#but honig thinks... damn.. i can fix her

[lesbokyoko]

"Sometimes when I pet her hair, clumps of it come out. I don't have much time with her left, but, I'll stay with her until my body gives out, too.

[despair-sauce]

Cartman at Kyle's: Mini Friday Night Funtime (Part 1)

It doesn't take long for Cartman to get done with his chores his mom asked him to do, so he pulls on his signature red jacket and looks in the mirror, fixing his hair and dusting himself off.

'hmmm nah, not tonight'

He decides to just go without his jacket, just to spice things up.

He walks downstairs and looks around to find his mom sitting on the couch. "Mom, I'll be at Kyle's for the weekend, call or text if you need me."

"Okay honey, I hope you have fun! If something happens, I'm always here!" Liane responds back to her son.

'Always here...right' Cartman sourly thinks to himself. 'If you were always here, I wouldn't be worrying about you all the damn time, mom.'

"I'm seriously mom, I know how you are with not wanting to depend on me, but I'll literally bust ass if I need to."

"I know honey, just go any have some fun, alright? I think you deserve it." She responds.

"Okay, okay, I'm going," Cartman says, dramatically turning around and opening the door. "Ich liebe dich, Mama," he says in a slow, but steady manor.

"Ich liebe dich mehr, Honig," Liane responds back, in a warm smile.

With that, Cartman sets off to Kyles, taking his time walking there, thinking about home.

Ever since the time in the rec room, things have gotten more lively back at home. Cartman and Liane have been getting on better terms, and Liane hasn't been going out and 'working,' much to Cartman's delight.

He thinks maybe it's because his 'voilent outbursts' and constant 'need to throw things when mad' have been improving because of Kyle and such...but he won't ever openly admit that.

It doesn't take more than five minutes until he shows up at Kyle's door. Knocking three times, he leans on the house, trying to look 'swag' for Kyle.

A few seconds later, he hears Kyle unlocking the door and opening it to see Cartman looking more or less like an idiot.

"Kyle~"

"I've never seen you look so stupid," Kyle deadpans, looking unimpressed. Looking a bit offended, taken back, Cartman responds. "Wh- Hey!"

Kyle laughs and turns around, keeping the door open for Cartman to come in. "I think I looked pretty damn awesome back there! Don't lie, you love my swagger Kyle!" He says, closing the front door, subconsciously locking it in the process.

Standing to look at Cartman, Kyle answers back. "Swagger? Is that what it was?" Kyle says teasingly, turning around to walk into the kitchen.

"Yeah! Trust me, when I'm not on my swagger, just assume something's wrong with me," Cartman says in a matter-of-fact tone. He follows Kyle into the kitchen and finds Kyle picking up some sort of ladle and stirring sauce in a pot.

"There's always something wrong with you Cartman. I think you mixed up 'swagger' with cockiness."

"Hey now, I'm here on my own free will, humor me and don't ruin my moment!" Cartman spews out, throwing a middle finger at Kyle behind his back.

Kyle laughs at bit at that and sets the ladle back down, lowering the heat. "Cartman, can you get a couple plates out and set them on the table?" "Yeah, sure," He responds, reaching out next to Kyle, opening a cabinet and getting plates out.

Kyle can't help but side eye Cartman, looking down and seeing the side of his shirt ride up.

Cartman is has gotten more muscle over the years. Sill soft, mostly everywhere, but Kyle can't deny that when he see Cartman's upper body, he absolutely melts.

For as much as Kyle rips on Cartman's weight, he can't say he really agrees with himself anymore. He loves the way Cartman looks, weight and all.

Setting them down on the table, Cartman asks, "Anything else?"

Kyle hums for a second. "No, everything else is already set, thank you."

"Yeah, yeah,' Cartman murmurs, sitting down at the kitchen table, opening his phone, looking at the message he just got.

"Who are you talking to?"

"Kenny, he wants to knows if he should bring any alcohol Sunday." Cartman says, still looking at his phone.

