth. If Casshern won’t do it....who will?”

The year is 1973:

The global oil crisis begins, Watergate has rocked and shattered the USA’s faith in democracy, Cutie Honey hits television, Mazinger Z battled Devilman, Godzilla fought Megalon, Bruce Lee dies after filming of Enter the Dragon, The Exorcist scared the daylights out people and a little director named George Lucas made the big time with the box office hit American Graffiti.

But at Tatsunoko studios, the production team was hot off the success of Gatchaman and needed another show to keep things fresh. The team chose a serialized manga done by Kodansha and Boken-oh and got to work on a televised version of it.  The concept was a boy fighting a robot apocalypse by being converted into a super android and battling alongside his companions.

Incarnations

The Original

In the 1973 series, Casshern was once a young boy named Tetsuya Azuma. He had a happy life with his parents, his dog Lucky and his girlfriend Luna. His father was a scientist who was working on a new kind of android that would help mankind. However, in a Skynet/Frankenstein turn of events, a bolt of lightning gives one of the androids designated BK-1 sentience. The android then proceeded to break out of the castle the Azumas lived in and plot to end humanity. Some time later, BK-1 has literally assembled a robot army and christened himself as Buraiking Boss, a Hitler-esque tyrant android who believes that to save Earth’s environment, he must kill all the inferior humans.

The Robots invade and some already built rebel against their masters and  decimate Earth’s defenses.  Tetsuya’s dog Lucky is killed trying to protect his friends and Dr. Kotaro Azuma rushes to create an invention that will stop the Android forces.

His solution is an indestructible android body that allows a human consciousness to inhabit it.  Tetsuya volunteers, becoming the feared hunter of machines Casshern! His dog Lucky gets his mind transferred to a shape changing robot dog named Friender, who joins his fight to take down Buraiking Boss and save humanity from extinction!

1990s

Same story, with a few tweaks like having an array of commanders who served the now dubbed “Black King” (translation error of early anime releases at work) and a bit more of a darker adult tone. The anime also tweaked the looks of characters a bit and polished the animation to appeal to a more modern audience. The most notable change is that Casshern (or Casshan as this iteration is called) now has a retractable visor in addition to his faceplate and armor plating on his chest.

2004 tokusatsu film

A radical departure from the original concept, the 2004 film is essentially Casshern in name only in certain areas. Set in a dystopic future, a war between two nations has resulted in an environmental disaster. Dr. Azuma comes up with an invention called “Neo-Cells” which accidentally results in a group of superhumaniods called “Neo-Sapiens” to be born. Tetsuya, a deceased war hero and Dr. Azuma’s son becomes a Neo Sapien after an experiment resurrects him. After witnessing a rebellion by the other Neo Sapiens led by a man named Burai with an army of robots, Tetsuya becomes the heroic Casshern, a warrior named after a prophesied deity.

Sins

He who killed the Sun named Moon and brought forth the Ruin...

Tatsunoko dusted off Casshern for a reboot in 2008, as a sort-of continuation of the company’s 45th anniversary in 2007.

Like the 2004 film version, this iteration deviates from the primary story. In this one, Casshern is an enforcer of Buraiking Boss. Something goes horribly wrong after he is ordered to kill a savior who represents humanity’s last hope, as her life essence is connected to the Earth and her death slowly kills the planet in a phenomenon known simply as The Ruin. Hundreds of years later, this creates a world where robots corrode rapidly and die and all remaining organic life is dying slowly due to the change in environment. Humanity is going extinct as the toxins in the air and land have robbed them of the ability to reproduce.

The Earth reeks of Death.

Yet, somehow, Casshern is still around and has no memory of what he has done or why things are in such a state.

This iteration is written by tokusatsu writer Yasuko Kobayashi and is the darkest incarnation of the Cassherns. (Not to mention soul crushingly depressing as one of its main story themes is the inevitability of death, how we deal with it and must accept our mortality.)

Infini-T Force

Civilian mode

Behold, the newest incarnation of the Neo-Human!

He appears to be relatively younger than previous iterations, but has a more armored look and his Pulsar Propellers are more modern looking. Like his 90′s incarnation, it is romanized as Casshan again.

Like all the other heroes in this story, Casshan was brought to the “real world” by a frightened girl named Kyoko, who made a wish on her mysterious “Probability Pen” during a convenience store robbery for a hero to save her. (So, Last Action Hero meets Big Bad Beetleborgs in a sense)

He will be one of the members of this four hero super team in 2017!

Powers:

Super Strength, Super Speed, Invulnerability (regeneration and immortality instead in Sins), powerful Energy Blast called the Destruction Beam which is fired from his helmet. Waist-mounted pulsar propellers can enhance jumps or be used as an offensive weapon.

His robot dog Friender can breathe fire, has super speed and strength and like Polymar can change into vehicles such as a motorcycle, a jet, a tank and a submarine that Casshern can use for transport.

Weaknesses:

In the first two iterations, Casshern is a Solar Powered hero and his energy can deplete during long battles. This is made worse when the Sun isn’t out, as a symptom of his failing power is that his eyesight blurs and his body weakens to the point he can collapse and go unconscious. Only the Sun can replenish his energy.

In Sins, Casshern has a self-preservation quirk that can overcome him to the point he attacks friend or foe in a berserk state, usually when provoked, in a state of rage or during long battles. He has a healing factor, but every stab, impaling or blow that causes serious damage causes him an agonizing amount of pain during the healing. He also cannot die, which can create psychological trauma for him or hostile situations among other survivors in certain cases.

Fun fact:

Casshern has a bit of a fan following, seemingly among its fans is Keiji Inafune, video game creator of a certain SUPER FIGHTING ROBOT~. This can be seen with his creation Rush the Dog and there is even a character named Friender in Mega Man II!

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