Kyle rolls his eyes, still preoccupied with making dinners responds, "I'm not going to babysit three practical adults"

"So that's a yes. No, that's a hell fuckin' yes," Cartman mutters as he types.

Kyle sighs and looks at Cartman with an almost accidental upset face.

"Live a little Kyle! We're only 17 once!" Cartman says, a little too excitedly.

"I swear, you three. It's like you guys enjoy destroying yourselves," Kyle says, shaking his head and sighing.

"We love every minute of it, too," Cartman says, turning his phone off and putting it back into his pocket.

"Smoking and drinking. What's next? Needles?" Kyle asks.

Ouch.

That hit a nerve.

It's bad enough that his mom shoots up almost all the time, now Kyle thinks he will too.

"Maybe, who fuckin' knows," Cartman says a little too aggressively.

Kyle caught on and looked at Cartman, who looks a little pissed off, he apologizes. "Sorry, shouldn't have said that."

"It's fine, Kyle," Cartman responds back. "No really, I didn't mean it like that."

"Kyle, let it go, I said it's fine." Cartman says, startling Kyle with the last word.

Kyle nervously looks back, and finishes making dinner, bringing the food to the table. "Dig in," Kyle says.

"Don't you like, pray to your Jew god or something before you eat?" Cartman asks.

"Usually no, but we do during Hanukkah," Kyle answers back.

Cartman's hums in response, and goes back to being silent again, making his plate of food.

Kyle mindlessly talks to Cartman, saying what's on his mind. "I like that you think before you talk. Mind you, you're still an asshole, but you at least think of what you say before you talk, that's something"

Cartman sort of freezes that that, face turning a light pink in the process. "I'm not an asshole anymore!"

"No, you still are, but I don't mind," Kyle tries to assure Cartman. "Well, I don't mind as much as I used to."

The light pink in his face turned a darker tint. "Good to know," He mutters.

It's silent for a good few minutes until Kyle starts talking again. "Tell me an event of November 3rd, 2003". Kyle asks.

Cartman looks over at Kyle, knowing what he's wanting. 'Is this a fucking challenge, Jew?' "We we're six and I beat you over the head with a yellow three prong mega block because you threw a green lincoln log at me because I said you can't build for crap."

"I can't ever stump you, can I?" Kyle asks, impressed. "Never, I'm just that good," He says, with a shit eating smirk.

"You and that photographic memory of yours," Kyle says, smiling and looking softly at Cartman. "You can do so well in life, you just need to apply yourself."

"Life is more enjoyable when you don't care about most things," Cartman responds. Kyle sighs and keeps looking at Cartman. "Life is more enjoyable when you care about important things."

"We have very different views on life then, Kyle," Cartman says. Afterward he sticks his fork back into his food and eats again.

Kyle closes his eyes for a good few seconds, opens them back up and starts eating again too.

When they finish eating, Kyle picks up their plates and utensils and brings them into the kitchen sink to clean.

When he's done, he didn't even notice Cartman left the kitchen table until just now.

"...Cartman?" Kyle asks loudly.

He steps into the living room and eyes the backdoor. He sees the back porch lights are on and he opens the backdoor and sees Cartman standing outside, smoking a cigarette.

"Cartman..." Kyle says with a hinge of both disappointment and irritation.

Cartman jumps at the sudden call of his name and looks back at Kyle. "Oh, hey."

"I'm sure you can imagine my surprise." Kyle says, crossing his arms and leaning on the outside wall of the house.

Taking another drag Cartman holds it in and breaths out. "Yeah yeah, so terrible, I know," he says sarcastically. He turns around to he can see Kyle. "Trust me, this shit takes like ass."

"Then why do you even smoke it?"

"Because if I don't I'll get a migraine."

"That's because you keep smoking retard," Kyle says, rolling his eyes and walking toward Cartman to stand next to him.

"Go back inside Kyle, it's freezing," Cartman states. In fact it's snowing actually.

"I have a jacket on, you don't," Kyle says.

"I can use my own personal body heat, I'll be fine," Cartman says, shrugging it off. He curses that his own body just betrayed him, shivering a little.

"You're not as big as you used to be, you know. Just hurry up, I don't want you to get frostbite." Kyle says walking back into the house.

Cartman blushes at that, he honestly didn't expect to hear that. And with that, he drops his cigarette onto the floor and crushes it with his shoe, swiftly walking back into the house.

"Honeyyyy I'm back!" Cartman says out loud. Kyle comes into the living room and leans on the living room frame and crosses his arms, smirking. "What makes you think I'm the girl?"

"Because Kyle, you have a girlish body than I do! It's like all your weight goes to your thighs and ass, and the rest of you is a twig! And because I'm sooo much taller than you!" Cartman teases.

"I do not have a girlish body!" Kyle exclaims.

"You are so cute when you're mad," Cartman teases again.

"Fuck off already," Kyle says turning towards the stairs to go up into his bedroom.

He stops though to see Cartman still standing where he was. "You coming?"

"Should I come?"

"I don't know, should you?"

"If I do, can we like, make out?"

Kyle stares at Cartman in shock. He didn't expect him to be so blunt about it. If he was blunt about it too, he'd say "God yes, hurry up!" But, that's not Kyle's style.

"Maybe." And he proceeds to walk up the stairs and into his room. A few seconds later he can hear Cartman running up the stairs, and he softly laughs at that.

Cartman closes the door and leans on the door a bit. He's eyeing Kyle, watching everything he's doing.

Kyle's just cleaning his room up a bit, not huge things, just small things he sees need to be picked up. "Am I really that interesting?" Kyle asks, trying to rile Cartman up a little bit.

Seeing Cartman flustered is absolutely adorable.

"You're the only damn thing here worth looking at." Cartman says. Kyle looks back at Cartman, blushing and with wide eyes.

Cartman's brain caught up with him. Now he's blushing too. "Wait that's not-"

Seeing Cartman stumble on his words makes Kyle laugh. "Don't worry about it, you're good."

Cartman grumbles a bit and crosses his arms in a soft demeanor. "You've been laughing a lot tonight, what's with that?" He asks.

"What? Can't I have fun with you sometimes?" Kyle asks, giving Cartman a smile.

"And all these damn compliments, it's annoying."

"Oh whatever! You're acting like I've never complimented you before!" Kyle exclaims.

"You do when you want something." He breathes. "No that's usually what you do," Kyle responds lightly.

Kyle finishes up and sits down at the end of his bed. He taps the side of him, gesturing he wants Cartman to sit down next to him.

Cartman's leans back up and walks to sit next to Kyle. Before Cartman knew it, Kyle sets a hand on Cartman's knee and squeezes a little. "Kyle you don't gotta-" "Shut up."

Kyle takes his hand and puts it up to Cartman's cheek to turn his head more towards him and lightly puts his lips on his.

Cartman puts his one of his hands on Kyle's hip and drags him closer, pulling one of Kyle's legs over his legs.

Kyle let's go and mutters. "Your lips are cold." "Well then, warm them up for me," Cartman breaths out.

Kyle smiles at that and kisses him again, this time, much deeper. Kyle uses his advantage of having a smaller body to lean more into Cartman, so he can be chest to chest with him.

Cartman makes a small moaning sound and that pleases Kyle a bit too much. Kyle takes his free hand and holds Cartman's hip.

He's happy Cartman didn't loose a lot of his weight. Would have been a real disappointment if there wasn't anything to hold onto.

It's been a good five minutes until Kyle let's go, but before that lightly bites Cartman's bottom lip, then let's go.

He moves off of Cartman and lays down on his bed, but makes room for Cartman. "That. Was amazing."

"It was, but you know what would make it more amazing?" Cartman asks.

Kyle knows what he means. "I'm just not ready for that yet. It's not you, trust me, it's just.--"

Cartman looks back at Kyle, who looks more nervous than anything. "Oh then yeah, don't worry about it Kyle." He proceeds to twist and turn until he's laying on his side, so he can look at Kyle.

"So you're not gonna rip on me for it?" Kyle asks, narrowing his eyes.

"Nah, I get it. Actually, I applaud you for waiting, for whatever reason." Cartman responds.

"That's... I'm- Thank you." Kyle manages to say, with a smile on his face.

"Whatever, just go to sleep, if you don't, I will tease you endlessly." Cartman says, with a smirk, of course.

"Fuck you, jackass," Kyle says closing his eyes, intentionally getting closer to Cartman, trying to cuddle with him.

Cartman got the memo thankfully and threw his arms around Kyle. "Fuck you too, jew."

"Awe man, almost one full night without a jew joke, damn." Kyle whispers.

"Would you rather me call you daywalker bitch instead?" Cartman whispers back.

"You fucking suck." Kyle teases laughing quietly. Cartman smiles at that and responds.

"Yeah, I know, but it's nice to know that you don't mind."

It doesn't take long for them to drift off to sleep.

[khalilhumam]

The Best of 2020: What We Read While the World Burned Around Us (Research Edition)

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-best-of-2020-what-we-read-while-the-world-burned-around-us-research-edition/

The Best of 2020: What We Read While the World Burned Around Us (Research Edition)

Even Dr. Pangloss would struggle to put a positive spin on 2020, a historic dumpster fire of a year in which a global pandemic, the deaths of a whole string of superheroes (Chadwick Boseman, Diana Rigg, Diego Maradona, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg start the list), and [*deep breath*] Beirut ammonium nitrate explosions, the costliest cyclone ever (Amphan), the Tehran plane crash, and California and Australia burning down. Kobe’s gone too. And Gerard Houillier. It’s been tough, and that’s without the ever-constant “I think you’re on mute” Zoom meetings.  But Candide’s alternative to Pangloss’s mindless optimism (after an even worse turn of events, if you can imagine that) serves as an inspiration: we must cultivate our garden. In that spirit, we’ve picked our favourite papers and articles about development of the year, picking pieces that help us understand the problems we’re working on better and how best to fix them.

Not the same storm, nor the same boats.

It’s inevitable that our first picks relate to COVID-19. Sifting through the avalanche of research in response to the coronavirus pandemic drove better minds than ours to distraction. Avinash Dixit estimated that the famous R rate for the pace of reproduction of COVID-19 research was as high as 34, though we had one advantage in fighting this pandemic of overconfident prognostication: there were no asymptomatic carriers of armchair epidemiology. Looking back at this wave of content, a few pieces stand out. Our colleague Justin Sandefur and his co-authors—in CGD’s most-read paper of the year—took on the task of estimating the infection-fatality rate from Covid across countries and came to the conclusion that sub-Saharan Africa faced substantially lower death rates from the disease—and the data (tentatively) suggest it may have been even lower than anyone predicted. Our current  lived experience of coronavirus ranges from total normality in Taiwan to everyday dysfunction in the US and tears over tiers in the UK, but in February many thought every country in the world would and should lock down completely to suppress the virus. Another of our favourite pieces of the year - Mushfiq Mobarak and Zachary Barnett-Howell writing in Foreign Policy made the case that the policy response in poor countries needed to be completely different to that in rich countries - the costs of lockdown were much greater, and the benefits fewer. Policy making during COVID-19 was incredibly hard—but pieces like this helped, as did this early note from Stefan Dercon suggesting where effort could be directed without regret, despite the uncertainty governments faced.

The sudden death of the Doing Business Index

We don’t gloat at CGD (that’s one of our few institutional positions). Yet news that the Doing Business Index was being suspended after allegations of data manipulation presumably raised a few eyebrows in this parish. The Index has long been a punching bag for researchers keen to understand how laws, implementation, and economic activity interact—partly because its construction varies over time, and partly because it doesn’t seem to shed much light on how business is actually done. Though few tears were shed outside the Bank over its demise, the Index will likely be resurrected. Whether it will ever recover credibility is much less likely, especially after what appears to an incredibly damning internal review, apparently confirming that data were manipulated under management pressures—requiring critically urgent reform. Part of the process of getting better is abandoning what doesn’t work. Expect this one to keep running.

Rebranding the bureaucrat

Dan Honig has been waging a battle on twitter to rebrand the bureaucrat, suggesting that . bureaucratic culture can drive better performance, and that it can be ‘created’ with relatively simple interventions. Two great new papers showcase this: in Ghana, Azulai et. al. implement a large scale training intervention aimed at cultural change in the civil service and find it improved division-level performance where the trainees were placed. And Muhammad Yasir Khan’s study in Pakistan shows that emphasising the mission-driven aspect of health work improves not only performance of health workers (and does so on more dimensions of their work than a simple incentive), it also improves downstream health outcomes in the community. These are some of the most optimistic and hopeful findings of the year—all praise the bureaucrats. If  large-scale change is going to happen, it will generally not be down to the efforts of a small but brilliant NGO, but because the full machinery of government bureaucracy is capable of action and can improve its performance.

A history of economics in 20 and ½ pages (and the future in 3)

One of the best long reads of the year was the three-way discussion between Amartya Sen, Angus Deaton and Tim Besley in the Annual Review of Economics, dominated by Amartya’s stories of his life as an economist and the people he interacted with. His story is almost a history of economic thought—arguing with Joan Robinson, talking about the environment with Arthur Pigou, being encouraged to folly by Nicholas Kaldor and reminding us of near-forgotten names like Piero Sraffa and Maurice Dobbs. This choice sticks out a little here because it doesn’t highlight a single finding or approach, but rather reminds us of much of the good the discipline has already produced—something economists, a species with a shorter memory than most, tend to forget. In a similar vein was this superb profile by John McDermott of Leonard Wantchekon: not about a specific paper or finding, but something that should give us hope about the capacity of economics to make the world better. Leonard has had an extraordinary life—from political prisoner to political economist - and his work to create an African School of Economics can only be a good thing for the generation of home-grown solutions and ideas, and for asking the right questions.

The world is still divided, but perhaps we’re redeemable

Back in May the world was rocked by the brutal killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by police in Minnesota. A wave of protests over the way police treat Black people spread from Minneapolis to Manchester to Monrovia, highlighting racism and inequality in society. Floyd’s death was one of many hundreds of police-involved killings that happen each year in the United States alone, and this paper by Desmond Ang shows how proximity to police violence has devastating and long-term effects for teenagers. He found persistent decreases in GPA, increased incidence of emotional disturbance and lower rates of high school completion and college enrollment, with the effects driven entirely by black and Hispanic students in response to police killings of other minorities. Ang notes that police killings are hyper-local and nearly 80 percent went unmentioned in local newspapers. But it’s not just the media that’s uninterested in violence against Black people. The story of economist Lisa Cook’s struggle to publish her paper on how violence against African-Americans depressed entrepreneurship among that community reveals deep troubles within the economics profession that we have barely started to address. But, perhaps we should not give up on humans yet. We also read some papers this year that provide more encouraging signs about people’s ability to become more tolerant. Salma Mousa, following her superb paper in 2019 on the effect of Mo Salah on Islamophobia in Liverpool, assigned Iraqi Christians to play football either on teams with other Iraqi Christians, or on mixed teams with Muslim players. Their behaviour changed, but only in the context of the football league - players on mixed teams were more likely to nominate Muslim peers for awards, for example. These behavioural changes didn’t extend to other settings, however. But in every cricket fan’s favourite paper, Matt Lowe finds that contact can reduce prejudice beyond the sports field.  He assigned men from various castes in Uttar Pradesh, India, to cricket teams and measured whether contact reduced caste divisions. It did - cross caste friendships increased by 45 percent, driven almost entirely by collaborative contact (same team) rather than adversarial (opposing team) contact. In a world where divisions sometimes seem as deep as ever, these papers offer a ray of hope. Perhaps more effort to integrate schools, workplaces, and communities could reduce discrimination in society. And, just like the rollout of vaccinations ends 2020 on a hopeful note, we will stop there. Thanks to Aisha Ali, Lee Crawfurd, and Dan Honig for contributions.